“Cheery” Acorn-Stamped Promo Approaches $100 Mark

Last updated on December 18, 2025

Tataru Taru | Illustration by Livia Prima

Magic has a yearly tradition that’s kind of “Corporate sends a Christmas card,” although with a cool MTG twist: The Xmas card is an actual Magic card.

2025's entry is Cheer, a Boros elemental incarnation that looks like Screaming Nemesis‘ bigger, badder brother…  

… and perhaps another cool twist of these MTG “Corporate Christmas Cards” is that they often do double duty as an end-of-year bonus: Some of them can be quite pricey (above $100 in some cases, and all the way up to $400). In Cheer‘s case, it's already sitting around ~$80 market price, with the majority of listings on TCGplayer between $75 and $90 at the time of writing.

What Is This Cheer Card, And Where Does It Come From?

Loran of the Third Path | Illustration by Steven Belledin

Cheer is part of the Happy Holidays promo series, which even has a set code: HHO. These are annual, holiday-themed MTG cards that Wizards sends out as “thank you” notes, rather than sell them in Collector Boosters or Secret Lairs. The series goes back to 2006, starting with Fruitcake Elemental.

They used to be silver-bordered cards, as Fruity shows above. This is a way to mark MTG cards that are, on the one hand, real Magic cards, but aren't tournament-legal. In other words, they are real cards that happen to be banned in all formats. The most common example of silver-bordered cards are cards from un-sets like Unglued or Unstable. Happy Holidays cards are pretty much like un-cards as far as their legality goes.

In the last few years, the silver-border was replaced with an acorn stamp, which is the rules-equivalent to the old silver border: Not legal in Constructed formats (notably, not legal in Standard or Commander by default), even if they are real Magic cards. They are strictly for casual games.

Are Happy Holiday Cards Expensive?

By MTG standards, yyyep, they are!

The cheapest tend to fall into the $20-$30 range. Cheer, released a month ago, is sitting at around $80 right now…

Source: TCGPlayer

… but that only makes it the seventh most expensive HHO card: The top five are all above $100, and the priciest of them all, Gifts Given, breaks past $400.

Source: Scryfall

Since these cards are unplayable in any sanctioned format, their price is entirely based on scarcity, coolness factor, and what collectors are willing to pay for them. Some of them are really scarce: For example, there are just a couple Gifts Given currently listed, and a grand total of seven copies were traded on TCGPlayer in the last 12 months. 

How Do I Get These Happy Holidays Cards?

Weeelll…

Or, better put: Wizards sends this to their staff, partners, and as of late also to WPN stores as a gift. They don't come in Booster packs, and are not sold by Wizards anywhere. Puns and jokes aside, HHO cards really are the cute version of corporate Xmas cards or “Thank you” notes that Magic's makers send out to stores, employees, partners, and friends of Wizards of the Coast.

For those of us outside that select circle, the usual “How To” works pretty much as usual: Buy singles.

Okay, I Got One! Where Can I Play It?

HHO cards are strictly for casual play, so you can absolutely play them, as long as your playgroup is cool with silver-bordered/acorn cards (or these cards in particular).

Last year, the Commander Rules Committee was analyzing options to allow players the use of silver-bordered cards in Commander… but promptly after we had the Great Fast Mana Cataclysm, the Rules Committee was disbanded, and WotC took full control of Commander, and since then Wizards haven't said a single word about silver or acorns in neither of the two Commander Brackets articles they published this year. So, as far as we know, they are still strictly for casual, rule-0 play.

Happy Holidays

Delighted Halfling – Illustration by Livia Prima

Real (if casual-only) Magic cards, real Xmas cards, and almost like little end-of-year bonuses given how pricey they can be: That's HHO cards in a nutshell.

One way in which Wizards of the Coast says, “Thanks for making Magic with us!”