What Time Spiral Remastered Can Teach Us About Dominaria Remastered

When to buy reprints, and when to stay away.

We’re only a few days into 2023, and Wizards of the Coast has already gifted us with our first new set of the year: Dominaria Remastered.

Dominaria Remastered – Draft Booster Box

Dominaria Remastered

It’s an all-reprint set, featuring many of the best and most iconic cards from expansions that were set on the plane of Dominaria. Since that includes most of Magic’s earliest sets, we’ve got goodies like Force of Will, Vampiric Tutor, Exploration, Mystic Remora, Entomb, Worldly Tutor, Mystical Tutor, and Dark Depths.

Many of Dominaria Remastered’s chase cards have been awaiting a reprint for years. For instance, No Mercy only had a Judge Foil and a Masterpiece printing between when it first showed up in Urza’s Legacy and today. Time Stretch hasn’t been reprinted since 10th Edition. This is the first reprinting ever for Urza, Lord High Artificer and Nut Collector. Even the tutor cycle hasn’t been reprinted much outside of older Masters sets and Judge foils.

Financially, this puts us in quite an interesting predicament. Dominaria Remastered is full of incredibly powerful cards that people have been begging for the chance to open in packs for years, which makes me pretty excited to pick up a box. On the other hand, cards that haven’t been reprinted in a while also tend to have the furthest to drop in value. In fact, I rarely recommend picking up cards like this on release weekend, since they often don’t bottom out until months and months later.

Will that be the case with this set, though? Time Spiral Remastered was one of WotC’s only truly limited products in recent years, and as you will soon see, the best time to buy many of those cards was on Time Spiral Remastered release weekend last January. Today, my goal is to look back at that set, along with several others, and see if we can learn any lessons that can help us engage with Dominaria Remastered in the most profitable way possible.

Let’s get to it!

Time Spiral Remastered: A Look Back

Time Spiral: Remastered – Draft Booster Box

Time Spiral: Remastered

Right now, a box of Time Spiral Remastered sells for about $250. That’s down from a high of close to $300 last spring, about a year after the set’s initial release. This makes it one of the only sets of the past few years that was worth speculating on as sealed product.

Time Spiral Remastered was also quite unique among recent Magic products. While some Targets and Wal-Marts did have a handful of blister packs with Time Spiral Remastered packs, it didn’t have much of a Big Box Store release at all. Local game stores only received a few cases each, if that, with no re-stocks possible. It’s also one of the only sets released since Throne of Eldraine not to have either Collector or Set Boosters. If you wanted to buy sealed Time Spiral Remastered product, you only had one choice: a Draft Booster Box.

Time Spiral Remastered also had another quirk that really excited people: classic frame cards, and especially classic frame foils. This set came out a few months before Modern Horizons 2, and was the first major release to have classic frame cards in years. Once people realized how unique and special these cards were, and how hard the set was to find, box prices surged. If you didn’t preorder your boxes, or get in early, you were pretty much out of luck.

Sealed prices fell off a bit over the summer, though. Once Modern Horizons was previewed, and folks realized that the classic frame would likely be returning more and more often, Time Spiral Remastered began to feel less like a must-own set. While sealed prices are still higher than they were during the preorder period back in early 2021, the set isn’t quite the home run that it looked like it might be a month or two after it was released.

What’s happened to single prices over the nearly two years since Time Spiral Remastered was released? Well, right now, the top non-foil, non-timeshifted cards in Time Spiral Remastered are Gemstone Caverns, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Sliver Legion, Akroma’s Memorial, Damnation, Vesuva, Pact of Negation, and Tarmogoyf. Has time been kind to these cards? Let’s take a look.

Gemstone Caverns

Time Spiral: Remastered, Mythic

First off, Gemstone Caverns was definitely a solid buy at release. You could have snagged it for about $23 that weekend, or waited a few months to buy it closer to $20. Either way, the card sells for a minimum of $40 now, and is the most expensive non-foil, non-timeshifted card in the set.

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Time Spiral: Remastered, Rare

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is much the same way. It was $14 on release weekend, before bottoming out just below $13 a few months later. These days, it’s a $35 card all day long.

Sliver Legion

Time Spiral: Remastered, Mythic

On the other hand, some cards have only dropped in price since release. Sliver Legion is still the third-most-valuable normal card in the set, but check out this chart:

Yeesh. The card bottomed out at $36 on release weekend, spiked back up to nearly $60, and then just kept dropping. Its actual low point was $11.88 this past July, and it’s back up to almost $22 now. Still, you’d certainly rather have avoided this one early on. Honestly, this card seems like a fine buy to me, since it will certainly spike the next time we get a Slivers Matter set from WotC, but at the moment, this chart looks pretty dire.

Damnation

Time Spiral: Remastered, Mythic

Damnation is an example of a card that was hurt by an additional reprint. You could pick it up for $25 on release weekend, and a few bucks lower over the coming months. By May of this year, it was up to $30 and starting to climb. Then the card was released in Double Masters 2022, and it cratered down to $15. It should be there for quite some time now.

Tarmogoyf

Time Spiral: Remastered, Mythic

Tarmogoyf wasn’t reprinted, but it has fallen on hard times. This once-venerable Modern staple was $25 on release weekend, which was already incredibly low for a card that used to be well over $100. Over time, Modern’s power creep has continued to sideline it in most competitive brews. While it does show up in Jund shells from time to time, it’s just a $10 card now, and I’m definitely wishing I didn’t have as many copies of this card lying around in boxes somewhere as I probably do.

Of course, these cards weren’t really why the set was so popular. It was the Time Shifted Classic Frame cards that people wanted, so let’s check in on those:

Chalice of the Void

Time Spiral: Remastered, Special

Classic Frame Chalice of the Void was just under $40 on release weekend, and bottomed out at $30 a few months later. It’s an easy $60+ now, though an additional reprint would have likely scuttled this spec. As it stands, it was definitely an easy way to make a tidy profit, and would have been great to pick up at any point during those first few months.

Thoughtseize

Time Spiral: Remastered, Special

Thoughtseize was definitely the opposite. It was a $40+ card on release weekend, and it hasn’t done much since. Right now, it’s pretty easy to find in the $20 range. Again, changes in the competitive metagame doomed this one for now.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Time Spiral: Remastered, Special

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician is the other expensive non-foil timeshifted card in the set. This one pre-sold for $25 or so, before bottoming out at $15-$16 a few months later. It started slowly climbing after that, peaking at $40+ this fall. Then Dominaria Remastered was teased, and we learned that Yawgmoth would be present in that set, too. Since then, the price has dropped to $30 or so.

If we put all this together, we can draw some pretty clear conclusions about Time Spiral Remastered. First, there was no real advantage to picking up Time Spiral Remastered singles on release weekend as opposed to waiting a few weeks or even a few months. This is different from most other sets, where there are always at least a few chase rares and mythics that are worth buying ASAP. In this case, even the cards with the most post-release helium were cheaper in May than they were in late March, and the right play was to hold off—despite the fact that sealed boxes surged in price during that same timeframe.

Second, the chase cards that fared the worst after release generally fell into one of two camps. Either they were reprinted again over the past few years, or they were part of a competitive metagame that was warped by a set like Modern Horizons 2. This is why long-term speculation is so much riskier today than it was a few years ago. Back then, having a high-profile card like Damnation or Yawgmoth, Thran Physician getting a reprint in back-to-back years was unheard of. Today, it’s fairly common. The Horizon sets also warp Modern in ways that earlier sets did not, which means that fewer and fewer cards are expensive staples for years at a time.ARTICLE SPOTLIGHTAll 18 Dominaria Remastered Reprint Commanders, RankedPowerful legends from Magic’s past.Drew Knapp12/13/2022

While Commander staples did better than average, this isn’t as simple a story as “Commander Good, Modern Bad.” Gemstone Caverns is one of the biggest success stories of Time Spiral Remastered, and that’s largely due to the Crashing Footfalls deck gaining traction in Modern. Meanwhile, Sliver Legion and Damnation are both Commander staples, and neither would have been a good buy on or near release weekend.

At the end of the day, doing well at Time Spiral Remastered speculation largely came down to luck.

Will Dominaria Remastered Be Like Time Spiral Remastered?

While Dominaria Remastered shares a theme and a subtitle with Time Spiral Remastered, the sets look like they’re going to be different in some pretty meaningful ways. For one thing, Dominaria Remastered has Collector Boosters, which is the easiest way to get Classic Frame cards, and especially Classic Frame foils. This is going to make those cards a lot easier to find than they were last time around, when you had to get incredibly lucky in your Draft Boosters or else resort to the secondary market.

For another, Dominaria Remastered doesn’t seem like it will be anywhere near as limited as Time Spiral Remastered. There are oodles of boxes up on the major marketplaces, and I’ve heard anecdotes from store owners that allocations of this set are roughly four times the size of Time Spiral Remastered. That puts this set more in the camp of products like Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate or Double Masters 2022 than Time Spiral Remastered, which makes me incredibly wary of buying a box for anything other than personal use. After all, Baldur’s Gate Draft Boxes have dropped from $150 to $82 over the past year, while Double Masters 2022 Draft Boxes plunged from $380 to $280.

Perhaps, then, we should be looking at those sets for answers on when to buy Dominaria Remastered singles. Baldur’s Gate is a hard comp because it was full of new cards, not reprints, which behave wildly differently. Yes, you should have preordered Ancient Copper Dragon, but when we’re talking about a card that has no previous evaluation and has only been printed once, it’s a whole different ballgame.

So, let’s talk Double Masters 2022. When was the right time to pick these cards up? Let’s take a look, starting with Imperial Seal:

Imperial Seal

Double Masters 2022, Mythic

At first glance, this appears to be following the same pattern as many cards in Time Spiral Remastered. Imperial Seal dropped to $115 on release weekend, rebounded to almost $170 over the following days, and then started to slowly drop off. The low so far seems to be $65 in late November, though it’s still kicking around the $70-$75 range now.

Cavern of Souls

Double Masters 2022, Mythic

Cavern of Souls has proven far more stable. It bottomed out at $52 on release weekend, surged back up to $65, and has been kicking around the $55-$60 range since then. There were a few outlier sales in the $40s, but for the most part, this is one of the few cards you’d have been happy snagging right away.

Dockside Extortionist

Double Masters 2022, Mythic

Dockside Extortionist has also held its value well. This is another card that was $52 on release weekend, and it bottomed out at just above $40 in early November. It has been slowly on the rise since then, though, and it’s at $57 and rising today.

Wrenn and Six

Double Masters 2022, Mythic

Wrenn and Six still appears to be on a downward trajectory, though. It was $65 on release weekend, but has been slowly dropping since then. Its low point was just $45 in early December, and it’s still below $50 today. You can see some signs of friskiness in the new year so far, but it remains to be seen if that’s a trend or just some statistical noise.

Force of Negation

Double Masters 2022, Rare

Force of Negation has also dropped a lot since release, but it looks to be on a gradual upswing now. This card was $38 on release day, almost $50 a few days after that, and fell as low as $25 a few weeks ago. It’s $31 now and seems to be rising, though it’s too early to say if that’s real movement or just a blip.

Smothering Tithe

Double Masters 2022, Rare

The last Double Masters 2022 card I want to look at is Smothering Tithe. You were probably happy picking this one up on release day, since it surged from $23 up to $29 over the following week. It fell off after that, but not by much, bottoming out just below $20 in late November. Smothering Tithe has ticked up a bit since then, currently sitting right around $25.

What can we learn from these cards? Well, nearly all of them jumped in price in the days after release, before slowly dropping off in price after that. Nearly all of them bottomed out in November or early December. None of them are currently at their cheapest price, though none of them are that far off, either.

We’ve now done a deep dive into two all-reprint sets: one that ended up being far scarcer than anticipated, and one that ended up being far less scarce than anticipated. In both cases, there was a dip on release weekend, followed by a small spike, followed by a gradual decline. While some cards like Tarmogoyf have never pulled out of that tailspin, most other cards have either rebounded already or shown promising signs of a rebound. It’s true that a few of those rebounds were minor, and others were followed by huge drops in value due to an additional reprint, but still: when you want to play the odds, knowing the overall trends is the best way to set yourself up for victory.

Setting Up for Dominaria Remastered

I think it’s safe to assume that Dominaria Remastered’s singles will follow a similar pattern to those in Double Masters 2022 and Time Spiral Remastered. While the cards that haven’t been reprinted much certainly have further to drop, we’re not talking about cards that are expensive only because they’re scarce. Cards like Entomb, No Mercy, and Mystical Tutor are very powerful in Commander, not to mention that several of them are staples in other formats, too. These are good cards, and they’re pricey for multiple reasons.

Sealed boxes could be a solid hold if the set is more like Time Spiral Remastered than Double Masters 2022, but all evidence I’ve seen so far points in the latter direction. Buying them is fine if you just want to crack the cards and have a good time, but I’m still not going to recommend speculating on sealed product unless I see WotC shift their print run philosophy in response to the overprinting criticisms of 2022.ARTICLE SPOTLIGHTIs Hasbro Killing Their Golden Goose?The problem with an infinite growth business model is everything I just said.Cassie LaBelle12/2/2022

As for singles, you’re definitely going to want to buy them on release weekend if you’re interested in owning the cards ASAP. Don’t wait until the following Monday or Tuesday, because prices generally rebound fast from that initial race to the bottom. If you’re going to get in now, you’ve got to time it perfectly.

For the rest of us, I’m going to recommend waiting a few months. These cards should hit bottom at some point this spring or early summer, before starting to rebound again in July, August, or September. In fact, you can make a calendar event to check in on the prices in April or May, and see what’s going on. If they seem to have stabilized or are ticking up again, it’s time to buy. You can’t rule out being hit by another reprint over the next few years, of course, but that’s true with everything these days. The best you can do is pick up the cards you want on a downswing, and hope for the best.