With Konami's update to the Forbidden/Limited just announced and coming into effect in a day, it looks like the second-hand market is already shifting to accommodate the immediate change in the card pool.
The Cards in Question
Currently, three cards are experiencing a sudden uptick in the market. Those are Lacrima the Crimson Tears, Fiendsmith's Requiem, and Fiendsmith's Tract.
If you compare the market trends of each card side-by-side, you will see similarities in their graphs.
Pulling some data over from TCGplayer, we can see that Lacrima the Crimson Tears, Fiendsmith's Requiem, and Fiendsmith's Tract had a respective average price (rounded up) of $11, $6, and $25 respectively before the spike occured.
Fast-forward to today, with the new update to the Forbidden/Limited List for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (TCG), and these prices have all skyrocketed to a new average of $39, $26, and $72, respectively.
Each card also had some outlier sales. Lacrima sold some copies for between $33 to $40, Requiem matches some of Lacrima’s more expensive sales at upwards of $34. Fiendsmith’s Tract's outliers are genuinely baffling, approaching $90.
Not All the Fiendsmith Cards
Thankfully, the core part of the Fiendsmith engine, Fiendsmith Engraver, is not experiencing the same kind of growth. That’s not to say that Engraver’s current asking price is nothing to sneeze at, though.
Last week, Fiendsmith Engraver had an average asking price of $18 before it made a huge leap to an average median of $63, with some outlier sales going as high as $70. This may look similar to Lacrima, Requiem, and Tract, but back in January, Engraver was easily going for $90+.
So, while Engraver's asking price is currently rivaling that of the aforementioned three above, it is still a far cry from what it usually commanded in the second-hand market months ago.
Actually, out of the main Fiendsmith cards that are being used to complement other competitive archetypes like Ryzeal, Fiendsmith’s Desirae is the only one with a humble asking price.
Once again checking last week’s average, Fiendsmith Desirae’s asking price was less than a dollar, even though its current average price is around the same. Outliers aren’t raising eyebrows either, as even the most expensive copy only costs about $2.
We can only make an educated guess that the reprint of Fiendsmith Engraver and Fiendsmith’s Desirae in the Quarter Century Stampede expansion pack -set for release on April 11th- may be why the second-hand market is putting more value in the other parts of the archetype package.
Small but Expensive
If you study the decks using the Fiendsmith engine at the different Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series (YCS), most of them are running a standard array of:
- x3 Fiendsmith Engraver
- x1 Lacrima the Crimson Tears
- x1 Fiendsmith's Requiem
- x1 Fiendsmith's Tract
- x1 Fiendsmith's Desirae
Assuming the current median prices listed above, this package already costs about $306. Bear in mind that this also assumes that the listed median prices in this article don’t change meaningfully for the time being.
With Engraver and Desirae being the only cards enjoying a reprint in a recent expansion from this package, Lacrima, Requiem, and Tract could keep climbing in second-hand market value.
With the recent update to the TCG’s Forbidden/Limited list hitting a lot of consistency cards for leading competitive archetypes, players will have to fill many holes in traditional decklists.
The Fiendsmith cards are very powerful in the current format due to their consistency and overall modulability.
With how small the engine is, Fiendsmith makes for a perfect dance partner for many archetypes. This doesn’t consider many of the powerful generic staples players tend to run in every deck.
But it goes without saying that the clock for Fiendsmith is probably ticking away. Many players were expecting at least one Fiendsmith card to be placed on the Forbidden/Limited list, and with current leaders like Ryzeal and Maliss taking the hit instead, it’s only a matter of time before Fiendsmith has their turn.
Before we end this article, we’d like to kindly remind players to do their due diligence when investing in the game of this shared hobby we all enjoy.