We’re only a few weeks away from the release of Disney Lorcana’s Fabled expansion. Alongside this new expansion is the implementation of a set rotation where cards from first to the fourth expansion will no longer be tournament legal. The second-hand market has suddenly shifted in response.
Tiana - Restaurant Owner
Tiana - Restaurant Owner (Azurite Sea) is one of those Legendary cards that usually sinks to the bottom of the value pile despite its rarity. A month ago, this card was playing around a modest $3 - $4 average.
Throughout July up until recently, its positive trend only brought up its average to around $5. Then out of nowhere, roughly starting two days ago (August 13th), the market value of Restaurant Owner skipped a few markers and started selling for around $22; some Cold Foil copies are now breaching past $30.
In the past two days alone, over a hundred copies have exchanged hands in second-hand markets like TCGplayer.
Seeing such rapid movement, we also took a look at the Enchanted variant of Tiana - Restaurant Owner. And despite the slower movement, there’s a similar positive trend.
Enchanted copies of Restaurant owner were sitting at a $68 average before being a slight boost to the $85 mark with the odd copy or two already breaching past $100.
Rapunzel - High Climber
Another Legendary card that has started to see a sudden shift in movement comes from Reign of Jafar. Despite their differences in ink color and overall mechanical design, High Climber experienced the same kind of market movements as Restaurant Owner.
Back in July, Rapunzel - High Climber started off at the $3 market median. But unlike Tiana, Rapunzel’s upward trend was a little more pronounced as it began a more noticeable climb in its analytics back on the 4th of August.
Presently, copies of High Climber are at a $18 market price with some cold foils already exchanging hands at the $30 price range.
In a little bit of a twist of the narrative, the Enchanted variants of Rapunzel are on the downward trend. Enchanted copies of High Climber started last month at around $180, now the market is currently recording their average market value at about $160.
Why the Sudden Movement?
It can be difficult to parse out a reason for any sudden movement in the second-hand market. Mechanical usefulness, plain collector’s value, and sometimes rogue elements, can influence these sudden shifts.
But for these cards in particular, there's a pretty good chance that players are grabbing copies for the upcoming set rotation once Ravensburger officially releases the Fabled expansion to the wider market.
As far as our sleuthing went, we could attribute Restaurant Owner's rise in demand and price to two particular reasons. First, the new Aurora (Holding Court) can cheat out Tiana as early as the second turn for the controlling player. This puts the opponent in a tight spot as they won't be able to readily challenge a character under Tiana's auspices without paying her hefty protection fee, this includes Tiana herself.
Second, Ravensburger has finally completed its list of reprinted cards, and there's a severe drought of instantaneous board removal. Some ink colors, like Ruby, may have an answer or two for Restaurant Owner, but the rest would have to invest hefty damage sources into this single card to get rid of her tax.
As for High Climber’s market shift, we can see the lack of instantaneous board removal as to why she has suddenly gained some popularity. Rapunzel's 2 in Strength brings her out of Sisu - Daring Visitor's range. Her 5 Willpower will ensure that Strength of a Raging Fire would need at least 5 bodies already on the board. High Climber is just a difficult piece to dislodge while applying pressure on the Lore race if direct board removal is not available.
That said, it’s a little early to tell if both Restaurant Owner or High Climber will end up shaping the tournament scene in Core Constructed once Fabled is released. All we can say with some modicum amount of certainty is that it looks like there are players who are already making their preparations for the format to come.