I keep a binder on my desk that’s just “stuff from the last two years I’m probably wrong about.” Every six months or so I pull it out, run the cards through Eldwyn, and see how many of my prerelease-night opinions aged like milk. Lost Caverns of Ixalan is the latest set to graduate into that category, and the verdict is surprisingly clear.
The set hit shelves in November 2023. We’re now well past Standard rotation, two full prerelease cycles later, and into a meta where Lost Caverns is just another back-catalog set nobody talks about unless somebody plays a Cavern of Souls. So this is a decent time to ask which cards earned their hype and which ones fell off the table.
The reprint that paid the entire set’s bills
Cavern of Souls is currently sitting at $49 for the standard Lost Caverns printing. Two years on. After being reprinted in a Standard set with a borderless surge variant, a phyrexian alt-art, and basically every other treatment Wizards could think of.
That’s the kind of behavior you only see from a card that’s load-bearing in two different formats at once. Modern Tribal decks, Slivers, Humans, Merfolk in Vintage and Legacy — Cavern of Souls is the answer to counter-magic in any format that lets it through, and reprints just don’t bring it down. The previous Modern Horizons 2 printing peaked over $80 and the Eternal Masters version is past $60 even now.
What that means for someone who bought a stack of Lost Caverns Caverns at release: you basically picked a stock that was always going to keep moving. The borderless promo from the Collector Boosters held up too. I sold a foil borderless one out of a bulk-box trade about two months ago for $75 and I still think I undercharged.
This is the boring lesson nobody wants to hear. The most valuable card from a recent set is almost always the Modern-staple reprint, not the new flashy mythic. It was true for Lord of the Rings (The One Ring, before the Frazier art reuse story made things weird), it was true for Modern Horizons 3, and Lost Caverns plays the same way.
Roaming Throne: the actual surprise of the set
The real surprise was Roaming Throne. Currency check: $51. As a rare. From a regular Standard set.
Roaming Throne barely registered at prerelease. I remember sliding mine into the unsorted pile because, sure, doubling triggers is fine, but typal Commander decks were already packing Vanquisher’s Banner and Maskwood Nexus and how much support does a tribe need? Then EDHREC happened, and Roaming Throne ended up in something like 50,000+ commander decks before a year was up. The reprint pressure has been mild — a Special Guests slot and not much else — and the price has only gone up.
It’s the cleanest argument for paying attention to Commander demand on rares from any new set. Roaming Throne and Bonehoard Dracosaur, which still sits at $14, are both rares that punched above their rarity because Commander decided they were good. Bonehoard Dracosaur isn’t as expensive but it’s been in the $12-18 range steady for almost two years now. That’s a card you can move at full retail, anytime, no friction.
If you want a rule of thumb: when a new set drops, look at which non-mythic rares EDHREC pulls into 8% or more of relevant decks within 60 days. Those are the ones that get expensive and stay expensive. The mythics fluctuate. Format demand is what holds.
The Standard darling that ate it
Tishana’s Tidebinder.
I’m bringing this one up because it’s the case study every collector should remember. Tishana’s Tidebinder was, briefly, the breakout rare of Lost Caverns. It saw play in Modern, in Standard, in Pioneer. The Stifle-on-a-body comparisons were everywhere. People were calling it a long-term Modern staple. I personally bought four because I was building a Dimir Frog deck for Modern and figured the reprint pressure on it would be low.
It’s $3 now.
What happened. Modern moved on. Phlage and Kaito and the new Eldrazi shells pushed control out of the meta, the artifact-hate angle that used Tidebinder fell off, and Standard was always going to evict her at rotation. Two years later, she’s just a fine Commander 1-of in a few weird tribal decks and bulk-rare territory in trade binders.
This is the trap with Standard-format hype cards. They rip in early because everyone wants 4-ofs for the new meta, retailers can’t keep them in stock, and prices look like they’re going to hold. Then rotation comes, the Modern angle never quite materialises, and you’re left holding a stack of three-dollar rares that you paid $12 each for.
I don’t actually know how many Lost Caverns Tidebinders are sitting in collector binders right now thinking they’re still worth $12. Probably a lot. The lesson I keep trying to internalise: by the time a Standard rare is on every Modern brewer’s shortlist on Twitter, you’re buying it at the top.
What I wish I’d held more of from Lost Caverns
Honestly? Get Lost. The white removal spell. It’s a $5 uncommon, which sounds boring, but it’s been in literally every white Commander deck I’ve built since the set came out, and I keep needing to buy more. Foil ones are at $6. They’ve barely come down.
There’s also Spelunking, the green uncommon. $4. Modern Horizons 3 didn’t print a real replacement for it, the landfall and ramp shells in commander love it, and it just uncommons-out of bulk all the time. I lost a foil one in a sleeve mishap about eight months ago and I’m still annoyed.
And Bloodletter of Aclazotz, currently $37. As a mythic, sure, but the kind of card nobody was calling great until pretty recently. It just slowly accumulated commander demand because Vito, Sanguine Bond, that whole life-loss archetype went through a renaissance. Now it’s stupid expensive and I sold mine at $14 in 2024 like an idiot.
The pattern I keep seeing
Here’s what I think is true after sitting with the data for a few hours and going through my own binder.
Two years out from a Standard set, the price distribution is bimodal. A small group of cards hold or grow, usually 2-4 per set, almost always Modern staples or runaway Commander cards. Everything else drifts to bulk-rare floor unless it gets a niche format spike. The middle just doesn’t exist. There’s no “settled around $8” tier. Cards either become real money or become trade fodder.
So yeah. Two years on Lost Caverns. Cavern of Souls is up, Roaming Throne is up, Bonehoard Dracosaur is steady, and Tishana’s Tidebinder is the cautionary tale. If you’re sitting on a stack of cards from this set and you haven’t checked them in a while, do that, because the spread between the winners and the losers is wider than people think.
Actually, one more thing. I went back and forth on whether Bloodletter of Aclazotz was the real big winner of the set or whether Cavern is just so dominant that it’s the obvious answer. The case for Bloodletter is that it went from $8 to $37 in 18 months, which is a bigger percentage move than Cavern’s drift from $45 to $49. The case for Cavern is that the absolute liquidity is way higher; you can sell Caverns at retail any time of day. Bloodletter you might be staring at TCGplayer for a week before something moves. So I don’t know. Maybe both, depending on whether you care about percent or whether you care about cash.
If you’re working through a stack of LCI singles, it’s worth pulling them up against current numbers. Pricing a collection honestly is its own discipline, and what you paid is not what they’re worth. Same logic for the bulk box that’s been collecting dust: the LCI commons that mattered in Standard are mostly chaff now, but those Get Losts and Spelunkings hide in there too. The pattern from Lorwyn Eclipsed three months in is going to look a lot like this set’s two-year shape, just earlier on the curve.