Ancient Meta-Breaking Artifact Resurfaces with Massive Price Spike

Last updated on October 13, 2025

Urza, Lord High Artificer | Illustration by Grzegorz Rutkowski

A very old MTG artifact that you likely have never heard of may have just become this year's holder of “Biggest Price Spike” among Magic cards: A silly 4674%!!

Yeah, that's multiplying by 46.74, which in this case is kind of simple math for a card that jumped from $1 to $46.74, as Arena of the Ancients just did according to MTGStocks:

Source: MTGStocks – Arena of the Ancients (Chronicles)

So why have you (or me, or anybody you play with!) never heard of this colorless card, and why is it going up?

Above all since Arena of the Ancients is almost as old as Magic itself. And, no, it has nothing to do neither with serial price spiker Vivi Ornitier, nor any upcoming MTG set like Avatar or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Arena of the Ancients Price Spike

Ancient Adamantoise | illus. Kevin Glint

The original Legends printing of Arena of the Ancients is no stranger to abrupt, strange price spikes. “Strange” as in, the card has very little competitive potential, and an abysmally low play rate, even in casual Commander.

Source: MTGStocks – Arena of the Ancients (Legends)

Note that the above is the original, black-border printing from Legends. It's not a Reserved List card, but it's old enough that, thanks to collectible value alone, it's never been under $4, and it was priced at around $15 a few days ago. In other words, the black-bordered Legends version spiked “just” about 300% – a huge jump to be sure, but in this case there's been a few precedents.

The fact that one the original version was always a lot more expensive than the reprint is a strong hint that this card was never too popular.

Why is Arena of the Ancients Spiking?

Spelunking | illus. Ernanda Souza

Short story: Arena of the Ancients‘s spike is very, very likely a speculative buyout.

Longer story: From time to time, a thread springs up in the EDH subreddit with somebody wondering why the card is not played more. And the usual answer is something along the lines of, “It can indeed royally hose some decks… but other commanders just won't care.”

MTG sets are getting an increasingly large amount of legendary creatures. So, yes, Arena of the Ancients is getting progressively more potential targets…

Arena of the Ancients was spotlit by content creators on TikTok and Instagram, which definitely motivated the spike.

It's not like they claimed to have discovered a new game-breaking combo. Some of those content creators even admit that “It’s a card that feels far too conditional for the upper brackets, and it’s definitely not playable in cEDH.”

Source: TCGplayer – Arena of the Ancients – Chronicles (CHR)

What Will Happen With Arena of the Ancient's Price?

Vrondiss, Rage of Ancients | illus. Svetlin Velinov

Magic is an awesome game, and of the many ingredients of why it's so awesome is that, from time to time, somebody will find a way to break a format in half thanks to a card nobody saw coming.

While it's not impossible that Arena of the Ancients will become such a card some day… today it doesn't seem to be that day.

Players do know this card exists, as proven by how frequently somebody asks about it (and gets told it's too narrow). Yet play rate in casual decks is microscopic, and even the content creators that have hyped it this week admit it's not cut for top-tier competition.

A famous economist once said, “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” And Arena of the Ancients at least does have a track record of pushing past $40, which to be honest is not something most Magic cards can say.