80% Price Drop Drives Edgar Markov Into #2 Most Popular Commander Spot

Last updated on September 22, 2025

Edgar Markov (Commander 2017) – art by Volkan Baga

Slash prices.

Overrun the market.

Edgar Markov may be Magic's role model for vampire lords, but this year he's been more of a ruthless CEO bent on market domination via cutthroat competition. Some time this week (and maybe as soon as this afternoon) he'll topple Atraxa, Praetors' Voice to take the #2 spot among the most popular commanders in the last two years.

Edgar Markov‘s trick has been very simple: Take an extremely demanded product, slash the price by 80%… and the market is yours.

Edgar's Ascension

Edgar Markov's Coffin – Illustration by Volkan Baga

According to EDHREC, Edgar Markov is a dozen decks away from dethroning Atraxa, Praetors' Voice as the second most popular commander of the past two years. As of this week, the vampire knight is essentially neck-and-neck with the angel horror, with Edgar's 37,185 decks vs. Atraxa’s 37,202.

Source: EDHREC

That razor-thin gap of merely a few dozen decks means Edgar Markov is about to sink his fangs into the #2 spot, trailing only The Ur-Dragon (the The Ur-Dragon #1 with about 39,105 decks). And looking at the top #10 commanders in the last month. The Ur-Dragon and Edgar Markov are the only two commanders not released this year, and Atraxa, Praetors' Voice is not even listed), it's extremely likely Edgar with claim Atraxa's spot this week:

Source: EDHREC

Atraxa had been the queen of EDH since her release in 2017, dominating the “Top Commanders” list for over half a decade until, earlier this year, she was dethroned by the dragon avatar. In fact, when the 5-color dragon overtook Atraxa for #1, Atraxa was still ahead of Edgar Markov by almost 4,000 decks.

Fast forward to today, and Edgar has rapidly closed that gap. And although the vampire's popularity is of course the key ingredient, the secret sauce was a massive price cut.

Bite Them In the Neck

If you look at his Commander 2017 original printing, Edgar Markov‘s price graph is a textbook case of “Whoa, now that's a crash!” After years of hovering around $100, near-mint copies of Edgar Markov dropped to around $80 by the start of this year, and then steadily down-hilled to around $20-$25 today:

Source: TCGplayer – Edgar Markov (C17), near mint

As any Econ 101 teacher would say, there are two main reasons for why a price may drop off a cliff: Nobody's buying, or everybody's selling. Given that EDHREC data shows that Edgar's popularity is on the rise, the explanation is clear here: Edgar Markov‘s long-awaited reprint in Innistrad Remastered has turned Edgar from a prohibitively costly luxury into a pricey-yet-popular command zone staple.

Innistrad Remastered released four different Edgar Markov versions. Three of them show a very similar trend to the Commander 2017 original, dropping from a cliff earlier this year to stabilize in the $20-$30 range today…

Source: TCGplayer – Edgar Markov (INR)

… while the fourth is Magic's first headliner card. 500 serialized printings in the movie poster treatment with double rainbow foiling, currently priced somewhere between “What the fang!?” and “Monthly Salary.” Which, in turn, showcases what seems to be WotC's approach as of late: Desirable reprints with several versions, so as to please both the high-end collectors looking for the shiniest stuff, and the cash-strapped players that just want to play with the good cards.

Source: Scryfall

In short: Edgar Markov finally got a widely available reprint which removed the old $100+ barrier to entry and let a lot more players actually build the deck they’ve wanted for years. Market dominance naturally followed.

The Importance of Being Eminent

The Ur-Dragon – Illustration by Jaime Jones

So what makes Edgar Markov such a powerhouse in Commander? You could point at several contributing reasons, like Edgar leading one of Magic’s most popular creature types (vampires), but in short: Eminence.

“Edgar Markov isn’t just the best vampire commander,” writes Andy in our best vampire commanders ranking, where he slam-dunks Edgar Markov at #1. “It’s one of the best commanders, period.”

“He creates a token vampire whenever you cast another vampire, which seems like a small benefit until you realize how quickly that can get out of hand. You can churn out two or three extra creatures in those crucial early turns with a deck built with a lower average mana value.”

And the quickest glance at the #1 most popular commander right now, The Ur-Dragon…

… strongly suggests that, yeah: Eminence is a broken mechanic, and if you pair it with an extremely popular creature type, sky's the limit.

For now, the dragon granddaddy remains king, in no small part thanks to the bump that the dragon tribe got in Tarkir: Dragonstorm – but the vampire lord is in hot pursuit. Things may change in a couple of months.