This week was a fairly quiet one in Magic finance as the world focuses on the holiday season and gears up for 2023. The biggest gainer of the week was the Exodus rare Ravenous Baboons which has shot up from around $1.50 to $10 thanks to Kibo, Uktabi Prince from Jumpstart 2022. While Ravenous Baboons isn't an especially good card in Commander, Kibo is - by far - the most popular of the new Jumpstart 2022 legends and it really wants a deck full of Monkeys and Apes, and there just aren't all that many Monkeys and Apes in Magic which has made Ravenous Baboons a Kibo staple almost by default. The land destroying Ape is nearly 30 years old and has never been reprinted so it doesn't take that much new demand for its price to spike. The good news is that Ravenous Baboons isn't on the Reserved List, so it's only a matter of time before it gets reprinted and drops back down towards being a bulk rare. Unless you really want to play the most optimal build of Kibo possible, my advice would be to play a substitute for now and wait for the reprinting to grab your copies. If you have some copies of Ravenous Baboons, you might as well sell or trade them now into the hype.

Also on the rise this week was Marrow-Gnawer, with the legendary Rat jumping 32% to $20. This is in part because of another popular Jumpstart 2022 legend Ashcoat of the Shadow Swarm, and in part because it seems like Rats are being supported in Phyrexia: All Will Be One. We've also seen Rat Colony climbing recently for the same reasons, going from under $3 early in December to nearly $5 today. Thankfully I wouldn't expect too many more Rat price spikes in the near future - if you look at all the Rats in Magic, you'll see there are only a handful of rares and several of them are also Ninjas, which might limit their appeal in a more traditional Rat deck. If you're trying to build around Marrow-Gnawer or fill your deck will copies of Rat Colony, you are going to pay a premium, but the rest of your deck should still be pretty cheap.

Finally this week, Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (phyrexian) ticked up 3%, pushing the normal non-foil printing up to nearly $68 thanks to a combination of heavy play in both Commander and 60-card formats. Considering how popular the card is in both Standard and Commander, the price of the Praetor is becoming a problem, and it's a problem that is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Yes, eventually Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (phyrexian) will leave Standard, most likely at rotation in another 18 months, but if you're hoping that rotation will give you a window to grab copies of the mythic on the cheap, you are likely to be disappointed. The Meathook Massacre sees a similar amount of play in Commander and is literally banned in Standard and it still costs nearly $50. The Great Henge (planeswalker stamp) is back up near $70 after dropping near $50 when it first left Standard. As such, there's little reason to think Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (phyrexian) will ever be cheap, at least in the short and mid-term. If you need a copy you might as well snag it now. I'd be shocked to see Sheoldred under $50 in the next couple of years, even if it somehow did manage to get banned in Standard.