This is surprisingly simple (and awesome) for a variant card. I find myself thinking of several cards that are slight variations of this...
Removing the coin makes it similar to the, too strong for $4, sifting Lab from Donald's outtakes, but the change from draw 2 discard 1 to drawing one of the top two cards should weaken it enough that it works at $4 or possibly less.
You can also change it to put the other card back on top of your deck, which makes the effect only very marginally better than +1 card. That card might also be good at $4. With that change and removing the +$1, it feels like a Pearl Diver variant to me.
Anyway, just random thoughts this card provoked.
I thought about putting the other card back instead of discarding it also. I figured it would make it too weak to be a , yet at it would be a strictly-better-than-Peddler for , which while not technically not ok, still probably not a good idea.
People always phrase it as "strictly better than Peddler at 4", but really the problem is that it's strictly better than Silver at 4 (barring dead draw, which is not broad enough to justify a strictly better situation with Silver, which is always present). Even decks that want to pile out Duchies have a theoretical average coin value of 1$ per card, so you can't justify Silver over 4$ Peddler.
I definitely disagree with this. Average coin value or not, there's plenty of times where is better than + 1 card. Mostly whenever you need the money now and the card you get isn't something that gives you money.
And even if it were a non-terminal action that gave , terminal draw is a huge thing. Yes a Peddler is going to be better than a Silver most of the time, but it doesn't obsolete Silver.
It's a strictly better buy, than Silver, not a strictly better play. Gold is a strictly better play than Silver, and that's obviously not a problem.
Yes, if you have 3 Silvers, an Estate, and one other card in hand, and the top card of your deck is Estate, you would rather have a Silver in hand than a Peddler. But when you are BUYING a card for next reshuffle there is no reason to expect that situation to come up. If you shuffle up an arbitrary pile of cards that contains Estates, Copper, Silver, and Gold, adding a Peddler to it will always improve its chance of drawing an 8$ hand more than adding a Silver to it as long as its money density is at least 1.0. That's just straight math. I'm not talking about the kind of strictly better where someone adds the ability to steal other treasures to Noble Brigand but its still balanced but people are like, man, that feels bad, strictly better Theif, I'm talking about the kind of strictly better where EVERY TIME you draw a 4$ hand with 4$ Peddler present and dead draw not present, you will not buy Silver. There's not many official cards that have that property, and there's a reason for that.