Why is bitterblossom so expensive?
Economics forum
Posted on June 13, 2014, 8:34 p.m. by SkyRaider42
So I wanted to make a U/B faeries deck, and I noticed 1 bitterblossom is about 45$. Why is it so expensive? faeries only accounts for about 2% of the modern meta, and cards like Scapeshift , Splinter Twin , Birthing Pod , and Wurmcoil Engine all 20$ or less?
It's only been printed once in a set that people didn't draft a whole lot of.
June 13, 2014 8:37 p.m.
It's not all that expensive right now considering it was a little more than $70 a while ago. Right after it got unbanned, a lot of people jumped on faerie tribal. The basic law of supply and demand just drove up the price.
It's also got mad flavor and one of the most beloved art works in all of magic. the card is just something a lot of folks would love to add to their collections.
June 13, 2014 9:53 p.m.
basically because everyone uses it even though it was only printed once. Why was Thoughtseize so expensive before it's reprint? why is Liliana of the Veil so expensive? All pretty much the same answer.
June 13, 2014 10:16 p.m.
strateupjee says... #6
I want Bitterblossom's art on a playmat for my Mono-Black Discard deck haha
June 16, 2014 12:25 a.m.
For the following reasons:
-It has been printed just once.
-It is a token generator... for FLYING tokens.
-Low CMC
-Turn one Thoughtseize , turn two this is nuts, then turn three into some other stupid threat is just retarded.
-It is very splashable.
-It has amazing synergy on a faerie tribal deck.
June 18, 2014 8:35 a.m.
To be perfectly honest, the card is terrible. Virtually unplayable in modern, not even in tokens decks, and sometimes not even in faeries decks if you can believe it(this part actually surprised me).
Its bad for a number of reasons that most people don't understand until they have played with it, but basically, the reason is because it has some of the worst tempo you could ever ask for, taking a whole 4 turns to give you an advantage even in the best case scenario(3 if you run faeries) since the first attack comes two turns later, but you already lost a life and spent a turn casting the card.
Even IF that gives you an advantage, the advantage is so small that your opponents lands will likely end up dealing more damage than they ever will.
In addition to this, bitterblossom is a very bad card to top deck in a bad situation, it doesn't help you at all unless you are desperately in need of blockers, but you might as well just have a dismember, or another creatuer like tasigur, or pretty much anything besides bitterblossom that costs 2 mana and is black.
Furthermore, abzan runs 2-3 abrupt decays and 1-2 maelstrom pulse, which end up making BB worthless, even if it did take out one of their CC cards.
Splinter twin will often run electrolyze as a cantrip, which completely takes a dump on bitterblossom, slowing it down even more than before, and actually resulting in a major tempo loss that could easily lose you the game.
Its worthless vs RDW, its actually worse to play it down than it is to not play it at all in this matchup, so theres that.
Doesn't help much vs infect except against their inkmoths, but aside from that its pretty worthless.
Thats 4 tier 1 decks that the card is useless against, its just not worth using.
Now, you could argue that you can protect it with discard spells and vendillion click, and the tokens can be pumped or championed and even make good blockers if you time it right, but at that point your just shoe-horning the card. As mentioned before, the card itself does very little to help your board, so you would basically be putting all that effort for nothing. The ONLY situation where bitterblossom is good is when you aren't facing a tier 1 deck and when you have Scion of Oona in play.
Now, as for the reason for the price, its probably because it looks cool as hell no matter how bad it is, and it was only printed once in a set that had a low print rate.
If the card was actually playable, its price would probably be more where Dark Confidant is sitting at. He isn't that great either, but thats more because of tasigur being deemed superior and not because he isn't good. Unlike BB, if dark confidant resolves against a non-aggro deck and isn't controlled ASAP, your opponents chances of winning become very slim.
April 2, 2015 3:59 p.m.
That post had almost nothing to do with the actual topic. It's a nice post but only the last bit actually answers the question. I would be careful of posting long contrary posts that don't ACTUALLY add to the original conversation. Not flaming you - just pointing it out.
April 2, 2015 4:01 p.m.
Honestly, the reason Bitterblossom is so expensive is speculators and hoarders.
Following the unbanning of Bitterblossom in Modern, the card went from $35 to $115 in a single day due to speculators buying up every card they could find.
Faeries were experimented with heavily following the unbanning, and it turned out to not be good enough to see play in modern.
Did the price adjust itself accordingly? No. Price drops on cards are almost always gradual, with the exception of standard rotations and bannings as the supply grows and demand plummets.
Of course, the price will continualy sink until it eventually balances out at slightly higher than it was pre-unbanning due to lack of a demand for the card.
Bitterblossom price history: http://mtgstocks.com/prints/20651
I also noticed that this thread was hella old. Why the necro?
ChiefBell says... #2
Because it's a very powerful card. Has the potential to be extremely broken and everyone wants to experiment with it. Whilst it's not currently big in the meta, it's a card that's always threatening to come through.
June 13, 2014 8:36 p.m.