Beware: Someone is Manipulating The Secondary MTG Market

Last updated on August 19, 2025

Archetype of Aggression – art by Matias Kollros

Magic players have been bombarded non-stop with reveals in the last three weeks: On top of Edge of Eternities‘ global launch, Wizards of the Coast revealed a good chunks of both Spider-Man – the Magic x Marvel crossover to be released in September – and Avatar: The Last Airbender, expected for late November.

It's therefore normal to expect the MTG market to be quite hectic, with so many new cards released and revealed – even when “normal” looks not too different from “crazy” when Avatar's Collector boxes scratch the $1,000 mark the very same day they go on prerelease, as they did last week…

But today's Magic finance story has a bit of a different angle than most we cover, because looks like some fishermen are taking advantage of turbulent waters to artificially inflate prices.

Quick Buck Sliver

Quick Sliver – art by John Avon

If you've been paying attention to Edge of Eternities‘ impact on the MTG card market, it's not news to you that Slivers are enjoying some time under the spotlight:

So if I were to tell you that Quick Sliver‘s demand had a huge spike in early August, you wouldn't be too surprised to learn that it sold 125 copies sold in a single day, while its the daily average is about 3. And if I told you that its market price shot from about fifty cents to $3.50, a 700% increase!

Or maybe you'd suspect a buyout: Somebody hoarding all the available copies to resell them at a premium.

But here's the plot twist: The huge spike in demand in early August barely budged the price back then. And now, all of a sudden and no additional demand, the price has had a huge jump…

Source: TCGplayer – Quick Sliver (CMM)

… even when there's a super-deep supply of near-mint copies for less than a buck…

Source: TCGplayer – Quick Sliver (CMM)

… and with the original printing from Legions costing no more than $0.50!

So what's going on with Quick Sliver here?

As it turns out, it's a bit of a “reverse buyout,” so to speak. Rather than somebody buying all the copies for cheap and reselling them at a steep markup, it turns out that three copies were, for some very odd reason, sold at nearly $20.

Source: TCGplayer – Quick Sliver (CMM)

No, You're Not Seeing Blurry

Well… Maybe somebody misclicked that day, and just got themselves a really bad deal for not double-checking? Maybe somebody who's not too used to the TCGplayer interface just made a mistake?

After all, all these Slivers kinda look the same… maybe they thought they were buying some other, very expensive Sliver?

Like, say, Blur Sliver:

Demand for this red sliver also spiked like crazy close to Edge of Eternities release…

Source: Blurry Sliver (CMM)

… but, what do you know: Supply is large enough that, like in Quick Sliver‘s case, the sudden spike in demand didn't move the needle much as far as price is concerned.

Well, apparently our in-a-rush Sliver buyer misclicked again, on the very same day, and got themselves a couple of extra-expensive copies of this sliver, too:

Source: Blurry Sliver (CMM)

And, wow, what do you know: Also at about $20 each!

I mean, what are the odds?

Yeah, Well, But, That's Just, Like, Slivers, Man!

I mean, yeah, that's true: These are Slivers, after all – the odds of all of them doing something weird because one of them does, are actually quite high.

What sure is odd is that our serial misclickers seems to have returned the next day to buy themselves some Tireless Provisioner from Bloomburrow, which is the only printing going up: 

Source: TCGplayer 

And they really must think that all Magic cards cost $20, because they keep buying 2-buck cards for ten times the price, and in turn pushing the market average sky-high.

Source: TCGplayer – Tireless Provisioner (BLC)

What's a bit problematic in this case is that, even though there are lots of listings for much cheaper, TCGplayer shows you the expensive price point at the top of the screen, which at a quick glance would seem to indicate it's the fair market price.

Something similar is happening at the time of writing with The Lost Caverns of Ixalan‘s Wayward Swordtooth:

There are tons of listings at about $3-$4 for this very same printing…

Source: TCGplayer – Wayward Swordtooth (LCC)

But if you're not familiar with the interface (or the Magic card market as a whole) and just look at the the price prominently displayed on the top right, you may think this is the actual market price:

Source: TCGplayer – Wayward Swordtooth (LCC)

Keep Scrolling!

Sidequest - Catch a Fish – Illustration by Gal Or

Our usual caveat when we write about MTG card prices is that this is not investment advice… but today that doesn't apply. This is advice, folks: Always research and double-check everything about the Magic singles you're buying.

What's the price of printings from other Magic sets? Even if you're only interested in a particular version, one version spiking while the others stay flat is already a warning sign.

And, like in today's case, make sure you scroll through the whole page and always make sure you browse through all the listings. Some fishermen out there are out to fish you.