As far as price movement on individual cards, this week was another slow one in the world of Magic finance. The biggest gainer was Halvar, God of Battle (showcase) which ticked up 46% to nearly $12. The Kaldheim God hasn't really developed into a staple in any format, but it has become a popular upgrade for Gylwain, Casting Director Commander decks which are all about loading up creatures with role auras. Halvar gives the deck a way to move around the auras (especially valuable with roles since you can only have one on each creature) and also buffs your team with double strike. Thanks to the recent price increase, Halvar, God of Battle (showcase) is currently the second most-valuable card from Kaldheim behind Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider (showcase) topping popular cards like Goldspan Dragon, Valki, God of Lies, and Koma, Cosmos Serpent (showcase), so I wouldn't expect to see it go much higher.

In sadder news, Troll and Toad is moving out of the Magic card business. If you aren't familiar with Troll and Toad, they are one of the original Magic vendors - they started buying and selling cards way back in 1994 with the help of magazines like The Duelist. While in recent years they have been arguably surpassed by vendors like StarCityGames, ChannelFireball, Card Kingdom and eventually TCGPlayer, Ebay and Amazon, it's still sad to see such an iconic shop close up their Magic business. In a press release announcing the decision, they hit on many common themes - 30th Anniversary Edition, too many card styles and variants, aggressive reprints of valuable cards - as reasons why selling Magic cards just wasn't as profitable as it used to be. It's worth mentioning that they will continue to buy and sell other games including Pokemon, Yugioh, and One Piece. How big of a deal is this really? It would be a bigger deal if it was a vendor that was more towards the top of the market in recent years, like StarCityGames or Card Kingdom. It's hard to parse out how much of this is because of Magic itself and how much of it is Troll and Toad losing steam over the years, but either way, seeing such an iconic name drop Magic is notable and regardless of how much impact it actually has on the market, not a good thing.

Finally, this week was Doctor Who spoiler week. The full decklists are out (you can see them all here) and in general they look solid. It's hard to put much weight in the value of the new cards during spoiler season, and this is doubly true for this release since it's the first time a Universes Beyond Commander release will also have booster packs alongside the decks. One thing that is certain is that Wizards massively upgraded the manabases of the decks compared to past Commander precons, with many of the decks having Horizons lands (see: Horizon Canopy), the Innistrad slowlands (like Dreamroot Cascade) and more. Currently the decks are selling for between $60 and $70 on Amazon (check with your local game store, they might have an even better deal) and at this price all of the decks seem like fine buys, assuming you want the new Doctor Who cards. Otherwise the release will hopefully drop the price on some playable lands which should be good pickups as singles.