Happy holidays everyone! This week the world of Magic finance was once against dominated by old cards related to the upcoming release of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. Leading the way was Iizuka the Ruthless shooting up over 500% to $8. Meanwhile other original Kamigawa Samurai like Konda, Lord of Eiganjo and Kentaro, the Smiling Cat also saw big increases of 54% and 106% respectively. This seems to be a combination of finance types betting on Samurai tribal Commander decks being popular post-Kamigawa and players picking up the pieces they need to build Samurai early to try to beat the price spikes. As we discussed last week, these cards are unlikely to stick at their post-buyout prices, but are also super unlikely to go back to their pre-buyout price any time in the near future. If you have your eye on some Kamigawa related cards that haven't increased yet, get them soon, otherwise you'll likely save a bit by waiting the price spikes out.

Meanwhile in the world of weird, old, never-reprinted cards, the Odyssey rare Gravestorm shot up from near bulk prices to $23 this week after the near mint copies were bought out on TCGplayer. In theory this is because the enchantment works well in a Umbris, Fear Manifest deck in Commander - if you have something like Leyline of the Void or Planar Void on the battlefield to keep your opponents graveyards empty, you basically get a painless Phyrexian Arena, drawing a card each turn. The problem is that in practice, only 15% of Umbris decks play Gravestorm according to EDHRec, and it sees play in zero% of decks overall. To me this looks like a finance buyout, with someone betting that Gravestorm was under priced at $2, which it very well may have been, but it's definitely not a $23 card either; there just isn't much demand. Expect it to start trending back down in coming weeks. 

Finally, you might have noticed the random War of the Spark uncommon Guildpact Informant is up to $4.50, which is a lot for a new-ish uncommon. The bad Thrummingbird is showing up in some Toxrill, the Corrosive (showcase) Commander decks, although the real reason it's so expensive is that it's a planeswalker deck card that wasn't printed in War of the Spark proper, and the supply of cards printed in planeswalker deck precons is tiny. In a world where we get a ton of exclusive cards printed in strange places, if you notice a card that seems oddly expensive compared to its power, rarity and playability, make sure to check where it comes from, because most of the time the answer will be that it was printed in a weird, low supply product.