Summary
Universes Beyond: Doctor Who has crashed its runaway Tardis intoMagic: The Gathering, bringing a phonebooth-load of Time Lords and companions along with it. But while the Time Lords can take as much time as they want to go through each and every new card in this timey-wimey set, we lowly humans have both limited time and money.
That’s why we’re going to save you some time and go over each of the most expensive cards available in Universes Beyond: Doctor Who. If you’re cracking open Collector Boosters, these are the cards you should be looking out for.
All prices are taken fromTCGplayer.com. As this is a brand-new set, prices are still fluctuating and may not be accurately reflected in this article.
Updated July 11, by Sean Murray: Things have certainly changed a lot since Doctor Who arrived last year. We’ve updated this list with a new top ten most-valuable cards for you to look out for in Universes Beyond: Doctor Who.
Price
$22.13
Mana rocks are a dime a dozen in Magic. The best ones are either cheap, like Sol Ring, or do something other than produce mana. Sonic Screwdriver falls into the latter camp,offering players a multitude of abilitiesfor an escalating mana cost.
One suspects that the value of Sonic Screwdriver may lay less in its usefulness outside of producing mana and more in its recognition among Doctor Who fans. Who wouldn’t want a Sonic Screwdriver to fix whatever problems might arise? You can get basic versions for as little as fifty cents, butthe fancy surge foil version will cost you.
$24.02
Snuff Out is a classic black removal spell thatretains a high price despite several printingseven at common rarity. The uncommon version from Universes Beyond: Doctor Who is the cheapest with the regular version starting at just over seven dollars, but the surge foil version is pushing $25.
What’s the big deal? Snuff Out has an alternate casting cost if you control a Swamp.Pay four lifeandwhatever nonblack creaturethat’s posing a problem suddenlydisappears. You could call it the black version of Force of Will.
$26.99
A surprising leap for River Song, a card that most players didn’t pay much attention to during the pre-release. Her second ability,Spoilers, doesn’t always pop off in Magic’s most popular casual format. Still, thereare plenty of ways to stuff cards on the bottom of your libraryin Commander, especially in her blue and red colors.
Although an interesting concept, River Song is still fairly cheap if you just get the standard version of her. It’s only when you opt for thealternate art showcase foilthatyou wind up paying out the nose.
$31.32
Keeping your board alive in a multiplayer game like Commander is a tricky thing, making cards like Everybody Lives! a sought-after commodity. Not only does Everybody Lives!keep your army of critters alive, it alsoprevents you from losing life,being targeted,or losing(or winning) the game.
This sort of trick can make or break Commander games, especially if one were to place it atop an Isochron Scepter. Demand for even the regular, non-foil versions of Everybody Lives! already priced it over $11, with theextended art foil version priced well into the $30s.
$32.23
Perhapsthe most hilarious card to come out of Universes Beyond: Doctor Who, Displaced Dinosaurs turns every artifact, legendary, and saga you play into a 7/7 Dinosaur. Why? Because time and space are funny things and so are dinosaurs.
The funniest thing to do with Displaced Dinosaurs is toplay them in a deck where you’d prefer your commander become a 7/7 dinsoauras soon as it comes into play. Wouldn’tBristly Billbe better as a 7/7 than a 2/2? Or how aboutCleopatra? Any green commander will do as long as they’re smaller than a dinosaur.
$35.80
Another classic Doctor Who artifact, the Tardis provides you with free planeswalking and cascade abilities so long as you’re playing with a Time Lord, and with 29 to choose from, you certainly won’t be starved for choice.So long as you’re playing a Doctor Who-themed deck, your TARDIS will be waiting to cast free spells with every attack.
As with the Sonic Screwdriver, the standard version of this card isn’t too expensive, butthe showcase art foil version can set you back nearly $36.
$36.72
It turns out that you often only need to duplicate your opponent’s Eldrazi for a few turns in order to deal with it, either by winning the game or by having your kaiju trade with theirs. For two blue mana, Flesh Duplicateprovides you with the shapeshifting answer to a surprisingly large number of threats.
Every Flesh Duplicate is expensive, butthe extended art foil version is pushing past $36as of the time of this writing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it push $40 in the future.
$227.55
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most valuable cards in Doctor Who are the ones with the numbers on them. Just as withThe Lord of the Rings crossover,several cards in Doctor Who received serialized printingsto denote just how few of them exist. For each Doctor, 500 alternate art special foil cards were printed, plus however many more to denote which Doctor. The Fourth Doctor, therefore, has 504 of the special art cards made.
The odds of getting The Fourth Doctor in any given pack is already quite low. The odds of getting foil or showcase art version lower still. The odds of getting one of the 504 serialized printings of The Fourth Doctor are astronomically small, and thus,any of these cards sell for a high price with collectors.
$269.99
Just like The Fourth Doctor,The Thirteenth Doctor’s value is almost entirely wrapped up in its serialized printing. you’re able to get the basic version of this card for less than a dollar online. It’s not like she’s a bad card, but there are easier ways to build a blue/green Commander deck that’s focused on counters.
That said, collectors are a driving force in Magic’s secondary market, and as soon as you put a number on a card (beyond its power and toughness, anyway), you’re going to get people willing tospend more than $250 on it.
$644.99
I have a theory that people really liked The Tenth Doctor, so any Doctor Who fan who’s also looking to fill out their Magic collection is probably going to spend a little more to get the best possible version of The Tenth Doctor they can.The best is, naturally,the serialized showcase art version, which sells for almost $650 online.
I wouldn’t call the Tenth Doctor a particularly great card; waiting three turns for something to arrive is an eternity in Magic, especially if you’ve already waited five turns just to play your Commander.But nostalgia is a powerful thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have Universes Beyond: Doctor Who.
