Extremely Unique Ancient Single Print Rare Spikes 131%

Last updated on August 14, 2025

Loyal Warhound | Illustration by Dmitry Burmak

A good number of price spikes in the MTG card market are related either to the popularity of newer sets, or because a card performs extremely well in competitive settings. Last week, for example, Shoot the Sheriff shot through the roof as it became the go-to black removal spell in post-rotation Standard, while many Magic players found out that Charge Station is an actual card given it's great synergy with charge counters.

In other cases though, a price spike can happen out of nowhere because of a buyout – that's to say, when just a handful of buyers dry up the market, driving prices up.

That seems to be the case of what's happening right now with Debt of Loyalty:

Debt of Loyalty, a white instant that most Magic players have never heard of, has more than tripled in price in the last few days – although the huge spike may be a mixture of hype from content creators, speculators buying out the card and, in some cases, even from misreading what Debt of Loyalty actually does.

Debt of Loyalty's Price Spike

Revel In Riches | Illustration by Eric Deschamps

Debt of Loyalty is an MTG card so old that's probably older than a good chunk of Magic players – it has a single printing from Weatherlight, back from 1997, and if you never heard of it it's because, well, most players never have: It has never been seen in a competitive deck, and it has a rock-bottom play rate even among casual Commander decks.

But it also happens to be a Reserved List card: Cards that WotC has vowed never to reprint. Which, in turn, made it fairly expensive (even if unplayable), costing north of $10 until a couple of weeks ago.

Debt of Loyalty‘s listed prices have now quadrupled overnight, from that $9-10 bottom to more than $40 in US markets:

Source: MTGStocks

And when you look at traded units on TCGplayer, it's pretty clear the market dried up last week: 

Yeah, pretty clear buyout here…

Source: TCGPlayer

After several days of trading just 1-2 copies (and in many case trading none), Debt of Loyalty traded dozens of copies per day for three consecutive days.

Reading the Card Explains the Card… Sometimes

The source of the out-of-nowhere interest seems to be a mixture of hype from content creators calling it an “undiscovered Commander super staple” and the scarcity of Reserved List cards. And, in some cases, even misreading what Debt of Loyalty does.

In all honesty, if you read the actual card it does seem amazing, since it says, “Regenerate target creature. Gain control of that creature.” In other words, no hoops to jump through: You Mind Control the target, at instant speed, in white, with no “during end of turn,” limitation. Which is a great way to handle an opposing commander: If you gain control of a creature, it never changes zones (it always stays on the battlefield), so Debt of Loyalty-ing your opponent's commander means it doesn't return to the command zone.

But as one wise cardboard philosopher once said…

… if it's too good to be true, then it probably ain't.

The thing is, Debt of Loyalty‘s full Gatherer text does have an important hoop: You only gain control of the creature if it does regenerate.

Source: Scryfall

In particular, according to the card's rulings: “If you cast Debt of Loyalty but nothing happens to the targeted creature for the rest of the turn that would cause it to be destroyed, Debt of Loyalty has no visible effect. The regeneration shield wears off at the end of the turn. If the creature regenerates during a later turn, you won’t gain control of it.”

In other words, you can't just point Debt of Loyalty at a target and claim it as yours; some other effect needs to attempt to destroy it for the “gain control” clause to take effect.

What Will Happen With Debt of Loyalty's Price?

Bruvac the Grandiloquent | Illustration by Ekaterina Burmak

In the last few weeks, we've had no shortage of long-forgotten bulk-bin draft chaff that went from zero to hero overnight given some new synergy with some popular card from Final Fantasy or Edge of Eternities, but this case is different: There's no new card here that breathes new life into old cardboard.

“I picked one up about 10 years ago,” notes u/random_val_string in the thread discussing the buoyant, “and it’s been consistently cut from decks every time I try putting it in.”

“Yep,” agrees u/Trickdaddy1, “a bunch of pissed off commander players are gonna be mad they dropped 30 dollars on a very situational card that isn’t a 3 mana gain control white spell.”

“Debt of loyalty? You need the creature to be destroyed before you gain control of it. It's situational, not very good for 1WW,” says u/AdAdventurous3879. “Anyway, time to sell.”

With the usual caveat that this is not investment advice (doing your own research is priceless!), it would seem in this case that hype and speculation are the driving forces, alongside a bit of reading the actual card rather than the Gatherer errata.

And while it's not impossible for a gazillion of Commander players to have missed a super-duper staple (Magic does have a lot of cards, after all), odds are that it's just not that good.