MTG Weekly Price Spikes: 8/29 – 9/4

Last updated on September 4, 2026

Optimus Prime, Inspiring Leader | Illustration by Steve Argyle

The Hobbit is finally loosening its grip on the Magic card market, but Middle-earth isn't quite done with us yet. Thranduil, the Elvenking is still pushing older elves higher, but this week's other movers come from Transformers, Fallout, and even an upcoming Mystery Booster Commander Edition legend.

Let's check this week's biggest movers!

Immaculate Magistrate

Immaculate Magistrate is back for a second consecutive week. Apparently this elf isn't done climbing!

Last week, we covered the original Lorwyn version after near-mint copies climbed into roughly the $4-$5 range. Now the spike has spread much more visibly across the card's many reprints; the Commander 2014 and Commander Anthology versions, for example, have been some of the biggest movers this week, and the Lorwyn original is still moving upwards.

Source: MTGStocks

The reason for Immaculate Magistrate‘s spike hasn't changed: Thranduil, the Elvenking.

Thranduil has kept pulling away as The Hobbit‘s most popular commander, with more than 7,300 decks now registered on EDHREC. And Immaculate Magistrate is currently in about two-thirds of those decks.

Optimus Prime, Hero

This is a bit of a sad one.

Peter Cullen, the Canadian voice actor who portrayed Optimus Prime for more than four decades, died on August 26 at his Los Angeles home. He was 85. News of his death was announced shortly afterward, prompting a huge wave of tributes from Transformers fans.

Optimus Prime, Hero saw an enormous burst of demand immediately after Cullen's death was announced. Roughly 300 nonfoil near-mint copies sold in just three days, which is more than what Optimus Prime had sold during the previous three months combined. Before the spike, copies were available for about $3–$4; they are now trading in the $13-$15 range. 

Source: MTGStocks

This looks very much like collectors wanting some Optimus Prime memorabilia after Cullen's passing (plus speculators buying into that demand…). We've seen a similar dynamic before, when Ellie and Alan, Paleontologists jumped roughly tenfold after Sam Neill died earlier this year, despite having little competitive or Commander demand behind the move. Ellie and Alan, Paleontologists has now returned close to its pre-spike price, and I'd expect Optimus Prime to do the same.

Bloatfly Swarm

Okay. Seriously.

Which one of y'all is buying all the Bloatfly Swarms?

We covered this radioactive insect about a month ago after it suddenly tripled in price, and at the time I couldn't find a particularly convincing catalyst.

Well, Bloatfly Swarm has kept going, by a lot (it has roughly doubled since last week, and it's up more than ten times over the last month)… and I'm still not too sure why. 

Source: MTGStocks

Unlike Optimus Prime, there's clear gameplay demand here. Bloatfly Swarm sees a lot of play with Fallout commanders, and in particular with The Wise Mothman decks, and the Mothman is among the Top 20 most popular commanders in the game.  

But none of this is new, though. The Wise Mothman has been one of Magic's most popular commanders for ages, and Bloatfly Swarm has always been one of its obvious inclusions.

The one possible piece of the puzzle is that Mutant Menace, the Commander precon that Bloatfly Swarm comes from, is getting very expensive: it costs 2-3 times as much as it did at the start of the year.

Source: MTGStocks

It's still puzzling that the tide is not lifting all boats, though. I haven't found a good reason for why Bloatfly Swarm is one of the most expensive cards in that precon (a lot more than The Wise Mothman, for example). If you have a clue or a hunch, let me know!

Rampaging Yao Guai

Luckily for my sanity, at least the other wild spike from Mutant Menace has a good reason behind it.

Going from bulk bin to nearly ten bucks, Rampaging Yao Guai originally shot from around fifty cents to several dollars during Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles earlier this year, when pretty much everything with “Mutant” on it went up.

Source: MTGStocks

But now it has one, and possibly two, new Commander homes.

The first is Beorn the Fierce, who's in the market for bears.

Rampaging Yao Guai is already in roughly 60% of Beorn decks, with Beorn being among the most popular The Hobbit commanders.

But the more interesting new home may be the upcoming Glava, Five-Advents Mage from Mystery Booster Commander Edition, releasing in November this year.

Glava doesn't care for mutants or bears… but rather for X spells. Whenever you cast a permanent with X in its mana cost, Glava lets you make X equal to five. So you can do silly things like cast Yao Guai with X equal to zero, paying only , and then Glava's trigger can then change X to five while the spell is on the stack. Your three-mana Bear Mutant enters with five +1/+1 counters and can destroy up to five total mana value worth of artifacts and enchantments!