Modern found a $49 rock it can't stop blinking

Three new spikes, Star Trek sealed prices 12 days out, and a farewell to Captain Picard.

Nov 1, 2026 · by Tim Johnson

1. Remembering Sir Patrick Stewart

Sir Patrick Stewart died Oct 28 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86. His family said he died after "a brief and poignant journey" with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia.

He leaves behind a Magic set he never got to see on shelves. Magic: The Gathering | Star Trek arrives Nov 13, and Captain Picard runs all through it. Jean-Luc Picard, Luminary commands the Federation Fleet Commander deck. Locutus of Borg leads the alternate build in We Are the Borg. Kenrith returns as the Stardates card "General Picard, Earth Warlord." Then there's the hand-signed Picard headliner card, one of seven, with Stewart's own pen on every copy.

Thank you, Captain. Engage.

2. Spikes of the Week

Three new cards this week, same as the ones on manamarketwatch.com. Prices are TCGplayer daily market prices (Near Mint, normal printing), Oct 24 to Oct 31. Full card pages are on the site. How we pick spikes: our methodology.

Nethergoyf (Modern Horizons 3): $6.30 → $10.20, +62%, with 74 copies sold in seven days. A one-mana Tarmogoyf turned out to be good in decks that throw their own library in the graveyard. Shocking, we know. Rakdos Moonshadow in Modern and Dimir Moonshadow in Legacy both run four, and Dark Matter Manipulator made both decks fill the yard faster. Playing Moonshadow? You need four, and the extended-art copy was a few cents cheaper on Oct 31. Speculating? This one lives or dies with one archetype.

Sphinx Sovereign (Shards of Alara): $2.57 → $3.22, +25%, on just 2 copies sold in seven days. A 2008 eight-drop got a raise because The Ur-Sphinx keeps dragging every sphinx out of the bulk box. One printing, no reprints, so it only takes a few Sphinx deck builders to move it. Two sales in a week means this price is a rumor with a chart. Buy it for the deck, not the portfolio.

The Mind Stone (Marvel Super Heroes): $41.05 → $49.37, +20%, with 255 copies sold Oct 25–31. Modern found a $49 rock it can't stop blinking. Per Wizards' Oct 29 Metagame Mentor on magic.gg, Azorius Chant took two of the four World Championship invitations at the last three Regional Championships, with Jason Yan winning Sydney and Martín Dominguez finishing second in Buenos Aires. The winning lists added one main-deck Mind Stone to blink Narset or Solitude. One copy per deck sounds harmless until the whole format wants one. Need it for Chant? You only need one, which is the only cheap thing about it.

3. Star Trek Sealed & Chase-Card Watch

The set is 12 days from release, and preorder prices are still sliding, with one loud exception. These are TCGplayer market prices checked Nov 1, 2026, 12:54 AM PT, next to last issue's Oct 24 numbers:

The Collector Booster display is the only product that went up. On Oct 29 it sold 556 copies on TCGplayer in a single day, many times its usual daily count, and its market price jumped from $495.34 to $576.02 overnight. We couldn't confirm what caused it. Everything else fell. All four regular Commander decks now sit under MSRP, and the Bundle trades about 31% under its MSRP.

Last week we called single sales rumors. Here's how they held up. Death Is Irrelevant went from about $70 to $19.02 (cheapest Near Mint listing: $14.17). Georgiou, Terran Emperor went from about $50 to $18.40 ($12.00 NM). The LCARS Blood Crypt went from a roughly $50 listing to $21.94. Deep Space 9 held up best at $49.83, though the cheapest NM copy is $30.87. The seven signed headliners still have TCGplayer pages and zero listings.

4. Secret Lair goes to warp

Set Phasers to Superdrop goes on sale Nov 9 at 9 a.m. PT on MagicSecretLair.com, and the pre-queue opens an hour earlier. Wizards has revealed five drops at $29.99 non-foil or $39.99 foil each. New Worlds is ten basic lands. Beam Me Up has four reversible blink cards, including Conjurer's Closet as "The Transporter." tlhIngan maH has five reversible red cards. KHAAAAAAAAN includes Wrath of the Skies as "Best Served Cold." Lower Decks turns Thrasios into Tendi and Weatherlight into the S.S. Cerritos. A sixth drop is still to come, and every $199.99 spent earns a foil "Transporter Boondoggle" promo while supplies last. The fine print says "Secret Lair is not responsible for any potential Tuvix incidents." Finally, a legal team that has watched Voyager.

5. The $5,242 land

Wizards' collecting guide says a Stardates card replaces a common in 1 of every 25 Play Boosters, and all 30 Stardates cards are mythic rare. If all 30 turn up equally often, which Wizards doesn't promise, any one of them shows up about once every 750 packs. At the $6.99 MSRP, that's $5,242.50 in Play Boosters to open the Stardates Talon Gates of Madara. That version isn't on TCGplayer yet, but the cheapest Near Mint copy of the card in any printing is $32.23. The math is cruel, but it's honest.

6. Tournament snapshot

Arena Championship 13: Gage Fevold won with Orzhov Lifegain and took $10,500. Last week's top seed, Arne Huschenbeth, playing the most-played deck, Mono-Green Landfall, finished 9th.

Modern: Frank Karsten's Oct 29 report covers three Regional Championships with more than 800 players. Rakdos Delirium jumped from 1.4% to 8.8% of the field with a 58.3% match win rate, and it took 6 of the 16 Pro Tour invites from Southeast Asia and Australia/New Zealand. It runs four copies of Dark Matter Manipulator, which spiked last week, so that price jump wasn't a fluke. Broodscale Combo is still the most-played deck, down from 17.3% to 14.2%. The field is answering with Sanctifier en-Vec, about as subtle as a hall monitor.

7. New captain at Wizards

Hasbro named Dan Ayoub president of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro Digital Games, effective tomorrow, Nov 2. He's the first internal candidate promoted into the job. Ayoub ran Dungeons & Dragons most recently and before that spent 11 years at Microsoft, including at Halo studio 343 Industries. Hasbro says he picked up Magic the year it launched, which means he's played longer than some of your sleeves have existed.

8. Dates to know

• Now through Nov 5: All Leylines' Eve at WPN stores. You draft whatever packs the store has, and everyone starts with Leyline of Anticipation in play, so every spell has flash. Spooky.
• Nov 4: Arena Star Trek early-access stream, 10 a.m. PT
• Nov 6–12: Prerelease events
• Nov 9: Set Phasers to Superdrop
• Nov 10: Star Trek on MTG Arena
• Nov 13: Tabletop release
• Nov 13–15: MagicCon: Atlanta and World Championship 32

See you next week. Bring a phaser, set to stun.