The Magic: The Gathering card Erayo, Soratami Ascendant has spiked, and spiked hard. Just one week ago, this innocuous rare from Champions of Kamigawa cost $8.65 on the secondary market. Now, copies are selling on TCGPlayer for upwards of $29.
Erayo starts out life as a simple 1/1 flying creature that costs two mana. But if you (or another player) can cast four spells in a turn, it becomes something much more heinous. The card flips into an enchantment, Erayo's Essence, which counters the first spell your opponent plays each turn. Not bad for a two-drop; there's a reason this thing is banned in Commander.
Surprisingly, this price spike was not caused by a newly released card from Secrets of Strixhaven, or a new card at all for that matter. Instead, a decklist shared by the YouTuber Aspiringspike seems to be the catalyst.
Aspiringspike's deck is a new take on an old school strategy, cramming Erayo into a Modern Affinity shell. The deck uses zero-cost mana rocks to quickly flip Erayo, and plays Ethersworn Canonist from the 2008 MTG set Shards of Alara to make it exceptionally hard for your opponent to play any cards at all. Even decks that might be able to force their way through Erayo's counters with a load of low-cost spells are locked out by the Canonist, since they can only play one non-artifact spell per turn.
While the main combo of the deck is very old, it benefits from the strong artifact cards that have been printed in recent years like Kappa Canoneer and Cori-Steel Cutter. Mox Opal being unbanned in Modern is also a huge help.
Demand for Erayo, Soratami Ascendant has sharply increased, as Aspiringspike went 5-0 in a Modern League event with the deck, and continued to play and hone the strategy across four videos on his channel over the last two weeks.
Supply seems to have been pretty low - this an old, never-reprinted card that was a viable strategy once upon a time, so there don't seem to be a lot of spare copies floating around. That's the perfect recipe for a swift, sharp spike like this.