The Casual Commander Marketplace

When most players think about Magic finance, their minds drift to Modern staples, Reserved List buyouts, or the sways of Standard Rotation. These are the blinding light of Magic finance – the breakout stories which dominate the Interests page here at MTGStocks and galvanize clicks on articles as players dig to find the “why” between a card’s most recent spike.

However, there’s another critical component to Magic’s finance, something which went unnoticed and undiscussed for most of the game’s life: the role of the casual Commander market.

The Kitchen Table Economy

Casual players have long been the silent majority of Magic’s player base. They’re the ones who buy packs at Walmart, draft at Friday Night Magic, and build decks not around what’s strictly optimal, but around what’s cool: Dragons, Elves, Five-Color Goodstuff. For years, casual cards were seen as the leftovers of the MTG market - cheap, janky, fun, and financially uninteresting.

Commander changed everything. Once a fringe format played by judges and cube drafters in their downtime, EDH exploded into the mainstream after Wizards of the Coast began directly supporting it with preconstructed decks and Commander-focused set releases, initially with 2011’s first Commander deck set. 

Suddenly, EDH was brought to the fore as a “real” part of Magic, and with it came a dramatic shift in the kinds of cards which had the financial spotlight placed upon them.

The Fun Premium

Take Kindred Discovery, for example. This card – initially printed in 2017’s iteration of the Commander preconstructed series – is essentially useless in competitive Magic. Legal only in the Eternal formats, this five-mana typal enchantment is too costly and too slow to be effective in even the most fringe of Legacy Merfolk lists. Despite that, however, this card maintains a not-so-insubstantial price. 

Debuting near the $7 mark, Kindred Discovery has seen multiple spikes – such as in 2021 and 2023 – thanks not to an explosion of competitive demand, but casual demand. The card wasn’t in a major tournament deck. It wasn’t trending on MTGGoldfish’s metagame charts. It was just good in fun, casual Commander decks.

This is the new normal. Casual players, especially Commander enthusiasts, are now dictating price trends just as forcefully as Modern grinders once did, and the financial community has caught on. Speculators now comb through previews not just for tournament staples, but for cards that scream “This is fun!”

This “fun” premium is compounded by the fact that the format is effectively evergreen. Without the pressure from a competitive metagame, players are free to hold strong to their decks. As Gavin Verhey has repeatedly said, “Commander is slow.” Commander players don’t rotate decks out; they tweak them and just keep adding more decks to the pile. This means that fun cards are likely to stay fun to more people for longer, maintaining their demand over years rather than months.

Predicting the Casual Boom

So how can a savvy speculator tap into the kitchen table economy? To start off with, look for unique effects that plenty of people could benefit from. Cards like Rhystic Study aren’t just powerful, they do things that few or no other cards do. Plenty of engines exist to draw cards, but very few break under the multiplayer rules quite in the same way that Rhystic Study does.

Second, watch for new commanders. Whenever preview season begins, it’s not just about the rares and mythics in Standard. The real gems are in the commanders that inspire whole new archetypes. The energy mechanic lacked a cohesive game plan until suddenly, thanks to Modern Horizons 3, it just didn’t anymore – a whole deck came out, and with it came an explosion in energy decks.

Finally, if you’ve got the time for it, track content creators. YouTubers, streamers, and deck-building sites like EDHREC have massive sway. Commander may not have a metagame, but it absolutely has a collective consciousness – the social fervor that stirs whenever a popular figure name-drops an odd playable. If a card gets featured in a hyped deck tech video, its price can spike within hours. The Reserved List has buyouts; Commander has hype spikes.

Wrap Up

Everyone knows that Commander is a modern juggernaut of value generation. Each time that a new legendary creature drops, someone, somewhere, begins brewing it - and with it, the demand for some previously unassuming cards inevitably jumps. Importantly, these jumps aren’t just limited to classically good cards. Hare Apparent is a common that sees little competitive play, but it’s still a couple bucks. 

So, keep an eye out, and don’t forget that players will pay not just for good cards, but for fun cards, too. 

Further Reading

Commander Staples From Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Underplayed Cycling Cards in Commander

Hidden Gems for Teval, the Balanced Scale