There are a lot of cards out there worth a ton of cash. Just a metric ton. And many of them make no sense at all to me.

This article is geared toward casual players who may not realize the actual cost of their cards. We don’t want anyone trading away a card worth a lot more than they knew. Or, if you are sitting on copies of these cards that are worth a pretty penny, perhaps you could move it. The cost of cards like Doubling Season demonstrates the secondary market value of casual hits quite nicely.

Honorable Mentions: Wolf Pack and Warrior’s Oath

Wolf Pack is still 40 bucks and Warrior's Oath is worse than the instant speed Final Fortune, but still worth $36. I don’t get how those bad rares from P3K are worth so much when better rares are worth less. But there you are.

10. Aurok Champion

In a recent article I discussed the super-high value of this Soul Warden variant at $21.99 NM. I mentioned that’s one of the cards that most needs a reprint this year in 2017. It still does. Auriok Champion, printed a surprising one time, is pricey as all get out, and used in Modern and Commander alike.

9. Scarecrone

Scarecrone is an awesomely fun card that any artifact deck can use, especially those with artifact creatures. Just tap four mana and your Scarecrone to recur any dead artifact critter from your graveyard right onto the battlefield. That’s not just card advantage, but pure card adrenaline! And you can sacrifice it to draw a card in case removal comes your way. It’s a great card, right? Right! And casual players have been grabbing them for decks ever since, including the artifact loving of Kaladesh and Breya, Etherium Shaper. Both are great. But this card is a high $13 near mint right now because it’s never been reprinted. And we all know it’s going to hit a Commander deck or other product sooner or later because of its great play value at the kitchen table. Its price is on the high side right now, and if you have unused copies, there’s no reason not to move them for other cards that are more reliable investments.

8. The “Bad” Shoals

When this cycle was printed in Betrayers of Kamigawa, no one thought that the good Shoals (Sickening Shoal, Shining Shoal) would be the ones that would have no long term value. They both were solid in casual, both held their own even without the pitch as a useful removal and surprise trick. Both had real value. And then combo-city hit the Shoals, but not those. And the Shoals that weren’t those two leapt in value. Now to a degree, Disrupting Shoal is understandable. It’s a limited pitch counter, but if you have the right casting cost in your hand, a free counter is still a free counter. But the other two are odd. Blazing Shoal was always expected to maybe be something, because you could pitch Myojin of Infinite Rage for +10/+0 power to a creature. Hey! Play a Mountain, drop a hasted 1/1, swing, Blazing Shoal out two Myojins for 21 damage! But that was so unlikely that it never really emerged, and the card remains cheap. But Nourishing Shoal sucks. It’s an instant Stream of Life for one more mana. Stream of Life sucks. And yet, there we are sitting at $8 bucks near mint, because of how it fuels Griselbrand decks. Discard a big, giant Green beater and the Shoal for at least 7 life, and then draw 7 more cards. Boom goes the combo. How did the sucky Shoals wind up with the high value? This cycle went into an odd space.

7. The Liege Uber-Cycle

In Shadowmoor and Eventide we had two sets of cycles of rare Lieges. They pumped each color in their cost once, so folks with both colors would get +2/+2. They had a useful slate of abilities, and typically had a good p/t casting cost, giving them a big board presence. Now a few of these were either never that hot in casual circles, or were reprinted to drop their value. But many of these are among the most heavily demanded casual cards out there. Here are a couple with high costs as good examples, Deathbringer Liege — $12.99 — and Balefire Liege — $7.99. Many of these are amazing cards for their colors, and reprints, like Murkfiend Liege or Wilt-Leaf Liege were needed to keep costs reasonable. And many are in the $5 buck mark with multiple copies out there. Cards like Boartusk Liege and Ashenmoor Liege are real.

6. Death Baron

It used to be Elves. Elves used to be the default most common tribe in casual Magic. Zombies have taken their place a while ago and never gave it back. As such, Zombie Lords tend to be worth some good cash. Consider the financial value of Undead Warchief ($4.99 near mint for the initial uncommon printing), and $10 NM for the best Zombie Lord out there, Lord of the Undead. Compare them to, say, the heavily printed Cemetery Reaper at $3.49 for the cheapest edition, and so forth, and all have a few bucks under their belt. But Death Baron, printed twice, is just worth a huge amount of cash at $22.99 for a near mint copy. Two printings, at rare. Right now, today, it’s worth more than almost every card in an expansion set. If you have set you aren’t using, you have almost $100 in those four cards alone. It’s worth a lot more than all of the other Zombie Lords, and you might be surprised to see how much!

5. Greater Auramancy

This hits all of the numbers. Needed for a very specific archetype, enchantments. Printed as a rare long ago in an underprinted set. Never printed again. And now this enchantment enabler is rocking a $21.99 near mint. It throws up a shield over everyone enchanted and everything enchantment. Now, this could be reprinted tomorrow. We all know it. But it is a unique card that is very good in a small subset of decks. So don’t be surprised to find these worth a lot of cash, and again, if you took apart an aura deck and have these sitting around doing nothing, this might be a good time to consider moving them.

4. In the Eye of Chaos

Are you playing Blue? Great! Here’s this old school enchantment that is in the wrong color. Anybody playing any instants has to pay twice as mana for it to resolve. Lightning Bolt? Pay that ! Counterspell? ! Murder? ! Chastise? ! The card actually works in other colors, you could make it White (which likes taxing everyone), or Green (hoses Blue and instants) all day long. Maybe even Red (chaos!). But Blue is the wrong color for this. Blue loves instants. It’s the color most associated with them, so why is this clunker in Blue? You have to work hard to make it work. Either run cards like Last Word that cannot be countered, or in a Blue deck devoid of counters, like Merfolk Aggro that runs this. But most decks would rather run something more reliable in the tempo-tastic value of Winter Orb or something. So, In the Eye of Chaos is in the wrong color, is very limited in its hoser-y nature, and is hard to build around. So why is it $44.99 near mint? That makes no sense to me.

3. City in a Bottle

Two years ago I led an article about surprisingly cheap cards by comparing the then-$20 price tag of the rare City in a Bottle (near mint) to these cards. It was two bucks more than Argivian Archeologist, as one example. Know what has happened in the last two years? That’s right! City in a Bottle has exploded and is now a clean $100 dollars (NM). Other than maybe a sideboard in Old School Magic against Serendib Efreet, Erhnam Djinn and Juzam Djinn, I’m not sure why people bought this card or picked it up, but they did. Don’t be surprised . . . 

2. Shahrazad

I want you to think about last week’s article a bit. We had multiple rares from the first two expansion sets for cheap costs, like Ydwen Efreet, Ifh-Biff Efreet, and Argivian Archaeologist. All are cheap, and yet, all have real play value in formats like Commander or the kitchen table. You can drop and rock an Ifh-Biff all day long. You can abuse Argivian Archaeologist. Great value!

So why is this so much more expensive at $90 NM? You can’t play it in tournaments. You can’t run it in Commander. You can’t run it in many casual formats that want to finish their games. It’s not a nice card at all. Especially if you’ve played with it a few times, as I have. In my opinion, Shahrazad is the worst designed Black-bordered card of all time. It makes games take 2 or 3 times as long, and has very little impact on the actual game when the subgame finishes. It’s not fun; it’s exhausting. So why does it have such a high value? If you are holding onto one, and not running it, why not get a serious injection of cash or value into your collection?

1. Living Plane

Living Plane, quite simply, sucks. It was a junk rare that was really bad. Why? It turned all lands into 1/1 creatures, which meant two possible things.

1. If your deck was designed to Armageddon your opponent’s creatures by killing them with Earthquake or Tremor it would kill yours too.
2. If your deck was designed to turn your lands into creatures and swing to win the game, it gave the same gift to your foes.

So you have to jump through hoops to make it useful. You could add in something to pump your creatures en masse, like Castle, Parapet, or Gaea's Anthem. Timber Protector? It takes some serious chops to jump through to make it work and have value. There are better ways to make your lands powerful creatures like Rude Awakening. Want to make everyone’s land a creature? Wouldn’t Nature's Revolt for one more mana than Living Plane be better for these tasks listed above? (It is, as someone who played a deck around this, the Revolt is the better card by far) As a surprise, you could Natural Affinity.

So, here’s my question . . . 

Why is Living Plane $100 near mint?

That makes no sense. How is that a $100 dollar rare from Legends? It’s not even good for Old School Magic, unlike City in a Bottle which, in the right metagame, be a useful sideboard card. Did you know that in all of Legends, there are only 7 cards are worth more than Living Plane? It’s true! Here they are:

• Eureka
• Moat
• The Abyss
• Mana Drain
• Nether Void
• The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
• Chains of Mephistopheles

Two other cards are worth the same (All Hallow's Eve, Invoke Prejudice). That means that Living Plane is the 8th most expensive card in a set that includes some of the most powerful cards in the history of the game.

Take a look at that list again. Now sing the kid’s song, “One of these things is not like the other . . . ”

I wonder which one . . . 

What happened to Living Plane?

One of the keys to evaluating the price value of the card is to also consider the play value of the card. Here, let me give you a couple of examples:

Wrath of God — Printed countless times. Worth $5 near mint in cheapest form

Day of Judgment — Printed countless times. Cheapest nm version is $3.

Wrath of God is a little better because it removes the ability to regenerate. Given the cheap difference in price, it’s often worth the upgrade cost from Day to Wrath.

On the other hand . . . 

Grim Monolith — 2 mana artifact, taps for 3, doesn’t untap, you can spend 4 to untap it. Worth $50 near mint.

Basalt Monolith — 3 mana artifact, taps for 3, doesn’t untap, you can spend 3 mana to untap it. Worth $1.50 near mint.

Basalt Monolith is clearly a little worse than Grim Monolith in the short term, and a little better in the long term. And yet Grim Monolith is worth so much more than Basalt! So why would you spend 50 on a card you can almost better for a buck and a half? There is no reason for you to not grab a bunch of Basalts right now. The play value of Grim Monolith does not meet its price. Now some cards do, they are unique. But many cards are far in excess of others when it comes to price vs. value. Living Plane’s play value is not anywhere near $100. And its scarcity isn’t on the same level either as other rares in the set attest. There is no reason for Living Plane to make this list.

Or really any of these other cards, right? Right!

So if you have some, and you aren’t using them? Time to clear up some space and trade or sell them for some serious bank.