The whole point of a card replacement is that the old cards wouldn't be made illegal for play. The collector's value is what Wizards would be protecting, not the play value. If you want to keep your old cards in a replacement world, go ahead ... Just be aware the counterfeiters will devalue them to peanuts.
The whole idea rests on the assumption that even the most adept counterfeiter can't fool Wizards of the Coast when they can even literally dissect the cards. If that is unrealistic the idea falls apart. But I have some faith that Wizards can stay one step ahead of counterfeit technology, even if the players don't have the luxury of destroying the cards to authenticate them.
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Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
Many of the people that play vintage these days using real cards are into the "pimp" factor. New printings would bring new blood sure, but no one that has spent the time now to build a super pimped out vintage deck is just going to up and sell it.
Different people prefer different kind of pimping though. I'm sure many would love the opportunity to swap out their current power for new foil power.
MtG is more resilient than your body because its a distributed thing which a multimillion dollar company wants to keep alive.
You can't possibly know that Crimeo's body isn't a widely distributed thing that a multi-million dollar company want's to keep alive, dude could be a porn star or Henry Winkler.
OT: I believe that the reason Hasbro hasn't re-printed things to hell and back again is that the profit simply isn't there. Yes, they'd sell the product hand over fist while deflating the secondary market. Then what? If the current best cards are easily available for a pittance, the only way they're going to be able to get people to justify the purchase of new product is if that is no longer the case.
It's been brought up that the Yugioh reprinting method would be viable, but those who brought it up neglected to mention that the old hotness doesn't become easily available until there's already a new carrot on the end of the stick to chase after.
What I'm driving at is, standard is only the most popular format because of necessity. If people could buy a Legacy deck for the same as a Standard deck, sales would diminish long term. Why would you keep paying to ride the merry-go-round if you could pay the same price for a lifetime pass?
It's possible they'll eventually break the reserve list, but it won't be until they have no choice. Of course, it's just as likely that when that time comes they'll abandon the format entirely. You know how old money is gradually removed from circulation as it's worn out/invalidated by counterfeiting? I can imagine a future where the only officially supported format is Standard, and you can tell what's legal by the cards having the most recent anti-counterfeiting measures on it.
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L1 judge since 1/30/12 (lapsed as of 1/30/13)
My Friend Code is: 0146-9645-8893
Why would you keep paying to ride the merry-go-round if you could pay the same price for a lifetime pass?
You're going to just sit around and play the same deck for the next 10 years!? I get bored of a deck after like 10 games...
What's the point if the same thing always happens?
You can't possibly know that Crimeo's body isn't a widely distributed thing that a multi-million dollar company want's to keep alive, dude could be a porn star or Henry Winkler.
I was actually accused of jumping a shark on this very forum not one day ago!
The plot thickens...
@ ccggenius12 - I've been trying for years to get that point across...you said it so well.
@ Crimeo - If you don't want to play the same deck for ten years, stay the heck away from Legacy.
Legacy is partly about 'going infinite' in constructed Magic. If that were easier to achieve, there would be significantly less incentive to play any other constructed format. Whether you're stuck with one or two decks or can never play blue decks, Legacy is still such a great and classic format that recent standards can't compare in terms of quality of play and competitive diversity. If Legacy and Modern staples cost what Standard staples do, the game would lose profits year after year.
The only reason Yu-Gi-Oh still makes money is because it's basically Legacy with massive power creep. You need to get new expensive cards every year regardless of what format you're playing to be at the top of the competitive game. Some sick people might like to see that continue to happen to Legacy ala-TNN, but I'm sure plenty of older player would quit if more key staples were obsoleted by cash-grab replacements.
Counterfeits concern me, but not too much. The idea that they will be sold 10% bellow mid sounds very accurate. They will go down in value, sure, but at least some of the people posting here will get screwed over buying fake cards.
I'll be ok with my cards losing value, but I expect Magic to become a worse game as a result.. It's not like I was going to sell them anyways. I just understand why they are expensive. I worked hard and bought a collectable I like and want it to stay the way it is.
You know, if you could find out some information such as how (99% it's a shipping freighter) these cards are coming into the country, where they're going to come into the country, when they're coming into the country, if you're super lucky the name of the ship they're coming into the country on, a single call to the port authority stops this from happening completely.
****, if you could figure out when, where, and what colorthe boxes are, you could stop this.
There is a governing body that protects the country from things like counterfeit goods, wild animals, and drugs from entering America, and they could easily nip this in the butt.
Bring on the counterfeits- January 19th can't come soon enough. 55,000 is nice, but I'd like to see even more. Let's get every tournament staple to the point where it's affordable. Let's beat Wizards to the punch and sell playsets of every chase rare in Born of the Gods before the prerelease at a fraction of the cost. Most importantly of all, let's make them undetectable, so we can use them in tournaments.
One thing I think would be really helpful to counterfeiters would be a StarCityGames-style website where you can buy playsets of singles. Buying 500 copies of Underground Sea is nice, but I don't think I'll ever be able to use that many. For the security of those running the site, it should be set up on the anonymous TOR network, and accept payment only in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to bypass e-commerce sites such as Paypal.
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These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
Bring on the counterfeits- January 19th can't come soon enough. 55,000 is nice, but I'd like to see even more. Let's get every tournament staple to the point where it's affordable. Let's beat Wizards to the punch and sell playsets of every chase rare in Born of the Gods before the prerelease at a fraction of the cost. Most importantly of all, let's make them undetectable, so we can use them in tournaments.
One thing I think would be really helpful to counterfeiters would be a StarCityGames-style website where you can buy playsets of singles. Buying 500 copies of Underground Sea is nice, but I don't think I'll ever be able to use that many. For the security of those running the site, it should be set up on the anonymous TOR network, and accept payment only in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to bypass e-commerce sites such as Paypal.
I kind of agree with this. I've seen too many people forced out of magic due to the cost, myself included. If standard is going to be overwhelmingly pushed and supported by wizards, one would hope it would become more affordable.
Also, IDGAF what the six-figure makers and high-school kids on here are going to say about my opinion.
I'm late to this giant cluster**** and i'm 99% certain that my views were already stated by another but this is what I have to say about this:
It doesn't exactly bother me that this counterfeiting thing is going to happen. Hell, I was curious as to when it would start. Ever since I saw shocks for for $30-40 a year or so back, I was thinking that anyone who bothered to make solid counterfeits and sell them for $20 would make thousands. Given the current state of the magic secondary market, I'd say that counterfeiting of this scale came rather late.
I might not be the only one with this opinion but I think that the secondary market prior to this counterfeiting incident was quite damaging for magic as whole. Speculation is rampant for old cards that might be playable and the low supply of staples and proven old cards are quite frankly, very expensive. Trading has become such a hassle for many because everyone is treating their collection as a store and trying to jump on the whole speculating to profit bandwagon. Wizards themselves aren't exactly doing much to fix this, as they have give themselves a sort of reprint-with-extreme-caution rule. We see this being the case with Modern Master where there was an extremely limited print run. I believe MM didn't even have the intended goal of making many modern staples accessible and affordable.
This might not be an issue to those with money or those with collections from the old days of magic but the reality is that the magic player base is growing at a really fast rate. There are many new faces at the hobby store and university club I attend to that have just started magic at the RTR block. They want to get their hands on a Tarmogoyf because they hear of a cool format known as modern which is more fun to play then the standard or limited that they're used to, and guess what, they can't really play unless they go and sharpie up a land or print out proxies. Same thing for those that are just starting EDH since WoTC is promoting the hell out of it with their new annual commander decks line-up.
It sucks that counterfeiting is happening on a scale like this, it sucks that these cards might get sucked into the market causing people to panic, but I realized that even if this whole counterfeiting thing didn't happen, the state of magic's secondary market would still be heading towards a grim place given the exploding playerbase and the demand for older cards that just aren't being met.
Wizards and Hasbro certainly has their set of legal options to try to stymie the counterfeiters but it won't do much. We all know that another group will always pop up as long as their is a profit to be made from this. Wizards and Hasbro has to understand that maybe the problem can be fixed if they made their products more widely available and put their foot down to those who sit on a bunch of old cards thinking that it will make them rich. I wouldn't mind so much buying a reprinted real $10 damnation as oppose to a counterfeiter's $5 damnation if the price of damnations prior to the reprint were $50
Bring on the counterfeits- January 19th can't come soon enough. 55,000 is nice, but I'd like to see even more. Let's get every tournament staple to the point where it's affordable. Let's beat Wizards to the punch and sell playsets of every chase rare in Born of the Gods before the prerelease at a fraction of the cost. Most importantly of all, let's make them undetectable, so we can use them in tournaments.
One thing I think would be really helpful to counterfeiters would be a StarCityGames-style website where you can buy playsets of singles. Buying 500 copies of Underground Sea is nice, but I don't think I'll ever be able to use that many. For the security of those running the site, it should be set up on the anonymous TOR network, and accept payment only in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to bypass e-commerce sites such as Paypal.
Have not seen you say one thing even remotely constuctive. Such an obvious troll. How can MTGS let posts like this stay up?
So 55,000 cards are going out. Assuming this is the list of 100-or-so cards that was circulated last week, that's about 550 examples of each card. That's a drop in the ocean, even for the duals, making this whole thing much ado about nothing. To give players some insight, there are roughly 300,000 of each dual land in existence, meaning that this print run weighs in at roughly 0.18% of the known population of dual lands. I certainly wouldn't be worried, you would have to buy more than 500 of each dual on average to encounter even one. Then there's the fact that we don't know how good the quality is; if it's poor, then what's the point in worrying about it? If they are good, and difficult to distinguish from the real deal, that's even better, because we will finally have impetus for WotC to change the status quo.
Secondly, those arguing that people buying counterfeits or endorsing their production are entitled are misguided. It's not entitlement, it's unmet demand, and in this case, many of the people arguing for lower prices (myself included) are players of legacy and own the cards in question. Eternal staples were in a prolonged bubble, and it's high time that bubble was popped. I mean in the long term, prices will have to come down anyway, because many of the expensive cards in legacy are highly prized for their playability. People will eventually stop playing legacy if prices keeping going up (and even if they stay the same as they are now), and when that happens, the cards aren't being played, and their value tanks. I would much rather have more players entering the format due to an increase in supply, and if it takes counterfeiting to make that happen, then these guys need to start running the printers.
Thirdly, the existence of high quality counterfeits doesn't preclude the existence of verified, graded cards for collectors. If you're worried, get your cards graded now, so that they can be certified original when good counterfeits inevitably do become a thing. That way, you can preserve their value by distinguishing your cards from everyone else's. If you can't prove their originality, people have no reason to pay more for your cards than for knock-offs. If you can, collectors will be interested in your cards.
Finally, I'd like to make the point that these counterfeits won't make cards worth nothing. Remember, the process of commissioning cards and having them sent to you still takes around 2 weeks, and liquidating a large volume of cards like that isn't something that can be done overnight. Magic cards aren't a very liquid asset, and so even the inevitable crash will likely unfold on the scale of months and years, rather than overnight.
So 55,000 cards are going out. Assuming this is the list of 100-or-so cards that was circulated last week, that's about 550 examples of each card. That's a drop in the ocean, even for the duals, making this whole thing much ado about nothing.
This is just the beginning, read the original post.
"there will be another wave of 200,000 on the 23rd of Jan." That's about 1% of the dual lands, in less than 1 month (along with thousands of other value cards printed). That doesn't sound significant, but it is a large number. Not to mention this supplier won't stop until they are forced to apparently. This is also just one supplier, you don't think there will be copycats?
Have not seen you say one thing even remotely constuctive. Such an obvious troll. How can MTGS let posts like this stay up?
Just because someone doesn't share your opinion doesn't mean they're a troll. If you're in favor of more available cards, (as Richard says he is) and the only way cards are becoming more available is through counterfeits, this seems like a great idea.
Every pro counterfeiting argument comes down to nothing more then an attempt to justify something completely ILLEGAL. I do want more people playing Legacy but not if they are just going to use illegal bootleg cards to do it.
This is just the beginning, read the original post.
"there will be another wave of 200,000 on the 23rd of Jan." That's about 1% of the dual lands, in less than 1 month (along with thousands of other value cards printed). That doesn't sound significant, but it is a large number. Not to mention this supplier won't stop until they are forced to apparently. This is also just one supplier, you don't think there will be copycats?
And everyone who has actually had these counterfeits in hand say the same thing "these are obviously fake". Not just the kerning, but the card stock is wrong, the gloss is wrong, the corners are wrong. Basically everything is wrong.
And everyone who has actually had these counterfeits in hand say the same thing "these are obviously fake". Not just the kerning, but the card stock is wrong, the gloss is wrong, the corners are wrong. Basically everything is wrong.
Mr. Huang is aware of the imperfections and hasn't done mass printing yet, he's apparently fixing and tweaking his model. The proxies are only going to improve.
To be honest, I'm very skeptical of these people who "actually had these counterfeits in hand." While they dismissed these proxies so easily, these people aren't posting evidence or even going into many specifics. If they really wanted to debunk these cards, they'd do something like share a video or even some high quality photos. My inclination is that a lot of these people are just white knights and spectators trying to discourage players from looking into buying these types of proxies and/or panicking and liquidating their collections.
By the way, even if the cards are flawed to an extent, based on the images we've seen, they look very good, and in card sleeves will be very passable, especially to an nonskeptical eye.
And everyone who has actually had these counterfeits in hand say the same thing "these are obviously fake". Not just the kerning, but the card stock is wrong, the gloss is wrong, the corners are wrong. Basically everything is wrong.
No worries. Maybe that source also mentioned the closedown of the China factory too.
From my line of work, I learned **** always happens. Dont trust what others say.
It would be gorgeous, there are people aready selling paper version of the MTGO Cube. I'd buy.
You know what puzzles me? Wotc not printing what players want, but then they print 'silver coins with Jace'. It seems Wotc wants to create artificial scarcity. Make sense?
Every pro counterfeiting argument comes down to nothing more then an attempt to justify something completely ILLEGAL. I do want more people playing Legacy but not if they are just going to use illegal bootleg cards to do it.
In most countries, owning counterfeit goods is not a crime, so long as you don't try to sell them. If you're referring to the practices of the printing company, then there are numerous utilitarian arguments as to why their activities are a good thing for the market (hence this thread). Legality has nothing to do with morality or justice, and is -- at the end of the day -- about arriving at a solution that is commonly agreeable to most parties. In this case, WotC have failed their market, and the inevitable end result is counterfeiting. From the perspective of a player, I see this only as a good thing, and the divided response to this is an indication that mine is a common opinion.
In most countries, owning counterfeit goods is not a crime, so long as you don't try to sell them. If you're referring to the practices of the printing company, then there are numerous utilitarian arguments as to why their activities are a good thing for the market (hence this threat). Legality has nothing to do with morality or justice, and is -- at the end of the day -- about arriving at a solution that is commonly agreeable to most parties. In this case, WotC have failed their market, and the inevitable end result is counterfeiting. From the perspective of a player, I see this only as a good thing, and the divided response to this is an indication that mine is a common opinion.
Not sure what a utilitarian argument is but I'm sure it's a lot of words so please spare me.
Just because Wizards has chosen to uphold the reserved list does not justify what you guys are doing. It's called international copyright law and yes if you knowingly purchase them you are breaking the law. Don't be naive, people are going sell/trade these once they get there hands on them. Even if your side constitutes a majority(and I really doubt that it does) that does not mean that you are in the right.
I just want to verify, regarding 55,000 cards on the 19th and 200,000 cards on the 23rd, are the cards being shipped on those days? Are they being printed on those days? Or are the cards being delivered on those days?
I'm trying to get an idea of when we are going to really see a true detailed review of these proxies (videos, detailed high quality photos, front and back of card, side by side comparisons, pictures inside of sleeves, etc).
Don't be naive, people are going sell/trade these once they get there hands on them. Even if your side constitutes a majority(and I really doubt that it does) that does not mean that you are in the right.
Just because some people might do something unethical like unscrupulously sell or trade these proxies doesn't mean it's wrong for a casual player to obtain and use detailed proxies outside of sanctioned play, selling or trading.
There is nothing harmful or unethical about Jim buying 30 proxy unhinged Islands for $30 dollars for his kitchen table Azami EDH deck provided that Jim wasn't ever going to spend $250 dollars on basic land cards and he doesn't sell or trade the proxies.
Similar to if Susan doesn't have $2000 to spend on Legacy deck for casual deck, but instead spends $50 on impressive proxies that she doesn't sell, trade or compete with in sanctioned events. There isn't anything harmful or unethical about this.
The whole idea rests on the assumption that even the most adept counterfeiter can't fool Wizards of the Coast when they can even literally dissect the cards. If that is unrealistic the idea falls apart. But I have some faith that Wizards can stay one step ahead of counterfeit technology, even if the players don't have the luxury of destroying the cards to authenticate them.
Thanks to Gabgabdevo for the awesome sig image!
I'm always looking for foil Madcap Skills and Ghitu Fire-Eater, [trade thread link forthcoming]
Worst of all, I can't for the life of me figure out a solution. What on Earth is WotC supposed to do about this?
How To Keep Your FOIL Cards From Curling: http://youtu.be/QTmubrS8VnI
The Best Deck Boxes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEwgLph_Pjk
The Best Binders: http://youtu.be/H5IauASYWjk
Different people prefer different kind of pimping though. I'm sure many would love the opportunity to swap out their current power for new foil power.
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
You can't possibly know that Crimeo's body isn't a widely distributed thing that a multi-million dollar company want's to keep alive, dude could be a porn star or Henry Winkler.
OT: I believe that the reason Hasbro hasn't re-printed things to hell and back again is that the profit simply isn't there. Yes, they'd sell the product hand over fist while deflating the secondary market. Then what? If the current best cards are easily available for a pittance, the only way they're going to be able to get people to justify the purchase of new product is if that is no longer the case.
It's been brought up that the Yugioh reprinting method would be viable, but those who brought it up neglected to mention that the old hotness doesn't become easily available until there's already a new carrot on the end of the stick to chase after.
What I'm driving at is, standard is only the most popular format because of necessity. If people could buy a Legacy deck for the same as a Standard deck, sales would diminish long term. Why would you keep paying to ride the merry-go-round if you could pay the same price for a lifetime pass?
It's possible they'll eventually break the reserve list, but it won't be until they have no choice. Of course, it's just as likely that when that time comes they'll abandon the format entirely. You know how old money is gradually removed from circulation as it's worn out/invalidated by counterfeiting? I can imagine a future where the only officially supported format is Standard, and you can tell what's legal by the cards having the most recent anti-counterfeiting measures on it.
My Friend Code is: 0146-9645-8893
You're going to just sit around and play the same deck for the next 10 years!? I get bored of a deck after like 10 games...
What's the point if the same thing always happens?
I was actually accused of jumping a shark on this very forum not one day ago!
The plot thickens...
Eh, depends on player. You get bored, but what format are we talking? legacy? EDH? Standard?
A lot of people have favorite decks, and the different decks they play against make the games different.
I agree that only 1 does have a eventual dullness to it, but I can see having 2-3 as being enough for a lot of players.
How To Keep Your FOIL Cards From Curling: http://youtu.be/QTmubrS8VnI
The Best Deck Boxes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEwgLph_Pjk
The Best Binders: http://youtu.be/H5IauASYWjk
@ Crimeo - If you don't want to play the same deck for ten years, stay the heck away from Legacy.
Legacy is partly about 'going infinite' in constructed Magic. If that were easier to achieve, there would be significantly less incentive to play any other constructed format. Whether you're stuck with one or two decks or can never play blue decks, Legacy is still such a great and classic format that recent standards can't compare in terms of quality of play and competitive diversity. If Legacy and Modern staples cost what Standard staples do, the game would lose profits year after year.
The only reason Yu-Gi-Oh still makes money is because it's basically Legacy with massive power creep. You need to get new expensive cards every year regardless of what format you're playing to be at the top of the competitive game. Some sick people might like to see that continue to happen to Legacy ala-TNN, but I'm sure plenty of older player would quit if more key staples were obsoleted by cash-grab replacements.
Counterfeits concern me, but not too much. The idea that they will be sold 10% bellow mid sounds very accurate. They will go down in value, sure, but at least some of the people posting here will get screwed over buying fake cards.
I'll be ok with my cards losing value, but I expect Magic to become a worse game as a result.. It's not like I was going to sell them anyways. I just understand why they are expensive. I worked hard and bought a collectable I like and want it to stay the way it is.
Back to MTG sucks right now hibernation.
Legacy:
RWBG Goblins
RRR Burn
WBU Affinity
UBR Sac-Land Tendrils!
BBBPox
Next possible deck: D&T, but that just wouldn't be right.
Modern: R Goblins (work in progress)
Standard: I only care about standard when Goblins is a deck.
Limited: I only care about limited when Goblins are in the set.
Pauper:
RGoblins
URCloudpost
other decks
Goblins.
****, if you could figure out when, where, and what colorthe boxes are, you could stop this.
There is a governing body that protects the country from things like counterfeit goods, wild animals, and drugs from entering America, and they could easily nip this in the butt.
One thing I think would be really helpful to counterfeiters would be a StarCityGames-style website where you can buy playsets of singles. Buying 500 copies of Underground Sea is nice, but I don't think I'll ever be able to use that many. For the security of those running the site, it should be set up on the anonymous TOR network, and accept payment only in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies to bypass e-commerce sites such as Paypal.
MTG finance guy- follow me on Twitter@RichArschmann or RichardArschmann on Reddit
I kind of agree with this. I've seen too many people forced out of magic due to the cost, myself included. If standard is going to be overwhelmingly pushed and supported by wizards, one would hope it would become more affordable.
Also, IDGAF what the six-figure makers and high-school kids on here are going to say about my opinion.
Wouldnt it be great if the counterfeiters do a Legacy Masters?
Wouldnt that be a slap to the faces of Wotc / SCG?
It would be gorgeous, there are people aready selling paper version of the MTGO Cube. I'd buy.
It doesn't exactly bother me that this counterfeiting thing is going to happen. Hell, I was curious as to when it would start. Ever since I saw shocks for for $30-40 a year or so back, I was thinking that anyone who bothered to make solid counterfeits and sell them for $20 would make thousands. Given the current state of the magic secondary market, I'd say that counterfeiting of this scale came rather late.
I might not be the only one with this opinion but I think that the secondary market prior to this counterfeiting incident was quite damaging for magic as whole. Speculation is rampant for old cards that might be playable and the low supply of staples and proven old cards are quite frankly, very expensive. Trading has become such a hassle for many because everyone is treating their collection as a store and trying to jump on the whole speculating to profit bandwagon. Wizards themselves aren't exactly doing much to fix this, as they have give themselves a sort of reprint-with-extreme-caution rule. We see this being the case with Modern Master where there was an extremely limited print run. I believe MM didn't even have the intended goal of making many modern staples accessible and affordable.
This might not be an issue to those with money or those with collections from the old days of magic but the reality is that the magic player base is growing at a really fast rate. There are many new faces at the hobby store and university club I attend to that have just started magic at the RTR block. They want to get their hands on a Tarmogoyf because they hear of a cool format known as modern which is more fun to play then the standard or limited that they're used to, and guess what, they can't really play unless they go and sharpie up a land or print out proxies. Same thing for those that are just starting EDH since WoTC is promoting the hell out of it with their new annual commander decks line-up.
It sucks that counterfeiting is happening on a scale like this, it sucks that these cards might get sucked into the market causing people to panic, but I realized that even if this whole counterfeiting thing didn't happen, the state of magic's secondary market would still be heading towards a grim place given the exploding playerbase and the demand for older cards that just aren't being met.
Wizards and Hasbro certainly has their set of legal options to try to stymie the counterfeiters but it won't do much. We all know that another group will always pop up as long as their is a profit to be made from this. Wizards and Hasbro has to understand that maybe the problem can be fixed if they made their products more widely available and put their foot down to those who sit on a bunch of old cards thinking that it will make them rich. I wouldn't mind so much buying a reprinted real $10 damnation as oppose to a counterfeiter's $5 damnation if the price of damnations prior to the reprint were $50
Fixed, warned for censor evasion.
-Memnarch
Have not seen you say one thing even remotely constuctive. Such an obvious troll. How can MTGS let posts like this stay up?
Secondly, those arguing that people buying counterfeits or endorsing their production are entitled are misguided. It's not entitlement, it's unmet demand, and in this case, many of the people arguing for lower prices (myself included) are players of legacy and own the cards in question. Eternal staples were in a prolonged bubble, and it's high time that bubble was popped. I mean in the long term, prices will have to come down anyway, because many of the expensive cards in legacy are highly prized for their playability. People will eventually stop playing legacy if prices keeping going up (and even if they stay the same as they are now), and when that happens, the cards aren't being played, and their value tanks. I would much rather have more players entering the format due to an increase in supply, and if it takes counterfeiting to make that happen, then these guys need to start running the printers.
Thirdly, the existence of high quality counterfeits doesn't preclude the existence of verified, graded cards for collectors. If you're worried, get your cards graded now, so that they can be certified original when good counterfeits inevitably do become a thing. That way, you can preserve their value by distinguishing your cards from everyone else's. If you can't prove their originality, people have no reason to pay more for your cards than for knock-offs. If you can, collectors will be interested in your cards.
Finally, I'd like to make the point that these counterfeits won't make cards worth nothing. Remember, the process of commissioning cards and having them sent to you still takes around 2 weeks, and liquidating a large volume of cards like that isn't something that can be done overnight. Magic cards aren't a very liquid asset, and so even the inevitable crash will likely unfold on the scale of months and years, rather than overnight.
This is just the beginning, read the original post.
"there will be another wave of 200,000 on the 23rd of Jan." That's about 1% of the dual lands, in less than 1 month (along with thousands of other value cards printed). That doesn't sound significant, but it is a large number. Not to mention this supplier won't stop until they are forced to apparently. This is also just one supplier, you don't think there will be copycats?
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
Just because someone doesn't share your opinion doesn't mean they're a troll. If you're in favor of more available cards, (as Richard says he is) and the only way cards are becoming more available is through counterfeits, this seems like a great idea.
And everyone who has actually had these counterfeits in hand say the same thing "these are obviously fake". Not just the kerning, but the card stock is wrong, the gloss is wrong, the corners are wrong. Basically everything is wrong.
Mr. Huang is aware of the imperfections and hasn't done mass printing yet, he's apparently fixing and tweaking his model. The proxies are only going to improve.
To be honest, I'm very skeptical of these people who "actually had these counterfeits in hand." While they dismissed these proxies so easily, these people aren't posting evidence or even going into many specifics. If they really wanted to debunk these cards, they'd do something like share a video or even some high quality photos. My inclination is that a lot of these people are just white knights and spectators trying to discourage players from looking into buying these types of proxies and/or panicking and liquidating their collections.
By the way, even if the cards are flawed to an extent, based on the images we've seen, they look very good, and in card sleeves will be very passable, especially to an nonskeptical eye.
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
No worries. Maybe that source also mentioned the closedown of the China factory too.
From my line of work, I learned **** always happens. Dont trust what others say.
You know what puzzles me? Wotc not printing what players want, but then they print 'silver coins with Jace'. It seems Wotc wants to create artificial scarcity. Make sense?
In most countries, owning counterfeit goods is not a crime, so long as you don't try to sell them. If you're referring to the practices of the printing company, then there are numerous utilitarian arguments as to why their activities are a good thing for the market (hence this thread). Legality has nothing to do with morality or justice, and is -- at the end of the day -- about arriving at a solution that is commonly agreeable to most parties. In this case, WotC have failed their market, and the inevitable end result is counterfeiting. From the perspective of a player, I see this only as a good thing, and the divided response to this is an indication that mine is a common opinion.
Not sure what a utilitarian argument is but I'm sure it's a lot of words so please spare me.
Just because Wizards has chosen to uphold the reserved list does not justify what you guys are doing. It's called international copyright law and yes if you knowingly purchase them you are breaking the law. Don't be naive, people are going sell/trade these once they get there hands on them. Even if your side constitutes a majority(and I really doubt that it does) that does not mean that you are in the right.
I'm trying to get an idea of when we are going to really see a true detailed review of these proxies (videos, detailed high quality photos, front and back of card, side by side comparisons, pictures inside of sleeves, etc).
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
Just because some people might do something unethical like unscrupulously sell or trade these proxies doesn't mean it's wrong for a casual player to obtain and use detailed proxies outside of sanctioned play, selling or trading.
There is nothing harmful or unethical about Jim buying 30 proxy unhinged Islands for $30 dollars for his kitchen table Azami EDH deck provided that Jim wasn't ever going to spend $250 dollars on basic land cards and he doesn't sell or trade the proxies.
Similar to if Susan doesn't have $2000 to spend on Legacy deck for casual deck, but instead spends $50 on impressive proxies that she doesn't sell, trade or compete with in sanctioned events. There isn't anything harmful or unethical about this.
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate