Are you also playing against individuals with 'budget' decks who don't include them either? If so, you're on an even playing field.
Obviously they're not absolutely essential per se. However, one can't deny that if your opponents have them in their decks and you don't, you'll always be at a disadvantage because your mana base is relatively less efficient and consistent. Like all other formats, mana consistency in edh is key, so the more duals you have (especially ones with no drawbacks), the better off you are. Realistically, anyone who plays edh using multi-colored decks and has spare ABUR duals which they're not using for legacy is going to include them in their edh deck lists. What possible (logical) argument could one possibly use to say it's more advantageous not to include them beyond perhaps their inclusion making the deck(s) they're in more tempting for would-be thieves to consider stealing.
Obviously they're better, but they're better in such a marginal, unimportant, almost impossible to effect the outcome of a game way that it's irrelevant. If I can run a 5 color deck and have no mana troubles without them (or fetches), they're clearly not even remotely essential. I never once even remotely implied that you shouldn't use them if you have them, but no one said that. Someone said they were as important to EDH as legacy, which is so laughably false that I responded to it.
If you reprint the duals or ban them, the cost of Legacy decks will drop from $2500 to $2000. The format is still nowhere near affordable.
You miss the point. The point is not and has never been to make legacy affordable. The point is to remove the influence of the reserve list, which is what the thread is about. Without the dual lands, the reserve list would hold very little influence on legacy as a format - most of the established competitive decks have very few notable cards from the reserve list except for the dual lands.
If you reprint the duals or ban them, the cost of Legacy decks will drop from $2500 to $2000. The format is still nowhere near affordable.
It's not that straightforward, but you're on the right track. If the duals were banned, the land cost for many decks would go down by around $500-$1000. This would cause an influx of players, which would put pressure on the cost of other staples, causing them to rise until everyone is priced out of the market once again.
This is classic supply issue. The demand is clearly there, but the lack of reprints for cards like wasteland and FoW means that even if the lands weren't expensive, the other staples would be. The fact is, reprints need to happen, which is why so many people are actually happy about the Chinese counterfeiting debacle. At the end of the day, we have a case of artificial scarcity enforced by a monopoly, and it was only a matter of time until other parties saw the profits to be made, and entered the market.
As for why the list still hasn't been rescinded, WOTC has a strong history of poor business decisions. My suspicion is that they settled out of court on a lawsuit pertaining to the list, sometime around 2009/10. This would set a precedent for any lawsuits they would face in the event that the list was ever removed (no, I never bought the promissory estoppel argument). The clear business decision here would be to remove the list, and gradually reprint eternal cards in supplementary products, so the only conclusion to be drawn is that they are either benefiting from the list in some way (doubtful), or they legally can't do so.
If Wizards of the Coast makes a claim that they will never reprint their product, and they reprint that product, they have lied about their product!. When you lie about your product, You open yourself up to a potential lawsuit from people who have purchased it. And you can absolutely, 100%, for certain no question take a company to court for doing it. No, I'm not saying that lawsuit would be winnable. But it can be filed. And the cost of defending a lawsuit is significant.
Congrats captain obvious.
It's why we have arbitration Courts.
The reserved list, when created, was in response to a different era. An era of true collectibles. I grew up in the 90s. I know about collectible cards. They were everywhere. Sports cards were the unquestionable dominate force.
You could go to any gas station in the 90s, and instead of candy to make kids become the obese nation we have today, you'd see waves and waves of cards. I can totally understand the reserved list back then. Wizard of the Coast was still a very new company, they really hadn't cemented themselves, and why shoot your selves in the foot.
Now, I'd be shocked if I saw any seriously lawsuit, we live in a digital doomsday age. You'll see a flood of twitter, facebook, tumblr, and every other social media outlet available explode for about a week, and the moment they announce a new duel deck or commander set with the duals, no one will give a crap.
For comparison - If Net Neutrality can be struck down, with little to no outrage from the geek community over all (if you remember SOPA outrage), most of you defending the reserved list are delusional to the point of needing real help. No one cares about this list except those who already spent way too much money or traded away too much of their own cards on other overpriced cards.
A huge chunk of the appeal of Legacy is playing with old classic cards such as the original dual lands, banning them would be just about the worst solution I can think of.
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Now, I'd be shocked if I saw any seriously lawsuit, we live in a digital doomsday age. You'll see a flood of twitter, facebook, tumblr, and every other social media outlet available explode for about a week, and the moment they announce a new duel deck or commander set with the duals, no one will give a crap.
For comparison - If Net Neutrality can be struck down, with little to no outrage from the geek community over all (if you remember SOPA outrage), most of you defending the reserved list are delusional to the point of needing real help. No one cares about this list except those who already spent way too much money or traded away too much of their own cards on other overpriced cards.
Up-front: I dislike the reserved list and wish it gone. I'd rather have my Legacy collection take a financial hit and have more people to play Legacy with.
But it's very clear from the comments WotC people make that the reason for its continued existence is some sort of legal advice they've received, and presumably their lawyers think it's serious enough to warrant keeping the list in place. It's going to stay.
Anyhow, the best I can come up with myself is a game in the top 8 of a PTQ back during Urza block in which we were starting game 3 with time already expired, so the tiebreaker rule was that whoever had more life after 3 turns would win. And I lost to... healing salve.
Up-front: I dislike the reserved list and wish it gone. I'd rather have my Legacy collection take a financial hit and have more people to play Legacy with.
But it's very clear from the comments WotC people make that the reason for its continued existence is some sort of legal advice they've received, and presumably their lawyers think it's serious enough to warrant keeping the list in place. It's going to stay.
I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe this. It seems far more like stubbornness or something we don't understand than the result of legal advice. Even companies can be ridiculously stubborn about stupid things.
The "they lied about their product" nonsense has never been a legitimate point. The reserved list was put into effect after the cards on it were no longer in products Wizards was selling. Wizards didn't get you to buy ABU duals from them by stating that they would never again be reprinted - you saw that Wizards never planned to reprint them (if you believed a company's policies would never change, you deserve to lose your "investment") and bought them from a third party. Wizards may have "lied," but it made no money off of its lies. I think it's pretty undeniable that Wizards has lost potential money making opportunities because of the reserved list. You could never even remotely demonstrate that Wizards ripped you off in any way.
The reserved list doesn't harm legacy. People constantly complaining about it do.
This is going to depend on semantic differences between how people define "harm".
You cant really argue against the fact that the limited supply of cards heavily dampens the growth of competitive Legacy.
And even as the format does continue to grow, it still also continues to become a smaller percentage of the overall Magic playerbase because the reserved list (and just WOTC's reprint policies in general) prevent it from ever expanding at the same rate as Magic's overall popularity.
So no, Legacy certainly isnt in any danger of disappearing, but we are in danger of being lost in the crowd.
I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe this. It seems far more like stubbornness or something we don't understand than the result of legal advice. Even companies can be ridiculously stubborn about stupid things.
Whenever people from WotC comment publicly, it's almost always "we don't like it, but it's here to stay, can't say more". Which is precisely the sort of thing you say when there's legal advice lurking in the background.
A while back I decided to try to figure that out, and the (non-lawyer, non-insider) conclusion I came to was that abolishing the reserved list matches up exactly with the definition of promissory estoppel. Dunno if that's the thing they actually worry about, but it would be my guess.
As the reserved list currently is, it does not allow a card to be reprinted in any form, but what if it could be revised to allow cards to be reprinted, but only as judge foils or as prizes awarded only at special events? Since those cards are rare and difficult to obtain, I cannot imagine that they would affect the value or availability of those cards very much. What does everyone else say? about that?
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“Those who would trade their freedoms for security will have neither.”-Benjamin Franklin
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
Whenever people from WotC comment publicly, it's almost always "we don't like it, but it's here to stay, can't say more". Which is precisely the sort of thing you say when there's legal advice lurking in the background.
A while back I decided to try to figure that out, and the (non-lawyer, non-insider) conclusion I came to was that abolishing the reserved list matches up exactly with the definition of promissory estoppel. Dunno if that's the thing they actually worry about, but it would be my guess.
I'm reasonably sure they settled out of court on a previous lawsuit to do with the reserved list. It would explain most of their behaviour:
1) They can't talk about the terms of the settlement, so all they can tell us is that they can't reprint anything on the reserved list.
2) Because they settled, there is a precedent for any future lawsuits that could occur if the list were removed. People wouldn't need to sue them on grounds of promissory estoppel, and could instead sue them on the grounds of their previous settlement, which would have a much higher chance of succeeding.
In fact, if this is the case, I think counterfeits, or 3rd party reprints, are the only thing that could get around it.
As the reserved list currently is, it does not allow a card to be reprinted in any form, but what if it could be revised to allow cards to be reprinted, but only as judge foils or as prizes awarded only at special events? Since those cards are rare and difficult to obtain, I cannot imagine that they would affect the value or availability of those cards very much. What does everyone else say? about that?
There used to be an allowance for premium cards. Then there was a kerfluffle about it because they printed a foil Phyrexian Negator in Dual Decks - Phyrexia vs the Coalition. The loophole has since been closed.
They can (and sometimes do) print non-tournament legal cards, such as oversized cards.
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Retrodrome!
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The funny thing is that they have removed cards from the Reserved List in the past and reprinted them with apparently no issue. You know Clone? That card that's been reprinted in a bunch of sets, most recently Magic 2014? That card used to be on the Reserved List, but they took it off and reprinted it.
Whenever people from WotC comment publicly, it's almost always "we don't like it, but it's here to stay, can't say more". Which is precisely the sort of thing you say when there's legal advice lurking in the background.
A while back I decided to try to figure that out, and the (non-lawyer, non-insider) conclusion I came to was that abolishing the reserved list matches up exactly with the definition of promissory estoppel. Dunno if that's the thing they actually worry about, but it would be my guess.
I'm no lawyer, either, but after reading up on it, that doesn't seem to be the sort of promise it references. That would be more like Wizards saying "if you buy ten boxes of boosters and don't get a full playset of every card, we'll give you the singles that you're missing" and then not doing it after people spend the money on the booster boxes. The value of the promise would then be the cards they didn't give you that they promised. Nothing about the reserved list is them promising to do anything for you - it's them stating that they will never reprint these cards. It's simply a company policy - those change all the time.
The fact that no one on these forums has ever been able to definitively say that Wizards would be at serious risk from getting rid of the reserved list and back it up with actual facts demonstrates pretty clearly that either no one who responds to these threads has a law degree or there's no actual issue. People have guessed. People have suggested. No one has demonstrated clearly or the discussion would just end. Besides, even if they would get sued successfully (never, ever going to happen) paying out a few greedy idiots who are angry that they believed a company (who does that?) for a few thousand dollars worth of cards is hardly a factor given how much money they could make by selling something like Vintage Masters in paper.
Not to mention that very little would happen to the value of many of the expensive reserved list cards. Look at Birds of Paradise - it's nowhere near as powerful as cards like the Moxen and has been reprinted plenty of times, yet an Alpha one still costs hundreds.
Whenever people from WotC comment publicly, it's almost always "we don't like it, but it's here to stay, can't say more". Which is precisely the sort of thing you say when there's legal advice lurking in the background.
That may be the case, but I also think that's the sort of thing you say when you sign an internal NDA. The people from WotC are people, after all, so it wouldn't surprise me if we're not hearing anything about the reserved list because of fear that the company itself would take legal action against those who would tell us.
Promissory Estoppel
In the law of contracts, the doctrine that provides that if a party changes his or her position substantially either by acting or forbearing from acting in reliance upon a gratuitous promise, then that party can enforce the promise although the essential elements of a contract are not present.
Certain elements must be established to invoke promissory estoppel. A promisor—one who makes a promise—makes a gratuitous promise that he should reasonably have expected to induce action or forbearance of a definite and substantial character on the part of the promisee—one to whom a promise has been made. The promisee justifiably relies on the promise. A substantial detriment—that is, an economic loss—ensues to the promisee from action or forbearance. Injustice can be avoided only by enforcing the promise.
A majority of courts apply the doctrine to any situation in which all of these elements are present. A minority, however, still restrict its applicability to one or more specific situations from which the doctrine emanated, such aswhen a donor promises to transfer real property as a gift and the donee spends money on the property in reliance on the promise.
With respect to the measure of recovery, it would be unfair to award the plaintiff the benefit of the bargain, as in the case of an express contract, since there is no bargain. In a majority of cases, however, injustice is avoided by awarding the plaintiff an amount consistent with the value of the promise. Other cases avoid injustice by awarding the plaintiff only an amount necessary to compensate her for the economic detriment actually suffered.
DIRECT QUOTE (Cited: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Promissory+Estoppel)
I see this as falling under the category except for one thing, this promise has to be between two parties. It would be a fail for a single person, lets call him [Major Speculator/Investor #1] (or MSI1)
Now lets postulate that MSI1 has made a grand investment into, say dual lands, for $50,000 and sees this as a SAFE place to invest, with slow inflation, but high security.
Wizards then removes the reserve list and he is out money, he would then make an argument saying that wizards owes him the amount that he lost.
However, this is very hard to ascertain, because wizards isnt directly effecting change on the price, because they never sell singles, and they never inflated the price of an underground sea to $200, either.
ALSO, it would be painfully obvious that MSI1 DOES NOT represent the entirety of the player base or fandom or collectorship of M:tg and other related products affected by theis sort of change in policy, he would not be entitled to the full amount of ANY settlement that would (even though he would never win) hypothetically be put forward. This is due to the fact that the promise was not between HIM and THEM, it was more of a proclamation from them to everybody.
This is also assuming that wizards hasnt made a backdoor agreement in order to keep prices high and make other companies (whom are their biggest distributors *cough* *cough*) RICH.
the point that i am making, however, is this
If they did remove the RESERVE LIST... then there would be MSI1 and possibly 2, 3,4,5,6etc. who would step forward and try to get in for some dollars.
Hey, they are sleezy enough to try and profit from our hobby, at our expense, im sure they would love to take an easy chunk out of wizards revenue with little or no risk to themselves.
Also, Wizards doesnt want to incur any legal fees related to defending themselves against such allegations.
I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure Hasbro/Wizards isn't paying lawyers on a case by case basis. There's no reason to think they'd be out any money if a few idiots file frivolous lawsuits that go nowhere.
Often the discussion comes down to two sides. Those that want to see reprints to ease prices/make it easier to enter the format, and those that treat their cards like gold investments and throw a fit anytime someone mentions 'reprints'.
Well how about this compromise from Wizards/Hasbro
"We understand that many of our collectors do not wish for us to abandon the reserved list; however, we feel as a company we need to make changes in order to grow.
What we would like to offer all of our players is the opportunity to buy your reserved list cards from you for a value to be determined by average price over approximately twenty worldwide stores. The purchase of these cards will take place at many locations world-wide over the course of the 2015 year. Of course you would need to cover the expense of travel (but if you are complaining about losing your investment, you obviously have the money to spend on airfare haha). If you choose to not sell us your cards that is your choice but those cards will be considered proxies at all sanctioned tournaments and be considered illegal.
Once this initial purchase has been completed we will then release a Reserved List reprinting set with new borders but the original artwork. These packs will be sold just like our core set/expansion sets and will be in a quantity to allow all players an opportunity to get into the format of eternal and own a piece of magic's history.
This message has been created in response to many of our players expressing a strong hatred of the reserved list and while we feel there may be alternate methods of this problem, we will it will be the best for the future of this game."
This solves all problems
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I only learned one thing in kindergarten: The bigger you were, the less you had to share!
That creates so many problems, it would be a nightmare for basically all parties involved. When are average prices calculated? These cards will surely drop like a rock if it was announced they would be considered proxies. Is WOTC ready to take a huge financial hit if these are calculated at a decent price before they drop? If not they are really screwing over anybody who has bought a card on the Reserved list before? For people trying to get into Legacy/Vintage, do they think the new printings will be easy to get? I'm sure they would be released in fairly small numbers and hoarded big. I'm not really a fan of the reserved list, but this idea borders on parody.
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I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure Hasbro/Wizards isn't paying lawyers on a case by case basis. There's no reason to think they'd be out any money if a few idiots file frivolous lawsuits that go nowhere.
I think thats a valid point. So how do we call them out as a community and make them speak on it. Without being shrouded or dodging the question.
if there is a reason, i believe we deserve to know why
That creates so many problems, it would be a nightmare for basically all parties involved. When are average prices calculated? These cards will surely drop like a rock if it was announced they would be considered proxies. Is WOTC ready to take a huge financial hit if these are calculated at a decent price before they drop? If not they are really screwing over anybody who has bought a card on the Reserved list before? For people trying to get into Legacy/Vintage, do they think the new printings will be easy to get? I'm sure they would be released in fairly small numbers and hoarded big. I'm not really a fan of the reserved list, but this idea borders on parody.
Well it was just a thought that would give investors actual greenbacks for their cards and then people who couldn't afford them could buy packs. I'll leave the logistics out of it but it solves both sides. It is the same problem when wizards creates a duel deck with an amazing card, people buy them up and then just resell the money card. There has to be a balance between the playing of the game and the financial clout it takes to be successful.
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Praise not the day until evening has come, ice until its been crossed, beer until its drunk.
I only learned one thing in kindergarten: The bigger you were, the less you had to share!
Well it was just a thought that would give investors actual greenbacks for their cards and then people who couldn't afford them could buy packs. I'll leave the logistics out of it but it solves both sides. It is the same problem when wizards creates a duel deck with an amazing card, people buy them up and then just resell the money card. There has to be a balance between the playing of the game and the financial clout it takes to be successful.
Its called printing enough product. Do you honestly think that enough modern masters was printed? Goyf could have been printed at non-mythic rarity and it wouldnt have messed up limited, because there is no fetch lands to really break him.
they made one mistake one time, and printed way too much, because of the popularity of the dark, and it was called Fallen Empires. (Love high tide and hymn to torach) It was 50c or 75c a pack and i doubt they will ever overprint like that again. They are, however, capable of it.
P.S. apologies if it sounds like im bashing on you, that is not my intent.
on another note though, i thought it might be good to include this quote as i find it very pertinent. (i found it on another forum and the credit cited will be anonymous)
"> Reprints do nothing to undermine the collectible aspect of the game. The only part it "undermines" is the financial or speculating aspect of the game, which is actually quite different. To be honest, if a reprint does hit the price of a card hard, it means that card wasn't collectible to begin with, and the reason it was expensive was because people wanted to use.
> I have no issue with people viewing some of the cards as collectibles. Some quite frankly are excellent collectibles, such as the blue Hurricane that I believe fetches over ten thousand dollars. But reprints do not harm the collectible aspect of the game, just the speculative aspect. The reprint policies of Wizards of the Coast, the Reserved List most notably, aren't about keeping cards collectible; they're about keeping cards expensive."
Obviously they're better, but they're better in such a marginal, unimportant, almost impossible to effect the outcome of a game way that it's irrelevant. If I can run a 5 color deck and have no mana troubles without them (or fetches), they're clearly not even remotely essential. I never once even remotely implied that you shouldn't use them if you have them, but no one said that. Someone said they were as important to EDH as legacy, which is so laughably false that I responded to it.
You miss the point. The point is not and has never been to make legacy affordable. The point is to remove the influence of the reserve list, which is what the thread is about. Without the dual lands, the reserve list would hold very little influence on legacy as a format - most of the established competitive decks have very few notable cards from the reserve list except for the dual lands.
It's not that straightforward, but you're on the right track. If the duals were banned, the land cost for many decks would go down by around $500-$1000. This would cause an influx of players, which would put pressure on the cost of other staples, causing them to rise until everyone is priced out of the market once again.
This is classic supply issue. The demand is clearly there, but the lack of reprints for cards like wasteland and FoW means that even if the lands weren't expensive, the other staples would be. The fact is, reprints need to happen, which is why so many people are actually happy about the Chinese counterfeiting debacle. At the end of the day, we have a case of artificial scarcity enforced by a monopoly, and it was only a matter of time until other parties saw the profits to be made, and entered the market.
As for why the list still hasn't been rescinded, WOTC has a strong history of poor business decisions. My suspicion is that they settled out of court on a lawsuit pertaining to the list, sometime around 2009/10. This would set a precedent for any lawsuits they would face in the event that the list was ever removed (no, I never bought the promissory estoppel argument). The clear business decision here would be to remove the list, and gradually reprint eternal cards in supplementary products, so the only conclusion to be drawn is that they are either benefiting from the list in some way (doubtful), or they legally can't do so.
Congrats captain obvious.
It's why we have arbitration Courts.
The reserved list, when created, was in response to a different era. An era of true collectibles. I grew up in the 90s. I know about collectible cards. They were everywhere. Sports cards were the unquestionable dominate force.
You could go to any gas station in the 90s, and instead of candy to make kids become the obese nation we have today, you'd see waves and waves of cards. I can totally understand the reserved list back then. Wizard of the Coast was still a very new company, they really hadn't cemented themselves, and why shoot your selves in the foot.
Now, I'd be shocked if I saw any seriously lawsuit, we live in a digital doomsday age. You'll see a flood of twitter, facebook, tumblr, and every other social media outlet available explode for about a week, and the moment they announce a new duel deck or commander set with the duals, no one will give a crap.
For comparison - If Net Neutrality can be struck down, with little to no outrage from the geek community over all (if you remember SOPA outrage), most of you defending the reserved list are delusional to the point of needing real help. No one cares about this list except those who already spent way too much money or traded away too much of their own cards on other overpriced cards.
Modern: Storm, Jund, Ghast Blaster, Elf Warriors
Legacy: RUG Cascade, Imperial Painter, Affinity, Dredge, Elves, Merfolk, Pox, Dragon Stompie, Goblins, ANT, Belcher
Classic: Delver, Dredge, Jacerater
Draft: I will draft basically any format online (other than Masques)
Pauper: MTGO's #1 most handsome Pauper Storm player
Up-front: I dislike the reserved list and wish it gone. I'd rather have my Legacy collection take a financial hit and have more people to play Legacy with.
But it's very clear from the comments WotC people make that the reason for its continued existence is some sort of legal advice they've received, and presumably their lawyers think it's serious enough to warrant keeping the list in place. It's going to stay.
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Lightning Bolts don't kill creatures. State-based actions kill creatures.
You forgot to mention who controls the printing press.:rolleyes:
I haven't seen anything that leads me to believe this. It seems far more like stubbornness or something we don't understand than the result of legal advice. Even companies can be ridiculously stubborn about stupid things.
The "they lied about their product" nonsense has never been a legitimate point. The reserved list was put into effect after the cards on it were no longer in products Wizards was selling. Wizards didn't get you to buy ABU duals from them by stating that they would never again be reprinted - you saw that Wizards never planned to reprint them (if you believed a company's policies would never change, you deserve to lose your "investment") and bought them from a third party. Wizards may have "lied," but it made no money off of its lies. I think it's pretty undeniable that Wizards has lost potential money making opportunities because of the reserved list. You could never even remotely demonstrate that Wizards ripped you off in any way.
This is going to depend on semantic differences between how people define "harm".
You cant really argue against the fact that the limited supply of cards heavily dampens the growth of competitive Legacy.
And even as the format does continue to grow, it still also continues to become a smaller percentage of the overall Magic playerbase because the reserved list (and just WOTC's reprint policies in general) prevent it from ever expanding at the same rate as Magic's overall popularity.
So no, Legacy certainly isnt in any danger of disappearing, but we are in danger of being lost in the crowd.
Really? People complaining about it, expressing an opinion, hurt Legacy?
Please explain that one... holy farfetched claims, Batman!
Whenever people from WotC comment publicly, it's almost always "we don't like it, but it's here to stay, can't say more". Which is precisely the sort of thing you say when there's legal advice lurking in the background.
A while back I decided to try to figure that out, and the (non-lawyer, non-insider) conclusion I came to was that abolishing the reserved list matches up exactly with the definition of promissory estoppel. Dunno if that's the thing they actually worry about, but it would be my guess.
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Lightning Bolts don't kill creatures. State-based actions kill creatures.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
I'm reasonably sure they settled out of court on a previous lawsuit to do with the reserved list. It would explain most of their behaviour:
1) They can't talk about the terms of the settlement, so all they can tell us is that they can't reprint anything on the reserved list.
2) Because they settled, there is a precedent for any future lawsuits that could occur if the list were removed. People wouldn't need to sue them on grounds of promissory estoppel, and could instead sue them on the grounds of their previous settlement, which would have a much higher chance of succeeding.
In fact, if this is the case, I think counterfeits, or 3rd party reprints, are the only thing that could get around it.
There used to be an allowance for premium cards. Then there was a kerfluffle about it because they printed a foil Phyrexian Negator in Dual Decks - Phyrexia vs the Coalition. The loophole has since been closed.
They can (and sometimes do) print non-tournament legal cards, such as oversized cards.
Hoi, hoi, u embleer hrair
M'saion ulé hraka vair.
I'm no lawyer, either, but after reading up on it, that doesn't seem to be the sort of promise it references. That would be more like Wizards saying "if you buy ten boxes of boosters and don't get a full playset of every card, we'll give you the singles that you're missing" and then not doing it after people spend the money on the booster boxes. The value of the promise would then be the cards they didn't give you that they promised. Nothing about the reserved list is them promising to do anything for you - it's them stating that they will never reprint these cards. It's simply a company policy - those change all the time.
The fact that no one on these forums has ever been able to definitively say that Wizards would be at serious risk from getting rid of the reserved list and back it up with actual facts demonstrates pretty clearly that either no one who responds to these threads has a law degree or there's no actual issue. People have guessed. People have suggested. No one has demonstrated clearly or the discussion would just end. Besides, even if they would get sued successfully (never, ever going to happen) paying out a few greedy idiots who are angry that they believed a company (who does that?) for a few thousand dollars worth of cards is hardly a factor given how much money they could make by selling something like Vintage Masters in paper.
Not to mention that very little would happen to the value of many of the expensive reserved list cards. Look at Birds of Paradise - it's nowhere near as powerful as cards like the Moxen and has been reprinted plenty of times, yet an Alpha one still costs hundreds.
That may be the case, but I also think that's the sort of thing you say when you sign an internal NDA. The people from WotC are people, after all, so it wouldn't surprise me if we're not hearing anything about the reserved list because of fear that the company itself would take legal action against those who would tell us.
In the law of contracts, the doctrine that provides that if a party changes his or her position substantially either by acting or forbearing from acting in reliance upon a gratuitous promise, then that party can enforce the promise although the essential elements of a contract are not present.
Certain elements must be established to invoke promissory estoppel. A promisor—one who makes a promise—makes a gratuitous promise that he should reasonably have expected to induce action or forbearance of a definite and substantial character on the part of the promisee—one to whom a promise has been made. The promisee justifiably relies on the promise. A substantial detriment—that is, an economic loss—ensues to the promisee from action or forbearance. Injustice can be avoided only by enforcing the promise.
A majority of courts apply the doctrine to any situation in which all of these elements are present. A minority, however, still restrict its applicability to one or more specific situations from which the doctrine emanated, such aswhen a donor promises to transfer real property as a gift and the donee spends money on the property in reliance on the promise.
With respect to the measure of recovery, it would be unfair to award the plaintiff the benefit of the bargain, as in the case of an express contract, since there is no bargain. In a majority of cases, however, injustice is avoided by awarding the plaintiff an amount consistent with the value of the promise. Other cases avoid injustice by awarding the plaintiff only an amount necessary to compensate her for the economic detriment actually suffered.
DIRECT QUOTE (Cited: http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Promissory+Estoppel)
I see this as falling under the category except for one thing, this promise has to be between two parties. It would be a fail for a single person, lets call him [Major Speculator/Investor #1] (or MSI1)
Now lets postulate that MSI1 has made a grand investment into, say dual lands, for $50,000 and sees this as a SAFE place to invest, with slow inflation, but high security.
Wizards then removes the reserve list and he is out money, he would then make an argument saying that wizards owes him the amount that he lost.
However, this is very hard to ascertain, because wizards isnt directly effecting change on the price, because they never sell singles, and they never inflated the price of an underground sea to $200, either.
ALSO, it would be painfully obvious that MSI1 DOES NOT represent the entirety of the player base or fandom or collectorship of M:tg and other related products affected by theis sort of change in policy, he would not be entitled to the full amount of ANY settlement that would (even though he would never win) hypothetically be put forward. This is due to the fact that the promise was not between HIM and THEM, it was more of a proclamation from them to everybody.
This is also assuming that wizards hasnt made a backdoor agreement in order to keep prices high and make other companies (whom are their biggest distributors *cough* *cough*) RICH.
the point that i am making, however, is this
If they did remove the RESERVE LIST... then there would be MSI1 and possibly 2, 3,4,5,6etc. who would step forward and try to get in for some dollars.
Hey, they are sleezy enough to try and profit from our hobby, at our expense, im sure they would love to take an easy chunk out of wizards revenue with little or no risk to themselves.
Also, Wizards doesnt want to incur any legal fees related to defending themselves against such allegations.
Mimeoplasm, reanimator
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Well how about this compromise from Wizards/Hasbro
"We understand that many of our collectors do not wish for us to abandon the reserved list; however, we feel as a company we need to make changes in order to grow.
What we would like to offer all of our players is the opportunity to buy your reserved list cards from you for a value to be determined by average price over approximately twenty worldwide stores. The purchase of these cards will take place at many locations world-wide over the course of the 2015 year. Of course you would need to cover the expense of travel (but if you are complaining about losing your investment, you obviously have the money to spend on airfare haha). If you choose to not sell us your cards that is your choice but those cards will be considered proxies at all sanctioned tournaments and be considered illegal.
Once this initial purchase has been completed we will then release a Reserved List reprinting set with new borders but the original artwork. These packs will be sold just like our core set/expansion sets and will be in a quantity to allow all players an opportunity to get into the format of eternal and own a piece of magic's history.
This message has been created in response to many of our players expressing a strong hatred of the reserved list and while we feel there may be alternate methods of this problem, we will it will be the best for the future of this game."
This solves all problems
I only learned one thing in kindergarten: The bigger you were, the less you had to share!
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I think thats a valid point. So how do we call them out as a community and make them speak on it. Without being shrouded or dodging the question.
if there is a reason, i believe we deserve to know why
Mimeoplasm, reanimator
Phelddagrif, superfriend/hugs
Edric, counter-target-player
Child of alara, Gods/Lands-Control
Titania, Timmy-combo
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Geist <under construction>
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Esper Control
Well it was just a thought that would give investors actual greenbacks for their cards and then people who couldn't afford them could buy packs. I'll leave the logistics out of it but it solves both sides. It is the same problem when wizards creates a duel deck with an amazing card, people buy them up and then just resell the money card. There has to be a balance between the playing of the game and the financial clout it takes to be successful.
I only learned one thing in kindergarten: The bigger you were, the less you had to share!
My Trade Link
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=9689206#post9689206
Its called printing enough product. Do you honestly think that enough modern masters was printed? Goyf could have been printed at non-mythic rarity and it wouldnt have messed up limited, because there is no fetch lands to really break him.
they made one mistake one time, and printed way too much, because of the popularity of the dark, and it was called Fallen Empires. (Love high tide and hymn to torach) It was 50c or 75c a pack and i doubt they will ever overprint like that again. They are, however, capable of it.
P.S. apologies if it sounds like im bashing on you, that is not my intent.
on another note though, i thought it might be good to include this quote as i find it very pertinent. (i found it on another forum and the credit cited will be anonymous)
"> Reprints do nothing to undermine the collectible aspect of the game. The only part it "undermines" is the financial or speculating aspect of the game, which is actually quite different. To be honest, if a reprint does hit the price of a card hard, it means that card wasn't collectible to begin with, and the reason it was expensive was because people wanted to use.
> I have no issue with people viewing some of the cards as collectibles. Some quite frankly are excellent collectibles, such as the blue Hurricane that I believe fetches over ten thousand dollars. But reprints do not harm the collectible aspect of the game, just the speculative aspect. The reprint policies of Wizards of the Coast, the Reserved List most notably, aren't about keeping cards collectible; they're about keeping cards expensive."
Mimeoplasm, reanimator
Phelddagrif, superfriend/hugs
Edric, counter-target-player
Child of alara, Gods/Lands-Control
Titania, Timmy-combo
-Tiny Leaders-
Geist <under construction>
-Standard-
Esper Control