"With great power comes great responsibility." - Uncle Ben

Wizards of the Coast is on the precipice of a new era for Magic: the Gathering with the upcoming release of their Marvel's Spider-Man set. We've seen a couple Universes Beyond sets already, but The Lord of the Rings and Final Fantasy felt like natural extensions of the game's multiverse.

Spider-Man will be distinctly different. For starters, the set is smaller than your typical release, with around 200 cards. Flavor-wise, there are fantasy-like elements to Stan Lee's creation, but the overlap is reduced with this new expansion. I wonder if this will pave the way for UB sets with even greater dissonance in the future. Time will tell.

In the meantime, any fan of Marvel's Spider-Man franchise (and there are many such fans) will appreciate getting to play one of their favorite games with such classic, memorable characters. Like any new Magic set, cards are already available to pre-order, with varying prices and availability. Let's check out the most valuable cards you can open at your upcoming local Spider-Man events.

I Got Soul but I'm not a Soldier

Doing research for this article, I stumbled upon an unexpected trend when it comes to singles prices from Spider-Man. There is one card with a steep pre-sale price tag, and the rest of the set trails significantly behind. I can't remember such a profound dichotomy during pre-order season. There's so much value concentrated in one card that it sells for more than half of a play booster box!

That card is The Soul Stone (not to be confused with Edge of Eternities' The Endstone).

According to Spider-Man fandom, The Soul Stone was one of six Infinity Stones. This one represents the element of the soul. In lore, The Soul Stone appears in Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame,and an array of other movie-related media. I'm no expert on this franchise, but even I can glean how important this artifact is to the Spider-Man universe.

The card reads powerfully--for just two mana you have a mana rock that is indestructible, helpful for early game ramp. Then, in the later stages of the game, you can activate The Soul Stone and exile a creature you control in order to reanimate a creature from your graveyard every upkeep. This reminds me of Virtue of Persistence, another powerful card with repeatable resurrection ability.

How much will it cost you to own The Soul Stone? I hope you're sitting down when you read this, because pre-sale prices are currently northwards of $100! I found at least one retailer selling copies for $109.99. Copies elsewhere have sold for even higher, selling for as much as $139.99 this past week. Clearly, players are coveting this artifact highly and are willing to pay a significant premium to ensure they have their copies day one.

I'd strongly advise against pre-ordering these, as we have $100 cards in brand new, readily available product quite rarely. If Spider-Man sells out across the globe quickly and Wizards of the Coast limits how much they print, then a $100 price tag may be warranted (if the card is as powerful as it seems). Otherwise, recent history suggests the value of a highly playable and coveted mythic rare from a newer set is more appropriately priced in the $50-$80 range (e.g., Sheoldred, the Apocalypse).

In Distant Second

The Soul Stone is so far ahead of the rest of the set that it merited its own section. While nothing else in Spider-Man currently compares with that card, there are still plenty of other exciting mythic rares and rares worth opening from a booster pack.

As you'd expect, the set contains an array of mythic Legendary Creatures that represent characters from the Spider-Man franchise. A handful of these are pre-selling for $20-$30.

The two most noteworthy creatures are Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer and Gwenom, Remorseless.

Both these cards had an initial preorder price north of $50, but have since retraced down to the $30 range. Because I'm not a Spider-Man fan, I can't tell you about the lore behind these two Symbiote Heroes. I can, however, talk up their power in Magic! While Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer's casting cost is quite prohibitive at , the fact that it comes with a free Resurrection spell stapled to it makes it quite the powerful two-for-one! On top of that, killing Anti-Venom with damage is a Sisyphean task--damage only makes it stronger! The card may only be playable in dedicated White decks, but perhaps this card alone can make such decks tick. Spider-Man will be Standard legal, so something like Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer can really shake up the format's metagame!

Gwenom, Remorseless also boasts an impressive ability. A five mana 4/4 creature with deathtouch and lifelink is respectable. This combined with that attack trigger really brings Gwenom's power level to life. When Gwenom attacks, you can cast the top card of your library that turn, and you can pay life instead of mana if you so desire. Gwenom's lifelink ability makes it more palatable to pay said life, and her deathtouch ability means your opponent will be losing creatures if they want to block and kill Gwenom, Remorseless.

Another noteworthy, valuable legendary creature is Eddie Brock, which can transform into Venom, Lethal Protector.

Eddie Brock is a mythic rare pre-selling for around $25. Transforming Eddie Brock may not be trivial given the three-colored transform cost, but his ETB ability can be synergistic in the right deck. Of course, if you can transform Eddie Brock, you can immediately attack with the menacing, trampling, haste creature and immediate generate card advantage by attacking and sacrificing another creature. A game will get out of hand quickly with Venom, Lethal Protector in play.

Two more noteworthy mythic rare, legendary creatures are Norman Osborn and Peter Parker, who transform into rivals Green Goblin and Amazing Spider-Man, respectively.

It's poetic to mention these two cards in the same sentence. In the movies, Norman Osborn's son is best friends with Peter Parker. That friendship is severely strained, however, when Norman Osborn starts transforming into Green Goblin, terrorizing the city. Peter Parker has no choice but to transform himself into Amazing Spider-Man, ultimately defeating Green Goblin and saving the day.

The two card representations of these characters are somewhat symmetric in nature. Both cost two mana and are relatively innocuous creatures by themselves. Norman connives when he deals combat damage to a player, which is relatively easy to accomplish given he's unblockable. Meanwhile, a similarly costed transform card in Peter Parker merely comes into play with a free 2/1 Green Spider creature token.

Once transformed, the two cards continue to show symmetry. They both have two evergreen abilities and they both help you cast cards for an alternative cost.

Fittingly, their prices are also nearly the same. Both these cards are pre-selling in the $20-$25 range, and while I expect these to drop as well once Spider-Man is released, the fact that these are two iconic characters from the Spider-Man universe tells me these may retain at least some of this financial value ongoing.

A Couple More Cards to Watch

In addition to these highly recognizable characters, there are a couple non-creature cards worth cracking open in a Spider-Man play booster. First, there's the famous meme-turned-Magic card in Imposter Syndrome.

This card may retain value simply because of how famous that meme picture became. In any event, an enchantment that copies your non-token creatures that damage a player in combat screams "build around me" in Commander, so it doesn't surprise me that this enchantment is preordering near $20. Just don't put this card in your Limited deck.

Lastly, I want to touch on two more cards: another mythic enchantment and the first rare to appear on this list. I'm talking about Web of Life and Destiny and Multiversal Passage.

Web of Life and Destiny seems prohibitively expensive at first glance, costing eight mana. But this can be reduced thanks to the card's convoke ability. Then at the beginning of combat on your turn you can look at the top five cards of your library and put a creature from among them directly onto the battlefield! You need to have a fairly creature-dense deck to pull this off, but the card seems like a lot of fun at first glance, it's no wonder Web of Life and Destiny is pre-selling for nearly $20.

At last, we come to the first rare, and it's a prototypical rare land. Multiversal Passage is an interesting twist on five-color lands. Whereas City of Brass and Mana Confluence give you a mana of any type, Multiversal Passage is more akin to Prismatic Vista because you must commit to a single basic land type. On the plus side, you don't have to pay any life to use this card if you're OK with it entering tapped, a nice plus over Prismatic Vista. It doesn't give you a shuffle effect, however, which makes Multiversal Passage a little worse in Legacy decks featuring Brainstorm. Still, five-color fixers like Multiversal Passage frequently see a good deal of play, so it's not surprising to see a $12-$15 pre-order price tag on this one.

Wrapping It Up

As with every modern-day Magic set, Spider-Man also contains a variety of alternative printings and treatments to make collectors salivate. These often appear only in special products like collector boosters, but if you are lucky enough you can find yourself the proud owner of an extremely expensive card! Take a look at some of the early winners:

During pre-sale season, I'd ignore the listing prices because supply is so thin. The fact that someone bought borderless Spectacular Spider-Man for $1,250 blows my mind. A couple other borderless cards have also been selling for hundreds of dollars.

Will these exorbitant prices stick? Possibly. Some of the special printings of Final Fantasy cards still sell for a $100-$300, so these numbers aren't too far-fetched.

One other thing to note--I took the above image directly from TCGplayer after sorting by price. Notice how The Soul Stone's normal printing is on that list, the sixth most valuable card? That absolutely blows my mind. I can't imagine that card stays so expensive.

In any event, Spider-Man is sure to delight fans of the franchise out there, making some of the set's classic lore references highly sought after on the collector market. It remains to be seen how robust the demand will be for such cards. Given the popularity of the franchise, however, I suspect prices will hold up relatively well.