MTG has been around for 33 years, and it’s safe to say that many of the game’s older designs are also the most unique. Bosium Strip certainly fits the mold, utilizing the “graveyard order matters” mechanic that left our game long ago. Thanks to some recent developments, this bizarre MTG card is getting some attention, causing a price spike.
MTG Bosium Strip
Because the card needs an instant or sorcery on top of your graveyard to do anything, Bosium Strip is typically too difficult to use. However, for the decks that can unlock it, Bosium Strip can enable long chains of cheap spells, creating powerful Storm-like sequences.
This is exactly what Bosium Strip does in Premodern. In addition to letting you double dip on Rituals and cantrips to build up Storm count, this artifact also enables you to get more mileage from Frantic Search and Intuition.
Notably, content creator Crucible of Worlds highlighted the Bosium Strip Storm deck in Premodern on July 14th before the spike occurred. Combined with the card’s success in recent top performing Psychatog decklists as well, it’s safe to say that the card is getting a lot of attention in the format.
In addition to Premodern play driving up interest, Bosium Strip also offers serious synergies with cards from The Hobbit. Because of its wording, Bosium Strip lets you recast Adventure spells from the graveyard, establishing an extremely powerful engine. Mark Rosewater’s teasers confirmed the return of this mechanic, potentially causing some early hype for the card.
The Spike
Despite being a scarce Reserved List card, Bosium Strip held a pretty modest near-mint market value of just $4.53 one month ago. It wasn’t until 18 copies were purchased between July 14th and 15th that the card saw a major price increase, with more sales in those two days than in the previous month combined. Even with so few copies purchased, the extremely low supply of Bosium Strip leaves it vulnerable to sudden spikes.
Now, in the U.S., Bosium Strip is extremely expensive, with current listings at $21.79 at the time of writing, representing a 381% price spike over the last month. Unsurprisingly, there are cheaper copies available in worse condition, but Lightly Played and Moderately Played copies will still set you back over $13.
A Potential Downturn
Ultimately, while Bosium Strip’s price has continued to elevate over the past few days, it wouldn’t be shocking if its value diminished in the long run. As cool as the card is in Premodern, Storm is hardly a top-tier deck in the format, and Psychatog decks rarely run more than one copy. Because of this, the card’s Premodern hype may be short-lived.
This puts a lot of pressure on The Hobbit to deliver some incredible Commander Adventure payoffs that keep players invested in Bosium Strip. After all, the card otherwise sees virtually no play in Commander, appearing in just 976 decks according to EDHREC. Even if this does happen, Bosium Strip could easily follow the usual trend for Commander spikes; a short surge that dies once a new set comes out.
All of that said, as always, it’s impossible to predict the future, as Bosium Strip’s Reserved List status could be enough to keep it expensive on its own. This will be an interesting MTG card to watch as The Hobbit’s spoiler season continues.
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