The Magic: The Gathering zombie card Graveborn Muse has climbed high in price over the past month or so, going from about $3 in late January to $19.96 today, according to the MTG Goldfish price tracker.
Interestingly, foil copies of the card from 10th edition, and old border copies from Legions are slightly cheaper, costing $14 and $19 respectively. But all versions look to have ramped up in price over the same time period.
If you’ve kept up with any Magic: The Gathering price movements over the past few weeks, you probably only need to see Graveborn Muse’s creature type – zombie – to guess why it’s spiking, but it becomes even clearer when you read its effect. First released in the MTG set Legions in 2003, this creature activates in your upkeep, letting you draw cards (and lose a little life) for each zombie you control.
As I was hinting, it is indeed MTG Aetherdrift that’s to blame for this card’s recent price rise: specifically the Commander precon deck Eternal Might. Indeed the card starts to tick up in value not long after the deck’s MTG commanders were revealed.
But unlike most of the other (many, many) price shifts we’ve seen from this new deck in the past month, this time it’s actually the deck’s face commander that’s kickstarted its movement. See, while Hashaton has proven far more popular than Temmet, Naktamun’s Will; the Scarab’s Fist only cares about discard effects, less-so draw.
But Temmet loves card draw. He buffs each of your zombies up by the number of cards you’ve drawn that turn. So Graveborn Muse, with Temmet and a few zombie tokens, can easily become an existential threat, drawing you loads of cards and making each of your attackers so much harder to block.
Going by the data on EDHREC, only about 20% of players are including Graveborn Muse in their decks; perhaps the fact that you are forced to lose life each turn means many see it as too risky. But since this creature card has not had a reprint (apart from an appearance on The List) for decades, that’s been easily enough to set it spiking in value.
For more Magic news, check out the MTG release schedule guide, or dive into the next set, Tarkir Dragonstorm.