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Magic: The Gathering’s land cards are the heart of the game, regardless of format, and that’s why valuable lands are a solid investment for players.
Magic: The Gathering has been going strong since its inception in August 1993, and in that time, that game has grown in many ways. The game has over 10,000 unique cards to its name, many of which hold significant monetary value dictated by supply, gameplay utility and more.
Some cards spike or crash in value as they rotate out of Standard or become the stars of new decks in formats such as Modern, but land cards in particular tend to have more stable value. Land cards will always be must-haves for any deck or collection, and their universal appeal ensures that they rarely lose all their value overnight. This makes them solid investments.
The Universal Appeal Of Land Cards In Magic: The Gathering
With rare exceptions, such as the Manaless Dredge deck, all decks in Magic: The Gathering use land cards, from booster draft Limited decks to competitive Modern, Legacy and Pioneer decks of all sorts. This is what sets lands apart from even the most powerful and flexible creatures or artifact spells in the game, since even powerhouses like Tarmogoyf or Arcbound Ravager only work in certain decks and strategies. In that sense, spells are like puzzle pieces, while lands are like the table on which the puzzle is assembled — and every player needs that table to build and run a proper deck.
Of course, not all lands are truly universal. Utility lands or manlands such as Gavony Township and Creeping Tar Pit only work in certain decks, such as Esper control decks or five-color Humans. Most cycles of lands, however, can be fitted into any deck or format where they are legal for play. Most often, this involves dual lands from various cycles, with these lands helping players get all their colors online right away in a game of Constructed or Limited, or the fetchlands to get dual lands of all sorts.
Few decks are mono-colored or colorless, and some decks are known for having greedy, color-heavy manabases. This ensures that effective dual lands are highly sought after, such as the shocklands of Return to Ravnica and the allied-color “fastlands” from the Scars of Mirrodin block. These cards are used in formats where they don’t rotate out. Due to their simple but effective nature, they can be run in any deck that needs their colors. An aggressive Delver deck in Modern can use Scalding Tarn, but so can a Jeskai control deck, or even a Scapeshift deck.
All this means that powerful land cards retain not just their gameplay utility across the years, but also their financial value and trade value. This makes them appealing for collectors and finance-oriented players who take their collections and decks seriously. The 10 shocklands are in no danger of going out of style in the foreseeable future, as decks will continue to need them, and their prices will only be affected temporarily by reprints.
Someone with a playset of Watery Grave can count on those cards being prime trade material with a wide variety of players well into the future, and someone with Alpha duals in their collection is set for the rest of the game’s lifetime. Those lands are too universal and too powerful to fall out of favor — anyone and everyone would want them, and that protects their value. In fact, Alpha duals tend to grow in value over time.
Notable Examples Of Land Value In Magic: The Gathering
Several particular cycles of land cards are renowned for retaining their value regardless of the game’s current meta and trends, with the 10 shocklands of Ravnica being an example. All then of them are used in the Modern format as stand-ins for the Alpha duals, from Temple Garden to Steam Vents and Overgrown Tomb, and sites like MTG Goldfish and TCGPlayer can provide examples of their financial value. Historically, the shocks were around $10-15, and today, one of the cheapest, Hallowed Fountain, is priced at $7.79 at most on TCG Player, while Breeding Pool maxes out at $21.34.
Among the 10 fastlands in Scars of Mirrodin and Kaladesh, the cheapest is Botanical Sanctum, at $6.00 according to MTG Goldfish, and the most expensive by far is Blackcleave Cliffs, at $38. Meanwhile, the 10 fetchlands are in a league of their own, allowing players to easily find the desired dual lands in a game. The cheapest is Marsh Flats at $20, and the most expensive is Polluted Delta, at $47. These prices are sure to remain fairly stable over time, and provide reliable value to their owners for years to come.
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