Going on my own experience, Modern has driven prices as much as anything else. Before Modern Standard-only players could dump their staples to keep up with rotation, Extended wasn't a very popular format and not many cards made the cut to port into Legacy. With Modern coming about many of these midrange cards that were good in Standard but not in Legacy now find homes in decks. With many people scrambling to pick up these cards for this new format many cards spiked because they were suddenly playable again. Within these spikes WotC announces Modern Masters and many people held out on getting into the format in fear that their "investment" would be for naught and prices would plummet.
Then MMa is released. People start picking up staples again and the supply doesn't slow the demand driving prices on more sought after cards up even further. Now a few years after Modern's conception the prices still rise as WotC continues to push Modern as their "eternal format". With Modern (and its banned list) being very volatile the "best deck" keeps changing and cards across the board rise because of the rotating lists. Eventually, players who got into Modern early (and profited) now are sitting on cards worth 2-10x what they payed for them. Rather than cashing out they trade them into Legacy staples fueling another rise in prices, this time from Legacy/reserve list staples. And this brings us to today. Many players now realize they have another format to contend with beyond standard. Many players (especially grinders) need to have at least one deck for each format to stay current.
I don't honestly believe there is a "bubble" in magic. I think prices are rising because of the massive influx of new players especially to non rotating formats like Modern. While I've seen numerous threads like this it often boils down to two sides. On one side you have players who didn't/don't have the cards or funds to play in more expensive formats and you have players who have much invested in these formats. I have no doubt the cost of entry to Modern will come down but that will require some input from WotC otherwise prices will keep reaching absurd levels (heres looking at you fetches).
Players are paying these prices to get the cards so complaining they are out of your price range and that they should be reprinted is more of a personal problem. If you can't afford to get into a format WotC does have other, cheaper, formats. It all comes down to how much you want to invest in this game, just because you think $2500 is way to much for a deck doesn't mean that I'm not going to pay it.
A solid commander deck costs as much as a good standard one just about, which costs the same amount as a totally sweet RC car or a paintball gun or a set of paints and some canvas, or taking a short road trip. people spend money on their hobbies.
TL;DR
There are more MtG players and not enough cards to go around, especially in older formats. If you can't afford these more expensive cards maybe consider less expensive options.
They are called antiques, antique cards are expensive...just look at baseball cards. Wait u see in the year 2093 how much a black lotus is worth, prob triple or quadruple what it is now!
Brilliant read. @ Bronson I agree with everything here, and its holding true. Legacy is rising in popularity because of people cashing out of modern for legacy staples. I personally just traded playsets of all my zendikar fetch lands, which i got when zen was in standard, for a massive profit!! I picked up a few revised dual lands, which in my opinion is about as safe of an investment into paper magic as there is. It remains to be seen who really wins in this trade. We both anticipate fetch land reprints, but noone knows when. And by then, misty rainforest could be 200 bucks!
Complaining about cards needing a reprint does nothing. Sure we may see fetch land reprints soon, and we did see MMA bring more cards to market (although it drove mythic prices higher), but WoTC cant and wont reprint everything that makes modern and legacy what they are efficiently or fast enough to truely help your position. The only way prices will fall is if demand falls. If you are holding out waiting for this to happen, im afraid your doing it wrong ( see GP richmond, polularity is skyrocketing globally ). I had a friend tell me once " I need a playset of Tarmogoyfs, but there is no way in hell im paying 200 bucks for something that used to be a junk rare." This same friend bought his playset of goyfs 2 months after the release of MMA for over 500 dollars! If you want to play legacy and modern, you have to pay the price. If you dont want to pay the price, play limited, pauper, or even standard and stop complaining, it does nothing.
They are called antiques, antique cards are expensive...just look at baseball cards. Wait u see in the year 2093 how much a black lotus is worth, prob triple or quadruple what it is now!
No, just no.
People arent talking about wanting an exact replica of an Alpha Black Lotus. People want cards to be more available to play the game with.
Cards from revised are not antiques. They are from the 90's. And they were mass produced by the hundreds of millions.
They are valuable because a lot of people want them to play a card game, not because they are some rare museum piece.
Baseball card makers print multiple cards for the same athlete. They dont stop making them just because the first one becomes valuable.
Card prices aren't a bubble unless Wizards decides to make them a bubble, which is very unlikely. It's actually remarkable that prices didn't soar sooner than this. Think about it: You have a relatively small number of cards in demand compared to the total number printed, and Wizards is a company that has publicly announced itself as gun-shy (or some less charitable term, if you'd prefer) about reprinting cards for nearly the entire game's history. Wizards has all but told people that cards a largely a safe investment. There's no reason to expect prices to go down under this model.
I think another part of it is that people have realized that the ceiling for staples, and Standard staples in particular, is much higher than they anyone thought it was. 40 dollars for a Standard card would have been outrageous in the past, but that's probably because no one asked for 40 dollars. The cat's out of the bag in the sense that it almost doesn't matter how high a price goes; competitive players will pay it. Add that to the internet making even small tournaments more competitively minded, and you get modern card prices.
Edit: In fact, my first paragraph gets something wrong. Wizards has explicitly told people that cards are a safe investment.
What truly surprises me is that Wizards doesn't take even MORE advantage of modern/legacy staples.
Take a look at cards like Mutavault, Thoughtseize and Scavenging Ooze. These were highly valuable and sought after cards. Why reprint them at rare instead of at Mythic. Instead of turning these into 30/15/10 dollar cards, they would have been much more expensive. High Mutavault demands in standard would have skyrocketed the price for the mythic land, and people would be buying M14 boxes just to hope to pull them.
Why did Return Ravnica sell so well? My opinion was that it was an extremely fun, and well designed set, but really, the numbers do not come from draft, they come from businesses buying large numbers of boxes searching for Shocks.
There are plenty of these cards that are extremely valuable, will not break standard/modern, and could still be used as a big cash cow at Mythic. Imperial Seal is one of the first to come to mind.
Others like Mana DrainMana CryptKarakas and Force of Will are not on the restricted list and could carry limited sets. Just watch From the Vault... Damnation will make Wizards a lot of money.
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Then MMa is released. People start picking up staples again and the supply doesn't slow the demand driving prices on more sought after cards up even further. Now a few years after Modern's conception the prices still rise as WotC continues to push Modern as their "eternal format". With Modern (and its banned list) being very volatile the "best deck" keeps changing and cards across the board rise because of the rotating lists. Eventually, players who got into Modern early (and profited) now are sitting on cards worth 2-10x what they payed for them. Rather than cashing out they trade them into Legacy staples fueling another rise in prices, this time from Legacy/reserve list staples. And this brings us to today. Many players now realize they have another format to contend with beyond standard. Many players (especially grinders) need to have at least one deck for each format to stay current.
I don't honestly believe there is a "bubble" in magic. I think prices are rising because of the massive influx of new players especially to non rotating formats like Modern. While I've seen numerous threads like this it often boils down to two sides. On one side you have players who didn't/don't have the cards or funds to play in more expensive formats and you have players who have much invested in these formats. I have no doubt the cost of entry to Modern will come down but that will require some input from WotC otherwise prices will keep reaching absurd levels (heres looking at you fetches).
Players are paying these prices to get the cards so complaining they are out of your price range and that they should be reprinted is more of a personal problem. If you can't afford to get into a format WotC does have other, cheaper, formats. It all comes down to how much you want to invest in this game, just because you think $2500 is way to much for a deck doesn't mean that I'm not going to pay it.
I think this is a great example:
TL;DR
There are more MtG players and not enough cards to go around, especially in older formats. If you can't afford these more expensive cards maybe consider less expensive options.
XXXX
Modern
URTwinRU R.I.P.
EDH
WUGRoon of the Hidden RealmWUG
Complaining about cards needing a reprint does nothing. Sure we may see fetch land reprints soon, and we did see MMA bring more cards to market (although it drove mythic prices higher), but WoTC cant and wont reprint everything that makes modern and legacy what they are efficiently or fast enough to truely help your position. The only way prices will fall is if demand falls. If you are holding out waiting for this to happen, im afraid your doing it wrong ( see GP richmond, polularity is skyrocketing globally ). I had a friend tell me once " I need a playset of Tarmogoyfs, but there is no way in hell im paying 200 bucks for something that used to be a junk rare." This same friend bought his playset of goyfs 2 months after the release of MMA for over 500 dollars! If you want to play legacy and modern, you have to pay the price. If you dont want to pay the price, play limited, pauper, or even standard and stop complaining, it does nothing.
BUGShardless SultaiBUG
Modern
URSplinter TwinUR
BWGAbzan MidrangeBWG
Standard
URWJeskai TokensURW
No, just no.
People arent talking about wanting an exact replica of an Alpha Black Lotus. People want cards to be more available to play the game with.
Cards from revised are not antiques. They are from the 90's. And they were mass produced by the hundreds of millions.
They are valuable because a lot of people want them to play a card game, not because they are some rare museum piece.
Baseball card makers print multiple cards for the same athlete. They dont stop making them just because the first one becomes valuable.
I think another part of it is that people have realized that the ceiling for staples, and Standard staples in particular, is much higher than they anyone thought it was. 40 dollars for a Standard card would have been outrageous in the past, but that's probably because no one asked for 40 dollars. The cat's out of the bag in the sense that it almost doesn't matter how high a price goes; competitive players will pay it. Add that to the internet making even small tournaments more competitively minded, and you get modern card prices.
Edit: In fact, my first paragraph gets something wrong. Wizards has explicitly told people that cards are a safe investment.
Take a look at cards like Mutavault, Thoughtseize and Scavenging Ooze. These were highly valuable and sought after cards. Why reprint them at rare instead of at Mythic. Instead of turning these into 30/15/10 dollar cards, they would have been much more expensive. High Mutavault demands in standard would have skyrocketed the price for the mythic land, and people would be buying M14 boxes just to hope to pull them.
Why did Return Ravnica sell so well? My opinion was that it was an extremely fun, and well designed set, but really, the numbers do not come from draft, they come from businesses buying large numbers of boxes searching for Shocks.
There are plenty of these cards that are extremely valuable, will not break standard/modern, and could still be used as a big cash cow at Mythic. Imperial Seal is one of the first to come to mind.
Others like Mana Drain Mana Crypt Karakas and Force of Will are not on the restricted list and could carry limited sets. Just watch From the Vault... Damnation will make Wizards a lot of money.