The Magic: The Gathering card Dockside Extortionist has seen a 400% price rise in just a couple of days, thanks to an article from Wizards of the Coast that clearly has some fans hopeful for its Commander ban to be overturned.
On February 10, before Wizards’ announcement, copies were selling for around $10 – give or take a couple bucks. Now, some fans are paying as much as $50 for the card, though TCGPlayer prices over the past three days fluctuate wildly – it looks like plenty of Docksides are still going for $25-30.
There’s only one reason why this treasure-generating card, which was a terror in EDH until it was controversially placed on the Commander banlist in September 2024, is selling for so much. It’s because in Gavin Verhey’s recent article on the Commander brackets beta he teases unbans are “potentially” coming.
“If you’re eager to hear about unbans, late April is the date to circle on your calendar,” he writes. Sidenote: I have to wonder if there was a concrete date there in the first draft of this article. You can’t just go circling half a month; that would cause calendar-based chaos!
Obviously, since there was such uproar when Dockside Extortionist, Jeweled Lotus and Mana Crypt were banned, some fans are hoping the decision made by the Rules Committee will be overturned. While Dockside Extortionist was definitely the earliest to spike, there’s already been some movement on the others as well.
However, as we said last time these card’s prices briefly surged (which happened immediately after Wizards of the Coast took over control of the format from the RC, and for similar reasons) we wouldn’t put any money on these cards becoming legal. For starters, it would send exactly the wrong kind of message to the fanbase i.e. that sending threats to the people making decisions about Magic is a good way to get what you want.
Plus, if you examine the Commander banlist, it seems like there are some other possible candidates for unbanning like Sylvan Primordial, Paradox Engine, or Biorhythm (or whatever your preferred option is). So even if Wizards did ultimately want to overturn one or more of last year’s card bans, I don’t think they’d choose to make them the first cards they unban. Again, it would just be bad optics.
Unbannings can be risky, but they can also help inject new life into an MTG format – as we saw when several cards were unbanned for Modern in December last year. They’re usually more impactful in Constructed, but some carefully chosen unbans in Commander could be extremely fun.
For more information on Magic’s multiplayer format, check out our guide to the best MTG commanders or our cEDH tier list. You might also want to check out the upcoming MTG release schedule or our list of every single MTG set ever released.
Source: Wargamer
