MTGNexus

Why is premium Garbage Elemental "D", the one with cascade, so expensive and apparently so hard to find? The "C" version, the one with battle cry, isn't cheap either! What gives?

Well, since there are 6 different versions of the card, each version has 1/6 of the total supply in the market than any single-version uncommon from the set. Thus, if any of those versions proves desirable for players or collectors, it will be roughly 6x more expensive, due to version scarcity. This is compounded for the foil, as the scarcity from the 6 versions is multiplied by the foil scarcity.

Garbage Elemental D is the best of the 6 overall, because of the Cascade, thus if there is demand for a Garbage Elemental for play, that's the one that will be in the highest demand.

As for why there is demand for Garbage Elemental? I can only speculate. Perhaps there is a thriving Un-Cube scene, and the builders want to bling their crazy cube with foils?

Consider this:

A normal distribution of cards has 1 copy of each mythic to 2 copies of each rare to 4 copies of each uncommon and 8 of each rare. With Garbage Elemental having 6 variations, that means that each specific version is actually rarer than any specific mythic.

Garbage Elemental C and D are both very reasonable cards (especially now that AFR has brought dice-rolling to black border) and even cubers who don't want to run the more jokey silver-bordered cards might consider them as there's nothing silver-bordered about them mechanically.

It was the last card that I got for my Unstable foil set. No MODO redemption meant that foils were in shorter supply than normal, and as both other posters have said it's both super-rare and surprisingly playable. Plus, the whole "un" set marketing is aimed at people who are unlikely to flip cards that they opened. "Oh, it's just a Garbage Elemental, I'll throw it in the box with the rest." Most of the supply of Unstable got sold and then sat in peoples' boxes and binders. Despite how expensive some of the foils are, very few people actually want them, so they're not worth dredging up and putting in your trade binder.

I didn't balk at paying for it, I legitimately had a hard time finding one to purchase. It didn't help that the names are all the same, so some people would create eBay listings like so: "Foil Garbage Elemental from Unstable! Pack fresh, from me to you!" And then no photo. So you had no idea which one you were buying.

Un-set finance is a strange beast.

Speaking for myself, Garbage Elemental (D) is one of the few un-cards I've considered for a deck. There aren't enough cards with cascade to fill out an EDH deck, so if you want to build a commander like Averna, the Chaos Bloom, it's a pretty tempting inclusion.