MTG - What's Up With Hermit of the Natterknolls Foil Price?

by RGFoxx, Gaming Successfully Contributor

I absolutely love collecting foils. Sure, they're shiny and they look nice in a binder or a Commander or Legacy deck (Modern, too, because it's an Eternal format!) But that's not why I like them. When foils were first released, many players weren't really that thrilled with them. But still, they were pretty rare and people took care of them. But most were only worth 1.5 or 2 times the value of the original non-foil card. That's not the case anymore. People love their foil sets. Once in awhile, certain foils of cards that are otherwise worthless can exceed $1 or $2, and sometimes can have ridiculous multipliers when compared to their non-foil price.  

Consider Hermit of the Natterknolls. This Werewolf looks to me to have been designed as a foil (pun not intended) to the Spirits archetype that is clearly present in Shadows Over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon. The Spirits, for the most part, have Flash, and Rattlechains gives all of your Spirits Flash. This means most of the time, Spirit players are going to try and cast their creatures on your turn. With the Hermit, you get to draw a card any time an opponent casts a spell during your turn. This includes counterspells or other instants that opponents will play on your turn. Sadly, the Hermit has seen very little play in Constructed, only appearing in a few random Bant Company lists when the archetype was first taking off in Standard. 

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But wait, the Hermit is also a flip card! If no spells were cast during the previous turn, the Hermit becomes a 3/5 Werewolf called Lone Wolf of the Natterknolls! But it gets better. Not only do you draw a card if your opponent wants to play shenanigans during your turn, but you get to draw another one, as well! That's some real card advantage, son! Again, unfortunately, Werewolves just never came together as a cohesive tribe in Standard. They lacked a lord like Immerwolf from the original Innistrad block, and also lacked a super good midrange threat like Huntmaster of the Fells (still a freaking awesome card in Modern, by the way!) So the Hermit just sort of has wandered off into obscurity.

But wait! The Hermit has not been completely forgotten. As it turns out, people really like Hermit foils. They even spiked to $3.50 in price shortly after the release of Shadows Over Innistrad and have maintained roughly a $2 price tag since then. In Magic Online, they've been highly sought after, as well, mostly in completing foil sets for redemption, but there's more to it than that. People are holding on to foils of this guy. Why exactly? They don't see play in really any format. Kitchen table players like foils, sure, but they don't usually actively buy 4 at a time. What's up with this price? 
 
There's actually a fairly simple explanation. When all of these cool new Werewolves were released with Shadows Over Innistrad (some of them are pretty damn good actually), a lot of speculators bought up foil copies of any Werewolf that seemed halfway decent. Was this a good strategy? Probably not. But the Hermit is  a good card that can do some work in certain metagames full of Spirits and/or control decks being a major part of the scene. 
 
I wouldn't spend my money buying Hermit of the Natterknolls foils. However, I would pick these up in non-foil as trade throw-ins or out of bulk bins. I don't mind having a playset or two of these in case they ever become worth something. Who knows, they may be a dollar each some day. I'm not betting on it at all, but at least I know that people will probably want these down the road.

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