The Strange Sands Forest: contents, prices and what it was worth
A Secret Lair drop released January 2025, 10 cards in 2 versions. What it cost, what the cards are worth today, and how that compares to buying them plainly.
What is in The Strange Sands Forest, and what it is worth
The cards in The Strange Sands Forest (the non-foil edition) are worth $38.60 today at TCGplayer market prices.
Rainbow Foil: singles worth $38.60 today.
No published release price for this drop has been found, so there is no figure to compare these singles against — for anyone. What the cards are worth today, and what plain copies of them cost, are both exact.
Card prices as of 2026-09-03.
What is unusual about this drop
Forest alone is 10% of what this drop’s singles are worth ($3.86 of $38.60), and its top three cards are 30% of it. Concentration like that is worth knowing before you buy, but across the whole Secret Lair catalogue it does not predict a good drop — plenty of top-heavy drops returned less than evenly-spread ones.
The Secret Lair printings in this drop carry a 42.89× treatment premium — that is what they are worth against $0.90 for the cheapest ordinary printings of the same 10 cards. The median across the 80 drops released in 2025 is 2.20×, so this art is holding more of a premium than its 2025 siblings (19.50× the year’s median).
By what its singles are worth today, The Strange Sands Forest is the 335th most valuable of the 405 Secret Lair drops with priced contents, and the 71st of the 80 released in 2025.
What the same cards cost without the art
The 10 priced cards in this drop can be bought in their cheapest ordinary printings for about $0.90, against $38.60 for the Secret Lair versions. That difference is what you are paying for the treatment — the gameplay is identical, and every card here is legal in exactly the same formats either way.
Every card in The Strange Sands Forest
Art by Scott Balmer.
Non-foil (the edition this page’s verdict covers)
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10× Forest
Prices as of 2026-09-03. TCGplayer market price for this exact printing; Card Kingdom where they stock it. “Plain copy” is the cheapest paper printing of the same card anywhere.
Rainbow Foil
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10× Forest
Prices as of 2026-09-03. TCGplayer market price for this exact printing; Card Kingdom where they stock it. “Plain copy” is the cheapest paper printing of the same card anywhere.
Look up sealed The Strange Sands Forest on TCGplayer
Sealed copies trade on the secondary market once the store window closes. That price is not tracked here — the figures on this page are for the singles.
How these numbers are worked out
The release price is what Wizards of the Coast charged for the drop when it was on sale. The singles total is the sum of TCGplayer market prices for the exact printings the drop shipped — not for ordinary copies of the same cards, which is a different and usually much smaller number, shown above as the plain-copy comparison. The multiple is one divided by the other.
Two things it deliberately does not do. It does not price sealed copies: once a drop leaves the store its sealed price is set by the secondary market, and that is a different question from whether buying it at release paid off. And it does not adjust for inflation — the multiple is nominal, so a return earned over six years is not directly comparable to the same figure earned over one.
Card prices refresh weekly and this page is rewritten only when its numbers actually move, so the date above is the real one rather than today’s.
FAQ
What is The Strange Sands Forest worth?
The 10 cards in The Strange Sands Forest are worth $38.60 today at TCGplayer market prices. No published release price for this drop has been found, so there is no figure to compare these singles against — for anyone. What the cards are worth today, and what plain copies of them cost, are both exact.
What cards are in The Strange Sands Forest?
The Strange Sands Forest contains 10 cards illustrated by Scott Balmer. It was released January 2025 in 2 versions: Non-foil, Rainbow Foil.
What is the most valuable card in The Strange Sands Forest?
Forest, at $3.86 — 10% of the drop's total singles value.
Is it cheaper to buy the The Strange Sands Forest cards separately?
The same 10 cards in their cheapest ordinary printings cost about $0.90, against $38.60 for the Secret Lair versions. The gameplay is identical; the difference is the art.
Can you still buy The Strange Sands Forest?
Secret Lair drops sell direct from Wizards of the Coast for a limited window and are not reprinted in that form, so once the window closes the only supply is the secondary market. This page prices the singles, not sealed copies. Prices shown are from 2026-09-03.