I play mostly standard, the standard decks generally range from $150-$500.00. However, it usually plays for 1 year. So on average it's about $5-10 per month. Plus I usually win store credits at my local gaming store, on average net $5-15 per week after entry fees. I usually save those credits to get the cards for the next set. All in all, I find that the hobby breaks even or I come out ahead (assuming no other opportunity costs, hobby are suppose to be time sinks).
Yeah, most standard cards lose value after rotation, but you already played 2 years out of them and got your value back.
If I go to modern or legacy, then at least your cards don't devalue minus reprints after the initial $500-$1000 investment. Heck, my legacy deck's value increased like 500% since I bought it back in 2009.
So overall, I find Magic to be quite cheap as a hobby. Even a movie once per month on average costs me more. What are your thoughts?
Have you taken into consideration the costs of Sleeves, Deckboxes, tournament fees (have you looked at recent Grand Prix entry fees? ), gas, hotel, etc.?
I probably spent around $1,000 on gas, hotel, and food fees during tournaments last year. That's pretty rough. I entered 9 PPTQs 2 seasons ago. That's $25 entry X 9, not to mention the gas there.
Sure, Standard is fairly cheap right now, even if many of the cards will be worth $1 or less upon rotation. Modern cards do stay around the same, as reprints hurt some prices, while raising others. Legacy, yep, prices do go up. That's true. But if you never sell, then what is the point of going up? I constantly ask myself this every day, as I have probably done 90% of my Magic business BUYING and only 10% SELLING. (in around 4,000 transactions) Regarding store credit, I noticed the value has gone down, while the competition has gone up. So at least for me, I barely get more than my entry fee, gas, and supplies, there.
*But yes, compared with many other hobbies, it's cheap. I wasted probably 3 houses worth of money just on cars in my lifetime. That feels pretty meh...
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
Yes Magic is pretty cheap. My other hobbies include backpacking, hunting and fishing. They all cost far more money, just the licenses for them cost me $500 annually plus gas, boots, guns, poles, inevitable snapped straps and broken equipment. If I go ocean fishing it is $150 a day on top of the other costs.
Last year I spent $3000 on outdoor hobbies and $500 on MTG. One of my buddies bought a new rig to get up old logging roads and bought a new set of backpacking equipment, total amounting to 50K.
Getting season tickets for college football is several thousand a year plus gas, for NFL it is far more. Expensive hobbies like Yachts/sailboats, horses, and welding cost tens of thousands annually.
In the game arena board games and video games are individually cheaper but likely a PS4 owner has spent the equivalent of a modern deck on it, and I used to spend $250 annually on new board games. Abd miniatures cost way more, 40K and Warmastuff require re-specking every edition and you spend $1000-$2000 dollars per army.
Even Vintage/Old School aren't truly awful compared to buying a boat or fixing an old car.
Making pauper and penny dreadful full formats would be good for younger/poorer players and helping draft cards retain some value, but the prices are fine overall.
Have you taken into consideration the costs of Sleeves, Deckboxes, tournament fees (have you looked at recent Grand Prix entry fees? ), gas, hotel, etc.?
I probably spent around $1,000 on gas, hotel, and food fees during tournaments last year. That's pretty rough. I entered 9 PPTQs 2 seasons ago. That's $25 entry X 9, not to mention the gas there.
Sure, Standard is fairly cheap right now, even if many of the cards will be worth $1 or less upon rotation. Modern cards do stay around the same, as reprints hurt some prices, while raising others. Legacy, yep, prices do go up. That's true. But if you never sell, then what is the point of going up? I constantly ask myself this every day, as I have probably done 90% of my Magic business BUYING and only 10% SELLING. (in around 4,000 transactions) Regarding store credit, I noticed the value has gone down, while the competition has gone up. So at least for me, I barely get more than my entry fee, gas, and supplies, there.
*But yes, compared with many other hobbies, it's cheap. I wasted probably 3 houses worth of money just on cars in my lifetime. That feels pretty meh...
I guess if you don't fly to lots of tournaments. If you play at your local shops, there shouldn't be crazy costs outside your usual local travel gas budget. Just a thought as i hear many players complain about the price of playing a competitive Magic deck.
Yes Magic is pretty cheap. My other hobbies include backpacking, hunting and fishing. They all cost far more money, just the licenses for them cost me $500 annually plus gas, boots, guns, poles, inevitable snapped straps and broken equipment. If I go ocean fishing it is $150 a day on top of the other costs.
This. There are a lot of Magic players who would not consider $500 for a deck to be cheap. But at the same time, there are a lot of other hobbies that are a lot more expensive.
This is true of other hobbies too. Flying to hunt big game or fish in Alaska or take your kayak to a specific lake/river, going to auto-shows, traveling in general.
The expensive thing about magic is shared with most hobbies.
The activeness of the Secondary Market is what makes the hobby cheap to maintain. You definitely don't have to be an "investor", just keep an eye out and recognize how card prices behave generally and act accordingly with your collection and you can basically minimize costs of continually maintaining the hobby.
Note my use of words - "hobby" and "maintain" instead of "game" and "play". Comparatively to the "outside" gaming industry we are relatively more expensive to initially get in because gaming is currently in the generation of luring players with Free-to-Play tactics, which in turn creates a generation of players used to getting into a game for free to test if they like it or not, then simply throw it away if they don't like it because it costed them nothing.
The paper card game cannot provide such free incentives because anything printed can immediately enter the Secondary Market due to its nature of being a physical product and honestly Magic does need to feature some of its costly best to entice more players to begin with - the new unaware players will not take the effort to go and sell the cards while the enfranchised secondary market is already ready to pounce for their own advantage, easily destroying the purpose of these "free" products to entice new players to begin with.
Notice how well Arena attracted new players? Because there isn't a Free-Secondary Market (the "dust/wildcard" system they're using is basically a very controlled-by-wotc version of it and isn't remotely the same), WotC can easily give out free booster packs to players (something that has never been done on paper, even MPR requires playing first to get free cards) without fear their current market would just destroy the effort. If they paywalled it from the start, MTGA would have ended up like Artifact (FYI it's not even in the top 100 played games on Steam before 2018 ended...) which is basically how paper MTG feels like to the outside world, but at least paper MTG is restricted by the nature of its product and market rather than just stupid decisions.
Of course, like any other game, the more competitive you are, the more it costs because you have to make sub-optimal choices regarding minimizing costs when it comes to buying/selling cards because of the urgency requirement of the cards, but on the casual level (which may even extend to FNM depending on location/meta), the game is relatively cheap to maintain compared to a lot more hobbies. It's the high wall to entry that scares people starting from zero off mainly - on some technicality I'm still spending the same thousand dollars I already spent in the past decade right now and the increment to this "pool" is actually pretty minimal.
Magic isnt "crazy" expensive compared to other sports, mainly as you get cards that have a worth.
Depending on how you get the cards, you can even make a PROFIT selling them.
If you play a lot of drafts in your FNM or win a bit of tournaments, you can actually profit.
Even if you buy a deck for a tournament you can sell the deck in the same season and sometimes the deck gets more expensive if its successful.
But all that taken into account, magic is not a CHEAP hobby, especially not if you collect the cards and play it very often.
for a beginner:
bike: £500+ for a halfway decent one or £2000+ for a competitive one
clothes/helmet: £250+ for some very basic gear but could spend a lot more
additional gear: £50+ for basic additional bits (backpack or bike storage, water bottles, that kind of thing)
servicing and repairs: assuming some decent mileage, £400+ per year in consumables (tyres/brakes), replacement parts and bits like lubrication and cleaning products
that's around £1000 give or take for a competent starting setup which won't need much/any upgrading, and an additional £400 ish in running costs throughout a given year of active participation.
compare this to Magic:
Deck: anywhere from £30 to £2000+ depending on format, but as a game let's say that we start with a 'decent' budget option, same as with cycling. One of the challenger decks, or prebuilt commander decks is a great place to start in MTG giving you a fun and well constructed starting point from which to build a collection. These generally run around £40, although can be significantly less.
sleeves/box: from around £30 to start off, for some decent kit
attending your first FNMs: let's say our new player doesn't necessarily want to just sit in their house with their friends, but fancies striking out to a local FNM. Let's say that they try their hand at a mix of drafting and standard, once each per month, for about 11 months of the year.
that's around £10 for a draft per time (let's say £15 to be on the safe side), and £5 entry for a reasonable standard FNM per time. £20 per month. £220 overall for the year, and let's be generous and round it up to £300 to include three prereleases @ £20 each, plus a few sleeves. fair?
for a beginner:
startup costs: around £70
running costs (events): around £300 per year if active and attending regular events pitched at beginners
impulse buys and tuning your challenger/commander decks: ??? (this will depend on the person, but i'll assume the average person will spend £5 here and there)
to me, looking at a beginner & fairly casual approach for both hobbies, Magic turns out way cheaper. As others have alluded to, I think most 'physical' hobbies which require equipment to participate will end up being more expensive than magic for an equivalent level of engagement (casual vs. competitive).
where magic begins to get expensive is when people take it beyond simply being a fun game to enjoy with friends, and start devoting personal attachment to the game, building collections, getting competitive, 'pimping out' decks with more expensive (but functionally identical) cards, etc.
I personally have a collection on the order of a house-deposit in terms of value, but I wouldn't say I've invested too much into the game financially. I have found that my purchases have accrued value over time (which is something you occasionally see in other hobbies but not to this extent).
it's an interesting topic for sure. Not sure we can actually rail on magic for being expensive though. It's all relative. It's only as expensive as you want it to be, truly. If you're fine chilling with your friends and jamming some commander, there's a perfectly good pre-built commander deck waiting on a store shelf for you to pick up, and it's affordable without sacrificing competitiveness
I think what makes Magic “feel” expensive compared to other hobbies is that the money you spend on Magic is just going to cardboard. All the other activities mentioned in this thread have gear and components that are tangible objects. A $500 bicycle has parts and engineering that match the cost. If you’re an outdoors person that gear gets real world use and abuse. Boats, cars, motorcycles, guns and other such items feel acceptable for the costs. For Magic, you’re buying a printed item that is produced in such mass quantities that any scarcity seems contrived. The price of Magic cards is a manufactured illiusion compared to the prices of the other items I mentioned. Another aspect of those other things I listed have physical tolerances with real world implications.
Just avoid impulse buys so it does not get too expensive. That's what I've learned the past holiday season.
Sometimes impulse buys are fine. I bought 6 foil Postmortem Lunge from my LGS for $2.17 each. Turned out not bad.
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
The price of Magic cards is a manufactured illiusion compared to the prices of the other items I mentioned.
Back up a bit. Value for objects isn't necessarily tied to the cost of raw materials/manufacture. In fact i'd go as far as saying that with the majority of consumer goods, it's only a very minor consideration. That bike you're referencing isn't intrinsically worth £500, it's just sold for that. Trying to make the assertion that magic is "just cardboard", that its value is "contrived" or a "manufactured illusion" (conspiracy much?), indicates that you might be cherry-picking your thought process here, because without even tracking back in history and just sticking to present-day, I could give you a nearly endless list of easy examples where something being sold or traded is "just plastic" or "just aluminium" or "just wood" and has its value tied to an entirely different facet in its production. We're talking on the scale of every product on the market, kind of endless.
and before we jump down a rabbit hole, just consider this: Magic is a game. Tennis is a game. Golf is a game. Monopoly is a game. Call of Duty is a game. What do you need to participate in all of these things? The tools to play.
A tennis racket, a monopoly set, some golf clubs, a computer, magic cards. yadda yadda. The value we ascribe to these tools is going to be based on your level of seriousness to engage in the game itself. Want to get competitive? 'better' gear costs more. For magic we'll see a similar pattern. 'better' cards cost more. They cost more because people want them and will pay more for the privilege. i'd go as far as saying that every prouct every sold, bartered or traded in the history of human civilisation has followed a similar trend. Most magic cards are worthless; however, that tundra sitting next to me is worth quite a bit. why? people want them, and there aren't many of them around. Five people want one thing, and they'll start bidding over each other for ownership of that thing. Over time the price creeps up. Flashy new standard/modern deck? People will pay more, fighting to have the rarer cards in that deck.
and while we're at it, let's talk "tangible" goods. That car outside - the raw materials are probably worth a couple of hundred at best. the "engineering" is a vague factor, and while yes, it costs a great deal to set up a working manufacturing plant, they generally pay for themselves within a few years and the "engineering" costs associated with a single unit off the production line is going to be relatively small, and yet a 'cheap' car will still set you back around £10,000. Those golf clubs, that kayak, those shoes? cheap to manufacture. surprisingly cheap to manufacture. you want an illusion? Just pick up any random product from a supermarket shelf. it's all just as fictitious in its pricing as magic cards. Why are they so expensive? you can't make them yourself. You are not paying for raw materials, you're paying for someone else's ability to make something you can't, and you're paying for growth. somewhere around 50% (often more) of a product's final price will be profit, used to enrich and grow a business, pay for ad campaigns, new staff, rewarding shareholders etc.
Why do I bring this up? well, items tend to have a price memory, and that 'profit' gets baked into people's perceptions of how much a product is worth. Selling your 2-month old iPhone on eBay? you'll be selling it for a very similar price to new, despite its non-profit value being less than half of that. Truth be told, Magic actually follows a similar principle with newer cards, with the value of cards being tied surprisingly closely to the value of a booster box. your EV for a booster box can't ever really get above the price of the box, because when cards in new sets get expensive, boxes get opened and the prices get crushed. If one card spikes in price, everything else gets slightly cheaper to compensate. Don't believe me? go check out the price trends for each card in each set for the last couple of years. You'll see that it correlates with what i'm saying. We saw an exaggerated version of this with Masterpieces, where the regular cards in the sets got crushed so much that the sets themselves were almost worthless, and the masterpieces held all the value.
don't describe magic as if it's some greedy plot where people get swindled by paying over the odds for "just cardboard" because that's a complete non-starter. You ever bought Toilet paper? cutlery or ceramics? ever bought a sofa or a table? Joke's on you, because those are "just cheap raw materials"
Just avoid impulse buys so it does not get too expensive. That's what I've learned the past holiday season.
Sometimes impulse buys are fine. I bought 6 foil Postmortem Lunge from my LGS for $2.17 each. Turned out not bad.
Those are useful impulse buys indeed. Mine are decent, but mostly just to decorate my decks with foil... a buy-a-box Goblin Rabblemaster, a duel of the planeswalkers ooze, and a foil beacon of creation. hehe ^___^
The price of Magic cards is a manufactured illiusion compared to the prices of the other items I mentioned.
Back up a bit. Value for objects isn't necessarily tied to the cost of raw materials/manufacture. In fact i'd go as far as saying that with the majority of consumer goods, it's never about that. That bike you're referencing isn't intrinsically worth £500, it's just sold for that. Trying to make the assertion that magic is "just cardboard", that its value is "contrived" or a "manufactured illusion" (conspiracy much?), indicates that you might be cherry-picking your thought process here, because without even tracking back in history and just sticking to present-day, I could give you a nearly endless list of easy examples where something being sold or traded is "just plastic" or "just aluminium" or "just wood" and has its value tied to an entirely different facet in its production. We're talking on the scale of every product on the market, kind of endless.
Agree 100% with that. Magic cards are not "just cardboard". The same way the cd's I bought from CDJapan are not "just discs", and the same way the limited edition magazines I bought are also not "just paper". Purkle already said most of what I wanted to say, so I shall not repeat.
I feel that the biggest costs of Magic (for me at least) are the costs of sleeves, tournament entry and splitting the costs of gas and hotels.
Maybe I just grind a lot of events and find the costs are high but I've probably spent an absurd amount the past few years
that's fair. Those are optional aspects of the game, too. For years, I just played on my friends' dining-room tables and picked up cards from the occasional booster, and sometimes i'd splash out (hey big spender) on a card or two from a local shop binder.
now, I'm in a similar spot to you. I opt to participate in more competitive play and travel to events. I don't have to, but it's good fun, and I enjoy getting to use my experience in a competitive sphere as well. =D
all in all, Magic can be a super affordable and awesome fun hobby. or, like just about anything, you can spend a lot more if you're so inclined.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
I feel that the biggest costs of Magic (for me at least) are the costs of sleeves, tournament entry and splitting the costs of gas and hotels.
Maybe I just grind a lot of events and find the costs are high but I've probably spent an absurd amount the past few years
that's fair. Those are optional aspects of the game, too. For years, I just played on my friends' dining-room tables and picked up cards from the occasional booster, and sometimes i'd splash out (hey big spender) on a card or two from a local shop binder.
now, I'm in a similar spot to you. I opt to participate in more competitive play and travel to events. I don't have to, but it's good fun, and I enjoy getting to use my experience in a competitive sphere as well. =D
all in all, Magic can be a super affordable and awesome fun hobby. or, like just about anything, you can spend a lot more if you're so inclined.
With me, I understand that I could probably save a lot of money by not going to tournaments a lot but it's not like I'm not covering what I need to. I mean I've been considering taking a bit of a break to not spend the money, but I would probably have a hard time doing that to be honest.
The nice thing about Magic is that you can also choose to play casually and spend less money if you want
Have you taken into consideration the costs of Sleeves, Deckboxes, tournament fees (have you looked at recent Grand Prix entry fees? ), gas, hotel, etc.?
I probably spent around $1,000 on gas, hotel, and food fees during tournaments last year. That's pretty rough. I entered 9 PPTQs 2 seasons ago. That's $25 entry X 9, not to mention the gas there.
Sure, Standard is fairly cheap right now, even if many of the cards will be worth $1 or less upon rotation. Modern cards do stay around the same, as reprints hurt some prices, while raising others. Legacy, yep, prices do go up. That's true. But if you never sell, then what is the point of going up? I constantly ask myself this every day, as I have probably done 90% of my Magic business BUYING and only 10% SELLING. (in around 4,000 transactions) Regarding store credit, I noticed the value has gone down, while the competition has gone up. So at least for me, I barely get more than my entry fee, gas, and supplies, there.
*But yes, compared with many other hobbies, it's cheap. I wasted probably 3 houses worth of money just on cars in my lifetime. That feels pretty meh...
I guess if you don't fly to lots of tournaments. If you play at your local shops, there shouldn't be crazy costs outside your usual local travel gas budget. Just a thought as i hear many players complain about the price of playing a competitive Magic deck.
This is subjective, I'd say. I spent several thousand dollars on Magic last year, primarily trying to forge my way into Legacy, but also touching up my Commander stuff (not to mention a few Casual decks). Admittedly, that's more than I ever wanted to spend on it, but I feel like I'm getting closer to the point of where I don't have to buy cards (by merit of having what I want/need) and that's an encouraging feeling. I think I built a single Standard deck last year just to see how it played, which was cheap - I think under $50 - but Standard just doesn't float my boat. Modern doesn't, either, and I've no interest in playing the format. That said, viable Modern decks tend to range in the mid-to-upper hundreds, if I'm not mistaken. I think a decent Commander deck can be had for ~$300 or less, but if we're talking Legacy, I'm reasonably certain the only viable (proven) and optimized deck you can have for less than $1000 is Burn. Sure, you could build something like, for example, Sneak & Show, with Shocks rather than Duals, but again, optimization. Yeah, you could go mono-colored, but most mono-decks want you to run City of Traitors, which, over the past year, jumped from a $100-$150 card to $250+. Additionally, some stores don't let you buy in to tournaments with your store credit so that you can't "go infinite". One of my LGSes is this way, which is unfortunate, as I recently placed 2nd at a Legacy 2k they hosted and that would have probably kept me set for tournament entry for the entirety of this year. As other people have mentioned, tournament entry and sleeves are a thing, and if you're playing a competitive format with expensive cards, you're likely going to want to double sleeve. I also try to make it a point not to hold on to cards I'm not using and will never use, but I understand I'm in the minority on that one. Yeah, compared to some hobbies mentioned here, Magic can be inexpensive, but if you delve deep into something like Legacy or Vintage, you're talking multiple thousands of dollars for a deck, alone, and if you like to switch it up (as a lot of people do), that adds up quickly.
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I feel that the biggest costs of Magic (for me at least) are the costs of sleeves, tournament entry and splitting the costs of gas and hotels.
Sleeving is for me, a necessary thing. As it prolongs the life of cards, protects from dust, liquid spills, and keeps them in good condition. As long as cards in a modern deck that I use.. even the cheapest ones are double sleeved. For example desert cerodon is double sleeved the same way as tarmogoyf, a basic forest is double sleeved the same way as the fetch lands, because I want to preserve them for the years to come.
@purklefluff, I understand supply and demand and that the cost of producing goods goes beyond the cost of materials. There's labor, R&D, marketing, distribution, rent, etc. And if you think that the metal in your car is only about $200 value, you haven't done any fabrication work or been to a steel yard. You haven't even scratched the surface, there's the electronic components and the engine. If you think "engineering" is a nebulous concept, then you're woefully unaware of the manufacturing procedure for many things. A car engine is an amazing piece of engineering, and even some of the seemingly simplest things require an extraordinary amount of thought to create.
I also understand that with many higher end versions of a product that you're often paying for that brand name. That still does not detract from the fact that those items require a certain amount of labor to manufacture, and often with luxury goods there really is more to them than the cheaper versions. The work and thought that goes into a high end sports car is vastly superior than that of an economy car. The concept of paying for something I cannot create myself is not lost on me. When it comes to Magic cards there's design and development teams, art and flavor, marketing, distribution, etc. But to say that the artificial scarcity of some of the cards is somehow a conspiracy is disingenuous on your part. WOTC literally decides how large print runs are and how many of each card gets printed. With print items the up front is you largest cost, as you produce more units the cost per unit decreases. This is where profit margins come into play. At a print shop producing more units is fairly simple, add more stock to the machine and hit the button. My stepdad was a die cutter foreman at a print shop in Sacramento for over 30 years at a place much like Cartamundi, so I have some insight into the procedure. With complex physical goods that require hands on tuning it's not so simple. I own a glass studio, my cost per unit is uniform no matter how many units we produce. If an item is just mass produced by machine, usually the cost per unit goes down on the production side, but once you add the need for hand craftsmanship that changes the equation. Even though my cost per unit to make stays the same, with higher volume purchases I can afford to sell for less. Many goods are sold under this model. That $500 bike you mentioned, it sells for that price based upon a series of calculations that involve initial cost and necessary profit margin for both the producer and seller coupled with what the target audience would be willing to pay. The price isn't as arbitrary as an ebay sale. So yes the value of that bike is $500 because that's what it needs to sell for for it to be worth while to get made in the first place. At my business I won't touch projects where the R&D and production costs won't net a certain profit percentage. There's always a little wiggle room for variance but businesses like to reserve that for sales and bulk buyers.
The only reason Magic cards have such a high secondary market value is because people have bought into WOTC's tournament structure. They could have just made Magic a living cards game, when a set comes out a box is just 4x of every card. WOTC's model is genius, it creates this crack-head mentality of keeping up with the Joneses or I cannot compete. They create invaluable chase mythic rares in low enough quantity that it drives up box sales. Players "need" those mythics to even have a chance at FNM. So ya, "conspiracy". WOTC's biggest problem is how to create the most profit without pissing off their fan base. That's been the biggest complaint since forever. Every decision WOTC has to back track on has been one of trying to milk the cash cow without milking it dry. When it comes to the secondary market prices are set based upon what the dumbest consumers will pay.
I collect guns and let me tell you, there's a stark difference in reliability and performance between a $300 and a $600 piece. Cheap tennis rackets and golf clubs also don't play as well as higher end ones do. When I shop I never buy the most expensive item, because you are just buying a name at that point, but I do buy in the upper range(when quality is directly correlated to cost). With Magic cards however, each card costs the same to produce, quality is not inherently built in. I know, I know, not all cards are playable, certain cards are more desirable than others for constructed, etc. But that's not intrinsic to the manufacturing process beyond design and development. Where as even a high end competitive bicycle, quality control is necessary from start to finish.(I also understand the vagaries than can happen during printing, but these thing don't truly affect a card's performance)
To summarize my point; high end luxury cardboard feels like a bigger waste of money to some of us because cards can be mass produced a the flick of a switch, and even if a card is flawed during manufacture, it still functions as a game piece. Compared to all the other mentioned items that require engineering to perform at peak levels. If a tennis racket breaks, you're out of the game. Your bicycle or car breaks you crash and could accrue medical bills. You don't want a budget rope to go mountain climbing do you? I'll wager that people who scuba dive or parachute want the best money can buy.
No offence purklefluff, but your response to me leads me to believe you've never been on the supply side of life. But as someone who has, you learn what goes into the manufacture of things, and you acquire an appreciation for the processes. Your comment about engineering being a vague factor shows a lack of knowledge for what is truly involved with design.
Another thing, many of the high end products that have been discussed have low profit margins, take guns for instance, there's about a 10% to 15% mark up from wholesale. When WOTC releases a product with an MSRP they've already calculated what percentage they need for it to be profitable for both them and the retailer, yet often times those products sell for far above the MSRP. If a gun shop tried to jack up prices the same way nobody but the rich could afford them.
It depends how far you take on the game, if you are a big collector that collects power, RL cards you will end up having 40-50k spending on collections, investment, or perhaps even more.
Some people only draft 1 time every friday FNM, so 1 month it is only $60.
I mean at the end of the day there is still way more expensive hobbies out there... Like cars, vacation, golf club etc...
That it's cheaper than fishing, hunting, guns, boating, model trains, etc. is a bit of a misnomer. Boating isn't cheap, but MasterCraft doesn't market to the people who can't afford it. Magic isn't cheap, but WotC markets to the 13+ demographic who then believe it's cheap. A large percentage are then dismayed when a $100 deck (the cost of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of video game entertainment) doesn't even get you a consistent top 4 finish in an LGS 8-man standard event.
Maybe Magic IS actually a cheap hobby but, if that's the case you're trying to make, then WotC is marketing to the wrong people.
That it's cheaper than fishing, hunting, guns, boating, model trains, etc. is a bit of a misnomer. Boating isn't cheap, but MasterCraft doesn't market to the people who can't afford it. Magic isn't cheap, but WotC markets to the 13+ demographic who then believe it's cheap. A large percentage are then dismayed when a $100 deck (the cost of hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of video game entertainment) doesn't even get you a consistent top 4 finish in an LGS 8-man standard event.
Maybe Magic IS actually a cheap hobby but, if that's the case you're trying to make, then WotC is marketing to the wrong people.
there's no requirement to play competitive events (or even events full stop) in order to play magic.
as an entrenched player since around Alpha who is into the competitive scene now, it wasn't always thus. Most of my mtg career was experienced on people's kitchen tables or living-room floors. or school desks. format? what's a format? ooh look at that sweet card!
for a while we even played with two libraries (one of shuffled basics and another with spells) to remove the problem of mana screw/flood. After a short while we realised we could circumvent most of our issues with some better deckbuilding, so our experiences evolved and grew over time.
for most of my mtg career, the idea of watching someone else play seemed strange and definitely had a ring of taking-it-far-too-seriously for my taste. I likened it to someone watching replays of Monopoly or something (like - what's the point?)
now, i'm really into FNM and attend GPs when I can. I played PTQs and PPTQs and did fairly well. but i'd say i'm in the end-game for the journey of a magic player. I've reached the point where I can be as successful as I can while maintaining a job. That, when you look at it, is a fairly extreme point to have reached in a game. Most people (literally most, more than 50% and likely much more) of players won't have reached this stage. Magic is a fun diversion. They look at cards, don't take it too seriously, like discovering new ideas and play with their friends.
to do that? magic is cheap. very cheap. cheaper than most alternatives (think Warhammer for a similar sort of casual-focused game which can also potentially translate into a competitive scene).
if your starting point is to somehow leap into protour recaps, winning Standard FNMs and following the competitive scene (therefore attaching a more significant price for entry), I'd say that 1) you've missed out on most of the joy of Magic, and 2) how!?
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While magic is not exactly "expensive" (tho you can surely make it expensive, I spend 5000€ on cards alone in the last year, not counting sleeves, playmats and so on - well, I also made 500 back due to selling some cards that have gone waaay up, so I guess I can relate to the 90% buying 10% selling;) ) but its also about "what do you get". Kitchentable player btw
60 paper cards for 500€ could net you a playstation + playstation vr + moove controllers or aim controller or a game if you get a good deal.
(180€ playstation 4 slim, 250 ps vr, 70 for the game or controllers)
Now compare this:
- A Console with lots of development time and high-tech materials
- A headset stuffed with tech that lets you dive into other worlds
- A game that was developed by a ****ton of people and consumed lots of time not only by programming, but also balancing and artwork. Compare the artwork going into a game alone with the artwork going into a magic set - it has to be A LOT more. Development Time: Sometimes years, while a single magic set comes down to 1/4 of a year (yes, I know, they are in development and playtesting much longer, but there are also multiple sets in construction at the same time, so cut this as you like)
- Some neat free 2 play games like warframe, wich will allow you to sink houndreds of hours into.
Oooooor you could have
60 paper cards, and if you are lucky 15 more to sideboard. Hope you don't get the bannhammer.
- "Permanent" costs (mainly: your electricity bill) are also usually much cheaper than the cost to regularly drive to your gamestore.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love magic, but I can also see why people see it as an expensive hobby - its not expensive in comparison to other hobbies, but its expensive for "just" beeing 60 pieces of cardboard with cool artwork and a good game balance. If you order something at amazon you get a decks worth of cardboard as packaging - cardboard is percieved as "trash-material" in many cases. Even printed cardboard envelops 50% of our products (the other 50% have plastic... some have both)
So, comparing on what a card costs, and how much it costs to produce that card, in comparison to other things can seem quite expensive.
Also, other hobbies have practical uses:
If you have a Car, you can drive wherever you want. A staple of 60 magic cards... can sit on your counter until you play with it.
Yeah, most standard cards lose value after rotation, but you already played 2 years out of them and got your value back.
If I go to modern or legacy, then at least your cards don't devalue minus reprints after the initial $500-$1000 investment. Heck, my legacy deck's value increased like 500% since I bought it back in 2009.
So overall, I find Magic to be quite cheap as a hobby. Even a movie once per month on average costs me more. What are your thoughts?
I probably spent around $1,000 on gas, hotel, and food fees during tournaments last year. That's pretty rough. I entered 9 PPTQs 2 seasons ago. That's $25 entry X 9, not to mention the gas there.
Sure, Standard is fairly cheap right now, even if many of the cards will be worth $1 or less upon rotation. Modern cards do stay around the same, as reprints hurt some prices, while raising others. Legacy, yep, prices do go up. That's true. But if you never sell, then what is the point of going up? I constantly ask myself this every day, as I have probably done 90% of my Magic business BUYING and only 10% SELLING. (in around 4,000 transactions) Regarding store credit, I noticed the value has gone down, while the competition has gone up. So at least for me, I barely get more than my entry fee, gas, and supplies, there.
*But yes, compared with many other hobbies, it's cheap. I wasted probably 3 houses worth of money just on cars in my lifetime. That feels pretty meh...
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Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Last year I spent $3000 on outdoor hobbies and $500 on MTG. One of my buddies bought a new rig to get up old logging roads and bought a new set of backpacking equipment, total amounting to 50K.
Getting season tickets for college football is several thousand a year plus gas, for NFL it is far more. Expensive hobbies like Yachts/sailboats, horses, and welding cost tens of thousands annually.
In the game arena board games and video games are individually cheaper but likely a PS4 owner has spent the equivalent of a modern deck on it, and I used to spend $250 annually on new board games. Abd miniatures cost way more, 40K and Warmastuff require re-specking every edition and you spend $1000-$2000 dollars per army.
Even Vintage/Old School aren't truly awful compared to buying a boat or fixing an old car.
Making pauper and penny dreadful full formats would be good for younger/poorer players and helping draft cards retain some value, but the prices are fine overall.
I guess if you don't fly to lots of tournaments. If you play at your local shops, there shouldn't be crazy costs outside your usual local travel gas budget. Just a thought as i hear many players complain about the price of playing a competitive Magic deck.
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The expensive thing about magic is shared with most hobbies.
Note my use of words - "hobby" and "maintain" instead of "game" and "play". Comparatively to the "outside" gaming industry we are relatively more expensive to initially get in because gaming is currently in the generation of luring players with Free-to-Play tactics, which in turn creates a generation of players used to getting into a game for free to test if they like it or not, then simply throw it away if they don't like it because it costed them nothing.
The paper card game cannot provide such free incentives because anything printed can immediately enter the Secondary Market due to its nature of being a physical product and honestly Magic does need to feature some of its costly best to entice more players to begin with - the new unaware players will not take the effort to go and sell the cards while the enfranchised secondary market is already ready to pounce for their own advantage, easily destroying the purpose of these "free" products to entice new players to begin with.
Notice how well Arena attracted new players? Because there isn't a Free-Secondary Market (the "dust/wildcard" system they're using is basically a very controlled-by-wotc version of it and isn't remotely the same), WotC can easily give out free booster packs to players (something that has never been done on paper, even MPR requires playing first to get free cards) without fear their current market would just destroy the effort. If they paywalled it from the start, MTGA would have ended up like Artifact (FYI it's not even in the top 100 played games on Steam before 2018 ended...) which is basically how paper MTG feels like to the outside world, but at least paper MTG is restricted by the nature of its product and market rather than just stupid decisions.
Of course, like any other game, the more competitive you are, the more it costs because you have to make sub-optimal choices regarding minimizing costs when it comes to buying/selling cards because of the urgency requirement of the cards, but on the casual level (which may even extend to FNM depending on location/meta), the game is relatively cheap to maintain compared to a lot more hobbies. It's the high wall to entry that scares people starting from zero off mainly - on some technicality I'm still spending the same thousand dollars I already spent in the past decade right now and the increment to this "pool" is actually pretty minimal.
Depending on how you get the cards, you can even make a PROFIT selling them.
If you play a lot of drafts in your FNM or win a bit of tournaments, you can actually profit.
Even if you buy a deck for a tournament you can sell the deck in the same season and sometimes the deck gets more expensive if its successful.
But all that taken into account, magic is not a CHEAP hobby, especially not if you collect the cards and play it very often.
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for a beginner:
bike: £500+ for a halfway decent one or £2000+ for a competitive one
clothes/helmet: £250+ for some very basic gear but could spend a lot more
additional gear: £50+ for basic additional bits (backpack or bike storage, water bottles, that kind of thing)
servicing and repairs: assuming some decent mileage, £400+ per year in consumables (tyres/brakes), replacement parts and bits like lubrication and cleaning products
that's around £1000 give or take for a competent starting setup which won't need much/any upgrading, and an additional £400 ish in running costs throughout a given year of active participation.
compare this to Magic:
Deck: anywhere from £30 to £2000+ depending on format, but as a game let's say that we start with a 'decent' budget option, same as with cycling. One of the challenger decks, or prebuilt commander decks is a great place to start in MTG giving you a fun and well constructed starting point from which to build a collection. These generally run around £40, although can be significantly less.
sleeves/box: from around £30 to start off, for some decent kit
attending your first FNMs: let's say our new player doesn't necessarily want to just sit in their house with their friends, but fancies striking out to a local FNM. Let's say that they try their hand at a mix of drafting and standard, once each per month, for about 11 months of the year.
that's around £10 for a draft per time (let's say £15 to be on the safe side), and £5 entry for a reasonable standard FNM per time. £20 per month. £220 overall for the year, and let's be generous and round it up to £300 to include three prereleases @ £20 each, plus a few sleeves. fair?
for a beginner:
startup costs: around £70
running costs (events): around £300 per year if active and attending regular events pitched at beginners
impulse buys and tuning your challenger/commander decks: ??? (this will depend on the person, but i'll assume the average person will spend £5 here and there)
to me, looking at a beginner & fairly casual approach for both hobbies, Magic turns out way cheaper. As others have alluded to, I think most 'physical' hobbies which require equipment to participate will end up being more expensive than magic for an equivalent level of engagement (casual vs. competitive).
where magic begins to get expensive is when people take it beyond simply being a fun game to enjoy with friends, and start devoting personal attachment to the game, building collections, getting competitive, 'pimping out' decks with more expensive (but functionally identical) cards, etc.
I personally have a collection on the order of a house-deposit in terms of value, but I wouldn't say I've invested too much into the game financially. I have found that my purchases have accrued value over time (which is something you occasionally see in other hobbies but not to this extent).
it's an interesting topic for sure. Not sure we can actually rail on magic for being expensive though. It's all relative. It's only as expensive as you want it to be, truly. If you're fine chilling with your friends and jamming some commander, there's a perfectly good pre-built commander deck waiting on a store shelf for you to pick up, and it's affordable without sacrificing competitiveness
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Sometimes impulse buys are fine. I bought 6 foil Postmortem Lunge from my LGS for $2.17 each. Turned out not bad.
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Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)Back up a bit. Value for objects isn't necessarily tied to the cost of raw materials/manufacture. In fact i'd go as far as saying that with the majority of consumer goods, it's only a very minor consideration. That bike you're referencing isn't intrinsically worth £500, it's just sold for that. Trying to make the assertion that magic is "just cardboard", that its value is "contrived" or a "manufactured illusion" (conspiracy much?), indicates that you might be cherry-picking your thought process here, because without even tracking back in history and just sticking to present-day, I could give you a nearly endless list of easy examples where something being sold or traded is "just plastic" or "just aluminium" or "just wood" and has its value tied to an entirely different facet in its production. We're talking on the scale of every product on the market, kind of endless.
and before we jump down a rabbit hole, just consider this: Magic is a game. Tennis is a game. Golf is a game. Monopoly is a game. Call of Duty is a game. What do you need to participate in all of these things? The tools to play.
A tennis racket, a monopoly set, some golf clubs, a computer, magic cards. yadda yadda. The value we ascribe to these tools is going to be based on your level of seriousness to engage in the game itself. Want to get competitive? 'better' gear costs more. For magic we'll see a similar pattern. 'better' cards cost more. They cost more because people want them and will pay more for the privilege. i'd go as far as saying that every prouct every sold, bartered or traded in the history of human civilisation has followed a similar trend. Most magic cards are worthless; however, that tundra sitting next to me is worth quite a bit. why? people want them, and there aren't many of them around. Five people want one thing, and they'll start bidding over each other for ownership of that thing. Over time the price creeps up. Flashy new standard/modern deck? People will pay more, fighting to have the rarer cards in that deck.
and while we're at it, let's talk "tangible" goods. That car outside - the raw materials are probably worth a couple of hundred at best. the "engineering" is a vague factor, and while yes, it costs a great deal to set up a working manufacturing plant, they generally pay for themselves within a few years and the "engineering" costs associated with a single unit off the production line is going to be relatively small, and yet a 'cheap' car will still set you back around £10,000. Those golf clubs, that kayak, those shoes? cheap to manufacture. surprisingly cheap to manufacture. you want an illusion? Just pick up any random product from a supermarket shelf. it's all just as fictitious in its pricing as magic cards. Why are they so expensive? you can't make them yourself. You are not paying for raw materials, you're paying for someone else's ability to make something you can't, and you're paying for growth. somewhere around 50% (often more) of a product's final price will be profit, used to enrich and grow a business, pay for ad campaigns, new staff, rewarding shareholders etc.
Why do I bring this up? well, items tend to have a price memory, and that 'profit' gets baked into people's perceptions of how much a product is worth. Selling your 2-month old iPhone on eBay? you'll be selling it for a very similar price to new, despite its non-profit value being less than half of that. Truth be told, Magic actually follows a similar principle with newer cards, with the value of cards being tied surprisingly closely to the value of a booster box. your EV for a booster box can't ever really get above the price of the box, because when cards in new sets get expensive, boxes get opened and the prices get crushed. If one card spikes in price, everything else gets slightly cheaper to compensate. Don't believe me? go check out the price trends for each card in each set for the last couple of years. You'll see that it correlates with what i'm saying. We saw an exaggerated version of this with Masterpieces, where the regular cards in the sets got crushed so much that the sets themselves were almost worthless, and the masterpieces held all the value.
don't describe magic as if it's some greedy plot where people get swindled by paying over the odds for "just cardboard" because that's a complete non-starter. You ever bought Toilet paper? cutlery or ceramics? ever bought a sofa or a table? Joke's on you, because those are "just cheap raw materials"
Those are useful impulse buys indeed. Mine are decent, but mostly just to decorate my decks with foil... a buy-a-box Goblin Rabblemaster, a duel of the planeswalkers ooze, and a foil beacon of creation. hehe ^___^
Agree 100% with that. Magic cards are not "just cardboard". The same way the cd's I bought from CDJapan are not "just discs", and the same way the limited edition magazines I bought are also not "just paper". Purkle already said most of what I wanted to say, so I shall not repeat.
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Maybe I just grind a lot of events and find the costs are high but I've probably spent an absurd amount the past few years
that's fair. Those are optional aspects of the game, too. For years, I just played on my friends' dining-room tables and picked up cards from the occasional booster, and sometimes i'd splash out (hey big spender) on a card or two from a local shop binder.
now, I'm in a similar spot to you. I opt to participate in more competitive play and travel to events. I don't have to, but it's good fun, and I enjoy getting to use my experience in a competitive sphere as well. =D
all in all, Magic can be a super affordable and awesome fun hobby. or, like just about anything, you can spend a lot more if you're so inclined.
With me, I understand that I could probably save a lot of money by not going to tournaments a lot but it's not like I'm not covering what I need to. I mean I've been considering taking a bit of a break to not spend the money, but I would probably have a hard time doing that to be honest.
The nice thing about Magic is that you can also choose to play casually and spend less money if you want
This is subjective, I'd say. I spent several thousand dollars on Magic last year, primarily trying to forge my way into Legacy, but also touching up my Commander stuff (not to mention a few Casual decks). Admittedly, that's more than I ever wanted to spend on it, but I feel like I'm getting closer to the point of where I don't have to buy cards (by merit of having what I want/need) and that's an encouraging feeling. I think I built a single Standard deck last year just to see how it played, which was cheap - I think under $50 - but Standard just doesn't float my boat. Modern doesn't, either, and I've no interest in playing the format. That said, viable Modern decks tend to range in the mid-to-upper hundreds, if I'm not mistaken. I think a decent Commander deck can be had for ~$300 or less, but if we're talking Legacy, I'm reasonably certain the only viable (proven) and optimized deck you can have for less than $1000 is Burn. Sure, you could build something like, for example, Sneak & Show, with Shocks rather than Duals, but again, optimization. Yeah, you could go mono-colored, but most mono-decks want you to run City of Traitors, which, over the past year, jumped from a $100-$150 card to $250+. Additionally, some stores don't let you buy in to tournaments with your store credit so that you can't "go infinite". One of my LGSes is this way, which is unfortunate, as I recently placed 2nd at a Legacy 2k they hosted and that would have probably kept me set for tournament entry for the entirety of this year. As other people have mentioned, tournament entry and sleeves are a thing, and if you're playing a competitive format with expensive cards, you're likely going to want to double sleeve. I also try to make it a point not to hold on to cards I'm not using and will never use, but I understand I'm in the minority on that one. Yeah, compared to some hobbies mentioned here, Magic can be inexpensive, but if you delve deep into something like Legacy or Vintage, you're talking multiple thousands of dollars for a deck, alone, and if you like to switch it up (as a lot of people do), that adds up quickly.
But, YMMV.
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Sleeving is for me, a necessary thing. As it prolongs the life of cards, protects from dust, liquid spills, and keeps them in good condition. As long as cards in a modern deck that I use.. even the cheapest ones are double sleeved. For example desert cerodon is double sleeved the same way as tarmogoyf, a basic forest is double sleeved the same way as the fetch lands, because I want to preserve them for the years to come.
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I also understand that with many higher end versions of a product that you're often paying for that brand name. That still does not detract from the fact that those items require a certain amount of labor to manufacture, and often with luxury goods there really is more to them than the cheaper versions. The work and thought that goes into a high end sports car is vastly superior than that of an economy car. The concept of paying for something I cannot create myself is not lost on me. When it comes to Magic cards there's design and development teams, art and flavor, marketing, distribution, etc. But to say that the artificial scarcity of some of the cards is somehow a conspiracy is disingenuous on your part. WOTC literally decides how large print runs are and how many of each card gets printed. With print items the up front is you largest cost, as you produce more units the cost per unit decreases. This is where profit margins come into play. At a print shop producing more units is fairly simple, add more stock to the machine and hit the button. My stepdad was a die cutter foreman at a print shop in Sacramento for over 30 years at a place much like Cartamundi, so I have some insight into the procedure. With complex physical goods that require hands on tuning it's not so simple. I own a glass studio, my cost per unit is uniform no matter how many units we produce. If an item is just mass produced by machine, usually the cost per unit goes down on the production side, but once you add the need for hand craftsmanship that changes the equation. Even though my cost per unit to make stays the same, with higher volume purchases I can afford to sell for less. Many goods are sold under this model. That $500 bike you mentioned, it sells for that price based upon a series of calculations that involve initial cost and necessary profit margin for both the producer and seller coupled with what the target audience would be willing to pay. The price isn't as arbitrary as an ebay sale. So yes the value of that bike is $500 because that's what it needs to sell for for it to be worth while to get made in the first place. At my business I won't touch projects where the R&D and production costs won't net a certain profit percentage. There's always a little wiggle room for variance but businesses like to reserve that for sales and bulk buyers.
The only reason Magic cards have such a high secondary market value is because people have bought into WOTC's tournament structure. They could have just made Magic a living cards game, when a set comes out a box is just 4x of every card. WOTC's model is genius, it creates this crack-head mentality of keeping up with the Joneses or I cannot compete. They create invaluable chase mythic rares in low enough quantity that it drives up box sales. Players "need" those mythics to even have a chance at FNM. So ya, "conspiracy". WOTC's biggest problem is how to create the most profit without pissing off their fan base. That's been the biggest complaint since forever. Every decision WOTC has to back track on has been one of trying to milk the cash cow without milking it dry. When it comes to the secondary market prices are set based upon what the dumbest consumers will pay.
I collect guns and let me tell you, there's a stark difference in reliability and performance between a $300 and a $600 piece. Cheap tennis rackets and golf clubs also don't play as well as higher end ones do. When I shop I never buy the most expensive item, because you are just buying a name at that point, but I do buy in the upper range(when quality is directly correlated to cost). With Magic cards however, each card costs the same to produce, quality is not inherently built in. I know, I know, not all cards are playable, certain cards are more desirable than others for constructed, etc. But that's not intrinsic to the manufacturing process beyond design and development. Where as even a high end competitive bicycle, quality control is necessary from start to finish.(I also understand the vagaries than can happen during printing, but these thing don't truly affect a card's performance)
To summarize my point; high end luxury cardboard feels like a bigger waste of money to some of us because cards can be mass produced a the flick of a switch, and even if a card is flawed during manufacture, it still functions as a game piece. Compared to all the other mentioned items that require engineering to perform at peak levels. If a tennis racket breaks, you're out of the game. Your bicycle or car breaks you crash and could accrue medical bills. You don't want a budget rope to go mountain climbing do you? I'll wager that people who scuba dive or parachute want the best money can buy.
No offence purklefluff, but your response to me leads me to believe you've never been on the supply side of life. But as someone who has, you learn what goes into the manufacture of things, and you acquire an appreciation for the processes. Your comment about engineering being a vague factor shows a lack of knowledge for what is truly involved with design.
Another thing, many of the high end products that have been discussed have low profit margins, take guns for instance, there's about a 10% to 15% mark up from wholesale. When WOTC releases a product with an MSRP they've already calculated what percentage they need for it to be profitable for both them and the retailer, yet often times those products sell for far above the MSRP. If a gun shop tried to jack up prices the same way nobody but the rich could afford them.
Some people only draft 1 time every friday FNM, so 1 month it is only $60.
I mean at the end of the day there is still way more expensive hobbies out there... Like cars, vacation, golf club etc...
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there's no requirement to play competitive events (or even events full stop) in order to play magic.
as an entrenched player since around Alpha who is into the competitive scene now, it wasn't always thus. Most of my mtg career was experienced on people's kitchen tables or living-room floors. or school desks. format? what's a format? ooh look at that sweet card!
for a while we even played with two libraries (one of shuffled basics and another with spells) to remove the problem of mana screw/flood. After a short while we realised we could circumvent most of our issues with some better deckbuilding, so our experiences evolved and grew over time.
for most of my mtg career, the idea of watching someone else play seemed strange and definitely had a ring of taking-it-far-too-seriously for my taste. I likened it to someone watching replays of Monopoly or something (like - what's the point?)
now, i'm really into FNM and attend GPs when I can. I played PTQs and PPTQs and did fairly well. but i'd say i'm in the end-game for the journey of a magic player. I've reached the point where I can be as successful as I can while maintaining a job. That, when you look at it, is a fairly extreme point to have reached in a game. Most people (literally most, more than 50% and likely much more) of players won't have reached this stage. Magic is a fun diversion. They look at cards, don't take it too seriously, like discovering new ideas and play with their friends.
to do that? magic is cheap. very cheap. cheaper than most alternatives (think Warhammer for a similar sort of casual-focused game which can also potentially translate into a competitive scene).
if your starting point is to somehow leap into protour recaps, winning Standard FNMs and following the competitive scene (therefore attaching a more significant price for entry), I'd say that 1) you've missed out on most of the joy of Magic, and 2) how!?
60 paper cards for 500€ could net you a playstation + playstation vr + moove controllers or aim controller or a game if you get a good deal.
(180€ playstation 4 slim, 250 ps vr, 70 for the game or controllers)
Now compare this:
- A Console with lots of development time and high-tech materials
- A headset stuffed with tech that lets you dive into other worlds
- A game that was developed by a ****ton of people and consumed lots of time not only by programming, but also balancing and artwork. Compare the artwork going into a game alone with the artwork going into a magic set - it has to be A LOT more. Development Time: Sometimes years, while a single magic set comes down to 1/4 of a year (yes, I know, they are in development and playtesting much longer, but there are also multiple sets in construction at the same time, so cut this as you like)
- Some neat free 2 play games like warframe, wich will allow you to sink houndreds of hours into.
Oooooor you could have
60 paper cards, and if you are lucky 15 more to sideboard. Hope you don't get the bannhammer.
- "Permanent" costs (mainly: your electricity bill) are also usually much cheaper than the cost to regularly drive to your gamestore.
Now, don't get me wrong, I love magic, but I can also see why people see it as an expensive hobby - its not expensive in comparison to other hobbies, but its expensive for "just" beeing 60 pieces of cardboard with cool artwork and a good game balance. If you order something at amazon you get a decks worth of cardboard as packaging - cardboard is percieved as "trash-material" in many cases. Even printed cardboard envelops 50% of our products (the other 50% have plastic... some have both)
So, comparing on what a card costs, and how much it costs to produce that card, in comparison to other things can seem quite expensive.
Also, other hobbies have practical uses:
If you have a Car, you can drive wherever you want. A staple of 60 magic cards... can sit on your counter until you play with it.