Summary
Magic: The Gathering’scard market can be a fickle and unpredictable thing, with cards rising and lowering in price all the time for a variety of different reasons. For example, the release of Thunder Junction earlier this year caused Cerulean Wisps to spike by over 500 percentafter a new infinite combo was found, while the MTG card forBaldur’s Gate 3fan favorite Karlach spiked around the game’s releasebecause fans thirsted over her a bit too much.
It would be surprising if the release of a new set didn’t cause at least one existing card to spike in price, and that’s exactly what’s happened with the release of Magic: The Gathering’s new Assassin’s Creed set. Before its release, the non-foil version of Thunder Junction Commander Olivia, Opulent Outlaw would set you back around $1.70, but that price has now spiked by a whopping 1000 percent, as it’s now selling for $19 (thanksWargamer).
There are a couple of reasons for this, though the main one appears to be the release of the Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Assassin-matters card that synergies really nicely with Olivia, thanks to Thunder Junction’s focus on Outlaws. It essentially boils down to Olivia being able to generate treasure tokens, which can then be used by Ezio with the freerunning mechanic to play even more Assassins for much cheaper than you’d normally be able to.
MTG Assassin’s Creed Set Causes 1000 Percent Spike To Thunder Junction Commander
Out of the 2,902 Ezio decks logged in EDHREC, Olivia appears in a pretty staggering 1,558 of them, meaning it’s currently a card that is in very high demand. That would be bad enough on its own, but the non-foil version of Olivia that is being used in these decks only appears in Collector Boosters, meaning the card is a lot less common.
Combine all of these elements together, and you can begin to see why Olivia’s price has spiked by over 1000 percent, despite having been on the market for a couple of months. If you want Olivia for your deck, you’re probably better off getting in sooner rather than later.
