Last updated on May 21, 2025
Mass Appeal – art by Christopher Moeller
It's not a secret by now that Magic's Final Fantasy crossover is having a huge impact on the MTG card market. Final Fantasy commanders like Vivi Ornitier and Y'shtola, Night's Blessed are partnering to turn obscure cards from old Magic sets into bulk-to-bust success stories, in some extreme cases pushing a draft-chaff rare up by literally 3000%.
The latest spike seems to be a forgotten blue card from Avacyn Restored, which has seen its price go up by 400% in the last couple of days – although in this case it's not entirely clear if it's just a fluke, or the real deal.
Source: MTGStocks
Mass Appeal has been a 50-cent uncommon for years, right until the day when the Final Fantasy precons were fully revealed last week. Since then, it has climbed to well over $2, even though it has absolutely no competitive pedigree, and it's hardly what you'd call a popular card even in casual, low-bracket Commander decks.
Why Is Mass Appeal Spiking?
Unlike Quicksilver Elemental‘s spike – which was easily to trace back to Vivi Orinitier, as we documented last week – Mass Appeal‘s case is not as clear-cut, and could very well just be an ephemeral spike. While it's true that Final Fantasy brings a lot of iconic human characters, it doesn't bring too many human-matter synergies, and supply is already reacting to the current spike.
Let's break the different factors down.
No Demand Spike (Yet)
Source: TCGplayer
The first thing to notice is that, while the price has certainly shot upwards, the spike in demand is no higher to what Mass Appeal has already seen a couple of times this year – notice how demand also peaked before Tarkir: Dragonstorm, for example. And supply was always able to adjust prices back to normal, as it's happening right now in TCGplayer…
Source: TCGplayer
… with many listings at roughly the same price as two weeks ago: about 50 cents.
Final Fantasy Does Have Human-Matters Synergies
On the other hand, unlike TDM, Final Fantasy doesn't just have a lot of human cards. This Magic set actually has at least one card that explicitly care about humans: Torgal, A Fine Hound.
Revealed just a couple of days ago, Torgal, A Fine Hound is explicitly asking you to brew a deck with lots of humans in it – which is exactly what Mass Appeal is asking you to do.
Thus far Torgal is the only such card in Final Fantasy, but the main set is only about 60% revealed (there are still more than 100 cards still to be revealed until May 30th) and there could still be more human typal cards in it.
A couple of other human-matters card are also seeing some slight upward action, which would suggest further interest in the archetype – Riders of the Mark, for example, went up about 50% after last week's reveals.
Source: MTGStocks
Lord of the Rings, Revisited
With our usual caveat that this is not investment advice (always do you own research, folks – it's priceless!), and that Mass Appeal may end up going Moonmist-crazy in a couple of days, the current trend is reminiscent of what Mass Appeal did two years ago with the Lord of the Rings Universes Beyond set.
Back then there was some hype about Mass Appeal, given how several of the LotR cards were humans or cared about humans. And that hype turned out to be right: Éowyn, Shieldmaiden is arguably the best Human commander out there, and a couple of different Aragorns sit in the top 10.
Source: MTGStocks
As a result, Mass Appeal did jump up in price in July 2023, and has slowly been creeping up since then – but is still as a 50-cent card and a far cry from truly uncommon powerhouses like Stock Up that can break past the $5-buck line.
Still, interest in humans seems to be increasing, and as Torgal, A Fine Hound shows, Final Fantasy could still have more human love!
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