I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion on the secondary market price controlling that wizards has been taking part of really from the start but has been far more obvious to me in the past 5 years based upon some new products they have been releasing and the contents as well as price points of these cards.
First of all, Wizards kind of figured out that they could and do adjust prices back in Chronocles which was also the event that drove them
Commander Products:
They decided from the start to make Sol Ring a staple card of the format. Back when they first printed Sol Ring in the first commander product, Sol Ring had 3 printings back in Alpha / Beta / Revised. My memory is a little foggy right now but the price tag of Sol Ring back when they printed it in the first commander product was somewhere around $10 - $15 for a white boardered 3rd edition copy. This might not seem huge but if the first commander product had launched without Sol Ring we would probably be at a point where Sol Ring would have quickly climbed to be a $100+ card if not for it having been reprinted here.
Reprints of cards in this product are generally kept to cards at about the $5 mark and in some exceptions $10.00 cards (Wurlmcoil Engine & Oblivion Stone at the time).
Any card that is reprinted and of worth in these products generally has its price cut in half at least temporarily for the first year after the deck is released (generally speaking until you can no longer buy the decks at MSRP / it is no longer in print).
This product is somewhat hypocritical because they will not print cards that are worth a lot in these products yet anything of worth that they reprint has a temporary price drop.
Masters Sets:
They artifically set the MSRP of this product high to essentially intorduce more stock of these cards into the market while keeping their secondary market values almost the same. Generally speaking you will see a temporary price drop of some of these cards but its generally just a few cards decrease in cost a little. The cost to make this set is no higher than any other set and in fact it should be lower because they are not creating new cards so they are only balancing the value and power of this for drafting purposes.
They seem to constantly push cards up in value if they are seeing play. There is nothing Mythic rarity about Tarmogoyf.
This series is such a joke from the standpoint that generally speaking if you open packs from it, you are actually losing money. The first set they released was well done and then they jacked up the MSRP and pushed most of the money into the mythics. I have no issues with a high powered draft set but anyone who is a regular drafter will tell you that making a set a high powered draft set is entirely in having powerful common / uncommons. This product is such a joke I cant believe what they have done to it. This is probably one of the biggest forms of highway robbery Wizards does because they directly sell as secondary market vendors essentially as the printing press.
Judge Promos:
How about you cover travel costs / hotel costs for your judges instead of using your printing press to print off a $0.10 piece of cardboard that will retail for $200. Honestly, I wish judges were properly compensated and or that wizards would pay for their travel instead of going cheap and ridiculous with this program.
The actual quantities of cards that this puts into the market is unreasonable. It can bring down the price tags of some really out there cards temporarily but at the same time when a card is printed in this program suddenly they think it does not actually need a print in quantity.
Inventions:
Ohhh look they made super mythic a rarity. This to me is like playing the lottery in pack opens. Does nobody else remember the rage when they made Mythic a rarity for magic? This program is essentially pushing mythic to a whole new level and sure while some could argue they are just adding the possibility of pulling these cards to an already established price tag of a pack I will counter with the fact that the cards they put in these are cards that NEED MORE PRINTING. This program adds so few copies of any of these to circulation and in almost every case the price tag of these cards is higher than the price of the original card.
This program does not add reasonable quantities of stock to the market. Most of these cards are highly sought after cards that need more in circulation but given that the price point of these cards is almost always higher than the normal copies it really does nothing to subside the demand for these cards.
From The Vaults:
The quantities and availability of this product need to be brought up. I think the MSRP and value of these products are fine I am even fine with big stores like walmart not getting their hands on these. They need to provide a LOT more of this product to LGS stores to the point that they can actually obtain these products for their players rather than these products always being sold at the LGS at $70+. What if the LGS could just sell twice as many of them at MSRP? The stores would make just as much money and wizards would actually make more because they would sell more of them.
Really none of this is new but really since the first commander product / since judges started getting a lot more new cards for their services I have seen this printing press that is Wizards feel like it is getting more and more greedy. We have seen so many buyouts / price hikes in the last few years that its obvious that instead of things getting better things are just getting worse for us players. I dont know what to really say other than wizards needs to rheel in some of the greed.
The MSRP of these products needs to be checked. I am mostly here from the standpoint of the masters sets. There needs to be a little bit of expected gain from these rather than an expected loss.
The availability of products needs to be improved. I am mostly on FTV, Judge, and Invention products here. I wish judges were actually properly rewarded but seeing as thats unlikely to change, perhaps try to give out more copies of these cards to judges. I would like a higher circulation of those cards if possible. You could also make the Inventions more common assuming you continue to do that (I know they had mentioned they probably are not for now).
Stop going so close on the current price tag of things. It feels like the selection of precon decks and masters products are so closely monitored that there is very little gain for players. In a lot of cases, we need to bring price tags down and establish new prices because of buyouts on stupid cards. Captain Sissay does not need to be a $45 card. In a lot of cases the current price tags of cards is dictated by how many times it has been printed and how old it is. Sol Ring would easily be a $100 card right now if they had not printed it into the ground. I am fine with it being a sub $5.00 card but how is it fair that it keeps getting reprinted because its cheap when another card is expensive only because its been forever since it has seen print???
I think of these products, the judge program is the oldest but really it wasn't until 2009 that they started really ramping up what they were offering judges for this program. FTV started up in 2008 so it was a little bit before they really started ramping up the judge program. I guess my question is why does it feel like wizards is getting a bigger and bigger piece of the pie while players are getting more and more hosed by the secondary market and buyouts? These products that should in fact be keeping some of the prices in check seem to just adjust to the current market in each case and just get worse for the players.
I think this is a very real thing and I am interested in discussing it assuming anyone has anything to add or discuss.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
No, Sol Ring was already a staple in the format. Wizards just decided to reprint it into oblivion to keep up with demand.
Lets take the what if factor in here. What if Captain Sisay was reprinted into oblivion before the buyout? Do you think it would be a $45 card? There are a ton of legends and old cards that have high price tags because they have not been printed into oblivion. Sol Ring was saved from having a high price because it was reprinted into an oblivion right before the format boomed in a way that would have pushed Sol Ring high.
Cards being reprinted at reasonable prices with good quantities is what keeps prices low. FTV almost never lowers the price of cards in part because it rarely goes for MSRP as well as being printed with too few copies to increase supply in a meaningful way. If the masters products were sold at a lower MSRP as well as in a higher stock that then prices would be controlled better (assuming you don't downgrade quality)
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
I guess my question is why does it feel like wizards is getting a bigger and bigger piece of the pie while players are getting more and more hosed by the secondary market and buyouts? These products that should in fact be keeping some of the prices in check seem to just adjust to the current market in each case and just get worse for the players.
I think this is a very real thing and I am interested in discussing it assuming anyone has anything to add or discuss.
WoTC is getting a "bigger and bigger piece of the pie while players are getting more and more hosed by the secondary market and buyouts" partially because they are using an outdated system in which they are trying to provide mass card printings for all of their formats through their largest quantity of printings in a year - Standard. This attempt at rationing cards to Modern, Legacy, Vintage, EDH and whatever else people play by printing crossover cards into Standard must come to an end. Standard is too limited in concept, whith the design constraints of drafting dictating the design constraints of Standard there is just no room left to find design space for cards useful in other formats. WoTC can't even put Counterspell into standard!
Every player is getting slapped in the face when WoTC tries to feed any other format besides Standard, when printing crossover cards into Standard-legal products. WoTC needs to incorporate the concept seen in Commander where the products comes with new cards whose set-legality is varied. WoTC needs to make it so that EVERY Masters product has the "gravitas" that Commander has and comes with new card printings that BYPASS other formats. The 56 new cards in C17 skip the Modern and Standard formats. New card printings that skip formats is a great idea that would help every format-specific product because you could just make a new card that is a functional reprint of an old over-priced card and by doing so (with a narrowed range of sets the card is legal in) you introduce a new price point that makes it so that the new card doesn't hinge old the old card's price. This would make the $10 MSRP on Masters sets more justifiable.
EDIT: I discussed the topic of needing new card printings in all Master's products a while back..
Cards featured in a Commander product should be exclusively designed for Commander.
I play both EDH and Legacy, and I look to all products as potential card sources. I'd be pretty miffed if WotC stopped printing Commander playables in Standard products. Most of us would be.
You'll also notice that many of the best commander staples are cards that see play in other eternal formats too. If we limit Commander products to cards that are good in EDH but not in Legacy or Vintage, that’s hamstringing design imo.
I like how in the 1990s WotC just printed fun and interesting cards - and the players got to decide how to use them. I think nowadays they are trying too hard to sculpt and manipulate formats and archetypes.
I would also be disappointed if WoTC stopped printing Commander playables (reprints or otherweise) into the standard format - but only in this current paradigm of rationing cards to all formats via the largest quantity of printings.. through Standard...
Let's take a view at this from 1,000 feet up.
Those 56 new commander cards are VERY unique. They are special in the way that WoTC has listed their format legality and at their current quantity, 56 cards per year, is an unfortunate oversight of their value. This allotment of 56 cards doesn't have to cator to the concepts of the draft environment, the limited environment, the Standard format or even the Modern format! That is amazing isn't it? Those 56 cards are worth MORE to all of Magic's formats than their current level of usage indicates.
Like you said, crimhead, you "like how in the 1990s WotC just printed fun and interesting cards - and the players got to decide how to use them. I think nowadays they are trying too hard to sculpt and manipulate formats and archetypes" and I can relate. I've been around for a minute too and have the same fond memories of Magic's past. Those awesome aspects of Magic's past are unfortunately still there - in the past - as you are bringing to our awareness. What if we could have this back? Well we can actually, to an extent.
The 1,000 foot view of how WoTC chooses its rations to the Modern, Legacy, Vintage or Commander formats looks like a never-ending struggle. The struggle itself is, for those formats, finding the space for reprints/new cards in an environment, the Standard format, that just is not conducive to catoring to any other formats really. WoTC can't even put Counterspell into Standard. The design requirements for the draft environment also shape the design requirements for the Standard format and THAT is the entire problem with trying to cator to any other formats besides Standard, when printing cards in Standard-legal sets.
WoTC could better serve ALL of its formats if they made MORE products that BYPASS other formats, like how the 56 Commander cards bypass ALLLLLLLL of those roadblocks presented by Modern, Standard and drafting/limited.
Commander should have its own, larger, list of cards that bypass Standard and Modern. Commander products can be the homes for these kinds of printings.
Vintage & Legacy should also have their own place for new cards that can be printed that also skip the Standard and Modern formats. Looking at the Eternal, Iconic and M25 Masters series, WoTC should take this into consideration. They can extend this concept to the Modern Masters series too. This would breathe new life into at least 3 eternal formats and also make it much easier for Standard and Modern products to stand on their own and focus on their specific range of design. The pittance of Modern and Legacy viable cards we see come out of Standard is a slap to the face and understandably so, they just aren't very concerned with trying to do so. But there is a solution to please all.
Magic has become a much larger game since the age of "in the 1990s WotC just printed fun and interesting cards - and the players got to decide how to use them" and WoTC must continue twisting those knobs and dials of format-tuning otherwise the whole creation dies. It will die like a limb losing blood flow. Like a body, WoTC has shaped these formats to have a degree of, shall we say, "arterial flow" between them in the form of crossover card printings. But it's not enough.
It's high time to improve the current model and give the Modern, Eternal, Iconic and frankly ALL Masters series some "gravitas" like what Commander has and give all of these formats places for increased card design IN THE FORM OF NEW CARD PRINTINGS THAT CAN SKIP FORMATS.
Firstly, I'm a casual EDH player who spends about £300 GBP on singles/commander product a year. I've bought about 10 boosters in the last ten years. I don't gamble with boosters and I don't fork out for tier 1 mythics.
I understand that my demographic is probably the one that makes Wizards the least profit so I don't expect anything to change but I think the following would have a huge beneficial effect on the secondary market.
Let's look at the card Exotic Orchard. It was a bulk rare when Commander 2016 (four color decks) came out. Now it's even cheaper. Meanwhile, City of Brass and Mana Confluence are 6 & 7 dollars respectively. If Wizards puts too much Value into a precon like a Commander deck the MRSP goes up.....
BUT
What would happen to the deck MRSP if Wizards announced reprints much further in advance....
For example, let's say Commander 2018 has five 5-color decks. And when the spoiler season begins, they spoil that not only is Mana Confluence is in each deck......it's also being reprinted in this Falls standard format expansion....
By announcing that the card will be in heavy circulation in a few weeks, speculators and investors won't want to hoard as many copies as they can acquire.
Older chase cards can be reprinted by pledging to reprint a certain amount of time in the next few years. For example, imagine if Wizards announced that Mana Drain was in Commander 2018 but it's also going to be printed in Conspiracy 2018 a few months later and we'll also commit to ensuring that it's in Commander 2108 too...
I know that it's our choice to play magic, and the it's wizards right to market their game how they see fit, but it's crazy that we players allow them to charge such crazy prices for cardboard. The predatory supply and demand is like the diamond industry stashing 90+% of the worlds diamond supply to keep prices high.
MSRP is the suggested price by the maker of the product aka wizards. The retailer selling said product never has to go off of the MSRP which is where you get price hikes from LGS and online sellers. You will never see a price hike above MSRP from a seller like Walmart / Target because they sell everything at MSRP. Some of the challenge then becomes having product that you can sell to these type of vendors or selling the product directly online so that your userbase can purchase the product for the MSRP. If a product is widely available in proper quantities at MSRP there is no reason for anyone to price hike above MSRP but generally speaking the product is limited or there is some limiting factor such as needing to buy commander products in complete sets.
The commander product has a unique issue due to the fact that each deck is not sought after equally which often turns to price hikes on the sought after deck and the deck that is not being sought after sitting on the shelf. If you were to compare it to say the Masters drafting sets, the masters drafting sets usually have issues with high MSRP and low availability.
Take into account the Commander 2017 decks. With a quck check to TCGPlayer I can see that Vamps and Dragons are both pushing $50.00 but Cats and Wizards are both sitting at $35.00. This is mostly due to the fact that retailers have to buy these decks as a full set of 4 from wizards so if they are able to sell the dragon and vampre deck at $50.00 each that gives them $100.00. Generally speaking MSRP is about twice what a store has to pay for a product so a set of 4 being 1/2 $35 = $17.50 per deck or $70.00 per set of these. This often means that a retailer has to sit on the last two decks for a good amount of time or gut them out for singles and sell those independently. If those selling online did not price hike and sold the Vamp and Dragon decks at $35.00 each they would make no profit for selling these two decks as it costs them about the same to buy a box of 4 as to sell these two products. Sure, they will sell some amount of the cat and wizard deck but you might get a case where you sell 20 of each of the desired decks for every 5 of the less desired decks.
The commander product is an issue in the way in which they are printing and distributing the product it encourages price gouging by anyone selling any real quantity of them. Even if they were to give an expensive card to the commander product it still does not solve the issue that the decks they release are not equal in value or desirability. You will still have the same issue unless they change their printing and distribution tactics.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
No, Sol Ring was already a staple in the format. Wizards just decided to reprint it into oblivion to keep up with demand.
Lets take the what if factor in here. What if Captain Sisay was reprinted into oblivion before the buyout? Do you think it would be a $45 card? There are a ton of legends and old cards that have high price tags because they have not been printed into oblivion. Sol Ring was saved from having a high price because it was reprinted into an oblivion right before the format boomed in a way that would have pushed Sol Ring high.
Cards being reprinted at reasonable prices with good quantities is what keeps prices low. FTV almost never lowers the price of cards in part because it rarely goes for MSRP as well as being printed with too few copies to increase supply in a meaningful way. If the masters products were sold at a lower MSRP as well as in a higher stock that then prices would be controlled better (assuming you don't downgrade quality)
Your post implied that Wizards made the decision that Sol Ring should be a staple. But it was already a staple when the format was just EDH, no Commander involved.
I don't disagree that Sol Ring's price probably would have skyrocketed if Wizards hadn't printed it (the Commander products have definitely increased interest in the format), I'm simply saying that Wizards' decision to reprint it had nothing to do with attempting to influence what cards were played in the format.
I think as much blame that sits with Wizards, players who treat the game as an investmemt, actual investors, and speculators are also to blame.
Yes, Wizards could have a looser reprint policy, reprinting all of the higher valued cards in normal priced product, but speculators and investors ruin that. They were the ones who forced the Reserve List into being. They're the ones behind the Sisay buyout, Riptide Lab, Patron Wizard, etc. Granted, some regular players are getting their hands on these cards, but people who buy multiples to make money are a real danger to the game.
I agree that Wizards shouod find a better way to get reprints to eternal formats if Standard is going to have a low comparative power level. I understand that Wizards want's to limit powercreep, and that is admirable, but they go too far the other way and end up with eternal formats not being changed enough. Imagine 56 new cards at Modern powerlevel being pushed straight into Modern?
They decided from the start to make Sol Ring a staple card of the format. Back when they first printed Sol Ring in the first commander product, Sol Ring had 3 printings back in Alpha / Beta / Revised.
5, actually. Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, and From the Vault: Relics.
They artificially set the MSRP of this product (Masters sets) high to essentially introduce more stock of these cards into the market while keeping their secondary market values almost the same.
To be fair, they initially set a lower MSRP for Masters packs, but stores just jacked up the prices anyway, so WotC decided to get their share of that price markup. I can't say I blame them for that.
They seem to constantly push cards up in value if they are seeing play. There is nothing Mythic rarity about Tarmogoyf.
How about you cover travel costs / hotel costs for your judges instead of using your printing press to print off a $0.10 piece of cardboard that will retail for $200. Honestly, I wish judges were properly compensated and or that wizards would pay for their travel instead of going cheap and ridiculous with this program.
At that point Judges could be considered employees, which can cause all sorts of issues. I'm Canadian; can I be employed by an American company that has no official presence in Canada? (Probably, but there could be some red tape to deal with.) And if so, do I want to deal with the tax headaches this could cause? (Definitely not.) And can you blame Wizards for paying their judges $200 while only spending $0.10? I can't.
Does nobody else remember the rage when they made Mythic a rarity for magic?
Apples to Oranges here. Mythic Rare includes cards that you can only get from that rarity (ie they aren't printed elsewhere). Masterpiece rarity are all reprints; it's not like they printed Smuggler's Copter at Masterpiece rarity and nowhere else.
This program is essentially pushing mythic to a whole new level and sure while some could argue they are just adding the possibility of pulling these cards to an already established price tag of a pack I will counter with the fact that the cards they put in these are cards that NEED MORE PRINTING.
Yeah, Divert really needed another printing. Before being printed as a Masterpiece it was a whopping $2.20. Thankfully it's now down to a more reasonable $2.00.
I don't see much "controlling" of the secondary market here. If anything, I mostly see them reducing the prices of secondary market cards (like Tarmogoyf going from over $200 to under $100 after several reprints). They also have to be careful what sort of reprints they include in products; Captain Sisay is hard to reprint outside of Commander because she is a named character from several hundred years ago (meaning she's probably dead), and because of that you're not going to see her in a Standard set release. But if she's included in a Commander deck, the price of that deck may skyrocket at your LGS to match its internal value, thus putting that deck out of the reach of Commander players, which is counter to the intention of these decks (cheap way to enter the format).
A lot of your arguments sound more like Wizards responding to the primary and secondary markets, not controlling them. I think WotC has done a good job over the past few years in dropping the prices of many cards, but it's only been a few years since they started, so we need to give them some more time to continue printing more cards. They've also started out conservatively to make sure they did things right, rather than ending up with another Chronicles debacle. But they have increased the number of reprints since Modern Masters I; we have not one but TWO Masters products coming out in the next few months, potentially (or assuredly with Iconic Masters) with more reprints to drop prices. Maybe Captain Sisay is in Masters 25?
To be fair, they initially set a lower MSRP for Masters packs, but stores just jacked up the prices anyway, so WotC decided to get their share of that price markup. I can't say I blame them for that.
I don't know if that's actually the case. To me, it seems that WotC realizes that if a sealed product has a higher EV than the MSRP then stores/dealers will have more incentive to open the product and sell the singles and/or increase the price of the the sealed product. When they put together Commander products and Masters sets they seem to be very careful about the EV of the product so that the product can get to players at the desired price and availability.
To be fair, they initially set a lower MSRP for Masters packs, but stores just jacked up the prices anyway, so WotC decided to get their share of that price markup. I can't say I blame them for that.
It also comes back to the supply of the product. The masters packs especially the first print (which is where that occurred) was criminally difficult to obtain. It seems like whenever they have a good product at a good price point they somehow underestimate demand and fail to meet it. It comes back again to the question of what if you were able to continue to supply stores with stocks of a product that they want for say 6 months or something? They continue to print commander products for example for stores for a good amount of time before cutting off printing.
Rare Tarmogoyf also sells packs. If it was a normal MSRP ($4.00) set and or there was a lot more of the product in circulation I could see increasing the rarity but the set is ridiculously expensive and in low supply generally.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
There's a lot to address here, and a variety of complex decisions being made by WotC with a variety of different reasons all trying to find a way to best appease the greatest number of players. So let's get started.
Commander Products:
Overall I consider the Commander products very well implemented. I think they knew from the start that Sol-Ring was going to be a necessary reprint- tons of players have fond memories of playing with this powerful card on lunchroom players, and being able to bring that power to any commander deck made it an obvious mandatory inclusion, though its legality in EDH is certainly a matter of debate. But WotC is leaving the players to police the format, and it's legal, so as such, I think we can all agree this was a great choice for reprint. The price of Sol Ring was steadily rising and until then only had Judge/FTV reprints. I think the problem with reprinting overly valuable cards in Commander decks is that the decks are designed with an MSRP of affordability in mind, and with that accessibility comes the problem of "what if one commander deck came with Force of Will?" Well, obviously, that deck is going to sell more than any other by vast quantities- any commander product that features an expensive card suddenly becomes much harder and more expensive for the intended audience to obtain. You could see this with the Political Puppets precon, which featured Flusterstorm, or the Devour For Power deck, which introduced Scavenging Ooze. Any product featuring an overly "hot" card causes a run on that specific product- right now we're starting to see the beginnings of that with the new Vampire deck featuring Teferi's Protection, but by and large it's been a while before we've seen the problems Political Puppets and Devour for Power experienced. I think for the most part WoTC has corrected the initial issues these decks had that resulted in them being basically unobtainable. The other issue is that reprinting expensive cards in commander precons is simply not the place to do it. Expensive cards are often extremely powerful, to the point of being format staples. If you do it to one deck, you have to do it to all 4 or 5, or you just won't sell nearly as many of the deck missing the reprint of a $50 bill. Additionally, you have people buying the deck not because they want the deck for commander play, they just want the expensive reprint. If you want to make a card more accessible, you put it in a reprint set like EMA or MMA.
Honestly, with a few exceptions (Flusterstorm, TNN, and I guess we'll see about Teferi's Protection), the commander decks seem pretty well done and well balanced and represent a good value for $35. You start putting $50 cards in them, and I guarantee there will be price gouging and hoarding.
Master Sets:
This is a really tricky one to get right. Masters sets, IMO, are as close as WotC will ever get to breaking the RL, which was created in response to their first Master's set, Chronicles. I'm not going to get into the messy RL debate, but I do need to underline one thing that for the rest of this post is relevant: The RL exists regardless of how you feel about it.
There was some degree of unease in regards to the execution and implementation of the original Modern Masters- its reception would be determining how/if WotC did more of these in the future, and they were very cautious, perhaps overly so, in regards to the print run, wanting to definitely not overprint supply. Given the limited nature of these sets and the high value cards contained within, the pricetag on these serves as a gatekeeper. Firstly, you simply cannot price these packs the same as whatever the current standard set is. You simply wouldn't sell any more standard packs until the MM supply was gone (which it would be, on day 1 at any store that didn't raise its prices). Who wants another pack of AKH when you could be cracking real money cards without having to open an Invo or Mythic? It's the equivalent of a $10 lottery ticket- higher risk, but higher odds and higher rewards. MM1 was a success, but there were some complaints about how hard it was to get packs, and retailers tended to gouge on them, citing the higher demand and limited supply. MM2 would have a higher print run, and the EV wasn't as great. It was much more obtainable for longer. I think the goal is that a customer opening a box of MM product should generally break about even, with some degree of variance above and below EV, but large differences in price vs EV will result in one of two things- retailers raising the price, or the product not selling at all. Ideally, you print the right amount to where everyone who wants some can get some at the MSRP, and it take a while to deplete your supply, and it drops some card prices and provides much needed reprints for cards that are not easily reprintable in standard for power/flavor reasons. $10/pack is fine if the value is there. Make it cheaper and either people won't be able to get a hold of it because it's sold out, or retailers just raise the price on it anyway. I don't need every other card to be Tarmogoyf, but I also don't need every other card to be Crucible of Fire either, so a $10 pricetag is reasonable if the value is there. I feel like MM3 and EMA are sets that were done right, and served their purpose well, with a print run and EV that was appropriate- this product seemed to be more accessible and experience less gouging and served its purpose of delivering some badly needed reprints.
Judge Promos: The reason WotC doesn't want to actually pay judges is that this is making them closer and closer to being actual employees, which would then result in them having to provide all the benefits and protections and minimum wages etc that employers are mandated to have. Paying them actual money creates a legal foothold for a judge to argue that he is a WotC employee- their name is on his paychecks after all.
Whether it's morally right or not for WotC to avoid calling judges employees for the sake of business is another argument, but I honestly think if WotC had to pay their judges actual cash and give them actual benefits.....we'd have a LOT fewer judges.
Your argument that a judge foil means they won't make an actual reprint is completely false however. Let me just list a few Judge cards that also got a reprint:
1998: Lighting Bolt
99: Memory Lapse
2000: Counterspell, Vamp Tutor
2003: Argothian Enchantress, Living Death
2004: 'Geddon, Balance,Phyrexian Negator
2005: Gemstone Mine, Sol Ring, Mishra's Factory
2006-present: Grim Lavamancer, Pernicious Deed, Vindicate, Demonic Tutor, Goblin Piledriver, Dark Ritual, Maze of Ith, Burning Wish, Onslaught Fetchlands, Entomb, Bitterblossom, SoFI, Doubling Season, Goblin Welder, Dark Confidant....
I could keep going honestly, but reviewing all the judge promos, in actuality more judge promos than not have received reprints. Recently, you may note Force of Will, Mana Drain, Karakas, and Flusterstorm as good examples of this. The ones that haven't received reprints are pretty much RL cards that were only made as promos due to the loophole in the RL that got closed off. Nearly every card I've listed has taken a major price hit because with very few exceptions, they ALL have been reprinted en masse.
Let's move on to Inventions/Masterpieces/Invos. We're not going to discuss the hated aesthetics of the Invos, but more to the point- what I like best about Invos is that is gives even the casual standard player who just started a year ago the chance to open something extremely exotic. It gives them a powerful collection boost that can be played or traded for even cards on the RL. But hey, let's look at the argument that the Invos and Masterpieces need more printings anyway. Again, I think there are but a handful of cards that legit actually need higher print numbers. The rest, well, they got their reprints or don't actually need them. Do we really need more Counterspells, another printing of FoW, or even Doomsdays or Lotus Petals for that matter? I mean, I'll give you Crucible of Worlds and Chalice of the Void, and probably a few others, but in reality, just because a card could certainly use another printing on as larger scale doesn't mean they shouldn't be made into Masterpieces or Invos. It just means they need to reprint it. Give it a bit of time and I'm pretty sure most of these cards will end up getting their reprint by the time the next EMA rolls around. It's a good thing that WotC has found another outlet to introduce more of a certain card in a controlled way, not a bad one.
FTV: FTVs are a product you really don't want to make too many of, they lose their appeal and collector's value which is basically what they're being marketed as. There's nothing special about an FTV WalMart edition. I admit they can be hard to obtain, but that's kind of the point, and they drive hard traffic to LGSs and provide guaranteed sales- they're almost made as a tool to boost LGS profits and product allocation given as a reward for having lots of players. It kind of sucks that "good" FTVs get gouged and sold out, but then again, if you made them crappy or overproduced them, there'd be absolutely nothing special about them and stores would just wind up with some really slowly selling box sets on their shelves for entirely too long. I mean, I can STILL go to one of three LGSs and buy an FTV Annihilation for MSRP.
Onto your closing statements:
If your Masters sets of limited print run result in more gains than losses by players, stores are simply going to either open the packs themselves and sell the singles, or they will hike up the MSRP to match demand (see the original Modern Masters). MSRP is just that- SUGGESTED retail pricing.
Availability- the sets lacking it have improved (EMA and MM3 print runs have pretty much met demand, I can't recall anyone locally complaining that they couldn't get the product from these they wanted if they were willing to pay for it. A card being a judge promo does not preclude it from being reprinted en masse and I've provided numerous examples. FTV sets have, IMO, appropriate attainability. A good example of poor attainability would be the Commander Anthology run- that was the product that really struck me as underprinted. No one wants FTV WalMart edition.
The secondary market getting hosed with buyouts is not Wizard's fault-they're not the ones snatching up every copy of every Legends card, and trying to address it by making massive reprints of valuable cards is literally what led to the creation of the reserve list. Really, unless you're a Legacy player, or you just really like North Star in EDH, the buyout pretty much don't affect you much, and newer and better alternatives for commander decks are being printed all the time. So you can't play Hazezon Tamar in your EDH deck cuz you don't want to spend $90 on one and it will never be reprinted- I'm sure you can find plenty of viable alternatives in R/W for token generation. Granted, there are a few cards that are reprintable,but just super awkward to do so. Captain Sisay is a good example- Who is Captain Sisay to newer players? They don't know the Weatherlight cycle, they just know the fab 5 walkers if that. She can't be dropped into the standard storyline, she's not iconic enough to get thrown into a commander product (she spent half the Weatherlight cycle kidnapped after all- something Mirri didn't do), she's not powerful enough to make it into a Modern Masters set as anything besides a bulk rare.....where do you reprint her? An FTV: Iconic Side Characters? As an aside, Captain Sisay is NOT $45. You can get on TCG right now and grab one of many copies for $20ish, so she's hardly the best example of a card needing a reprint.
WotC isn't getting bigger pieces of the pie, they're making the pie bigger so everyone's pieces are bigger- lots of big name cards have been reprinted in the last 3 years to satiate demand and Iconic Masters looks to be seriously continuing that theme. Yes, there are a few cards left that still need a reprint- Rishadan Port and Chalice of the Void come to mind, but I feel they're holding off on those for the next MMA/EMA. The best tasting pie, though, is still the RL pieces, which is an entirely different can of worms I'm not opening up here.
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Legacy: TES
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
In most cases demand drives the market. If, for example, Mishra's bauble wasn't popular, do you think it'd command a high price despite being uncommon? It's getting a reprint but it's still over 20 bucks. Lions eye diamond is arguably one of most busted cards and it's over 100 a piece. Inquisition and Path are printed into oblivion and they're still very expensive despite that. Sol ring has been printed into oblivion and they're still 5 dollars a piece on average. Collective brutality is going up despite being rotated out because of what it does. Because Drop of Honey is over 500 a pop players are now playing nodes and what used to be a 50 cent card is verging towards 10.
While I can agree with most of your statement about which is the coast controlling Market they are printing what they can to have the Supply to meet the players demands. I feel that if there was no Reserve list, they will reprint certain cards from there too because they want all the formats to thrive
I think your main complaints come from a misunderstanding over what reprints are supposed to do.
Wizards isn't trying to lower the value of collections (by much at least). Instead they just want the supply of cards to go up. They want a situation where people, especially casual players can go to their local shop and buy rare cards that they want. That furthers local business and keeps their FNM model open. They don't want a low supply where people are forced online to buy cards.
These reprint products aren't meant to lower the cost barrier to entry. They're meant to give local shops product to sell and ways to lure people in the door.
Thought I'd clarify that wizards isn't setting prices high on the Masters sets because of wanting to keep card prices high. They are actually doing it to ride the secondary market prices and make more money from less work. It's literally 1/3 fewer packs per box and because of the card values they are able to move these at 2x msrp of a normal booster box to distributors. Think about that: It takes 1/3 less cardboard per box of cards along with other raw materials. The negotiations on the print run costs with the printing companies would be significantly less.
The sets are also printed for the stores since they make significantly more money on these masters sets than standard sets. Basically, us players eat the bill on the masters products. Stores and distributors tend to eat the bill on the standard sets. I guess you can say wizards "funds" standard via selling modern masters sets to a ravenous playerbase.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
To be fair, they initially set a lower MSRP for Masters packs, but stores just jacked up the prices anyway, so WotC decided to get their share of that price markup. I can't say I blame them for that.
I don't know if that's actually the case.
It happened. MM1 had a MSRP of $6.99, but most stores sold them at $10-12 each at the time. WotC realised they had under-priced their product, so they upped the MSRP for MM2.
You simply sell them at big box stores and sell them till demand is stasitified. YGO does it quite a bit and you never see sculptors try and buy YGO products for these purposes. Because Konami does it frequently and often enough to render sculpting pointless.
I thought it would be interesting to have a discussion on the secondary market price controlling that wizards has been taking part of really from the start but has been far more obvious to me in the past 5 years based upon some new products they have been releasing and the contents as well as price points of these cards.
First of all, Wizards kind of figured out that they could and do adjust prices back in Chronocles which was also the event that drove them
Commander Products:
They decided from the start to make Sol Ring a staple card of the format. Back when they first printed Sol Ring in the first commander product, Sol Ring had 3 printings back in Alpha / Beta / Revised. My memory is a little foggy right now but the price tag of Sol Ring back when they printed it in the first commander product was somewhere around $10 - $15 for a white boardered 3rd edition copy. This might not seem huge but if the first commander product had launched without Sol Ring we would probably be at a point where Sol Ring would have quickly climbed to be a $100+ card if not for it having been reprinted here.
Reprints of cards in this product are generally kept to cards at about the $5 mark and in some exceptions $10.00 cards (Wurlmcoil Engine & Oblivion Stone at the time).
Any card that is reprinted and of worth in these products generally has its price cut in half at least temporarily for the first year after the deck is released (generally speaking until you can no longer buy the decks at MSRP / it is no longer in print).
Likely your best argument. Commander decks are a soild (one of hte only really solid) Return on investment from a sealed fixed deck.
This product is somewhat hypocritical because they will not print cards that are worth a lot in these products yet anything of worth that they reprint has a temporary price drop.
Masters Sets:
They artifically set the MSRP of this product high to essentially intorduce more stock of these cards into the market while keeping their secondary market values almost the same. Generally speaking you will see a temporary price drop of some of these cards but its generally just a few cards decrease in cost a little. The cost to make this set is no higher than any other set and in fact it should be lower because they are not creating new cards so they are only balancing the value and power of this for drafting purposes.
They seem to constantly push cards up in value if they are seeing play. There is nothing Mythic rarity about Tarmogoyf.
Agreed In truth they should ban the goyf to open up design space and deck vialibliy in modern.
This series is such a joke from the standpoint that generally speaking if you open packs from it, you are actually losing money. The first set they released was well done and then they jacked up the MSRP and pushed most of the money into the mythics. I have no issues with a high powered draft set but anyone who is a regular drafter will tell you that making a set a high powered draft set is entirely in having powerful common / uncommons. This product is such a joke I cant believe what they have done to it. This is probably one of the biggest forms of highway robbery Wizards does because they directly sell as secondary market vendors essentially as the printing press.
I could make the argument about what the market will bear but I 100% agree with you. Raising the MSRP on MM is a dick move designed to impact the single market and to keep modern from being the preimer format. Its not even about money from Modern Masters its to try and keep price of entery of MODERN lower so people still are playing Standard.
Judge Promos:
How about you cover travel costs / hotel costs for your judges instead of using your printing press to print off a $0.10 piece of cardboard that will retail for $200. Honestly, I wish judges were properly compensated and or that wizards would pay for their travel instead of going cheap and ridiculous with this program.
The actual quantities of cards that this puts into the market is unreasonable. It can bring down the price tags of some really out there cards temporarily but at the same time when a card is printed in this program suddenly they think it does not actually need a print in quantity.
While they should compenate judges its unlikely to happen. Companies don't like magic new expenses to pay that might be spoofed. Someone screws up a judge promo fraude they are out pennies soemone screws up a CASH one they are out a fair bit more. The number is small and No one is buying a judge eddtion just to make a competive deck, if you are buying this its for PIMP factor. Eh Throw judged a bone if they took this away its very unlikely to be replaced with real $$$ compensation for judges and would likely hurt the game.
Inventions:
Ohhh look they made super mythic a rarity. This to me is like playing the lottery in pack opens. Does nobody else remember the rage when they made Mythic a rarity for magic? This program is essentially pushing mythic to a whole new level and sure while some could argue they are just adding the possibility of pulling these cards to an already established price tag of a pack I will counter with the fact that the cards they put in these are cards that NEED MORE PRINTING. This program adds so few copies of any of these to circulation and in almost every case the price tag of these cards is higher than the price of the original card.
This program does not add reasonable quantities of stock to the market. Most of these cards are highly sought after cards that need more in circulation but given that the price point of these cards is almost always higher than the normal copies it really does nothing to subside the demand for these cards.
The purpose of this produce is not to increase supply but to entice collectors to open their huge wallets.
From The Vaults:
The quantities and availability of this product need to be brought up. I think the MSRP and value of these products are fine I am even fine with big stores like walmart not getting their hands on these. They need to provide a LOT more of this product to LGS stores to the point that they can actually obtain these products for their players rather than these products always being sold at the LGS at $70+. What if the LGS could just sell twice as many of them at MSRP? The stores would make just as much money and wizards would actually make more because they would sell more of them.
I agree. I strognly support printing more good sealed product. The fact that these NEVER get sold for MSRP is proof enough their is a problem.
Really none of this is new but really since the first commander product / since judges started getting a lot more new cards for their services I have seen this printing press that is Wizards feel like it is getting more and more greedy. We have seen so many buyouts / price hikes in the last few years that its obvious that instead of things getting better things are just getting worse for us players. I dont know what to really say other than wizards needs to rheel in some of the greed.
The MSRP of these products needs to be checked. I am mostly here from the standpoint of the masters sets. There needs to be a little bit of expected gain from these rather than an expected loss.
The availability of products needs to be improved. I am mostly on FTV, Judge, and Invention products here. I wish judges were actually properly rewarded but seeing as thats unlikely to change, perhaps try to give out more copies of these cards to judges. I would like a higher circulation of those cards if possible. You could also make the Inventions more common assuming you continue to do that (I know they had mentioned they probably are not for now).
Stop going so close on the current price tag of things. It feels like the selection of precon decks and masters products are so closely monitored that there is very little gain for players. In a lot of cases, we need to bring price tags down and establish new prices because of buyouts on stupid cards. Captain Sissay does not need to be a $45 card. In a lot of cases the current price tags of cards is dictated by how many times it has been printed and how old it is. Sol Ring would easily be a $100 card right now if they had not printed it into the ground. I am fine with it being a sub $5.00 card but how is it fair that it keeps getting reprinted because its cheap when another card is expensive only because its been forever since it has seen print???
I think of these products, the judge program is the oldest but really it wasn't until 2009 that they started really ramping up what they were offering judges for this program. FTV started up in 2008 so it was a little bit before they really started ramping up the judge program. I guess my question is why does it feel like wizards is getting a bigger and bigger piece of the pie while players are getting more and more hosed by the secondary market and buyouts? These products that should in fact be keeping some of the prices in check seem to just adjust to the current market in each case and just get worse for the players.
I think this is a very real thing and I am interested in discussing it assuming anyone has anything to add or discuss.
This is mostly the case of capitalism supply/demand. If everyone in the MTG market said "I am not paying more then $20 for ANY standard card ever. Standard singles would go down. Unfortunately their are enough people in MTG that are willing to play more. Their is also a second aspect of MTG where people are ONLY playing the stockmarket aspect of it. They have never played a game game legacy/standard/draft they only care about card price movement and how they can Gain/lose from it. I don't care about any of the fancy foil printings of older cards that are not bulk they are not printed for PLAYERS they are printed for collectors. Do people foil our their entire deck if all they want to do is compeat NO ofcourse not, as long as their is no benfit to foil cardes (super secret tech excluded) they are just more expensive normal ones and don't really matter. The biggest problem are the fixed products and large print run sets where a) FTV is a supply issue their are not enough printed peroid. THIS needs to be a walmart product. b) MSRP in MM and simlar products should be set to the same as a standard set. The only reason they are doing this is fear of modern becoming the favored set by players.
Do people foil our their entire deck if all they want to do is compeat NO ofcourse not,
b) MSRP in MM and simlar products should be set to the same as a standard set. The only reason they are doing this is fear of modern becoming the favored set by players. [/b]
Because you seem to be unaware of it yourself I though I would jump in here. Your problem with Masters sets isn't the problem you think it is, its the same problem you have the the FTVs, purposefully low supply.
Also, of course people foil out decks to compete in tournaments.
Ironicly enough you actually MADE money by opening Masters boosters in the first bunch of weeks.
Not just 1 random booster, you had to open a lot , as the big hits recover so much product you open (and selling all of it, including the small junk actually gives you a net profit), as the estimated value of a booster including all the extra foils in them did result in a net profit.
But with everything that has a net profit attached to it, people overbuy it and prices plummet over time. The big hits lose value and all the junk loses even more, to the point they are almost impossible to flip (still sells complete sets of commons/uncommons for example, but that involves sorting all the cards you open, which you better enjoy doing, otherwise its just "work").
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Anyway, all the products try to have a somewhat equal value, as a lot of people "obvisiously" buy pre-made product as it contains value.
And if they sell sets of 4-5 different pre-made decks and just 1 has big value, it will be sold out, while the other product hangs in limbo.
A store has to buy the packs of each product, they cannot just order more and more of the product that sells very well (otherwise everyone would do precisely that).
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Lots of cards are expensive simply because they are hard to find and by being hard to find the demand is kept down too, as its not a "mandatory" card and because its not available in enough quantity players playtest less with them too, and some even ignore the cards as they simply do not have access to them at all.
So unless a old card suddenly gets a HUGE spike in popularity (which happens very rarely) , it keeps a high price and just gets more expensive slowly (for the simple logic that someone that buys a card will not willingly sell it for less in short time, they will probably just charge a little bit more, unless they badly need the money).
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The popularity of Commander increased the demand in a bunch of foils , thats a pretty huge impact, given that a lot of foils had a much much lesser demand before the Commander impact and the pre-made product does not include foils, outside the commanders (and even that is a new thing and they are a special kind of foil so not everyone will really like that).
Anyway, the real VALUE of magic cards is in the foils right now.
The replies were rather lengthy, so excuse me if this has been said, but one of the purposes of the Masterpiece series was not just to reprint older cards, but to keep the price of Standard down (there have been dozens of articles attesting to this on various websites/forums, and Maro addressed it as well). Hour of Devastation, Amonkhet, Aether Revolt, and Kaladesh have a combined 7 cards that cost more than $10 (and only 2 of those, Chandra and the Scarab God have broken $20). Now, preorders should be taken with some grain of salt, but already Ixalan has 6 cards pre-selling over $10. 6 cards in ONE set vs. 7 cards in FOUR sets.
The replies were rather lengthy, so excuse me if this has been said, but one of the purposes of the Masterpiece series was not just to reprint older cards, but to keep the price of Standard down (there have been dozens of articles attesting to this on various websites/forums, and Maro addressed it as well). Hour of Devastation, Amonkhet, Aether Revolt, and Kaladesh have a combined 7 cards that cost more than $10 (and only 2 of those, Chandra and the Scarab God have broken $20). Now, preorders should be taken with some grain of salt, but already Ixalan has 6 cards pre-selling over $10. 6 cards in ONE set vs. 7 cards in FOUR sets.
"Now, preorders should be taken with some grain of salt, but already Ixalan has 6 cards pre-selling over $10. 6 cards in ONE set vs. 7 cards in FOUR sets." This can be explained by the loss of lottery-cards (Masterpieces). Their high prices soaked up a large portion of the "overall value" of whichever set they were in which resulted in a depression in value of everything else. Game stores are compensating for this "lost value" by spreading it out among rares/mythics and especially their foils. The end result is potentially waaaaaay more profit for stores and reduced risk. Factoring in a 1 in 4 boxes chance of breaking even (banking on Masterpieces) is not a sound business model for the stores..or players for that matter
"This can be explained by the loss of lottery-cards (Masterpieces). Their high prices soaked up a large portion of the "overall value" of whichever set they were in which resulted in a depression in value of everything else."
Uhh, yeah, that was exactly my point, didn't think further explanation was needed.
"Factoring in a 1 in 4 boxes chance of breaking even (banking on Masterpieces) is not a sound business model for the stores..or players for that matter."
Masterpieces helped move boxes for store owners, but savvy players know that cracking boxes is nearly always a losing endeavor, with or without Masterpieces. It led to a flood of cheap singles, which lowered the barriers for Standard. The only people it really hurt were people cracking boxes for the express purpose of selling singles. Stores and players were not hurt.
Masterpieces helped move boxes for store owners, but savvy players know that cracking boxes is nearly always a losing endeavor, with or without Masterpieces. It led to a flood of cheap singles, which lowered the barriers for Standard. The only people it really hurt were people cracking boxes for the express purpose of selling singles. Stores and players were not hurt.
Yeah, I still struggle to see how Masterpieces were anything but a resounding success.
They gave collectible cards for the collectors while simultaneously making Standard the cheapest it had been in very long time.
And sometimes, a casual might get to crack a cool card, too.
Masterpieces helped move boxes for store owners, but savvy players know that cracking boxes is nearly always a losing endeavor, with or without Masterpieces. It led to a flood of cheap singles, which lowered the barriers for Standard. The only people it really hurt were people cracking boxes for the express purpose of selling singles. Stores and players were not hurt.
Yeah, I still struggle to see how Masterpieces were anything but a resounding success.
They gave collectible cards for the collectors while simultaneously making Standard the cheapest it had been in very long time.
And sometimes, a casual might get to crack a cool card, too.
In the world of MTG sales there's always a winner and a loser in the triumvirate of player vs store vs distributor. Nothing was going to save the stores from Amonkhet.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
First of all, Wizards kind of figured out that they could and do adjust prices back in Chronocles which was also the event that drove them
Commander Products:
This product is somewhat hypocritical because they will not print cards that are worth a lot in these products yet anything of worth that they reprint has a temporary price drop.
Masters Sets:
This series is such a joke from the standpoint that generally speaking if you open packs from it, you are actually losing money. The first set they released was well done and then they jacked up the MSRP and pushed most of the money into the mythics. I have no issues with a high powered draft set but anyone who is a regular drafter will tell you that making a set a high powered draft set is entirely in having powerful common / uncommons. This product is such a joke I cant believe what they have done to it. This is probably one of the biggest forms of highway robbery Wizards does because they directly sell as secondary market vendors essentially as the printing press.
Judge Promos:
Inventions:
From The Vaults:
Really none of this is new but really since the first commander product / since judges started getting a lot more new cards for their services I have seen this printing press that is Wizards feel like it is getting more and more greedy. We have seen so many buyouts / price hikes in the last few years that its obvious that instead of things getting better things are just getting worse for us players. I dont know what to really say other than wizards needs to rheel in some of the greed.
I think of these products, the judge program is the oldest but really it wasn't until 2009 that they started really ramping up what they were offering judges for this program. FTV started up in 2008 so it was a little bit before they really started ramping up the judge program. I guess my question is why does it feel like wizards is getting a bigger and bigger piece of the pie while players are getting more and more hosed by the secondary market and buyouts? These products that should in fact be keeping some of the prices in check seem to just adjust to the current market in each case and just get worse for the players.
I think this is a very real thing and I am interested in discussing it assuming anyone has anything to add or discuss.
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[Modern] Allies
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Lets take the what if factor in here. What if Captain Sisay was reprinted into oblivion before the buyout? Do you think it would be a $45 card? There are a ton of legends and old cards that have high price tags because they have not been printed into oblivion. Sol Ring was saved from having a high price because it was reprinted into an oblivion right before the format boomed in a way that would have pushed Sol Ring high.
Cards being reprinted at reasonable prices with good quantities is what keeps prices low. FTV almost never lowers the price of cards in part because it rarely goes for MSRP as well as being printed with too few copies to increase supply in a meaningful way. If the masters products were sold at a lower MSRP as well as in a higher stock that then prices would be controlled better (assuming you don't downgrade quality)
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[Modern] Allies
WoTC is getting a "bigger and bigger piece of the pie while players are getting more and more hosed by the secondary market and buyouts" partially because they are using an outdated system in which they are trying to provide mass card printings for all of their formats through their largest quantity of printings in a year - Standard. This attempt at rationing cards to Modern, Legacy, Vintage, EDH and whatever else people play by printing crossover cards into Standard must come to an end. Standard is too limited in concept, whith the design constraints of drafting dictating the design constraints of Standard there is just no room left to find design space for cards useful in other formats. WoTC can't even put Counterspell into standard!
Every player is getting slapped in the face when WoTC tries to feed any other format besides Standard, when printing crossover cards into Standard-legal products. WoTC needs to incorporate the concept seen in Commander where the products comes with new cards whose set-legality is varied. WoTC needs to make it so that EVERY Masters product has the "gravitas" that Commander has and comes with new card printings that BYPASS other formats. The 56 new cards in C17 skip the Modern and Standard formats. New card printings that skip formats is a great idea that would help every format-specific product because you could just make a new card that is a functional reprint of an old over-priced card and by doing so (with a narrowed range of sets the card is legal in) you introduce a new price point that makes it so that the new card doesn't hinge old the old card's price. This would make the $10 MSRP on Masters sets more justifiable.
EDIT: I discussed the topic of needing new card printings in all Master's products a while back..
I would also be disappointed if WoTC stopped printing Commander playables (reprints or otherweise) into the standard format - but only in this current paradigm of rationing cards to all formats via the largest quantity of printings.. through Standard...
Let's take a view at this from 1,000 feet up.
Those 56 new commander cards are VERY unique. They are special in the way that WoTC has listed their format legality and at their current quantity, 56 cards per year, is an unfortunate oversight of their value. This allotment of 56 cards doesn't have to cator to the concepts of the draft environment, the limited environment, the Standard format or even the Modern format! That is amazing isn't it? Those 56 cards are worth MORE to all of Magic's formats than their current level of usage indicates.
Like you said, crimhead, you "like how in the 1990s WotC just printed fun and interesting cards - and the players got to decide how to use them. I think nowadays they are trying too hard to sculpt and manipulate formats and archetypes" and I can relate. I've been around for a minute too and have the same fond memories of Magic's past. Those awesome aspects of Magic's past are unfortunately still there - in the past - as you are bringing to our awareness. What if we could have this back? Well we can actually, to an extent.
The 1,000 foot view of how WoTC chooses its rations to the Modern, Legacy, Vintage or Commander formats looks like a never-ending struggle. The struggle itself is, for those formats, finding the space for reprints/new cards in an environment, the Standard format, that just is not conducive to catoring to any other formats really. WoTC can't even put Counterspell into Standard. The design requirements for the draft environment also shape the design requirements for the Standard format and THAT is the entire problem with trying to cator to any other formats besides Standard, when printing cards in Standard-legal sets.
WoTC could better serve ALL of its formats if they made MORE products that BYPASS other formats, like how the 56 Commander cards bypass ALLLLLLLL of those roadblocks presented by Modern, Standard and drafting/limited.
Commander should have its own, larger, list of cards that bypass Standard and Modern. Commander products can be the homes for these kinds of printings.
Vintage & Legacy should also have their own place for new cards that can be printed that also skip the Standard and Modern formats. Looking at the Eternal, Iconic and M25 Masters series, WoTC should take this into consideration. They can extend this concept to the Modern Masters series too. This would breathe new life into at least 3 eternal formats and also make it much easier for Standard and Modern products to stand on their own and focus on their specific range of design. The pittance of Modern and Legacy viable cards we see come out of Standard is a slap to the face and understandably so, they just aren't very concerned with trying to do so. But there is a solution to please all.
Magic has become a much larger game since the age of "in the 1990s WotC just printed fun and interesting cards - and the players got to decide how to use them" and WoTC must continue twisting those knobs and dials of format-tuning otherwise the whole creation dies. It will die like a limb losing blood flow. Like a body, WoTC has shaped these formats to have a degree of, shall we say, "arterial flow" between them in the form of crossover card printings. But it's not enough.
It's high time to improve the current model and give the Modern, Eternal, Iconic and frankly ALL Masters series some "gravitas" like what Commander has and give all of these formats places for increased card design IN THE FORM OF NEW CARD PRINTINGS THAT CAN SKIP FORMATS.
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
MSRP is the suggested price by the maker of the product aka wizards. The retailer selling said product never has to go off of the MSRP which is where you get price hikes from LGS and online sellers. You will never see a price hike above MSRP from a seller like Walmart / Target because they sell everything at MSRP. Some of the challenge then becomes having product that you can sell to these type of vendors or selling the product directly online so that your userbase can purchase the product for the MSRP. If a product is widely available in proper quantities at MSRP there is no reason for anyone to price hike above MSRP but generally speaking the product is limited or there is some limiting factor such as needing to buy commander products in complete sets.
The commander product has a unique issue due to the fact that each deck is not sought after equally which often turns to price hikes on the sought after deck and the deck that is not being sought after sitting on the shelf. If you were to compare it to say the Masters drafting sets, the masters drafting sets usually have issues with high MSRP and low availability.
Take into account the Commander 2017 decks. With a quck check to TCGPlayer I can see that Vamps and Dragons are both pushing $50.00 but Cats and Wizards are both sitting at $35.00. This is mostly due to the fact that retailers have to buy these decks as a full set of 4 from wizards so if they are able to sell the dragon and vampre deck at $50.00 each that gives them $100.00. Generally speaking MSRP is about twice what a store has to pay for a product so a set of 4 being 1/2 $35 = $17.50 per deck or $70.00 per set of these. This often means that a retailer has to sit on the last two decks for a good amount of time or gut them out for singles and sell those independently. If those selling online did not price hike and sold the Vamp and Dragon decks at $35.00 each they would make no profit for selling these two decks as it costs them about the same to buy a box of 4 as to sell these two products. Sure, they will sell some amount of the cat and wizard deck but you might get a case where you sell 20 of each of the desired decks for every 5 of the less desired decks.
The commander product is an issue in the way in which they are printing and distributing the product it encourages price gouging by anyone selling any real quantity of them. Even if they were to give an expensive card to the commander product it still does not solve the issue that the decks they release are not equal in value or desirability. You will still have the same issue unless they change their printing and distribution tactics.
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[Modern] Allies
I don't disagree that Sol Ring's price probably would have skyrocketed if Wizards hadn't printed it (the Commander products have definitely increased interest in the format), I'm simply saying that Wizards' decision to reprint it had nothing to do with attempting to influence what cards were played in the format.
Two Score, Minus Two or: A Stargate Tail
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Yes, Wizards could have a looser reprint policy, reprinting all of the higher valued cards in normal priced product, but speculators and investors ruin that. They were the ones who forced the Reserve List into being. They're the ones behind the Sisay buyout, Riptide Lab, Patron Wizard, etc. Granted, some regular players are getting their hands on these cards, but people who buy multiples to make money are a real danger to the game.
I agree that Wizards shouod find a better way to get reprints to eternal formats if Standard is going to have a low comparative power level. I understand that Wizards want's to limit powercreep, and that is admirable, but they go too far the other way and end up with eternal formats not being changed enough. Imagine 56 new cards at Modern powerlevel being pushed straight into Modern?
5, actually. Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, Revised, and From the Vault: Relics.
To be fair, they initially set a lower MSRP for Masters packs, but stores just jacked up the prices anyway, so WotC decided to get their share of that price markup. I can't say I blame them for that.
Mythic Rare Tarmogoyf sells packs.
At that point Judges could be considered employees, which can cause all sorts of issues. I'm Canadian; can I be employed by an American company that has no official presence in Canada? (Probably, but there could be some red tape to deal with.) And if so, do I want to deal with the tax headaches this could cause? (Definitely not.) And can you blame Wizards for paying their judges $200 while only spending $0.10? I can't.
Apples to Oranges here. Mythic Rare includes cards that you can only get from that rarity (ie they aren't printed elsewhere). Masterpiece rarity are all reprints; it's not like they printed Smuggler's Copter at Masterpiece rarity and nowhere else.
Yeah, Divert really needed another printing. Before being printed as a Masterpiece it was a whopping $2.20. Thankfully it's now down to a more reasonable $2.00.
I don't see much "controlling" of the secondary market here. If anything, I mostly see them reducing the prices of secondary market cards (like Tarmogoyf going from over $200 to under $100 after several reprints). They also have to be careful what sort of reprints they include in products; Captain Sisay is hard to reprint outside of Commander because she is a named character from several hundred years ago (meaning she's probably dead), and because of that you're not going to see her in a Standard set release. But if she's included in a Commander deck, the price of that deck may skyrocket at your LGS to match its internal value, thus putting that deck out of the reach of Commander players, which is counter to the intention of these decks (cheap way to enter the format).
A lot of your arguments sound more like Wizards responding to the primary and secondary markets, not controlling them. I think WotC has done a good job over the past few years in dropping the prices of many cards, but it's only been a few years since they started, so we need to give them some more time to continue printing more cards. They've also started out conservatively to make sure they did things right, rather than ending up with another Chronicles debacle. But they have increased the number of reprints since Modern Masters I; we have not one but TWO Masters products coming out in the next few months, potentially (or assuredly with Iconic Masters) with more reprints to drop prices. Maybe Captain Sisay is in Masters 25?
I don't know if that's actually the case. To me, it seems that WotC realizes that if a sealed product has a higher EV than the MSRP then stores/dealers will have more incentive to open the product and sell the singles and/or increase the price of the the sealed product. When they put together Commander products and Masters sets they seem to be very careful about the EV of the product so that the product can get to players at the desired price and availability.
It also comes back to the supply of the product. The masters packs especially the first print (which is where that occurred) was criminally difficult to obtain. It seems like whenever they have a good product at a good price point they somehow underestimate demand and fail to meet it. It comes back again to the question of what if you were able to continue to supply stores with stocks of a product that they want for say 6 months or something? They continue to print commander products for example for stores for a good amount of time before cutting off printing.
Rare Tarmogoyf also sells packs. If it was a normal MSRP ($4.00) set and or there was a lot more of the product in circulation I could see increasing the rarity but the set is ridiculously expensive and in low supply generally.
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[Modern] Allies
There's a lot to address here, and a variety of complex decisions being made by WotC with a variety of different reasons all trying to find a way to best appease the greatest number of players. So let's get started.
Commander Products:
Overall I consider the Commander products very well implemented. I think they knew from the start that Sol-Ring was going to be a necessary reprint- tons of players have fond memories of playing with this powerful card on lunchroom players, and being able to bring that power to any commander deck made it an obvious mandatory inclusion, though its legality in EDH is certainly a matter of debate. But WotC is leaving the players to police the format, and it's legal, so as such, I think we can all agree this was a great choice for reprint. The price of Sol Ring was steadily rising and until then only had Judge/FTV reprints. I think the problem with reprinting overly valuable cards in Commander decks is that the decks are designed with an MSRP of affordability in mind, and with that accessibility comes the problem of "what if one commander deck came with Force of Will?" Well, obviously, that deck is going to sell more than any other by vast quantities- any commander product that features an expensive card suddenly becomes much harder and more expensive for the intended audience to obtain. You could see this with the Political Puppets precon, which featured Flusterstorm, or the Devour For Power deck, which introduced Scavenging Ooze. Any product featuring an overly "hot" card causes a run on that specific product- right now we're starting to see the beginnings of that with the new Vampire deck featuring Teferi's Protection, but by and large it's been a while before we've seen the problems Political Puppets and Devour for Power experienced. I think for the most part WoTC has corrected the initial issues these decks had that resulted in them being basically unobtainable. The other issue is that reprinting expensive cards in commander precons is simply not the place to do it. Expensive cards are often extremely powerful, to the point of being format staples. If you do it to one deck, you have to do it to all 4 or 5, or you just won't sell nearly as many of the deck missing the reprint of a $50 bill. Additionally, you have people buying the deck not because they want the deck for commander play, they just want the expensive reprint. If you want to make a card more accessible, you put it in a reprint set like EMA or MMA.
Honestly, with a few exceptions (Flusterstorm, TNN, and I guess we'll see about Teferi's Protection), the commander decks seem pretty well done and well balanced and represent a good value for $35. You start putting $50 cards in them, and I guarantee there will be price gouging and hoarding.
Master Sets:
This is a really tricky one to get right. Masters sets, IMO, are as close as WotC will ever get to breaking the RL, which was created in response to their first Master's set, Chronicles. I'm not going to get into the messy RL debate, but I do need to underline one thing that for the rest of this post is relevant: The RL exists regardless of how you feel about it.
There was some degree of unease in regards to the execution and implementation of the original Modern Masters- its reception would be determining how/if WotC did more of these in the future, and they were very cautious, perhaps overly so, in regards to the print run, wanting to definitely not overprint supply. Given the limited nature of these sets and the high value cards contained within, the pricetag on these serves as a gatekeeper. Firstly, you simply cannot price these packs the same as whatever the current standard set is. You simply wouldn't sell any more standard packs until the MM supply was gone (which it would be, on day 1 at any store that didn't raise its prices). Who wants another pack of AKH when you could be cracking real money cards without having to open an Invo or Mythic? It's the equivalent of a $10 lottery ticket- higher risk, but higher odds and higher rewards. MM1 was a success, but there were some complaints about how hard it was to get packs, and retailers tended to gouge on them, citing the higher demand and limited supply. MM2 would have a higher print run, and the EV wasn't as great. It was much more obtainable for longer. I think the goal is that a customer opening a box of MM product should generally break about even, with some degree of variance above and below EV, but large differences in price vs EV will result in one of two things- retailers raising the price, or the product not selling at all. Ideally, you print the right amount to where everyone who wants some can get some at the MSRP, and it take a while to deplete your supply, and it drops some card prices and provides much needed reprints for cards that are not easily reprintable in standard for power/flavor reasons. $10/pack is fine if the value is there. Make it cheaper and either people won't be able to get a hold of it because it's sold out, or retailers just raise the price on it anyway. I don't need every other card to be Tarmogoyf, but I also don't need every other card to be Crucible of Fire either, so a $10 pricetag is reasonable if the value is there. I feel like MM3 and EMA are sets that were done right, and served their purpose well, with a print run and EV that was appropriate- this product seemed to be more accessible and experience less gouging and served its purpose of delivering some badly needed reprints.
Judge Promos: The reason WotC doesn't want to actually pay judges is that this is making them closer and closer to being actual employees, which would then result in them having to provide all the benefits and protections and minimum wages etc that employers are mandated to have. Paying them actual money creates a legal foothold for a judge to argue that he is a WotC employee- their name is on his paychecks after all.
Whether it's morally right or not for WotC to avoid calling judges employees for the sake of business is another argument, but I honestly think if WotC had to pay their judges actual cash and give them actual benefits.....we'd have a LOT fewer judges.
Your argument that a judge foil means they won't make an actual reprint is completely false however. Let me just list a few Judge cards that also got a reprint:
1998: Lighting Bolt
99: Memory Lapse
2000: Counterspell, Vamp Tutor
2003: Argothian Enchantress, Living Death
2004: 'Geddon, Balance,Phyrexian Negator
2005: Gemstone Mine, Sol Ring, Mishra's Factory
2006-present: Grim Lavamancer, Pernicious Deed, Vindicate, Demonic Tutor, Goblin Piledriver, Dark Ritual, Maze of Ith, Burning Wish, Onslaught Fetchlands, Entomb, Bitterblossom, SoFI, Doubling Season, Goblin Welder, Dark Confidant....
I could keep going honestly, but reviewing all the judge promos, in actuality more judge promos than not have received reprints. Recently, you may note Force of Will, Mana Drain, Karakas, and Flusterstorm as good examples of this. The ones that haven't received reprints are pretty much RL cards that were only made as promos due to the loophole in the RL that got closed off. Nearly every card I've listed has taken a major price hit because with very few exceptions, they ALL have been reprinted en masse.
Let's move on to Inventions/Masterpieces/Invos. We're not going to discuss the hated aesthetics of the Invos, but more to the point- what I like best about Invos is that is gives even the casual standard player who just started a year ago the chance to open something extremely exotic. It gives them a powerful collection boost that can be played or traded for even cards on the RL. But hey, let's look at the argument that the Invos and Masterpieces need more printings anyway. Again, I think there are but a handful of cards that legit actually need higher print numbers. The rest, well, they got their reprints or don't actually need them. Do we really need more Counterspells, another printing of FoW, or even Doomsdays or Lotus Petals for that matter? I mean, I'll give you Crucible of Worlds and Chalice of the Void, and probably a few others, but in reality, just because a card could certainly use another printing on as larger scale doesn't mean they shouldn't be made into Masterpieces or Invos. It just means they need to reprint it. Give it a bit of time and I'm pretty sure most of these cards will end up getting their reprint by the time the next EMA rolls around. It's a good thing that WotC has found another outlet to introduce more of a certain card in a controlled way, not a bad one.
FTV: FTVs are a product you really don't want to make too many of, they lose their appeal and collector's value which is basically what they're being marketed as. There's nothing special about an FTV WalMart edition. I admit they can be hard to obtain, but that's kind of the point, and they drive hard traffic to LGSs and provide guaranteed sales- they're almost made as a tool to boost LGS profits and product allocation given as a reward for having lots of players. It kind of sucks that "good" FTVs get gouged and sold out, but then again, if you made them crappy or overproduced them, there'd be absolutely nothing special about them and stores would just wind up with some really slowly selling box sets on their shelves for entirely too long. I mean, I can STILL go to one of three LGSs and buy an FTV Annihilation for MSRP.
Onto your closing statements:
If your Masters sets of limited print run result in more gains than losses by players, stores are simply going to either open the packs themselves and sell the singles, or they will hike up the MSRP to match demand (see the original Modern Masters). MSRP is just that- SUGGESTED retail pricing.
Availability- the sets lacking it have improved (EMA and MM3 print runs have pretty much met demand, I can't recall anyone locally complaining that they couldn't get the product from these they wanted if they were willing to pay for it. A card being a judge promo does not preclude it from being reprinted en masse and I've provided numerous examples. FTV sets have, IMO, appropriate attainability. A good example of poor attainability would be the Commander Anthology run- that was the product that really struck me as underprinted. No one wants FTV WalMart edition.
The secondary market getting hosed with buyouts is not Wizard's fault-they're not the ones snatching up every copy of every Legends card, and trying to address it by making massive reprints of valuable cards is literally what led to the creation of the reserve list. Really, unless you're a Legacy player, or you just really like North Star in EDH, the buyout pretty much don't affect you much, and newer and better alternatives for commander decks are being printed all the time. So you can't play Hazezon Tamar in your EDH deck cuz you don't want to spend $90 on one and it will never be reprinted- I'm sure you can find plenty of viable alternatives in R/W for token generation. Granted, there are a few cards that are reprintable,but just super awkward to do so. Captain Sisay is a good example- Who is Captain Sisay to newer players? They don't know the Weatherlight cycle, they just know the fab 5 walkers if that. She can't be dropped into the standard storyline, she's not iconic enough to get thrown into a commander product (she spent half the Weatherlight cycle kidnapped after all- something Mirri didn't do), she's not powerful enough to make it into a Modern Masters set as anything besides a bulk rare.....where do you reprint her? An FTV: Iconic Side Characters? As an aside, Captain Sisay is NOT $45. You can get on TCG right now and grab one of many copies for $20ish, so she's hardly the best example of a card needing a reprint.
WotC isn't getting bigger pieces of the pie, they're making the pie bigger so everyone's pieces are bigger- lots of big name cards have been reprinted in the last 3 years to satiate demand and Iconic Masters looks to be seriously continuing that theme. Yes, there are a few cards left that still need a reprint- Rishadan Port and Chalice of the Void come to mind, but I feel they're holding off on those for the next MMA/EMA. The best tasting pie, though, is still the RL pieces, which is an entirely different can of worms I'm not opening up here.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
While I can agree with most of your statement about which is the coast controlling Market they are printing what they can to have the Supply to meet the players demands. I feel that if there was no Reserve list, they will reprint certain cards from there too because they want all the formats to thrive
Wizards isn't trying to lower the value of collections (by much at least). Instead they just want the supply of cards to go up. They want a situation where people, especially casual players can go to their local shop and buy rare cards that they want. That furthers local business and keeps their FNM model open. They don't want a low supply where people are forced online to buy cards.
These reprint products aren't meant to lower the cost barrier to entry. They're meant to give local shops product to sell and ways to lure people in the door.
The sets are also printed for the stores since they make significantly more money on these masters sets than standard sets. Basically, us players eat the bill on the masters products. Stores and distributors tend to eat the bill on the standard sets. I guess you can say wizards "funds" standard via selling modern masters sets to a ravenous playerbase.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
It happened. MM1 had a MSRP of $6.99, but most stores sold them at $10-12 each at the time. WotC realised they had under-priced their product, so they upped the MSRP for MM2.
CerberusJund (Modern)GRB
Sidisi, Brood Tyrant Morphentress (Commander) GUB
I also play YGO (DragunFusion) and Hearthstone (Dragon Control Warrior)
This is mostly the case of capitalism supply/demand. If everyone in the MTG market said "I am not paying more then $20 for ANY standard card ever. Standard singles would go down. Unfortunately their are enough people in MTG that are willing to play more. Their is also a second aspect of MTG where people are ONLY playing the stockmarket aspect of it. They have never played a game game legacy/standard/draft they only care about card price movement and how they can Gain/lose from it. I don't care about any of the fancy foil printings of older cards that are not bulk they are not printed for PLAYERS they are printed for collectors. Do people foil our their entire deck if all they want to do is compeat NO ofcourse not, as long as their is no benfit to foil cardes (super secret tech excluded) they are just more expensive normal ones and don't really matter. The biggest problem are the fixed products and large print run sets where a) FTV is a supply issue their are not enough printed peroid. THIS needs to be a walmart product. b) MSRP in MM and simlar products should be set to the same as a standard set. The only reason they are doing this is fear of modern becoming the favored set by players.
Also, of course people foil out decks to compete in tournaments.
Not just 1 random booster, you had to open a lot , as the big hits recover so much product you open (and selling all of it, including the small junk actually gives you a net profit), as the estimated value of a booster including all the extra foils in them did result in a net profit.
But with everything that has a net profit attached to it, people overbuy it and prices plummet over time. The big hits lose value and all the junk loses even more, to the point they are almost impossible to flip (still sells complete sets of commons/uncommons for example, but that involves sorting all the cards you open, which you better enjoy doing, otherwise its just "work").
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Anyway, all the products try to have a somewhat equal value, as a lot of people "obvisiously" buy pre-made product as it contains value.
And if they sell sets of 4-5 different pre-made decks and just 1 has big value, it will be sold out, while the other product hangs in limbo.
A store has to buy the packs of each product, they cannot just order more and more of the product that sells very well (otherwise everyone would do precisely that).
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Lots of cards are expensive simply because they are hard to find and by being hard to find the demand is kept down too, as its not a "mandatory" card and because its not available in enough quantity players playtest less with them too, and some even ignore the cards as they simply do not have access to them at all.
So unless a old card suddenly gets a HUGE spike in popularity (which happens very rarely) , it keeps a high price and just gets more expensive slowly (for the simple logic that someone that buys a card will not willingly sell it for less in short time, they will probably just charge a little bit more, unless they badly need the money).
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The popularity of Commander increased the demand in a bunch of foils , thats a pretty huge impact, given that a lot of foils had a much much lesser demand before the Commander impact and the pre-made product does not include foils, outside the commanders (and even that is a new thing and they are a special kind of foil so not everyone will really like that).
Anyway, the real VALUE of magic cards is in the foils right now.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
"Now, preorders should be taken with some grain of salt, but already Ixalan has 6 cards pre-selling over $10. 6 cards in ONE set vs. 7 cards in FOUR sets." This can be explained by the loss of lottery-cards (Masterpieces). Their high prices soaked up a large portion of the "overall value" of whichever set they were in which resulted in a depression in value of everything else. Game stores are compensating for this "lost value" by spreading it out among rares/mythics and especially their foils. The end result is potentially waaaaaay more profit for stores and reduced risk. Factoring in a 1 in 4 boxes chance of breaking even (banking on Masterpieces) is not a sound business model for the stores..or players for that matter
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
Uhh, yeah, that was exactly my point, didn't think further explanation was needed.
"Factoring in a 1 in 4 boxes chance of breaking even (banking on Masterpieces) is not a sound business model for the stores..or players for that matter."
Masterpieces helped move boxes for store owners, but savvy players know that cracking boxes is nearly always a losing endeavor, with or without Masterpieces. It led to a flood of cheap singles, which lowered the barriers for Standard. The only people it really hurt were people cracking boxes for the express purpose of selling singles. Stores and players were not hurt.
Yeah, I still struggle to see how Masterpieces were anything but a resounding success.
They gave collectible cards for the collectors while simultaneously making Standard the cheapest it had been in very long time.
And sometimes, a casual might get to crack a cool card, too.
In the world of MTG sales there's always a winner and a loser in the triumvirate of player vs store vs distributor. Nothing was going to save the stores from Amonkhet.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
They were in every way except for the one that mattered most to me, the player: They were all ugly.