I keep a little spreadsheet of Secret Lair drops I’ve regretted. Not the big regrets, the ones where I bought at 2am because the art was nice and then watched the singles settle at half the price three weeks later. Extra Life 2021 is on there. The first time I bought a Bitterblossom reprint drop thinking “this’ll never come back.” I was wrong. It came back.
So every time Wizards announces a Superdrop I pull the spreadsheet out before opening my wallet.
The Secret Lair Back to School Superdrop goes live April 27 on secretlair.wizards.com. Eight drops, all $29.99 non-foil and $39.99 foil, timed against Secrets of Strixhaven’s classroom energy. Two of them are My Little Pony collabs. One is Dwarf Fortress. One is a slice-of-life manga aesthetic with a name I’ve had to copy-paste three times to get right (Maho Gakuin Seishun Hakusho). And one is called Return to the Mystical Archive, which if you were around for the original Strixhaven cycle is more than just a cute title. I wrote about what the Special Guests Mystical Archive return did to old STA singles a few weeks ago.
What I actually care about as a collector is which of these hold their value, which ones sell out in six minutes and double on eBay, and which ones I’m going to walk past and never think about again.
The ones worth buying
Secret Lair x My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. This is the one. Six cards: Defense of the Heart, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Generous Gift, Reconnaissance Mission, and Radiate. On singles alone, the Urza’s Legacy Defense of the Heart sits at roughly $25, which already puts this drop above MSRP before you add any collab premium. Radiate is another $5. The MLP silver-bordered cards Wizards put out a few years back became genuine collector pieces, print runs were tiny, and that secondary market is still holding. If history rhymes at all, this drop is a flip target, and if it doesn’t rhyme you still opened a box with Defense of the Heart in it.
My hesitation here is that MLP as a cultural moment isn’t where it was in 2019. The people I knew who cared about it in college all moved on. I honestly don’t know how big the collector pool is in 2026, and there’s a version of this where the drop sits on Wizards’ store for a week because the overlap between the MLP IP crowd and active MTG collectors is smaller than the hype suggests. I’d still buy one copy. I wouldn’t buy three.
Dwarf Fortress: Create New World. Terror of the Peaks is currently around $28 on its cheapest printing. That means, just like the MLP drop, singles alone cover the non-foil MSRP with four other cards thrown in. Dwarf Fortress is the exact kind of IP that has a devoted, insular, and weirdly monied fan base, indie game collectors who’ll buy this for the shelf regardless of whether they play Commander. The ASCII-inspired framing is a gimmick that’ll either land perfectly or look terrible in hand; I’d want to see a finished card before buying a second copy. At these prices with that Terror print included, I’m in for one.
If I had to pick between the two I’d take MLP first. Dwarf Fortress’s fanbase is smaller and less flippy.
The ones for the shelf
Omens of Chaos. The Seanan McGuire novel tie-in, five cards featuring the book’s protagonists in the art: Abrupt Decay, Growth Spiral, Counterflux, Batwing Brume, Chance for Glory. Non-foil singles maybe clear $5. This one is pure aesthetic and that’s fine. Buy it if you love the book, buy the foil if you want the much nicer foil Chance for Glory (around $21 in its Guilds of Ravnica printing), and skip otherwise. A $30 art print, not a singles investment.
Maho Gakuin Seishun Hakusho. Stinging Study in manga art is the kind of thing where, if it hits the right collector, they’ll pay $60 for this drop in two years. If it doesn’t, it sits at $25 on secondary forever. Singles EV is around $14 on the cheapest printings, so you’re paying roughly $15 for the treatment. I’d buy this before Notebook Genius but after Omens of Chaos.
The Lands of Equestria. Ten MLP-themed basic lands. There’s no singles floor for Secret Lair basics, the only version of this that makes financial sense is if someone wants a matching foil land package for an MLP-themed Commander deck or cube, and if you’re that person you already know you’re buying it. I’m not that person. Moving on.
Skip
Notebook Genius. Four cards for $29.99, which is bad math before you even start. Lier and Anhelo in a doodle art style sounds nice enough, but singles floor is maybe $5 and you’re paying $25 above singles for four cards in a whimsical style that ages badly. The other drops give you five. This one doesn’t.
Return to the Mystical Archive. Here’s where I’d push back on my own reflex, because my instinct is to buy this on name alone. I love the original Mystical Archive frames, but the cards in this drop (Duty Beyond Death, Spell Pierce, Zombify, Abrade, Shared Roots) have almost no singles value. Wizards knows the Mystical Archive aesthetic is one of their most beloved treatments and is stuffing it with bulk text to sell at $29.99. If you care about the frame style specifically, pick one up. For value, pick almost anything else in this Superdrop first.
The Eyes Have It. Counterbalance, Gitaxian Probe, Opt, Otherworldly Gaze, Baleful Strix. Blue cards with an eye-themed art overlay. Singles clear about $13, which is unusually decent for an aesthetic drop, and Counterbalance still sees Legacy play. But the theme is thin and eye imagery gets old fast. Fine if you run a blue cube, skippable otherwise. I keep going back and forth on this one honestly. Maybe it’s better than I’m giving it credit for.
What the reprints do to your existing copies
Worth flagging if you own any of the chase cards. A Secret Lair reprint of Defense of the Heart or Terror of the Peaks does put mild downward pressure on the Urza’s Legacy and Thunder Junction printings. Not catastrophic, Secret Lair print runs are limited and the alternate art tends to price separately from the original, but if you’ve been sitting on either card waiting to sell, the next four weeks are when the market adjusts. This is the same dynamic I walked through when Library of Alexandria got a Special Guest treatment in Strixhaven, just smaller scale. Check current prices before the drop actually ships and make a call.
The Secrets of Strixhaven release is also happening at the same time, which means collector attention and wallet space are already stretched. If you’re triaging between the Superdrop, Commander precons, and Collector Boosters, the Superdrop is the lowest-risk buy of the three for most collectors. The full Strixhaven product rundown breaks down the rest.
How I’m actually buying
One copy of MLP: Friendship is Magic. One Dwarf Fortress. Probably the foil Maho Gakuin if I’m feeling weak at 2am. Everything else, pass. Total spend somewhere around $110 if I’m being honest with myself, which I never am.
So yeah, Superdrop. Every six months. I say I’m going to skip. I never skip. Spreadsheet keeps growing. I keep telling myself I flip more than I keep and I keep more than I flip. Anyway.