Universes Beyond Discount Affects Wildly Powerful Cards

Last updated on April 21, 2026

Commander's Plate Illustration | by Volkan Baga

By now, the “Universes Beyond tax” is basically part of Magic. Wizards of the Coast's suggested retail prices for Universes Beyond products like Magic: The Gathering | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY are noticeably higher than for in-universe sets. The current rate is $6.99 for a Play Booster and $37.99 for a Collector Booster for Universes Beyond products, while in-universe sets like the recent Lorwyn Eclipsed or the upcoming Secrets of Strixhaven have an MSRP of $5.49 for Play Boosters and $26.99 for Collector Boosters.

So yes, crossovers usually come to Magic with a premium.

But there’s a funny catch here: while Universes Beyond often makes sealed products more expensive, it can also make specific reprints cheaper. Much cheaper, in some cases. And that seems to be what’s happening with TMC and PZA, the bonus sheets from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover. There are extremely strong staples, like Food Chain, Commander's Plate, or, Shadowspear, that are currently being sold for a lot less than any other version.

The TMC Discount

Everything Pizza – Illustration by James Bousema

If you ask Scryfall to show you the most expensive reprints in TMC, and show you the cheapest version, it turns out that the TMC version is actually the cheapest of them all in nine out of ten cases, with Dark Ritual being the exception.

Source: Scryfall

For example: There are seven different printings for Food Chain; the most expensive is a Judge Gift Card that costs almost $100, then five different versions that are priced between around $45 and $60… and then the bottom-barrel TMC version, which is priced just about half as the next cheapest!

Source: Scryfall

Something similar happens with Commander's Plate: It has seven different printings, the most expensive is a Secret Lair version (costs about $65), then there are five versions tightly packed in the $43-$48 range… and the TMC version for just about $27.

Source: Scryfall

Most Sword of Hearth and Home printings costs about $21-$25, the most expensive version is about $42, and the cheapest version is… yyyep, the TMC printing, for just a paltry $13.

And that's true for nine out of the top ten most expensive reprints; the only card to break the trend is Dark Ritual…

… with Filipe Pagliuso's version costing about $13 while there are tons of Dark Ritual printings (like the Mercadian Masques version, or the Tempest version) that cost less than half of that.

One could come up with several reasons for why TMC reprints could have such a big discount (for example, it's a very recent MTG, so of course there's bound to be a lot of fresh supply). But with how much Magic players were against the art direction in this set, the clearest explanation seems to be: most folks just find these distasteful.

If that doesn't strike you as a plausible explanation, just take a look at the topping on this other pizza:

Source: Scryfall

Of the twelve most expensive reprints included in the PZA bonus sheet (aka the Source Material bonus sheet), in all cases the cheapest version is the PZA version.

Before PZA, the cheapest near-mint printing of Shadowspear was from Theros Beyond Death, at about 40 bucks. If you can stomach the PZA version, you just have to pay $21.

All Will Be One costs about $30 for the regular Phyrexia: All Will Be One printing… while the PZA version is just $15!And the examples go on and on; in some cases the PZA version is the cheapest just a little bit; in other, the Universes Beyond discount is close to a whopping 50%. Definitely not bulk-bin prices, but certainly the bargain-bin version.

Why Are TMNT Reprints So Cheap?

The obvious answer is supply. TMC and PZA are brand-new, so there are fresh packs being opened right now. And when you compare TMNT with the previous Universes Beyond set, namely Avatar, is pretty common for Avatar's source material bonus sheet (TLE) to be the cheapest version:

Source: Scryfall

But, for starters, the cheapest version of the most expensive reprint (Deflecting Swat) is not from Avatar, and only six of the top then are. And once you dig into the prices, the differences are minimal: TLE's The Great Henge costs about $59 while the next cheapest, the Commander Masters version, is about $62; and TLE's Fierce Guardianship is just a couple of pennies cheaper than the Commander Masters version.

Discounts for turtles and pizzas, on the other hand, are huge… and that's very likely to be related to how just plain ugly and overly cheesy these reprints are.

Tons of players felt that the art direction was all over the place, calling it everything from pizza gore to downright ugly.

To be fair, not everybody hated these. And, as game pieces, many of these cards are powerful staples. But, by and large, players just seem a lot less eager to pay up for versions covered in pizza bits and crossover cheese.

Wrap Up

Guac & Marshmallow Pizza – Illustration by Brandon L. Hunt

It's interesting to see how Universes Beyond can do two opposite things at once. It can raise the price of sealed products, while lowering the price of specific singles.

And with TMC and PZA, the judgment seems pretty clear: these are powerful reprints, but many players simply don’t like how they look.

So while the “UB tax” is very real when you’re buying packs, there also seems to be a clear “UB discount” when the crossover art lands with a thud.