Price Memory, Speculation, and the Commander Bans

The past few weeks have been a tumultuous time for Magic. Commander, the game’s most popular format as of the past few years, was hit by the most significant bans in recent memory, wiping out as much as $200 million dollars in card equity by some estimates. Just as quickly as prices collapsed, however, things started to crawl back towards a recovery. So, now that nearly a month has passed, why is it that cards like Dockside Extortionist are still commanding a price tag in excess of $30?

What Happened

First off, a bit more detailed context. On September 23, 2024, four cards were banned in Commander: Nadu, Winged Wisdom, Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus, and Mana Crypt. These were the first bans in nearly three years, as before this Commander’s most recent banlist update was the September 2021 banning of Golos, Tireless Pilgrim (with a simultaneous unbanning of Worldfire). 

These bannings were controversial for several reasons, but among the most pertinent for our purposes had to do with the break from Commander’s perceived norms as well as the poor communication surrounding the anticipated changes. Commander is widely perceived as a self-regulating format, thanks in large part to the “Rule Zero” gameplay conversations which have increased in frequency in recent years, and this quality has been reinforced by a past history of the Rules Committee (Commander’s governing body for the majority of its life) ignoring all but the most prevalent of problematic cards.

For this reason, the ban of Nadu, Winged Wisdom was somewhat expected, as this commander was new, omnipresent, and oppressive. Commander bannings had historically been swift and decisive, as there was hesitancy to ban cards after the player base had come to accept them – begrudgingly or otherwise – and as such the time to ban Nadu was as soon as possible. In the case of the other three cards on the banlist, however, this could not have been farther from the case.

The next newest card on the banlist was Jeweled Lotus, the face card of a recent Masters Set (Commander Masters) and a powerful designed-for-Commander card which had been legal for nearly four years. Dockside Extortionist, meanwhile, had been legal since 2019. The oldest of the bunch, Mana Crypt, had been a part of a Commander since the format’s inception. Needless to say, these were cards most players had become accustomed to – far from Nadu’s case.

Immediately after these bans hit, the affected cards (minus Nadu, which had already suffered price erosion thanks to its ban in Modern) began plummeting in price. Dockside Extortionist and Jeweled Lotus had base-edition copies sell for as little as $20 a card within hours of the banlist announcement, while Mana Crypt sank to around $80. Millions of dollars were wiped out near-instantaneously.

By the end of the day, card prices had recovered slightly, but nowhere near the significant rebound which they have experienced since. So, to understand why these largely unplayable cards have recovered so much more than that of the average ban, we need to turn to two compounding economic factors: price memory and speculation.

Price Memory 

In order to think about where a card is going, it’s helpful to have an idea of where it’s starting from - that is, it’s always good to gauge the price floor. In the case of the three “surprise” Commander bannings (Jeweled Lotus, Mana Crypt, and Dockside Extortionist) this can largely be understood through the lens of price memory.

Price memory is the concept that an asset has value currently because it had value in the past. These three cards are an excellent case study in price memory because all three were premiere collectibles (cards which had significant price tags and were used to increase the value in sets as part of a singles-based advertising campaign) and as such maintained an alluring status in the world of Magic, eliciting the “oohs” and “ahhs” that help to insulate exorbitant price tags. Additionally, these three are almost entirely unplayable outside of Commander; Jeweled Lotus doesn’t serve a primary function in a non-Commander deck, Dockside Extortionist is only broken in multiplayer, and Mana Crypt is now only playable in Vintage and kitchen-table. As such, any value they maintained post-ban was largely indifferent towards play-based demand and instead had to come from somewhere else entirely. 

In looking at the price pattern of Mana Crypt, we can see that the real floor on this card’s base printing (focusing on Double Masters) is somewhere around $80. On the day bans were announced, copies sank from a pre-ban average near $180 to an all-time-low of $60. This was a race to the bottom, but once cards began selling at a near-67% discount the market had the first of many corrections and jumped back towards the $70 mark. By the end of the day, copies were changing hands at a steady $85, a price that has recovered further to the $100 benchmark as of mid-October. 

This price floor is important because, as I mentioned before, Mana Crypt is functionally banned from Magic now, and unlike fellow Vintage all-stars like Black Lotus, Mana Crypt has been printed in much greater numbers and is not on the Reserved List. In short, the price tag it commands – one greater than multi-format staples like Sheoldred, the Apocalypse – isn’t one which can be dismissed as due to simple scarcity. Rather, the inertia of the Magic community’s economic memory continues to keep Mana Crypt afloat.

Speculation 

As with any rapid and emotional shakeup, there’s also been a significant amount of speculation in the markets, something best demonstrated with the younger cards among the bans, such as Jeweled Lotus.

First, establishing a floor. Looking at September 23, 2024 sales data on TCGPlayer for the base printing in Commander Masters, we can see that Jeweled Lotus bottomed-out at $30 a card, discounting outliers, but, like Mana Crypt, would later stabilize to end the day around $45. All in all, a 50% loss to the pre-ban prices.

This $45 price tag for a defunct Magic card (outside of fringe interactions with Doubling Cube) is Jeweled Lotus’s price-memory component. Like Mana Crypt, Jeweled Lotus has been printed fairly recently and in comparatively-large numbers (relative to older cards with similar price-memory attachments). The difference, however, is that Mana Crypt is a much older card which carried a price tag twice as big, and as such the absolute magnitude of price memory is much more limited in Jeweled Lotus’s case than it is for Mana Crypt. So, to evaluate Jeweled Lotus’s current price tag – nearly $60 as of writing – we also need to factor in short-term speculation.

When Wizards of the Coast announced that they would be assuming control of the Commander format, one of the first things to be whispered amongst the community was that maybe there would be some unbans in the near future. Members of Wizards of the Coast staff had been quoted as saying that they were opposed to the most recent bans – at least, in their final form and execution. This was further reinforced by Wizards’ opening Commander announcement that, as a part of the format’s transition, the Game Development team would be reevaluating the ban list, but that no new cards would be banned. So, while no one stated there would definitely be any changes, the door was left open for unbans. 

It’s exactly this kind of hazy communication that inspires speculation on the future value of cards, speculation which can be seen in the short-term volatility of price tags. Jeweled Lotus demonstrates this significantly, as its upwards price trend in recent weeks has been anything but stable. Instead, copies are selling at widely differing prices, only averaging a strictly upwards trend when taken in aggregate. This contrasts against the less-speculative Mana Crypt, which has instead seen a more stable, albeit less dramatic, uptick. 

Wrap Up

The recent Commander bannings may be both unprecedented in scope and the magnitude of value affected, but they are nonetheless familiar in the root mechanisms influencing card prices to this day. Understanding why it is that banned cards can follow wildly different price trajectories is an important part in navigating the Magic market, and if nothing else I hope that these bans can serve as a case study in the pathways cards can take.

Further Reading:

Other Counterspells You Should Play in Commander