By Brian Cooper |
Updated on January 9, 2024
I was looking at the Time Spiral Remastered price list the other day and noticed that Booster Boxes continue to hover at all time lows BUT here’s the kicker…..the Expected Value has been CLIMBING!!
As I watched booster box prices continue to sink this past year, it occured to me that we may be approaching THE BEST TIME EVER to buy Time Spiral Remastered.
Why is now a great time to buy in?
With Booster Box prices being SO LOW and single card prices from the set rising, it’s no doubt that Time Spiral Remastered is one of the best deals in Magic The Gathering right now.
Let’s dive into this and I’ll show you why NOW IS THE TIME to get on board the Time Spiral Remastered train!
Contents
- 1 A Step Back in Time: Time Spiral Remastered Hits Shelves In 2021
- 2 Box Prices SPIRALED Out of Control in 2021!
- 3 Time Spiral Remastered Booster Box Price Fluctuation In 2022-2023
- 4 Time Spiral Remastered Expected Value
- 5 Another Way To Determine MTG Booster Box Value
- 6 What Are The Best Cards In Time Spiral Remastered?
- 7 What About the Elusive Timeshifted FOIL Versions?
- 8 THE BOTTOM LINE: Are Time Spriral Remastered Booster Boxes Worth It?
A Step Back in Time: Time Spiral Remastered Hits Shelves In 2021
Time Spiral Remastered arrived on shelves back on March 19, 2021. It seems like just yesterday that I was looking for packs and boxes, yet we’re nearly 2 ½ years past the release date. Wow, time flies!
Early 2021 was certainly a crazy time in the world of Magic The Gathering. Within an 8-9 month span of time, Wizards of the Coast (well at this point it was really Hasbro – who purchased them in September 2019) had released SIX major sets.
By March of 2021, they were already sending Time Spiral Remastered to store shelves with a glut of other products already on the minds of players and collectors.
Look at all of the Magic sets released at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021:
But regardless of the glut, players and collectors couldn’t wait for Time Spiral Remastered. It didn’t take long for the box prices to go through the roof and shortly after release they were selling for 50-60% more than the release price. It was crazy.
The bottom line was that Time Spiral Remastered was a very unique product and the supply was not nearly what was expected. Some thought it would remain in stock for 1-2 years (sort of like Modern Horizons) but we all found out that that was not happening.
Soon enough, rumors started hitting that stores were not getting nearly the allocations they wanted. Stores that requested 1,000 boxes were only getting 300 and this sent people into panic-buying mode.
Box prices took off from there within the first month of release. Yep, times were good….if you could find boxes.
Box Prices SPIRALED Out of Control in 2021!
Back in the very early release time period (and pre-release), the initial price on Amazon and at local stores was $140-150/box. It was a small premium over the Draft Booster Box prices and not as expensive as Masters.
This was the price that Wizards/Hasbro intended it to be.
It was supposed to be priced somewhere in between their expensive premium Masters product (which runs $10/pack) and the regular Draft sets (which are closer to $5/pack.)
Being that Time Spriral Remastered booster boxes contained 36-packs and Masters booster boxes contained 24-packs, it looked like pack prices were going to be right in line with what Wizards/Hasbro wanted.
What they didn’t factor in was the demand that would ensue once everyone found out that supply was going to be WAY more limited than expected.
So what happened was that Time Spiral Remastered received a small print run (unfortunately) and booster box prices got out of hand and skyrocketed from the $150-$190’s to the $250-$275 range.
Within 2-weeks of release, anything in the $200’s was considered CHEAP! This proved to be catastrophic to the consumers as prices continued to climb and many were priced out of a great product.
And with no more printings of the set on the horizon, you either bought the packs and boxes as prices climbed or you threw in the towel. People were upset and many just decided to hold their money for Modern Horizons 2, which was only 2-3 months away by this time.
Time Spiral Remastered Booster Box Price Fluctuation In 2022-2023
So how could a booster box that was so anticipated, that skyrocketed from the get-go and that had such a low print run eventually sink in price? Let’s talk about what happened after the initial 2021 frenzy.
Like just about everything else in the world of collectibles, Time Spiral Remastered booster box prices slowly came down little by little over the next 1-2 years.
As the economy softened and collectible prices went down, Magic The Gathering (and most TCG’s) followed suit. Prices that were in the $300’s soon were coming down into the $250’s. And in just the last year, the $250’s are now the $220’s
If you purchased boxes for $300 back when released, you’re definitely hurting right now.
If you never bought into Time Spriral Remastered because box prices took off so fast back in 2021, now is your opportunity to get in at a reasonable price.
Time Spiral Remastered Expected Value
The “Expected Value” of a booster box is basically the average dollar value that you can expect to realize if you were to open an entire booster box and sell the cards.
For Time Spiral Remastered, there are 36-packs of 15-cards each for a total of 540 cards in a full box. If you added up the value of those cards, that is the “Expected Value.”
As collectors and investors, it’s nice to know the Expected Value if you plan to open a box. That’s a good indicator of the value of the cards compared to what you’re paying for the box itself.
For Time Spiral Remastered, the booster box is selling for around $220 right now. The Expected Value has been going up and up over the last few months and is currently $227.29 according to the Dawnglare site.
That’s a good thing, knowing that the cards inside the box on average are worth more than what you’re paying for the box itself.
Often you’ll see Expected Values at less than the price of the box. That happens mainly for two reasons:
- The set is weak and the cards in the set are not very desirable by players and collectors.
- The box price is strong because of print runs, demand, rarity or a combination of these.
When it comes to Time Spiral Remastered, it’s the perfect storm right now. You have a set of strong cards with good values, a consistent demand for those cards and booster boxes and a print run that appears to be pretty low.
That all adds up to rising booster box prices and rising card values.
Here are some statistics showing the Time Spiral Booster Box Prices on eBay over the last month or so:
Another Way To Determine MTG Booster Box Value
One other way to figure out if it’s worth buying a booster box is to figure out how many cards in the set have a price that matches or exceeds the price of the booster PACK. It’s just another calculation in your arsenal to help determine that all important word….VALUE.
Logic would tell me that the more cards I have in the set that have a value that is more than the pack price (or at least HALF the pack price), the better the deal when it comes to buying booster packs and boxes.
For Time Spiral Remastered, the current market price for a booster pack is $6.99. According to Dawnglare, there are currently (22) cards worth $7 or more and another (41) cards that are worth $3-$6.
So it’s nice to see a treasure trove of value when even considering cards priced at HALF the value of the pack and above.
What Are The Best Cards In Time Spiral Remastered?
There are (21) cards I consider the best cards you can find in Time Spiral Remastered booster boxes. All of them are currently worth MORE than the average pack price and (10) of them are the highly sought after Timeshifted cards.
Here are those (21) cards listed in order of current value:
- Chalice of the Void $63 *TS
- Sliver Legion $54
- Gemstone Caverns $51
- Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth $32
- Thoughtseize $22 *TS
- Akroma’s Memorial $21
- Damnation $17
- Yawgmoth, Thran Physician $15 *TS
- Living End $13
- Vesuva $12
- Pact of Negation $10
- Tarmogoyf $10
- Swarmyard $10
- Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker $9 *TS
- Leyline of the Void $9 *TS
- Ponder $9 *TS
- Elvish Mystic $8 *TS
- Silence $8 TS
- Magus of the Moon $7
- Goblin Engineer $7 *TS
- Dismember $7 *TS
Note: *TS = Timeshifted
There are a total of (121) unique Timeshifted cards in Time Spiral Remastered and there is ONE in every booster pack. So there is absolutely a chance to get a rare or mythic card from the list above along with a high end timeshifted card in one single pack!
More than half of the cards listed are priced quite high so it’s nice to see a good mix of more valuable cards. Quite often you’ll see sets with 2-3 high priced cards and then piles of lesser value cards.
Definitely not the case here with Time Spiral Remastered.
What About the Elusive Timeshifted FOIL Versions?
And we haven’t even talked about the full blinged out versions yet! There are FOIL versions of these Timeshifted cards hidden in booster boxes that bring BIG dollars. That is if you can find them.
These ‘lottery cards’ (which is basically what they are) are found roughly 1-2 in every CASE and they can be quite expensive. I’ve seen foil Timeshifted cards for sale anywhere from $100 on up to $800 or more!
One of the more recent sales on eBay was the TIMESHIFTED FOIL “PONDER” which just sold for $265 on July 17, 2023. As you’ll see from our list above, Ponder is a $9 card by itself so finding a Foil version (which is REALLY hard to do) multiplied the price by nearly 30-times.
Another card that is for sale on eBay (as of August 24, 2023) is the TIMESHIFTED FOIL THOUGHTSEIZE, an iconic card from the Lorwyn set (2007) that has been reprinted a few times. This version is probably one of the tougher (if not THE TOUGHEST) versions to find and this particular seller is asking nearly $750!
Will the seller get their price for this Thoughtseize Timeshifted Foil? Too soon to tell but I think it’s in the ballpark of what it should sell for. The regular non-foil version of this card is going for $22. And if you use the same multiple as the PONDER card above (30X), this card should be worth at least $650-$700!
THE BOTTOM LINE: Are Time Spriral Remastered Booster Boxes Worth It?
The bottom line is that the Time Spiral Remastered price is heading UP and I think booster boxes at this level are definitely worth it. The interesting thing is that these boxes were worth the price back in 2021 when single prices weren’t as high as they are now.
So if anything, the pot has sweetened a bit more as single card prices have increased over time for many of the best cards.
The product is creative, has old throwbacks and is very unique and I think it will age very well. I know many of us were hoping for a restock or for prices to go down so the current low box prices is a blessing in disguise for those that really like the set.
Remember that the long term prospects for increased value is about supply coupled with uniqueness. This one has both.
I liken the set to the Masters sets that all are normally high priced and have awesome cards. But for Time Spriral Remastered I think it’s even better than the Masters sets because you get more packs per box, overall a better assortment of higher and mid-priced singles and just a better overall value for your dollar.
Now I’m still a bit upset that Time Spiral Remastered sort of continued this trend of Wizards/Hasbro asking higher and higher prices for boxes. And I’m also upset as a player that the print run was so low and it made this box so pricey and tough to find.
Because Wizards/Hasbro was slinging out so many new products, the company really didn’t game plan this one very well as they had to move on to the next best thing. And because they were moving so ridiculously fast with new products, there was no time to manage all of these new sets at the rate of speed they were going.
You can’t keep pumping out new products every 30-days and expect your team to be on their game (re: play testing, gameplay and rules) and players/collectors to be super happy when they’re wallets are empty.
With that, gone are those great days of $3-$4 booster packs and one type of box for sure. But you cannot argue that for $7-$9 per pack, Time Spriral Remastered is a good deal, if not pretty darn cheap.
Heck even Commander Masters Set Booster Packs that just came out this month (August 2023) are $10-$15 per pack right now. I saw Commander Masters Set Booster Packs in Target just last night and they were $23! That makes Time Spiral Remastered even BETTER looking right now.
So I say it’s time to BUY BUY BUY Time Spiral Remastered!
My bet is prices will continue to rise higher over time and we may not see the low $200’s again. It’s at the bottom and it’s time to go in.
Boxes are going to get stashed away in vaults, packs are going to get ripped at what I believe is super cheap and this product will become more and more scarce as time goes on. Just a hunch and my personal opinion. Take it for what it is.
Thanks all for stopping by. If you have any questions about Time Spiral Remastered or any other Magic The Gathering set or if you want to see us cover a specific topic, send us a message. And remember, keep investing in Magic!
