Same for warp, foretell, madness, freerunning, and any other alternative cost that ever gets printed: What you actually end up paying does not change the mana cost or the mana value
Giving the ability to Clue tokens gives those artifact tokens more use beyond just sacrificing them to draw cards, and Merchant of the Truth has respectable stats and relevant creature types without all the other text
Altered cards can fall anywhere between Near Mint and Heavily Played , provided the card is still tournament-legal
The precon deck has exactly 19 Artifact cards, and the odds of pulling all of them are low
The scheme is no longer available in other parts of the UK
Outside of landfall, this spell should make for a solid ramp option if you dont mind waiting a turn to be able to tap the tokens for mana