Memory Jar

Premodern-legal editions of Memory Jar — old-border printings plus any period-appropriate foil promos (Arena/Judge, through Scourge). Hover to preview an edition on the card; click to select it.

Urza's Legacy

1999·ulgrare

Selected

Old-border editions + pre-Scourge promo foils (Arena/Judge). Modern-frame reprints (8th Edition onward) exist but are not period-appropriate printings.

Why It's Banned

Memory Jar is a 5-mana artifact that taps and sacrifices to make every player exile their hand and draw seven, with the new hands discarded and the originals returned at the next end step — a one-shot, symmetrical refill rather than a Wheel of Fortune you keep around. In Premodern's free-artifact/storm-adjacent shells it becomes an engine rather than a fair card-advantage tool: searched up by Tinker, returned and re-sacrificed by Goblin Welder, it refuels a turn that draws and chains a huge fraction of the deck. The format's pre-2003 card pool simply lacks the cheap, reliable interaction needed to punish a combo player who can manufacture multiple fresh seven-card hands in a single turn.

Printed in Urza's Legacy (1999), Memory Jar landed in the notoriously broken Urza's block and earned the first emergency ban in Magic's history — pulled from Standard (Type II) almost immediately — for fueling explosive artifact and storm decks; it is restricted in Vintage and banned in Legacy to this day. Premodern, whose pool runs 4th Edition through Scourge, inherited that same Urza-block enabler density (Tinker, Goblin Welder, and a deep stable of fast mana), so the card was placed on the format's ban list at its founding.

Trivia & Lore

• Memory Jar was the subject of Magic's first-ever emergency ban from the DCI. The action was announced March 1, 1999 (taking effect April 1, 1999), only weeks after Urza's Legacy's February 1999 release.
• Randy Buehler and his playtest partner Erik Lauer finished 3rd-4th at Grand Prix Vienna 1999 with the 'Broken Jar' deck, the result that helped trigger Memory Jar's emergency banning. The deck paired Memory Jar with Megrim so the draw-seven also drained the opponent for life as they discarded.
• Memory Jar remains restricted in Vintage and is banned in Legacy. It and Felidar Guardian (2017) are the only two cards ever given an emergency ban or restriction in DCI-sanctioned play.
• The Broken Jar engine used Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, Mana Vault, Dark Ritual and Mox Diamond for explosive mana, Tinker to fetch the Jar, and Yawgmoth's Will to replay the spent rituals from the graveyard, chaining multiple Jar activations in a single turn.
• Memory Jar is on the Reserved List, so it has never received a Standard-legal paper reprint. Its only paper reprint came in the premium foil-only From the Vault: Relics set, released August 27, 2010, as card #8 of 15.
• Memory Jar's third printing, in Vintage Masters (released June 16, 2014), exists only on Magic Online since Vintage Masters was a digital-exclusive set, and there it was bumped to mythic rarity despite being a plain rare in its 1999 Urza's Legacy debut.
• Every printing of Memory Jar uses the same artwork by Donato Giancola, an original 7-by-9-inch oil-on-panel painting created for Urza's Legacy.
• Despite being a Reserved List rare, the From the Vault: Relics foil Memory Jar has commanded premium prices, with a recorded all-time high of about $142.52.

Critical Rulings