Commander Unbannings Spiking Prices

Header Image: Coalition Victory, by Eric Peterson

With all the news earlier in the week regarding Commander's banlist, we've seen a lot of price shake-ups hitting cards both unbanned and still banned. Let's take a look.

Effective from the moment of the announcement on April 22, these five cards are now legal in Commander and are officially Game Changers. If you've already got these cards on hand, you're likely enjoying the sudden bump of value thanks to their new-found legality. But that bump didn't start on Tuesday, and it wasn't limited to these five cards.

Speculative Acquisitions

Leading up to Tuesday, Commander players didn't know much in terms of which individual cards might see their release from metaphorical prison. All players knew was that there might be some cards that'll once again be allowed to see the light of day. That lead to rampant speculation online, the result of which was cards - and money - changing hands, as some sought to get ahead of potential surges by speculatively buying up banned cards that could be unbanned.

Some were looking to shore up their own collections, to ensure they'd have the cards on-hand if and when they became legal, while others were looking to buy low for the chance to sell high after the announcement.

But why now?

Mostly, it's because back in October, when the newly created Commander Format Panel was introduced, Gavin Verhey of Wizards of the Coast pointed to spring of 2025 as the time any shake-ups might occur regarding the banlist. He reiterated this in February, when he said to expect "one big article in late April that both rolls out the full (bracket) system and any unbans all together."

By looking at the prices of the five cards we now know were unbanned, we can see if the Magic fandom at-large were correct in their guesses.

Gifts Ungiven

Including the original printing from Champions of Kamigawa, Gifts Ungiven has been printed eight times (also counting the three distinct versions from Double Masters 2022).

As of today, the most expensive version is the foil from Champions of Kamigawa, which will run you $148, with the runner-up being the foil-only From the Vault: Exiled printing, coming in at around $60. The cheapest is the nonfoil, regular 2X2 version at a hair under $14.

However, on the morning of Tuesday, before the big announcement, most nonfoil copies of Gifts Ungiven could have been had for under $10, with a few versions under a dollar. So if you snagged a few copies pre-announcement, you're one of the few who guessed right when it came to Gifts Ungiven.

Sway of the Stars

We'll go from a blue card from Kamigawa block that's seen several reprints, to one that has never been reprinted.

Sway of the Stars, from Betrayers of Kamigawa, is currently sitting at around $15 for a nonfoil, while the foil is a bit above $70. Where was it before the announcement? Well, not that expensive, to say the least.

The morning of April 21, nonfoils were $4 and foils were $43. That's a 275% price jump for nonfoils in two days. Will people actually start playing Sway of the Stars, a card that is still a ten-mana sorcery that does little outside of annoy people? Time will tell, but at least you can rest easy knowing that most people didn't pick this one to speculate on.

However, some actually did. Looking at graphs dating back to October, when Verhey first hinted at potential unbans coming in April, we saw Sway of the Stars jump from less than a dollar to around $2.50, with a steady and slow build to $4 after that. So it was on some people's radars, but not enough to see egregious price fluctuations.

Braids, Cabal Minion

We've had two reprints of Braids following its debut in Odyssey that came in Eternal Masters and Modern Horizons 2. They've all got the same Eric Peterson art of a maniacal Braids grinning at the viewer, as if to say "Unban me, I dare you."

Some players are old enough to remember a pre-ban Braids wreaking havoc at Commander tables.

Looking back at prices for Braids, we can see the card was not one people expected to ever see daylight again. The Odyssey version was 80 cents in October, it was 80 cents in February, and it was $1.20 a week ago. Today, Braids is nearly $20. That's all for the old-bordered Odyssey version, though; the other versions were and are cheaper, coming in today at $6.50 for Eternal Masters and a paltry $4 for MH2. 

The real price spike came in the form of the Odyssey foil. It wasn't exactly cheap at any point, coming in at around $70 pre-unban, a price in-line with most old-border foils (as in true old-border, not retro bordered cards printed more recently). Right now, if you wanted that same card, you'd be paying almost $300.

Coalition Victory

The reason this card was banned in the first place was because the now-defunct Commander Rules Committee felt that with a five-color commander, Coalition Victory essentially won you the game the moment you played it, assuming your commander was on the battlefield. It's still just a sorcery, though, and a very difficult one to cast, at that. And it can easily be ruined with a well-placed removal spell, which is why it's now legal again.

Over the years, we've gotten only one true reprint of the card originally from Invasion, coming as a Timeshifted card from Time Spiral. It also saw a stint on The List. 

Before October, a copy of the Invasion Coalition Victory was around a buck. However, unbanning Coalition Victory seemed like a no-brainer to many people following Verhey's announcement, so we saw the price jump last fall from that one dollar to nearly $7. It never really dipped back down, and right before this week's announcement, people were so sure it was going to be legal again that we saw the price rise all the way to $10. And, as we now know, they turned out to be right on the money with this one.

As of today, that Invasion version is nearly $20, with the two reprints not far away from that figure. The foil version of the original printing, like Braids, was never cheap, but it went from $86 to almost $150 between Tuesday to now.

Panoptic Mirror

Another lonely, never-reprinted card, Panoptic Mirror's only version comes to us courtesy of Darksteel. It's a weird one, sort of a giant Isochron Scepter, and people often wondered why this card could ever have been banned. The answer to that question, as people will surely become very familiar with soon, is Time Warp.

In today's Commander, there'll be easier ways to deal with a Mirror lock, which was the logic presented by Verhey regarding the unbanning. It's up to players to actually include methods to deal with it in their decks, though.

This was another correct guess by people, if we judge by the card's price graphs from October to now. Pre-Halloween, a Panoptic Mirror would cost you around $2.50, but it quickly doubled after the original announcement. From there, we saw it creeping up, nearly doubling again by the time we got to April, coming in at $9.50 on Monday. Since the official unbanning, that price has ballooned to $50.

And if you want a foil, prepare to pay five times that amount, with a current price tag of $228.

Of all the cards unbanned this week, this is the one people are most likely to be pleased about discovering that a random Darksteel rare in their bulk box is now worth $50.

The Misses

We've seen through the numbers that speculators were a good two-for-five when it came to guessing the unbans. But what about the missed guesses? Can we see any currently (and still) banned cards that mysteriously got more expensive leading up to this week?

Dockside Extortionist

Dockside Extortionist was banned in September, and as a result we saw its price go from around $85 to half that, in a few short days. It hit its lowest point in February, scraping the bottom at $13. But talk of unbannings got people into a fervor, and right before this week rolled around, Dockside Extortionist had its price tag hit nearly $50 again. Still snugly on the banned list, however, the card's back down to $30.

Primeval Titan

Garnering plenty of discussion regarding a potential unbanning, all versions of Primeval Titan saw price increases stemming from the October announcement. A copy from Magic 2012, for example, could have been had in Sept. 2024 for as low as $4, for example, but today, even with its place on the banlist unchanged, you're looking at $20. Not bad for a card with eight reprints covering four different arts and four different border treatments.

Mana Crypt

Also banned in September, Mana Crypt similarly saw its price plummet shortly thereafter, but rumors of a potential unbanning reversed that trend in February. The price has risen ever since, going from a floor in early Feb. of $60 for the version from Eternal Masters to today's price of around $90. Still a far cry from the $200-range it was floating at pre-ban, but the chance that it could have hit those numbers again with an unbanning this week led a lot of people to place their bets in the form of card orders.

Building a Perfect Machine

Did you get in on the unbanning craze and pick up a bunch of cards? Did you get lucky with one of the five that are now legal, or are you still sitting on a stack of Sylvan Primordials? Let us know!