Buyback

Buyback is a keyword ability on sorceries and instants that allows the player to pay an optional additional cost. If the player pays the buyback cost when playing the spell, buyback replaces the event of putting the spell into the graveyard upon resolution by instead putting it back in its owner's hand.

The first tournament-legal cards with buyback were printed during Tempest block. One card, Capsize, was later reprinted as a Friday Night Magic promo in 2003. A number of new cards with buyback were printed in Time Spiral, along with a Timeshifted reprint of Whispers of the Muse.

From the ()

Rulings

• Buyback is an additional cost. You choose whether to pay the buyback at the time you play the spell. If you choose to pay the buyback cost, then after the spell's effect happens, the spell will be returned to your hand instead of being put into your graveyard.
• Buyback returns the spell to your hand only if the spell resolves. If the spell is countered, it goes to the graveyard as normal.
• If you control a spell you don't own whose buyback cost was paid, that spell is put into its owner's graveyard as normal as it resolves. The card wouldn't be put into your graveyard, so buyback's replacement effect has nothing to replace.
• If you control a copy of a spell whose buyback cost was paid, the copy will be put into your hand as it resolves, then it will cease to exist.
• Whether the spell is returned to your hand depends on whether the choice to pay buyback was made, not on the actual payment of buyback (in the unusual cases where cost-reduction effects mean the buyback cost isn't actually paid).
• Buyback costs don't count toward a spell's mana cost or converted mana cost, whether they're paid or not.

Color percentages

There is a total of 39 cards that involve buyback, which divide by color as such:

• Black = 23 %
• Blue = 23 %
• White = 21 %
• Red = 18 %
• Green = 13 %
• Artifact = 2 %

Artifact that reduces Buyback costs

• Memory Crystal