Secret Lair x Global Fund for Women: Their Magic Is Limitless — EV Breakdown

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Wizards announced Secret Lair: Their Magic Is Limitless this week, a seven-card charity drop with Global Fund for Women, and my first reaction was the normal human one: nice, good cause, cute name. My second reaction, about four seconds later, was to go check whether the cards inside are actually worth what they’re charging for it. I’d like to say that’s not a character flaw. I’m not sure it isn’t.

The mechanics: print-to-demand, no cap on quantity, on sale July 20 through August 3. Non-foil runs $39.99, foil $49.99, and half of whatever you pay goes to the charity. So the math has decent karma built in before we’ve even opened a pack.

We priced out all seven cards against the cheapest non-Secret-Lair copy on the market right now. Here’s the card-by-card, then what it actually means. And yes, one card is doing basically all the work, which feels like it should be a bigger deal than it is.

Card by Card

Add those seven up and you land on the $65.63 non-foil / $87.97 foil in the Reference EV card above, against a $39.99 / $49.99 retail. One card is doing almost all of that work, and it isn’t close.

Why the Math Favors You

Finale of Devastation is carrying this drop, and I feel a little bad for the other six cards about it. The comp we used for the EV math, $43.68 non-foil / $50.88 foil, comes from the cheap War of the Spark buy-a-box promo, the least expensive way to own the card today. But that’s the floor, not the real story. Go to the actual War of the Spark non-foil printing instead of the promo and it’s $52.05: more than the entire foil price of this drop, on one card. The Commander Masters etched version trades at $91.57. So somewhere between $50 and $92 is what collectors already pay for this card’s first two art treatments. This is only the third.

Then there’s a pair I’d actually call the wildcards, and I mean that as a compliment. Start with Dark Ritual: the comp in the table above is nothing, $3.25 non-foil, a Fourth Edition common you would not look twice at. But that is not what previous Secret Lair art of this card has done once it’s actually out in the wild. A Dark Ritual drop from December 2022 sits at $132.58 non-foil and $184.60 foil right now, years later, for a card that does nothing but add three black mana.

Sol Ring tells the same story, louder. Its comp is $1.06 non-foil, a Commander precon insert. A Sol Ring drop from December 2023 is at $80.83 non-foil, and the special foil from that same drop cleared $170. Sol Ring specifically has had something like two dozen different Secret Lair printings at this point, which by any reasonable logic should have exhausted collector interest by now. It has not, even a little. The spread across all of them runs from single digits to well over $150 depending on which one you’re holding. None of that is the comp we used for the EV math, and none of it is guaranteed to repeat here. But it’s the honest reason both of these cards are worth watching after the drop goes live, not just during it.

Coat of Arms is the card here that’s just going to sit there being fine, forever: real reprint value ($15.69–$24.23), no history of spiking, no reason to expect one. It sees enough actual Commander play (EDHREC rank #964) that “filler” would be unfair. It’s just also the vibe.

Path of Ancestry is the same story at a smaller scale: a few dollars of reprint value, boring in the way a fixing land is supposed to be boring, and EDHREC rank #14 says Commander players agree with that assessment more than they do about almost anything else in this drop.

Cultivate is the one nobody’s buying this for. It comps at $0.34. You are not buying a $49.99 foil box for a thirty-four-cent ramp spell, and if you are, we need to talk about your budgeting before we talk about Magic cards.

Lathril, Blade of the Elves is in the same boat, just with a better home: real Elf-tribal Commander decks want it, EDHREC rank #2,275 or not, and its comp is still only $1.39. It’s here because it fits the drop’s identity, and that’s a fine reason for Wizards to include it. It’s just not, on its own, a reason for you to.

Which is the part I actually like about this drop, and it has nothing to do with the numbers: every card here was painted by a woman. Magali Villeneuve is the veteran of the group, the kind of name that’s been on your cards for years whether you ever clocked the signature or not. Julie Dillon and Ivy Dolamore are the newer faces to Magic, which is a good look for a set supposedly about where the game is going and not just its back catalog. And Fury Galluzzi, Caroline Gariba, Olena Richards, and Livia Prima are all frequent flyers by now, the artists you’ve stopped being surprised to see because they keep earning the slot. Wizards built the whole thing around “the women of Magic,” and for once the theme isn’t just a label stuck on an otherwise random seven-card grab bag. It goes all the way down to who held the brush.

Card images via Scryfall.

Our Take

This is about as close to a no-downside Secret Lair as I’ve seen, and I say that as someone who is professionally suspicious of that sentence. It’s print-to-demand for a two-week window, so there’s no restock panic and no reason to buy out of FOMO. Get it because you want the art, or don’t, and either answer is fine. But the math holds up regardless: a $49.99 foil purchase where one included card has already traded above that number under two separate prior treatments, six other cards that see real Commander play, and half of what you spend going to Global Fund for Women. I genuinely don’t know what else you’d want out of a Secret Lair drop. Someone email me if you find the catch.

Bottom line: a rare no-negatives drop. Great value, print-to-demand, a real charity component, and widely available with no cap. Easy recommend for green-black and Elf players, or anyone who just wants a new Finale of Devastation.

Full reference sheet, including EDHREC/Penny Dreadful rank and observed price range per card, if you want to check our work.

What Do You Think?

Got thoughts on where individual cards will settle once the drop actually goes live? Email us at analyst@mtgsold.com.

1. 1Sol Ring has had roughly two dozen Secret Lair printings already. Does a new one still move collectors, or is it just an art print at this point?
2. 2Does this new Finale of Devastation art become the default over the $91 Commander Masters etched version once people actually have it in hand?
3. 3If you play green-black or Elf tribal, are you buying this for Lathril and Coat of Arms specifically, or is Sol Ring and Dark Ritual already doing all the convincing for you?