Story of a Price Spike - Petrified Field from Odyssey

by Richard Rowell, Gaming Successfully Staff

Some time ago, I wrote a bit about Petrified Field, a utility land from Odyssey. While it's hardly a staple in any deck, Petrified Field has seen play in Legacy and Vintage. It also sees a fair amount of play in Commander, as well. Land-based decks such as Titania, Protector of Argoth, in particular, really like to have it. What makes it good is that you can sacrifice it and return a land card from your graveyard to your hand. There are plenty of lands such as Wasteland that you'd like to reuse. It also provides colorless mana, which is more relevant than ever with the pure colorless mana requirements of cards from Oath of the Gatewatch.

Being an older card, there aren't many copies of Petrified Field still in circulation. Back in October 2015, I picked this card as a long-term investment, especially the extremely rare foils. It was only $4 a copy at the time. My target price was $8-10. As of March 2, 2016, the price jumped from $5 and hit $12. I expected foil copies to hit $20, and they are now over an average of $35. This wasn’t really a buyout. It was more of a price correction for a fairly under-appreciated card.

This is definitely a card that could be reprinted at some point, as it's not on the Reserved List. So keep that in mind when deciding what to do with any copies you may already have in your possession. Now that the price has settled around $10, however, you’re safe to pick any copies that you’d like.

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