That's fine, just about every hobby you can do reserves the most elite level for those willing to pay for it. There's no reason for Magic to be different other than our own selfish desires as the consumer that is currently priced out of whatever format.
Our selfish desires to play a game, or the selfish desires of Trading Card Game Elites to maintain their position of cardboard wealth and exclusivity over others?
I hope my point is clear here. I don't see how it's selfish in the least to want to be included in a game. It's definitely selfish to want to exclude others from a game in order to maintain your own "investment".
Nobody is excluding you from playing the game. If you want to play Legacy at the highest levels Magic offiers, be prepared to meet it's financial demands. I want to be a member of the Corvette club, but I don't have a spare $60k laying around to play in that arena. No amount of complaining or demands I can make on GM will change that fact. I don't have the money, therefore I cannot play in that arena.
That's simply how the world works. Sorry if it isn't fair, but that's reality. I've accepted I probably won't own a Corvette until (if I'm REALLY lucky) I'm 60 years old and my kids are out of school. You should accept that you can play Standard, Legal, Draft, Modern, and Commander much as I have accepted that I have a 7 year old truck with 100k miles on it. Leave the luxury items (Legacy staples, nice cars, big houses, boats, planes, etc) to those with more money.
What does any of this have to do with the idea that wanting to have increased access to eternal formats is "selfish"?
Not to mention, these are not luxury goods. These are pieces of cardboard that were all at one time sold for the same price. Hasbro will do what it believes is most profitable, and that includes abolishing the reserve list and reprinting every single one of those cards. You'd better believe that the second they believe that Magic is dead and they can squeeze a last bit of blood out of that stone this will happen. Leave the patronizing "this is how the world works" crap home. As a consumer it is our right to voice our displeasure with Hasbro's practices in the hopes that they will change their policies regarding reprints. You know, kind of like what happened after Chronicles came out?
If you take away the reserve list, and start printing reserve list cards in the quantities needed to drop their prices to sane levels, exactly who is going to want to play standard?
Why does Standard exist now, when according to this logic Modern should draw away the entire Standard player base? How did type 2 (Standard) exist alongside type 1 (Vintage), 1.5 (Legacy), and 1.X (Extended) for so long before prices got crazy? Maybe because different formats have different things to offer different people?
What does any of this have to do with the idea that wanting to have increased access to eternal formats is "selfish"?
Not to mention, these are not luxury goods. These are pieces of cardboard that were all at one time sold for the same price. Hasbro will do what it believes is most profitable, and that includes abolishing the reserve list and reprinting every single one of those cards. You'd better believe that the second they believe that Magic is dead and they can squeeze a last bit of blood out of that stone this will happen. Leave the patronizing "this is how the world works" crap home. As a consumer it is our right to voice our displeasure with Hasbro's practices in the hopes that they will change their policies regarding reprints. You know, kind of like what happened after Chronicles came out?
So let me get this straight. Magic cards are not luxury goods? That means they are necessary for what purpose? I suggest you go back and look at what the definition of a luxury good is. Second to that, even if you look within the Magic market, the cards you complain about being expensive are among the most prized and highly sought after in the game. None of which are required to play Standard, Limited, or Modern. The cards you complain about are almost exclusively limited to Legacy, Vintage, and EDH - arguably the 3 least played formats (debatable on EDH). Luxury items on top of a luxury game. What you are looking for is to have cheap and easy access to the best, most expensive, and most valuable cards.
The reason what you want is selfish is because you want to completely change the dynamic of the economy of the game to fit your desires. To hell with everyone who owns these cards already, with the secondary market, those who make a living on the game's current structure, and Wizards' themselves. Doing so would have grave and potentially catastrophic consequences on the game. Have you considered what would happen to each of these entities if you got your way?
I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that Wizards' can be expected to do exactly what is in their best interests alone. If they thought they could ultimately make more money by abolishing the RL, they would do so. They did try to tinker around it with the premium loophole. After that was shut down, they have not made any further attempts at it. What does that tell you based on those 2 facts? It tells me that Wizards has thought it through and decided it was NOT in their best interests to abolish the RL.
Taking this one step further.. Wizards has now done 3 reprint sets. They have adjusted the EV and print runs each time. It appears that they have found what they believe to be the sweet spot. They will probably tinker with it a bit more with each successive release, but you're not going to find a major swing in the EV of packs or in the print run size. Why? Because Wizards believes they've found the best point for them to make the most money, keep collectors happy, keep the secondary market from collapsing on those cards, and inject copies of hard to find cards into the wild for players.
Finally - it is well within your right to voice your displeasure at Wizards' decisions. But understand WHY they make the decisions they make before spouting off derisive comments. Look at this from each perspective... That of the player, the collector, the LGS, and Wizards' itself. Try to understand the wants/desires of these groups and you will have a much better grasp on why Wizards' does what it does.
So let me get this straight. Magic cards are not luxury goods? That means they are necessary for what purpose? I suggest you go back and look at what the definition of a luxury good is. Second to that, even if you look within the Magic market, the cards you complain about being expensive are among the most prized and highly sought after in the game. None of which are required to play Standard, Limited, or Modern. The cards you complain about are almost exclusively limited to Legacy, Vintage, and EDH - arguably the 3 least played formats (debatable on EDH). Luxury items on top of a luxury game. What you are looking for is to have cheap and easy access to the best, most expensive, and most valuable cards.
Oh jeez. Okay, fine, great semantic win there bud. Magic cards are dictionary definition luxury goods, as are candy and tea. I'm obviously rejecting the notion that they are in the same category as nice cars, big houses, planes, etc. You're acting like Legacy has always costed an arm and a leg. It has not. You could buy in to Legacy for fewer than a thousand dollars for the vast majority of the life of the game. It is only recently that the price of Legacy staples has risen to absurd heights, and there is reason to believe that this is an unsustainable bubble.
Honestly, I just think people need to be patient. I know, can be hard sometimes (honestly) when one doesn't want to have to wait years to get something they want for what they would view as a reasonable price. But for wizards, honestly one has to realize that as a business that is both catering to their own profit margins, as well as to their customer base, they have to be careful how they handle mass reprint sets like these (ie: sets made up entirely or almost entirely of reprints).
Wizards first foray into this sort of thing (outside of core sets and the occasional standard reprint), in a booster pack product came with the 1st Modern Masters set. Its clear at the time they were still testing the waters, part of why with an msrp of $7 (most of which sold for $10+ upon release), and a limited print run (because of wanting to make sure a product like that would actually sell at such a price point when made up of all reprints), they realized they had something and they had room to breathe a bit with how they could structure such a set.
So then, we have Modern Masters 2015, which they raised the msrp to $10 (due in part to what happened with the first modern masters set) and they increased the print run due to, once again the high demand that came from the first modern masters set. Unfortunately the set wasn't as well balanced as many would have liked, and who knows its possible wizards decided to be careful again once they raised the msrp and increased the print run so as not to cause other potential systemic problems, and once again to see how it would be received by the players and how sales would go for it.
Obviously Modern Masters 2015 wasn't as big a hit as the first one and the higher supply and less balanced set quality has led it to still be available for less than msrp online even now (a year later). But, that gave them even more data to help use towards their newest creation and reprint set, Eternal Masters....
The tricky thing with Eternal Masters, once again, is that, unlike modern which was a fast-growth format that they had been pushing in popularity over the previous years, you had this set which was inevitably going to have a large amount of non-modern legal cards, and thus while wizards could use the data they got from the previous two modern masters sets, they once again had to be cautious in how they chose to handle this set, so as to come in at a price people would pay (in this case msrp $10 again), and at a print run size that from what some people said wasn't as large as modern masters 2015, but possibly larger than the first modern masters? Basically they were being careful. And while it seems many were pleased by some of the choices for the Eternal Masters set, as some have pointed out, the set wasn't as chocked full of goodies as some certainly would have hoped (better than modern masters 2015, but as some have said, worse than the first modern masters set). That said however, from the sounds of it, the set really shouldn't have any trouble selling well for wizards and for shops that are selling it, so it would seem, at least for now, that wizards caution will still inevitably pay off for them.
Now with all that said, here is the biggest thing. From a business standpoint wizards knows that they need to reprint cards because the playerbase continues to grow, and in order to keep prices from getting too crazy, some reprinting is required (we could argue about what "too crazy" is all day and all year I'm sure, but not really what I'm delving into for now). But from their business standpoint, they find themselves having an opportunity while giving players the reprints they want, to also be able to increase their sales/profits (the key part of any profitable business enterprise while doing your best to cater to your overall customer base), so as we've seen with modern masters, wizards seems intent on slow-rolling the reprints to allow them to be able to continue printing these sorts of sets into the future and still have enough decently valued cards across the spectrum for them to keep selling as they go. Its long-term planning, which is something wizards I would say has excelled at, and has, in part, allowed them to have the most popular (from an overall standpoint) CCG/TCG out there on the market even after 23 years since its initial release (gods has it been that long, man I feel old...)
I suspect we will continue to see these masters sets each year likely from now on with an alternating modern/eternal schedule for as long as wizards is able to make them to where players will still be willing to buy them. The thing to keep in mind as well, is that each time they do these they will learn from their previous attempts and we will likely see improvements of some sort over time. Part of why I expect the next Modern Masters set to be better than the 2015 one, and possibly even as good as the first one. And why I expect the next Eternal Masters set (assuming I'm not wrong of course in my previous assumption) to be better than this last one hopefully, or at least see an increased print run if this one sells as well as I imagine it likely will.
Anyhow, should be interesting to see how these sorts of sets play out in the future. As well as what the value of the cards in Eternal Masters end up settling out at once the singles start hitting the market en-masse starting today.
As for people saying the $10 per pack price is too high, well, that's debatable really. In the end, if there are enough people willing to pay at or near the msrp on a product like this, then wizards has in fact chosen their price point correctly. And with a limited print run product the likelihood increases that there will in fact be enough people interested in such a product with enough money to spend that they wont have any trouble selling through all of it. So while some may find the cost too high or may not have the funds, those that do (as can be the case with many non-necessity products out there) will buy and enjoy it.
As a tertiary side note as well, I often see a lot of people complaining about how these sets and the various reprint products wizards puts out each year don't seem to be putting a dent in the cost of cards. And while for some cards this certainly may be true as they will over time rise back up to around where they may have been before, in many cases, especially for casual/EDH cards, as well as even from tournament playable cards, the prices do drop and many/most that have gotten reprinted are still lower than they were at their high points (notice I said most, not all), and as someone who has kept an eye rather closely on all of the cards getting reprinted on a regular basis from wizards various products (in part because I do have such a large collection that its taking me forever to liquidate), I can say for a certainty that quite a lot of cards are in fact a lot cheaper today than they were a 1, 2, or 3 years ago when the masters/commander sets started their process of coming out more regularly or at all respectively).
Some of these arguments here have gone so far to both sides of the bell curve it's just ridiculous. It's another summer, another Masters set, and another fail.
WotC still suffers with these sets from some bizarre identity crisis where they can't decide who this product is for, and basically screw it up for everyone. The set has a lot of filler and ridiculous rarity upgrades for limited, but it's so expensive and in short supply to feed a high number of drafts. It's got too many newer cards and chaff to feel like cube style drafting, and cubes don't require expensive cards, just good ones. We've got a good number of Legacy staples, but with the reserved list plus what wasn't included, prices on everything else in Legacy just went up, offsetting any benefit from the increased availability. Cross-format staples were not only avoided, they specifically targeted the Modern banned list for reprints to show off the 'diversity' of Legacy or whatever, which is fine, but leaves an entire segment of the fastest-growing format in the 'this product isn't for you' category. For Commander players, a good chunk of the best Commander cards came in at Mythic, so not drafting this set and just taking advantage of reduced-price singles is probably the only saving grace of the entire set.
Then you have all this talk about EV that pops up, and everyone wants to break out their Economics 101 textbook and dust it off. For everyone that thinks the packs cost too much, you're going to be right in 90% of cases (foil or Mythic lottery notwithstanding). To everyone that says a $10 pack of cards can't have a $20 EV without costing that much, you seem to be neglecting both equilibrium and averages. The way WotC has it set up now, they're packing 50 cent rares in with $80 mythics, and there's more of the former than the latter. It is not only possible, but probable that any given pack will not net you anywhere near the value you paid for it, which is why packs are notoriously a sucker's bet. Couple that with the fact that EV is not a concrete number. Prices on the cards in the set dip every time a Masters set releases. If you're going to say the EV on a pack is $7 for a $10 pack at release, at 2-3 weeks in that number can go to $4 or 5, depending on how many of the 'chase' cards were expensive based on rarity and not playability, and let's not forget that commons and uncommons usually take permanent reductions. By a month after release there's virtually no chance with these sets that you're going to crack a junk rare and have the rest of the cards make up the price tag on the pack. (This is even true of MM1, go crack a Skeletal Vampire, Lava Spike, and a Kitchen Finks, you're still nowhere near $20), so the pack become even MORE of a lottery. The short version of this conversation is EV is a shifting number that always shifts down, people need to stop holding it up on a pedestal to justify the insanely crappy card choices going into these sets, especially at the common/uncommon level.
Lastly, since I mentioned card choice, I am solidly convinced WotC is trying to either sabotage themselves by flipping off the community or really is so inept as to not make proper choices based on response. I mean, Wrath of God over Damnation? People have been screaming for a Damnation reprint for 4 years or more at this point, what the hell is the holdup? This was a perfect opportunity. Wouldn't it have made more sense with what White is doing in this set to have included Ravages of War, and let black have Damnation? Snapcaster and Tarmogoyf are Legacy staples, but we needed Control Magic at rare and Argothian Enchantress at Mythic. Really? You're sure about that? Where the hell is Lotus Petal? I know the whole spiel, 'they gotta save something for the next set', but we've been saying that for years and the best they do is maybe trickle 1 or 2 while the other 30 we're asking for get more expensive every year. It's just plain dumb to trust this company anymore. They don't even seem to be looking to sell packs to us, they just want their product bought in bulk by SCG and let the secondary market have it's way with us.
Some of these arguments here have gone so far to both sides of the bell curve it's just ridiculous. It's another summer, another Masters set, and another fail.
WotC still suffers with these sets from some bizarre identity crisis where they can't decide who this product is for, and basically screw it up for everyone. The set has a lot of filler and ridiculous rarity upgrades for limited, but it's so expensive and in short supply to feed a high number of drafts. It's got too many newer cards and chaff to feel like cube style drafting, and cubes don't require expensive cards, just good ones. We've got a good number of Legacy staples, but with the reserved list plus what wasn't included, prices on everything else in Legacy just went up, offsetting any benefit from the increased availability. Cross-format staples were not only avoided, they specifically targeted the Modern banned list for reprints to show off the 'diversity' of Legacy or whatever, which is fine, but leaves an entire segment of the fastest-growing format in the 'this product isn't for you' category. For Commander players, a good chunk of the best Commander cards came in at Mythic, so not drafting this set and just taking advantage of reduced-price singles is probably the only saving grace of the entire set.
Then you have all this talk about EV that pops up, and everyone wants to break out their Economics 101 textbook and dust it off. For everyone that thinks the packs cost too much, you're going to be right in 90% of cases (foil or Mythic lottery notwithstanding). To everyone that says a $10 pack of cards can't have a $20 EV without costing that much, you seem to be neglecting both equilibrium and averages. The way WotC has it set up now, they're packing 50 cent rares in with $80 mythics, and there's more of the former than the latter. It is not only possible, but probable that any given pack will not net you anywhere near the value you paid for it, which is why packs are notoriously a sucker's bet. Couple that with the fact that EV is not a concrete number. Prices on the cards in the set dip every time a Masters set releases. If you're going to say the EV on a pack is $7 for a $10 pack at release, at 2-3 weeks in that number can go to $4 or 5, depending on how many of the 'chase' cards were expensive based on rarity and not playability, and let's not forget that commons and uncommons usually take permanent reductions. By a month after release there's virtually no chance with these sets that you're going to crack a junk rare and have the rest of the cards make up the price tag on the pack. (This is even true of MM1, go crack a Skeletal Vampire, Lava Spike, and a Kitchen Finks, you're still nowhere near $20), so the pack become even MORE of a lottery. The short version of this conversation is EV is a shifting number that always shifts down, people need to stop holding it up on a pedestal to justify the insanely crappy card choices going into these sets, especially at the common/uncommon level.
Lastly, since I mentioned card choice, I am solidly convinced WotC is trying to either sabotage themselves by flipping off the community or really is so inept as to not make proper choices based on response. I mean, Wrath of God over Damnation? People have been screaming for a Damnation reprint for 4 years or more at this point, what the hell is the holdup? This was a perfect opportunity. Wouldn't it have made more sense with what White is doing in this set to have included Ravages of War, and let black have Damnation? Snapcaster and Tarmogoyf are Legacy staples, but we needed Control Magic at rare and Argothian Enchantress at Mythic. Really? You're sure about that? Where the hell is Lotus Petal? I know the whole spiel, 'they gotta save something for the next set', but we've been saying that for years and the best they do is maybe trickle 1 or 2 while the other 30 we're asking for get more expensive every year. It's just plain dumb to trust this company anymore. They don't even seem to be looking to sell packs to us, they just want their product bought in bulk by SCG and let the secondary market have it's way with us.
A couple of comments. I generally agree with you that EV is a moving target. It's consistently changing right up until sets are released. However, as we saw with MM1 if EV is significantly higher than MSRP, the secondary market will just adjust upwards and you will still pay about EV pricing regardless of MSRP. People make decisions based on whatever available information they have. Rarely do you have complete and perfect information to make decisions, so you go with what you know. Based on EV being a generally accepted methodology, it's the primary guideline that retailers are using to set prices on these reprint sets. At least with these, there's really only one shot. They have typically sold out pretty quick. I think people stick to EV because it is a good predictor of what the street cost of boxes will be.
On the lottery aspect of EMA, I think it's kind of how Magic works all around. You can make the same claim for SOI, or BFZ or just about any standard print set that Wizards' has released. I'm not really sure what you were expecting or hoping for, but even in standard 80% of the packs you open lose money too.
I actually think its an OK move not to put Damnation here. I'd rather it show up in Conspiracy 2 that has a full print run, or if push comes to shove, MM3 would be adequate. As much as I'd like to see Damnation here, I think it'll spice up MM3 limited to have wraths in sealed. Keeping EV in mind does limit some of Wizards' choices in cards. I know that you're not a fan of this methodology, but we already saw what happens when EV and MSRP don't match up. This does mean that Wizards simply will not load up the set with every power card that we could ever want in it. It's a tradeoff.
On Wizards sabotaging themselves and not knowing what they are doing, I respectfully disagree. They've managed to not only stay in business for over 20 years. They have managed to grow from essentially nothing into what is generally considered the best TCG in existence (arguable with Yu-Gi-Oh!). They have to balance several groups whose interests directly conflict with one another (collectors wanting rare and valuable cards, with high prices versus players who want everything cheap and accessible), grow the game, keep their retailers sustainable (major places for many to play the game), and keep their overlords (Hasbro) happy. We may not understand, like, or agree with the decisions they make but to think they are purposely screwing up their business model or giving the bird to those who purchase their game doesn't make sense. If that were the case, the game simply would stop growing, and eventually die. All evidence currently points to the direct opposite.
On Wizards sabotaging themselves and not knowing what they are doing, I respectfully disagree. They've managed to not only stay in business for over 20 years. They have managed to grow from essentially nothing into what is generally considered the best TCG in existence (arguable with Yu-Gi-Oh!). They have to balance several groups whose interests directly conflict with one another (collectors wanting rare and valuable cards, with high prices versus players who want everything cheap and accessible), grow the game, keep their retailers sustainable (major places for many to play the game), and keep their overlords (Hasbro) happy. We may not understand, like, or agree with the decisions they make but to think they are purposely screwing up their business model or giving the bird to those who purchase their game doesn't make sense. If that were the case, the game simply would stop growing, and eventually die. All evidence currently points to the direct opposite.
Here is the only point I would have to respectfully disagree right back. The 'they managed to stay business...' bit has been an argument beaten to death. Quite honestly, it's patently false for several reasons. Chronicles, Combo Winter, Affinity, Cawblade, to a much lesser extent Fairies, 6th Ed. rules changes, 10th Ed. rules changes, etc. - they've come within striking distance of killing the game on a number of occasions. Be it good will, community, or turning a corner with a great set, WotC has been able to save itself more than once and rebuild the player base. One could see it as good job on their part for pulling it off, but the cynic in me says the community shouldn't have been put there in the first place. So no, I don't feel they deserve pats on the back for recovering from disastrous mistakes like those when they did the damage to themselves. So no, I can't say I 'trust their expertise', because evidence shows a terrible track record. When they're good, they're great, and when they're bad, they're really bad. Instead of striving for greatness, they've decided to balance these 'conflicting desires' you mentioned by settling for mediocrity. Nothing here is so great collectors get upset, nothing here is so great it justifies the price, nothing here is so reasonably priced it makes sense to draft, and nothing here is so good you can make a Legacy deck out of a box.
There is one caveat to all of the above, though, and I've seen a few of your posts, so you may not appreciate the opinion, but - collectors are the only segment of these conflicting desires NO ONE has to appeal to. In order for Gaea's Cradle, for example, to maintain it's value, all WotC has to do is NOT print it. By virtue of it's exclusion in this set (yes, I'm aware of its status), the price rose on the value of the card. Somewhere along the line 'collectors' began feeling entitled to this imaginary number on paper. If you're holding the card, it's cardboard. If you're playing with the card, it's really good cardboard. If you're cube drafting it, it's still cardboard. If it's sitting in a binder to show off to people, or yourself, it's vanity. Only if you're actually buying, selling or trading it does the dollar value assigned to it become relevant. Yet somehow, my ability to get one by way of reprint falls second to a collector's desire to hang on to whatever the market price is when he wakes up that morning, on some trust or implied promise that someday when said collector is no longer loyal to the game, he can cash out and retire on it?
If EV is entering into WotC's equations, then they're lying or stupid when they say they're blind to the secondary market. When they print a 2cc-creature that's a guaranteed staple 4-of at mythic, they're either lying or stupid. When they opt to not reprint a card despite player demand for it to satisfy a collector that isn't purchasing product, they're either lying or stupid. Lastly, when they're printing top-heavy lottery ticket sets, they're either lying or stupid.
Magic has a vastly large player base. You presented the lack of the death of the game as 'evidence' that they know what they're doing. Action, not a lack of reaction, is the evidence I've based my opinions on. I guess it all comes down to how much you trust them with the future of the game. You do, I don't.
Some of these arguments here have gone so far to both sides of the bell curve it's just ridiculous. It's another summer, another Masters set, and another fail.
WotC still suffers with these sets from some bizarre identity crisis where they can't decide who this product is for, and basically screw it up for everyone. The set has a lot of filler and ridiculous rarity upgrades for limited, but it's so expensive and in short supply to feed a high number of drafts. It's got too many newer cards and chaff to feel like cube style drafting, and cubes don't require expensive cards, just good ones. We've got a good number of Legacy staples, but with the reserved list plus what wasn't included, prices on everything else in Legacy just went up, offsetting any benefit from the increased availability. Cross-format staples were not only avoided, they specifically targeted the Modern banned list for reprints to show off the 'diversity' of Legacy or whatever, which is fine, but leaves an entire segment of the fastest-growing format in the 'this product isn't for you' category. For Commander players, a good chunk of the best Commander cards came in at Mythic, so not drafting this set and just taking advantage of reduced-price singles is probably the only saving grace of the entire set.
Then you have all this talk about EV that pops up, and everyone wants to break out their Economics 101 textbook and dust it off. For everyone that thinks the packs cost too much, you're going to be right in 90% of cases (foil or Mythic lottery notwithstanding). To everyone that says a $10 pack of cards can't have a $20 EV without costing that much, you seem to be neglecting both equilibrium and averages. The way WotC has it set up now, they're packing 50 cent rares in with $80 mythics, and there's more of the former than the latter. It is not only possible, but probable that any given pack will not net you anywhere near the value you paid for it, which is why packs are notoriously a sucker's bet. Couple that with the fact that EV is not a concrete number. Prices on the cards in the set dip every time a Masters set releases. If you're going to say the EV on a pack is $7 for a $10 pack at release, at 2-3 weeks in that number can go to $4 or 5, depending on how many of the 'chase' cards were expensive based on rarity and not playability, and let's not forget that commons and uncommons usually take permanent reductions. By a month after release there's virtually no chance with these sets that you're going to crack a junk rare and have the rest of the cards make up the price tag on the pack. (This is even true of MM1, go crack a Skeletal Vampire, Lava Spike, and a Kitchen Finks, you're still nowhere near $20), so the pack become even MORE of a lottery. The short version of this conversation is EV is a shifting number that always shifts down, people need to stop holding it up on a pedestal to justify the insanely crappy card choices going into these sets, especially at the common/uncommon level.
Lastly, since I mentioned card choice, I am solidly convinced WotC is trying to either sabotage themselves by flipping off the community or really is so inept as to not make proper choices based on response. I mean, Wrath of God over Damnation? People have been screaming for a Damnation reprint for 4 years or more at this point, what the hell is the holdup? This was a perfect opportunity. Wouldn't it have made more sense with what White is doing in this set to have included Ravages of War, and let black have Damnation? Snapcaster and Tarmogoyf are Legacy staples, but we needed Control Magic at rare and Argothian Enchantress at Mythic. Really? You're sure about that? Where the hell is Lotus Petal? I know the whole spiel, 'they gotta save something for the next set', but we've been saying that for years and the best they do is maybe trickle 1 or 2 while the other 30 we're asking for get more expensive every year. It's just plain dumb to trust this company anymore. They don't even seem to be looking to sell packs to us, they just want their product bought in bulk by SCG and let the secondary market have it's way with us.
A couple of comments. I generally agree with you that EV is a moving target. It's consistently changing right up until sets are released. However, as we saw with MM1 if EV is significantly higher than MSRP, the secondary market will just adjust upwards and you will still pay about EV pricing regardless of MSRP. People make decisions based on whatever available information they have. Rarely do you have complete and perfect information to make decisions, so you go with what you know. Based on EV being a generally accepted methodology, it's the primary guideline that retailers are using to set prices on these reprint sets. At least with these, there's really only one shot. They have typically sold out pretty quick. I think people stick to EV because it is a good predictor of what the street cost of boxes will be.
On the lottery aspect of EMA, I think it's kind of how Magic works all around. You can make the same claim for SOI, or BFZ or just about any standard print set that Wizards' has released. I'm not really sure what you were expecting or hoping for, but even in standard 80% of the packs you open lose money too.
I actually think its an OK move not to put Damnation here. I'd rather it show up in Conspiracy 2 that has a full print run, or if push comes to shove, MM3 would be adequate. As much as I'd like to see Damnation here, I think it'll spice up MM3 limited to have wraths in sealed. Keeping EV in mind does limit some of Wizards' choices in cards. I know that you're not a fan of this methodology, but we already saw what happens when EV and MSRP don't match up. This does mean that Wizards simply will not load up the set with every power card that we could ever want in it. It's a tradeoff.
On Wizards sabotaging themselves and not knowing what they are doing, I respectfully disagree. They've managed to not only stay in business for over 20 years. They have managed to grow from essentially nothing into what is generally considered the best TCG in existence (arguable with Yu-Gi-Oh!). They have to balance several groups whose interests directly conflict with one another (collectors wanting rare and valuable cards, with high prices versus players who want everything cheap and accessible), grow the game, keep their retailers sustainable (major places for many to play the game), and keep their overlords (Hasbro) happy. We may not understand, like, or agree with the decisions they make but to think they are purposely screwing up their business model or giving the bird to those who purchase their game doesn't make sense. If that were the case, the game simply would stop growing, and eventually die. All evidence currently points to the direct opposite.
The correct way to adjust to MM1's slightly higher EV would have been to do a much higher print run. If the print run were 5x the print run of MM1 then the EV would drop with increased availability and we'd have a nice happy medium where customers pay MSRP or slightly below MSRP like they do for most MTG products. The secondary market only adjusted upward because the product was printed in such limited supply.
Instead of simply increasing supply and keeping price and quality the same, they got greedy as they realized that price elasticity of demand could handle a price hike, even with a higher print run. $7.99 was already a bit ridiculous for the same exact cardboard that they sell for 3.99 but $10 for a pack of cardboard is just insane and unfortunately there's enough people willing to pay that much.
There is always a lottery aspect to sealed product but there is a drastic difference in paying $90 for something with an EV of $75 and paying $250 for something with an estimated value of under $200. First off, there are other value additives to sealed product such as limited or the thrill of opening a new set which helps fill in the gap of price and EV. Masters products don't really add much extra value in that area even though the price and EV gap are wider. The other problem is that with masters products you typically either win big or lose bad since they seem to have a bad habit of putting most of the value in mythics. Losing bad on a $250 dollar premium product is much worse than getting a stinker box from a standard set.
Looking back 20 years is a poor method of evaluating Wizard's recent decisions. Masters sets are a newer thing and just go to show how Wizards has become greedier in recent years. Rather than print sufficient quantities of format staples, they wait until they get so expensive that they are afraid of offending collectors by printing the card at a sufficient quantity. See Wasteland as an example of a card that should be at most a $5 uncommon had they reprinted it a long time ago as they should have. Only in recent years have we seen the massive price spikes, buyouts, and large amount of speculation that contributes to the mtg bubble. Only time will tell if Wizard's new greedier strategy will pay off or whether it'll ultimately lead to the bubble bursting.
We need to retire the Reserved list and reprint all the old cards. I for one could not care less if collector's lose value for cards they hoard on a shelf or lock away in safety deposit box.
To be fair. The collectors could probably not care less that you don't get the legacy staples that they already paid lots of money to store on a shelf or lock away in a safety deposit box. I'm not saying things couldn't be done a little different, but it's a little short sighted to think that your perspective is the only p.erspective that should be cared about
Cheers mate! I didn't want to quote every piece of text you and I agreed on, so I shall say this: You are a kindred-spirit, friend. I very much agree and support what you've said about the RL, the lottery method WotC uses to make money while screwing over anyone who isn't a collector, and so on. Keep up the good fight mate; not everyone will agree with you, but you have my support.
On Wizards sabotaging themselves and not knowing what they are doing, I respectfully disagree. They've managed to not only stay in business for over 20 years. They have managed to grow from essentially nothing into what is generally considered the best TCG in existence (arguable with Yu-Gi-Oh!). They have to balance several groups whose interests directly conflict with one another (collectors wanting rare and valuable cards, with high prices versus players who want everything cheap and accessible), grow the game, keep their retailers sustainable (major places for many to play the game), and keep their overlords (Hasbro) happy. We may not understand, like, or agree with the decisions they make but to think they are purposely screwing up their business model or giving the bird to those who purchase their game doesn't make sense. If that were the case, the game simply would stop growing, and eventually die. All evidence currently points to the direct opposite.
Here is the only point I would have to respectfully disagree right back. The 'they managed to stay business...' bit has been an argument beaten to death. Quite honestly, it's patently false for several reasons. Chronicles, Combo Winter, Affinity, Cawblade, to a much lesser extent Fairies, 6th Ed. rules changes, 10th Ed. rules changes, etc. - they've come within striking distance of killing the game on a number of occasions. Be it good will, community, or turning a corner with a great set, WotC has been able to save itself more than once and rebuild the player base. One could see it as good job on their part for pulling it off, but the cynic in me says the community shouldn't have been put there in the first place. So no, I don't feel they deserve pats on the back for recovering from disastrous mistakes like those when they did the damage to themselves. So no, I can't say I 'trust their expertise', because evidence shows a terrible track record. When they're good, they're great, and when they're bad, they're really bad. Instead of striving for greatness, they've decided to balance these 'conflicting desires' you mentioned by settling for mediocrity. Nothing here is so great collectors get upset, nothing here is so great it justifies the price, nothing here is so reasonably priced it makes sense to draft, and nothing here is so good you can make a Legacy deck out of a box.
There is one caveat to all of the above, though, and I've seen a few of your posts, so you may not appreciate the opinion, but - collectors are the only segment of these conflicting desires NO ONE has to appeal to. In order for Gaea's Cradle, for example, to maintain it's value, all WotC has to do is NOT print it. By virtue of it's exclusion in this set (yes, I'm aware of its status), the price rose on the value of the card. Somewhere along the line 'collectors' began feeling entitled to this imaginary number on paper. If you're holding the card, it's cardboard. If you're playing with the card, it's really good cardboard. If you're cube drafting it, it's still cardboard. If it's sitting in a binder to show off to people, or yourself, it's vanity. Only if you're actually buying, selling or trading it does the dollar value assigned to it become relevant. Yet somehow, my ability to get one by way of reprint falls second to a collector's desire to hang on to whatever the market price is when he wakes up that morning, on some trust or implied promise that someday when said collector is no longer loyal to the game, he can cash out and retire on it?
If EV is entering into WotC's equations, then they're lying or stupid when they say they're blind to the secondary market. When they print a 2cc-creature that's a guaranteed staple 4-of at mythic, they're either lying or stupid. When they opt to not reprint a card despite player demand for it to satisfy a collector that isn't purchasing product, they're either lying or stupid. Lastly, when they're printing top-heavy lottery ticket sets, they're either lying or stupid.
Magic has a vastly large player base. You presented the lack of the death of the game as 'evidence' that they know what they're doing. Action, not a lack of reaction, is the evidence I've based my opinions on. I guess it all comes down to how much you trust them with the future of the game. You do, I don't.
I guess time will tell which of us is right if Wizards' knows what they are doing or not.
You are certainly right that Wizards has made some bonehead decisions over the years - most notably being Chronicles - and have come within inches of its demise. I like to think they've learned from their mistakes. And while we still see design mistakes like many of the decks you just mentioned and even the recent Eldrazi Winter, I don't believe that any event in the last 10 years or so has really threatened the livelihood of the game itself. Yes, their decisions anger portions of the player base, collectors, LGS's, etc... I can only speak effectively to what I've seen over the last 8 or 9 years - and the last 5 or 6 have been exceptionally good.
Actually, I've gone back through a number of Wizards' posts through MaRo and others. I couldn't specifically find a post anywhere where Wizards said they specifically do not pay attention to the secondary market. On the contrary, I did find a post from Maro stating that the reason Goyf was a mythic was to preserve its value. While not specifically tied to the secondary market they do mention they didn't want to crash that cards value.
I read through your portion on collectors, but I didn't really get the gist of it. I'm guessing that you say that card values only matter if you're actually buying or selling? If that's the case, it's sort of true, but sort of not. There is a psychological portion that also ties to the value of cards. My collection is pretty valuable and something that is an asset. If something catastrophic were to happen, I would liquidate it for some portion of its value. It wouldn't be my first alternative, but it's a financial source at my disposal if times get rough. Collectors are kind of an oddity all around. But they(we) do reasonably expect our collections to be worth what we paid for it - even if that value is as ethereal as card prices.
So, if you really don't trust Wizards' to do right by their game, are you liquidating out of it? It seems to me that if you think things are going to go off a cliff, the smart move would be to pull out before things go bad.
/edit ok I've gone back and re-read your post a few more times and I wanted to make one comment about collectors. Wizards has stated from the onset of the game that Magic is a collectible card game. There will always be a collectible element to it. Wizards' does have to cater to collectors since they make up a substantial portion of those who buy their products. They do so in a number of ways. One of them is not over-reprinting cards into oblivion.
A couple of comments. I generally agree with you that EV is a moving target. It's consistently changing right up until sets are released. However, as we saw with MM1 if EV is significantly higher than MSRP, the secondary market will just adjust upwards and you will still pay about EV pricing regardless of MSRP.
Problem here is that we all can safely assume the EV driving up the price of the packs was a combination of how limited the print run is, which is also a problem with EMA, and because of how much it meant to everyone at the time, people wanted to get reprints of cards we hadn't seen in 5-10 years and there was a thought among many that it was possible we wouldn't be seeing something like this again for some time, so everyone jumped on it. Not to mention how many people swarmed into Modern because of it as they thought it would be easier to get into, which only backfired and increased prices a month after the set came out.
Now MM1 was an experiment and we can all agree that it was better to be cautious, but if the print run was much higher, at MM2 levels at least, we could figure that the secondary market wouldn't have increased the price so much, if not at all. With EMA having a near MM1 print run we have $15 packs being sold. You can have a higher print run and a set that has more expensive boosters and not affect the secondary market on the scale of Chronicles, then again we'll never see that again so I'm not sure why WoTC is so worried about something we've yet to even see on the horizon for almost 20 years.
A couple of comments. I generally agree with you that EV is a moving target. It's consistently changing right up until sets are released. However, as we saw with MM1 if EV is significantly higher than MSRP, the secondary market will just adjust upwards and you will still pay about EV pricing regardless of MSRP.
Problem here is that we all can safely assume the EV driving up the price of the packs was a combination of how limited the print run is, which is also a problem with EMA, and because of how much it meant to everyone at the time, people wanted to get reprints of cards we hadn't seen in 5-10 years and there was a thought among many that it was possible we wouldn't be seeing something like this again for some time, so everyone jumped on it. Not to mention how many people swarmed into Modern because of it as they thought it would be easier to get into, which only backfired and increased prices a month after the set came out.
Now MM1 was an experiment and we can all agree that it was better to be cautious, but if the print run was much higher, at MM2 levels at least, we could figure that the secondary market wouldn't have increased the price so much, if not at all. With EMA having a near MM1 print run we have $15 packs being sold. You can have a higher print run and a set that has more expensive boosters and not affect the secondary market on the scale of Chronicles, then again we'll never see that again so I'm not sure why WoTC is so worried about something we've yet to even see on the horizon for almost 20 years.
Size of the print run is still probably the most hotly contested part of these reprint sets. If the only lens you look through is that of the player, you will never be happy with the size of the print run until it is unlimited. Understand there are other forces at work here.
I suppose the biggest point of view to look at is Wizards' itself. Why would Wizards' want any non-rotating format to decrease in price? They've said stated their bread-and-butter formats are standard and limited. Lowering the barrier to entry for Modern and Legacy will actually cost Wizards money in the long run. They are intelligently and slowly injecting cards into the Modern environment so we don't see the runaway prices of cards that we have seen in Legacy, while making money in the process.
Size of the print run is still probably the most hotly contested part of these reprint sets. If the only lens you look through is that of the player, you will never be happy with the size of the print run until it is unlimited. Understand there are other forces at work here.
You say I won't be happy and yet I stated a minimum in which would have been good, and if that minimum is hit then would I not be happy by it?
I suppose the biggest point of view to look at is Wizards' itself. Why would Wizards' want any non-rotating format to decrease in price? They've said stated their bread-and-butter formats are standard and limited. Lowering the barrier to entry for Modern and Legacy will actually cost Wizards money in the long run. They are intelligently and slowly injecting cards into the Modern environment so we don't see the runaway prices of cards that we have seen in Legacy, while making money in the process.
You must also look at it with players becoming irritated by these decisions and end up buying less of all products. Customers being unhappy will definitely hurt more than MM3 or EMA being printed more than EMA or MM1.
Actually, I've gone back through a number of Wizards' posts through MaRo and others. I couldn't specifically find a post anywhere where Wizards said they specifically do not pay attention to the secondary market. On the contrary, I did find a post from Maro stating that the reason Goyf was a mythic was to preserve its value. While not specifically tied to the secondary market they do mention they didn't want to crash that cards value.
I read through your portion on collectors, but I didn't really get the gist of it. I'm guessing that you say that card values only matter if you're actually buying or selling? If that's the case, it's sort of true, but sort of not. There is a psychological portion that also ties to the value of cards. My collection is pretty valuable and something that is an asset. If something catastrophic were to happen, I would liquidate it for some portion of its value. It wouldn't be my first alternative, but it's a financial source at my disposal if times get rough. Collectors are kind of an oddity all around. But they(we) do reasonably expect our collections to be worth what we paid for it - even if that value is as ethereal as card prices.
So, if you really don't trust Wizards' to do right by their game, are you liquidating out of it? It seems to me that if you think things are going to go off a cliff, the smart move would be to pull out before things go bad.
It was PAX East, where they previewed Theros and Modern Masters 2013. They had a Q&A panel, they were specifically asked about card choice in the set vs. secondary market pricing, their response was we don't concern ourselves with the secondary market. So whether the lopsidedness of MMA2 was stupidity or an about-face on that policy remains to be seen, but surely we can agree that the egregious lack of transparency on this issue leads to speculation that their motives are exactly as I said above - stupidity, or they're intentionally doing this to the community. The worst they can do is say nothing on the subject.
That last sentence in the second paragraph REALLY irks me. What makes you think that you, as a collector, are in any way entitled to an expectation of ANY return close to what you paid for a product after you walk out of the store with it? It's paper. For a card game. I could understand if you felt that way if the paper was a treasury bond, but it's not true of cars, stocks, houses, or most any other commodity in this life. Also, and I can't believe I have to say this, you seem like a really intelligent cat, but Magic cards are NOT an investment! Not, with a big ol' N. You invest money into it with no expectation but the fun to have collected all of a set, finished a deck, played with your friends, made some new ones, nailed a cool trade, etc.
To make matters worse, this has seriously spiraled downwards over the last 3-4 years. Players with sets of ABU duals saw their 'investment' almost double in price, and now feel they're entitled to not what they paid for it, but the doubling the market said it did. Legacy loses its tournament support, prices barely waffle, and so it goes. Congrats, y'all, you killed the format. But at least you have $300 Tundras to sit in your binder for a format you can't ever really play. On the other end of the spectrum, Modern, the format that's supposed to be immune to this toxicity the RL created, has watched prices rise while we keep getting 'wait for the next set' for every missed reprint for 4 years now. C'mon, man, I paid $8 for my first Snapcaster. There's no reason the guy next to me has to pay $50 to play at the same table so I can 'keep' that value, man, that's just greed.
For your last point, yes, I did. I kept about 1500 cards, all Modern, and sold my collection of 10 years, some 50,000 cards, in February. The collection was valued at approx. 16k. Know what I got for it? 6,000. That's right, one-third. I kept everything in binders by set, ordered by collector number/color, no more than 4 copies of any given card. I took meticulous care of that collection. Some 9-12 complete sets. I wasn't in a bind, or hurting for cash. Commander hasn't been the same since Wizards stuck it's nose in it. I played with BFZ and I hated it. I was never going to be stupid enough to get into the dying format that is Legacy. So I said screw it, you can't take it with you when you die, let's cash out. Do something nice with the family. Breaking the chains of being a 'gotta catch them all' collector was probably the single most freeing thing I've ever done. I crack prize packs now and keep only what I think I can use. I just recently opened a pack of Oath and was more excited for the Pulse of Murasa than I was the foil Kozilek behind an Eldrazi Displacer. I bindered both of those for a wopping 5 minutes before someone offered stuff I actually wanted for them. No, I don't trust Wizards with the future of the game, so yeah, I put my money where my mout was and cashed out. I still love hanging with my friends and going to tournaments, but now I do it on my terms. WotC has to earn back my trust before I give them another red cent. My LGS, however, I'll still support them with entry, singles, and supplies. Might even draft here and there (I tried the EMA lottery last night, actually - a $15 Gamble and I won 4-0 with a peasant deck...just like every draft I've played for 5 sets now), but I've spent such a fortune on this game, I think it's long overdue I be shown some good will on the part of WotC.
Give me a product with real value, and i don't mean EV, I mean stop stuffing reprint sets with filler trash and calling it a limited format, and I'll buy in. I want to pay Wizards, not some company that bought 1800 cases from them to flip to me for a profit for the few singles I need. Then they can have my money again.
Actually, I've gone back through a number of Wizards' posts through MaRo and others. I couldn't specifically find a post anywhere where Wizards said they specifically do not pay attention to the secondary market. On the contrary, I did find a post from Maro stating that the reason Goyf was a mythic was to preserve its value. While not specifically tied to the secondary market they do mention they didn't want to crash that cards value.
I read through your portion on collectors, but I didn't really get the gist of it. I'm guessing that you say that card values only matter if you're actually buying or selling? If that's the case, it's sort of true, but sort of not. There is a psychological portion that also ties to the value of cards. My collection is pretty valuable and something that is an asset. If something catastrophic were to happen, I would liquidate it for some portion of its value. It wouldn't be my first alternative, but it's a financial source at my disposal if times get rough. Collectors are kind of an oddity all around. But they(we) do reasonably expect our collections to be worth what we paid for it - even if that value is as ethereal as card prices.
So, if you really don't trust Wizards' to do right by their game, are you liquidating out of it? It seems to me that if you think things are going to go off a cliff, the smart move would be to pull out before things go bad.
It was PAX East, where they previewed Theros and Modern Masters 2013. They had a Q&A panel, they were specifically asked about card choice in the set vs. secondary market pricing, their response was we don't concern ourselves with the secondary market. So whether the lopsidedness of MMA2 was stupidity or an about-face on that policy remains to be seen, but surely we can agree that the egregious lack of transparency on this issue leads to speculation that their motives are exactly as I said above - stupidity, or they're intentionally doing this to the community. The worst they can do is say nothing on the subject.
That last sentence in the second paragraph REALLY irks me. What makes you think that you, as a collector, are in any way entitled to an expectation of ANY return close to what you paid for a product after you walk out of the store with it? It's paper. For a card game. I could understand if you felt that way if the paper was a treasury bond, but it's not true of cars, stocks, houses, or most any other commodity in this life. Also, and I can't believe I have to say this, you seem like a really intelligent cat, but Magic cards are NOT an investment! Not, with a big ol' N. You invest money into it with no expectation but the fun to have collected all of a set, finished a deck, played with your friends, made some new ones, nailed a cool trade, etc.
To make matters worse, this has seriously spiraled downwards over the last 3-4 years. Players with sets of ABU duals saw their 'investment' almost double in price, and now feel they're entitled to not what they paid for it, but the doubling the market said it did. Legacy loses its tournament support, prices barely waffle, and so it goes. Congrats, y'all, you killed the format. But at least you have $300 Tundras to sit in your binder for a format you can't ever really play. On the other end of the spectrum, Modern, the format that's supposed to be immune to this toxicity the RL created, has watched prices rise while we keep getting 'wait for the next set' for every missed reprint for 4 years now. C'mon, man, I paid $8 for my first Snapcaster. There's no reason the guy next to me has to pay $50 to play at the same table so I can 'keep' that value, man, that's just greed.
For your last point, yes, I did. I kept about 1500 cards, all Modern, and sold my collection of 10 years, some 50,000 cards, in February. The collection was valued at approx. 16k. Know what I got for it? 6,000. That's right, one-third. I kept everything in binders by set, ordered by collector number/color, no more than 4 copies of any given card. I took meticulous care of that collection. Some 9-12 complete sets. I wasn't in a bind, or hurting for cash. Commander hasn't been the same since Wizards stuck it's nose in it. I played with BFZ and I hated it. I was never going to be stupid enough to get into the dying format that is Legacy. So I said screw it, you can't take it with you when you die, let's cash out. Do something nice with the family. Breaking the chains of being a 'gotta catch them all' collector was probably the single most freeing thing I've ever done. I crack prize packs now and keep only what I think I can use. I just recently opened a pack of Oath and was more excited for the Pulse of Murasa than I was the foil Kozilek behind an Eldrazi Displacer. I bindered both of those for a wopping 5 minutes before someone offered stuff I actually wanted for them. No, I don't trust Wizards with the future of the game, so yeah, I put my money where my mout was and cashed out. I still love hanging with my friends and going to tournaments, but now I do it on my terms. WotC has to earn back my trust before I give them another red cent. My LGS, however, I'll still support them with entry, singles, and supplies. Might even draft here and there (I tried the EMA lottery last night, actually - a $15 Gamble and I won 4-0 with a peasant deck...just like every draft I've played for 5 sets now), but I've spent such a fortune on this game, I think it's long overdue I be shown some good will on the part of WotC.
Give me a product with real value, and i don't mean EV, I mean stop stuffing reprint sets with filler trash and calling it a limited format, and I'll buy in. I want to pay Wizards, not some company that bought 1800 cases from them to flip to me for a profit for the few singles I need. Then they can have my money again.
Thanks for clearing up the not paying attention to the secondary market question. I probably spent an hour looking for that quote but couldn't find it. Definitely concerning when you two entities at Wizards (PAX panel and MaRo) saying things that directly contradict one another. This is an issue Wizards really needs to get a stance on and then stick with it. I get that flip flopping on it is a problem, and potentially a serious one.
On the issue of collections being worth what we paid for it, I do think it is reasonable for it to be valued at something close to what I paid for it. I do want to note that I believe there is a huge difference between the value of a collection and its true selling price. I didn't say I expect it to appreciate over time, or that I should be guaranteed a return. There are no guarantees. But many assets do appreciate over time with the exception of cars. I also do not think of my collection as an investment. An investment implies that I am specifically looking for growth and will eventually sell for a profit. While I am hopeful the value of my collection grows, I have absolutely no intention of selling it. And even if I did as you mention, I would take a bloodbath trying to sell it for about 1/2 of what its worth. With all that said, I do understand the risks associated with buying cards that are not on the RL. There is no expectation on my part of Wizards preserving the value of the cards in my collection and I understand that any of them could be reprinted in the next set.
I understand your point about card prices being nuts. Modern as a format has probably gone up 50-60% in the 5 years since the format has been created. No disagreements there. But Modern and Legacy are different beasts. The RL pretty much guarantees that Legacy will never be a supported format. But if you look at it from Wizards POV, this is a good thing. Modern as a format doesn't really make them any money. It's a place where people who are entrenched in the game can still play with old cards and give them a place to hold value. Standard and Limited is what Wizards wants to push since that is where they make money. A high barrier to entry pushes people into the arena Wizards wants them to play in. I understand from the players' POV that this sucks if you are trying to enter the format since it's (comparatively speaking to standard) prohibitively expensive. But once you're in, it doesn't really effect you that dramatically. Wizards' thought process (I believe) is that they do not want to actively promote growth in that format, but want to reward long time players that retained cards from their time in standard and give players a reason to hold on to them.
Right, wrong or indifferent, this appears to be their strategy.
I'm sorry you sold out of the game. My hope is that Wizards is able to do enough to get your confidence back and you buy in again. I agree that they certainly are not perfect in their decision making, but they are successfully growing the game and its player base and have been for several years. You are certainly doing what you feel best by voting with your wallet. If enough people think like you, at the minimum you will get Wizards' attention.
One thing that does frustrate me is that everyone thinks these sets should be full of value with no filler. That just doesn't fit up with the current model of selling cards by packs. Every set that Wizards' releases, be it EMA, SOI, or even Alpha, has an overwhelming majority of filler. That is the model of randomized cards in packs. I actually think you have a better chance of pulling some money in EMA than you do in, say, BFZ.
/edit I wanted to take a second to say thank you SephX. I've appreciated the tone of your posts. It's refreshing to have an intelligent discussion with someone of a differing opinion that hasn't resorted to personal attacks or sniping at one another.
Give me a product with real value, and i don't mean EV, I mean stop stuffing reprint sets with filler trash and calling it a limited format, and I'll buy in. I want to pay Wizards, not some company that bought 1800 cases from them to flip to me for a profit for the few singles I need. Then they can have my money again.
This is my main issue. I love opening sealed product but it's just so scandalous now. They have handed the reins over to SCG and the like. I feel the need to sell my collection simply because I feel the need to, and if I feel this way, more like me probably do as well. (The casual player with a $20k+ collection that just doesn't want to support being taken for a fool)
1/3 of the value of my collection is a tough pill to swallow indeed, but I understand the liberation you feel from doing it, and it makes sense. It is just an estimated value after all.
The fact that people feel justified comparing a strategic game played with cardboard PLAYING PIECES to things like Polo and high-end car collecting really speaks volumes about not just the absurdity of card availability, but also about the self-entitlement/bragging of individuals who claim to possess all they do.
If you want to be a conceited, arrogant, "I have this so I don't want you to have it" childish mentality stuck up, then go seek company on a dating site; it's the closest thing you'll likely get to a real connection.
Meanwhile, I frequent sites regarding Magic to discuss the game I love, playing it, and why more people deserve that same experience. If more people play my game, I'll get more value from my cards than I anticipated to when I bought them. "WOW OMG NO ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF THAT THAT'S CRAZY WOW!"
who cares about upsetting ppl with price drops. Even if prices of those cards drop like hell, it only means that more ppl will be able to afford legacy, get into legacy and collectors still sit on their reserve list cards, duals are through the roof right now. I really dont care about that argument, I got an expensive playset of goyfs, would I cry of they got reprinted at rare and drop to 50 euros? No because I got my goyfs to play with them not collect them for a future investment. Hobbies also cost money, the list this hobby cost the more ppl can play it, especially legacy.
I would agree it's overpriced for what you get. If you buy a box, and a box only contains 24 packs, in reality you're paying ~$200-$300 for 24 rares and/or mythics. And of course, the value of those cards isn't a constant - the amount of boxes that contain that amount of worth are very few indeed.
It makes more sense to hold onto the boxes and wait til they rise in worth. But for people like me, you want to see what you paid for, so you open it.
Actually, I've gone back through a number of Wizards' posts through MaRo and others. I couldn't specifically find a post anywhere where Wizards said they specifically do not pay attention to the secondary market. On the contrary, I did find a post from Maro stating that the reason Goyf was a mythic was to preserve its value. While not specifically tied to the secondary market they do mention they didn't want to crash that cards value.
I read through your portion on collectors, but I didn't really get the gist of it. I'm guessing that you say that card values only matter if you're actually buying or selling? If that's the case, it's sort of true, but sort of not. There is a psychological portion that also ties to the value of cards. My collection is pretty valuable and something that is an asset. If something catastrophic were to happen, I would liquidate it for some portion of its value. It wouldn't be my first alternative, but it's a financial source at my disposal if times get rough. Collectors are kind of an oddity all around. But they(we) do reasonably expect our collections to be worth what we paid for it - even if that value is as ethereal as card prices.
So, if you really don't trust Wizards' to do right by their game, are you liquidating out of it? It seems to me that if you think things are going to go off a cliff, the smart move would be to pull out before things go bad.
It was PAX East, where they previewed Theros and Modern Masters 2013. They had a Q&A panel, they were specifically asked about card choice in the set vs. secondary market pricing, their response was we don't concern ourselves with the secondary market. So whether the lopsidedness of MMA2 was stupidity or an about-face on that policy remains to be seen, but surely we can agree that the egregious lack of transparency on this issue leads to speculation that their motives are exactly as I said above - stupidity, or they're intentionally doing this to the community. The worst they can do is say nothing on the subject.
That last sentence in the second paragraph REALLY irks me. What makes you think that you, as a collector, are in any way entitled to an expectation of ANY return close to what you paid for a product after you walk out of the store with it? It's paper. For a card game. I could understand if you felt that way if the paper was a treasury bond, but it's not true of cars, stocks, houses, or most any other commodity in this life. Also, and I can't believe I have to say this, you seem like a really intelligent cat, but Magic cards are NOT an investment! Not, with a big ol' N. You invest money into it with no expectation but the fun to have collected all of a set, finished a deck, played with your friends, made some new ones, nailed a cool trade, etc.
To make matters worse, this has seriously spiraled downwards over the last 3-4 years. Players with sets of ABU duals saw their 'investment' almost double in price, and now feel they're entitled to not what they paid for it, but the doubling the market said it did. Legacy loses its tournament support, prices barely waffle, and so it goes. Congrats, y'all, you killed the format. But at least you have $300 Tundras to sit in your binder for a format you can't ever really play. On the other end of the spectrum, Modern, the format that's supposed to be immune to this toxicity the RL created, has watched prices rise while we keep getting 'wait for the next set' for every missed reprint for 4 years now. C'mon, man, I paid $8 for my first Snapcaster. There's no reason the guy next to me has to pay $50 to play at the same table so I can 'keep' that value, man, that's just greed.
For your last point, yes, I did. I kept about 1500 cards, all Modern, and sold my collection of 10 years, some 50,000 cards, in February. The collection was valued at approx. 16k. Know what I got for it? 6,000. That's right, one-third. I kept everything in binders by set, ordered by collector number/color, no more than 4 copies of any given card. I took meticulous care of that collection. Some 9-12 complete sets. I wasn't in a bind, or hurting for cash. Commander hasn't been the same since Wizards stuck it's nose in it. I played with BFZ and I hated it. I was never going to be stupid enough to get into the dying format that is Legacy. So I said screw it, you can't take it with you when you die, let's cash out. Do something nice with the family. Breaking the chains of being a 'gotta catch them all' collector was probably the single most freeing thing I've ever done. I crack prize packs now and keep only what I think I can use. I just recently opened a pack of Oath and was more excited for the Pulse of Murasa than I was the foil Kozilek behind an Eldrazi Displacer. I bindered both of those for a wopping 5 minutes before someone offered stuff I actually wanted for them. No, I don't trust Wizards with the future of the game, so yeah, I put my money where my mout was and cashed out. I still love hanging with my friends and going to tournaments, but now I do it on my terms. WotC has to earn back my trust before I give them another red cent. My LGS, however, I'll still support them with entry, singles, and supplies. Might even draft here and there (I tried the EMA lottery last night, actually - a $15 Gamble and I won 4-0 with a peasant deck...just like every draft I've played for 5 sets now), but I've spent such a fortune on this game, I think it's long overdue I be shown some good will on the part of WotC.
Give me a product with real value, and i don't mean EV, I mean stop stuffing reprint sets with filler trash and calling it a limited format, and I'll buy in. I want to pay Wizards, not some company that bought 1800 cases from them to flip to me for a profit for the few singles I need. Then they can have my money again.
Thanks for clearing up the not paying attention to the secondary market question. I probably spent an hour looking for that quote but couldn't find it. Definitely concerning when you two entities at Wizards (PAX panel and MaRo) saying things that directly contradict one another. This is an issue Wizards really needs to get a stance on and then stick with it. I get that flip flopping on it is a problem, and potentially a serious one.
On the issue of collections being worth what we paid for it, I do think it is reasonable for it to be valued at something close to what I paid for it. I do want to note that I believe there is a huge difference between the value of a collection and its true selling price. I didn't say I expect it to appreciate over time, or that I should be guaranteed a return. There are no guarantees. But many assets do appreciate over time with the exception of cars. I also do not think of my collection as an investment. An investment implies that I am specifically looking for growth and will eventually sell for a profit. While I am hopeful the value of my collection grows, I have absolutely no intention of selling it. And even if I did as you mention, I would take a bloodbath trying to sell it for about 1/2 of what its worth. With all that said, I do understand the risks associated with buying cards that are not on the RL. There is no expectation on my part of Wizards preserving the value of the cards in my collection and I understand that any of them could be reprinted in the next set.
I understand your point about card prices being nuts. Modern as a format has probably gone up 50-60% in the 5 years since the format has been created. No disagreements there. But Modern and Legacy are different beasts. The RL pretty much guarantees that Legacy will never be a supported format. But if you look at it from Wizards POV, this is a good thing. Modern as a format doesn't really make them any money. It's a place where people who are entrenched in the game can still play with old cards and give them a place to hold value. Standard and Limited is what Wizards wants to push since that is where they make money. A high barrier to entry pushes people into the arena Wizards wants them to play in. I understand from the players' POV that this sucks if you are trying to enter the format since it's (comparatively speaking to standard) prohibitively expensive. But once you're in, it doesn't really effect you that dramatically. Wizards' thought process (I believe) is that they do not want to actively promote growth in that format, but want to reward long time players that retained cards from their time in standard and give players a reason to hold on to them.
Right, wrong or indifferent, this appears to be their strategy.
I'm sorry you sold out of the game. My hope is that Wizards is able to do enough to get your confidence back and you buy in again. I agree that they certainly are not perfect in their decision making, but they are successfully growing the game and its player base and have been for several years. You are certainly doing what you feel best by voting with your wallet. If enough people think like you, at the minimum you will get Wizards' attention.
One thing that does frustrate me is that everyone thinks these sets should be full of value with no filler. That just doesn't fit up with the current model of selling cards by packs. Every set that Wizards' releases, be it EMA, SOI, or even Alpha, has an overwhelming majority of filler. That is the model of randomized cards in packs. I actually think you have a better chance of pulling some money in EMA than you do in, say, BFZ.
/edit I wanted to take a second to say thank you SephX. I've appreciated the tone of your posts. It's refreshing to have an intelligent discussion with someone of a differing opinion that hasn't resorted to personal attacks or sniping at one another.
First off, thank you as well, it's been a pleasure.
I'd never say NO filler is acceptable. I mean, for some of us, red cards are filler in any given pack. A 7-drop 5/5 blue flyer might be a bomb in limited even if it'll never see constructed play. I get that, and that's fine. But with these reprint sets, the cards we want, use, and/or need are already well known. Charging 7 dollars on a pack on MMA with the possibility of cracking a Skeletal Vampire is a slap in the face. It's becomes unconscionable at $20 a pack. When 2/3 of the rares are at that status, it still goes back to my point that they're either lying or stupid as it relates to not just the secondary market, but listening to their community. Yes, I get that magic Christmasland is a box will get you into Modern and that's absurd. But the other end of the spectrum isn't working, either, trickling down cards we need in dribs and drabs, while everything missed gets exponentially more expensive. Aggressive reprinting for needed cards was the entire concept behind this format, so why am I still going to SCG to get the singular printing of staple cards from 8 years ago?
And this ties right into this other argument I hear a lot of, that Standard and Limited are their cash cows. My wife owns a store herself, and diversification is key there. Opening new revenue streams. I mean, if I'm pushing around an apple cart and somebody stops me and says, 'I'd buy, but you don't have bananas', you can be damn sure I have an apple and banana cart the next day. Modern is always looking for new players, and 'scaring' people away with the barrier to entry is flat stupid. At one point, I had 2 Commander Decks, 2 Modern decks, a Standard and Legacy deck in my bag every Friday. Just because I love Modern doesn't mean Wizards can't make money on me. Acting like we need to be herded to their cash cow format sounds like a bit of ineptitude on their part for not finding a way to properly monetize their other formats.
I've always found the collector side of Magic bizarre. People honestly expect that they can sell off their cards for full price, when in reality you are much more likely to get only a 1/3 return on their current market value, probably just going to break even. Which begs the question; Why bother? You collect in the hopes of selling off your cards, of which you'll likely only get back the money you invested or slightly more so? People actually think this is a viable income/resource?
Meanwhile the existence of the RL and inflated market price of cards prevents Jane Doe from actively engaging and playing the game, because all the best cards are in the hands of collectors who have deluded themselves into thinking that they actually own something of more inherit value than what they paid/traded for. It boggles my mind that people do not understand how badly they are being suckered by the fake secondary market of Magic.
I'm not saying what's said in here is wrong, but let me tell you what happened with our box;
First two packs, Jace and mana crypt. Gamble, mystical tutor, and several other things. Had plenty more, hell a foil night whispers sold at the store for 6 change and that was the last on my mind compared to the other foil uncommons and commons.
Sold what we didn't need (only play edh) but kept the big stuff. Draft only cost me and my gf 10 dollars today. She pulled a force of will and sneak attack. I got another gamble and a foil enlightened tutor. And again, plenty of small stuff.
I have to say when you hit it with this set, you hit it. That and my gf has magical opening powers, im not allowed to open anymore
Part of it is that people are willing to pay so much money for the cards because they can at least get some of the value back when they are done with Magic. If the prices tank and they get back pennies on the dollar, they have sunk a lot of money in that they will never get back, compared to now where they can get 30 cents on the dollar or more.
I don't mind the price tanking, but there are people who would be extremely upset. Chronicles proved that. If they did it again, we would likely end up with a new reserved list. One something like, no reprints for any card that ever reaches 50 bucks in price even for a moment.
That said, I am still waiting for a consensus on what others think a pack should cost since the EV is a little over 10/ pack. So far 6 is the only answer.
If the EV of a pack is $10. Then it should cost $10
Lol no, the EV of a pack should always be far lower than the pack price, otherwise the singles market is way overvalued.
Well this is also true, because anytime we have had a set go to 4+ mid value average on a pack that set gets opened a crap ton and the values plummet overall. Return to Ravnica and Khans of Tarkir both had values shortly after release that left pack TCG mid-value at about 4.50 or so shortly after release, and those sets were both opened a crap ton which dropped that value.
Thing is you have so much tied up in the secondary market. All of the stores that exist that help make magic the large game it is are heavily reliant on selling magic cards. To suddenly shift and say they're going to make all of the cards cheaper is a good way to tank many stores who have sunk money into buying product that they themselves will then sell to make a profit. It's great for the players, but will hurt if not kill the stores who have sunk money into stocking singles product.
These stores will be just as hurt when the bubble finally bursts and people realize that game pieces can't possibly continue to increase in value in perpetuity. "Magic Finance" is an absurd childish fantasy that will eventually come crumbling down and the bigger it gets the more it will hurt when this inevitably happens. LGSes managed to somehow succeed before this insane speculator frenzy and shift to lottery-based set design drove prices through the roof. Wizards allowed the secondary market to become problematic, and if they won't correct it, it'll correct itself.
I've heard people talk like this since the 90s bro, it hasn't happened in the 20ish years MTG has been around. Prices will tumble for a time when the game wanes in popularity but it has never come to the point of truly "crashing down". Back in the 90s when I was much younger my friends and myself scoffed at power selling for $100-150 each, and if we would have bought in at that time we would have all had $1000s worth of power alone.
What does any of this have to do with the idea that wanting to have increased access to eternal formats is "selfish"?
Not to mention, these are not luxury goods. These are pieces of cardboard that were all at one time sold for the same price. Hasbro will do what it believes is most profitable, and that includes abolishing the reserve list and reprinting every single one of those cards. You'd better believe that the second they believe that Magic is dead and they can squeeze a last bit of blood out of that stone this will happen. Leave the patronizing "this is how the world works" crap home. As a consumer it is our right to voice our displeasure with Hasbro's practices in the hopes that they will change their policies regarding reprints. You know, kind of like what happened after Chronicles came out?
Why does Standard exist now, when according to this logic Modern should draw away the entire Standard player base? How did type 2 (Standard) exist alongside type 1 (Vintage), 1.5 (Legacy), and 1.X (Extended) for so long before prices got crazy? Maybe because different formats have different things to offer different people?
So let me get this straight. Magic cards are not luxury goods? That means they are necessary for what purpose? I suggest you go back and look at what the definition of a luxury good is. Second to that, even if you look within the Magic market, the cards you complain about being expensive are among the most prized and highly sought after in the game. None of which are required to play Standard, Limited, or Modern. The cards you complain about are almost exclusively limited to Legacy, Vintage, and EDH - arguably the 3 least played formats (debatable on EDH). Luxury items on top of a luxury game. What you are looking for is to have cheap and easy access to the best, most expensive, and most valuable cards.
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/luxury-goods.html
The reason what you want is selfish is because you want to completely change the dynamic of the economy of the game to fit your desires. To hell with everyone who owns these cards already, with the secondary market, those who make a living on the game's current structure, and Wizards' themselves. Doing so would have grave and potentially catastrophic consequences on the game. Have you considered what would happen to each of these entities if you got your way?
I wholeheartedly agree with your statement that Wizards' can be expected to do exactly what is in their best interests alone. If they thought they could ultimately make more money by abolishing the RL, they would do so. They did try to tinker around it with the premium loophole. After that was shut down, they have not made any further attempts at it. What does that tell you based on those 2 facts? It tells me that Wizards has thought it through and decided it was NOT in their best interests to abolish the RL.
Taking this one step further.. Wizards has now done 3 reprint sets. They have adjusted the EV and print runs each time. It appears that they have found what they believe to be the sweet spot. They will probably tinker with it a bit more with each successive release, but you're not going to find a major swing in the EV of packs or in the print run size. Why? Because Wizards believes they've found the best point for them to make the most money, keep collectors happy, keep the secondary market from collapsing on those cards, and inject copies of hard to find cards into the wild for players.
Finally - it is well within your right to voice your displeasure at Wizards' decisions. But understand WHY they make the decisions they make before spouting off derisive comments. Look at this from each perspective... That of the player, the collector, the LGS, and Wizards' itself. Try to understand the wants/desires of these groups and you will have a much better grasp on why Wizards' does what it does.
Oh jeez. Okay, fine, great semantic win there bud. Magic cards are dictionary definition luxury goods, as are candy and tea. I'm obviously rejecting the notion that they are in the same category as nice cars, big houses, planes, etc. You're acting like Legacy has always costed an arm and a leg. It has not. You could buy in to Legacy for fewer than a thousand dollars for the vast majority of the life of the game. It is only recently that the price of Legacy staples has risen to absurd heights, and there is reason to believe that this is an unsustainable bubble.
Wizards first foray into this sort of thing (outside of core sets and the occasional standard reprint), in a booster pack product came with the 1st Modern Masters set. Its clear at the time they were still testing the waters, part of why with an msrp of $7 (most of which sold for $10+ upon release), and a limited print run (because of wanting to make sure a product like that would actually sell at such a price point when made up of all reprints), they realized they had something and they had room to breathe a bit with how they could structure such a set.
So then, we have Modern Masters 2015, which they raised the msrp to $10 (due in part to what happened with the first modern masters set) and they increased the print run due to, once again the high demand that came from the first modern masters set. Unfortunately the set wasn't as well balanced as many would have liked, and who knows its possible wizards decided to be careful again once they raised the msrp and increased the print run so as not to cause other potential systemic problems, and once again to see how it would be received by the players and how sales would go for it.
Obviously Modern Masters 2015 wasn't as big a hit as the first one and the higher supply and less balanced set quality has led it to still be available for less than msrp online even now (a year later). But, that gave them even more data to help use towards their newest creation and reprint set, Eternal Masters....
The tricky thing with Eternal Masters, once again, is that, unlike modern which was a fast-growth format that they had been pushing in popularity over the previous years, you had this set which was inevitably going to have a large amount of non-modern legal cards, and thus while wizards could use the data they got from the previous two modern masters sets, they once again had to be cautious in how they chose to handle this set, so as to come in at a price people would pay (in this case msrp $10 again), and at a print run size that from what some people said wasn't as large as modern masters 2015, but possibly larger than the first modern masters? Basically they were being careful. And while it seems many were pleased by some of the choices for the Eternal Masters set, as some have pointed out, the set wasn't as chocked full of goodies as some certainly would have hoped (better than modern masters 2015, but as some have said, worse than the first modern masters set). That said however, from the sounds of it, the set really shouldn't have any trouble selling well for wizards and for shops that are selling it, so it would seem, at least for now, that wizards caution will still inevitably pay off for them.
Now with all that said, here is the biggest thing. From a business standpoint wizards knows that they need to reprint cards because the playerbase continues to grow, and in order to keep prices from getting too crazy, some reprinting is required (we could argue about what "too crazy" is all day and all year I'm sure, but not really what I'm delving into for now). But from their business standpoint, they find themselves having an opportunity while giving players the reprints they want, to also be able to increase their sales/profits (the key part of any profitable business enterprise while doing your best to cater to your overall customer base), so as we've seen with modern masters, wizards seems intent on slow-rolling the reprints to allow them to be able to continue printing these sorts of sets into the future and still have enough decently valued cards across the spectrum for them to keep selling as they go. Its long-term planning, which is something wizards I would say has excelled at, and has, in part, allowed them to have the most popular (from an overall standpoint) CCG/TCG out there on the market even after 23 years since its initial release (gods has it been that long, man I feel old...)
I suspect we will continue to see these masters sets each year likely from now on with an alternating modern/eternal schedule for as long as wizards is able to make them to where players will still be willing to buy them. The thing to keep in mind as well, is that each time they do these they will learn from their previous attempts and we will likely see improvements of some sort over time. Part of why I expect the next Modern Masters set to be better than the 2015 one, and possibly even as good as the first one. And why I expect the next Eternal Masters set (assuming I'm not wrong of course in my previous assumption) to be better than this last one hopefully, or at least see an increased print run if this one sells as well as I imagine it likely will.
Anyhow, should be interesting to see how these sorts of sets play out in the future. As well as what the value of the cards in Eternal Masters end up settling out at once the singles start hitting the market en-masse starting today.
As for people saying the $10 per pack price is too high, well, that's debatable really. In the end, if there are enough people willing to pay at or near the msrp on a product like this, then wizards has in fact chosen their price point correctly. And with a limited print run product the likelihood increases that there will in fact be enough people interested in such a product with enough money to spend that they wont have any trouble selling through all of it. So while some may find the cost too high or may not have the funds, those that do (as can be the case with many non-necessity products out there) will buy and enjoy it.
As a tertiary side note as well, I often see a lot of people complaining about how these sets and the various reprint products wizards puts out each year don't seem to be putting a dent in the cost of cards. And while for some cards this certainly may be true as they will over time rise back up to around where they may have been before, in many cases, especially for casual/EDH cards, as well as even from tournament playable cards, the prices do drop and many/most that have gotten reprinted are still lower than they were at their high points (notice I said most, not all), and as someone who has kept an eye rather closely on all of the cards getting reprinted on a regular basis from wizards various products (in part because I do have such a large collection that its taking me forever to liquidate), I can say for a certainty that quite a lot of cards are in fact a lot cheaper today than they were a 1, 2, or 3 years ago when the masters/commander sets started their process of coming out more regularly or at all respectively).
WotC still suffers with these sets from some bizarre identity crisis where they can't decide who this product is for, and basically screw it up for everyone. The set has a lot of filler and ridiculous rarity upgrades for limited, but it's so expensive and in short supply to feed a high number of drafts. It's got too many newer cards and chaff to feel like cube style drafting, and cubes don't require expensive cards, just good ones. We've got a good number of Legacy staples, but with the reserved list plus what wasn't included, prices on everything else in Legacy just went up, offsetting any benefit from the increased availability. Cross-format staples were not only avoided, they specifically targeted the Modern banned list for reprints to show off the 'diversity' of Legacy or whatever, which is fine, but leaves an entire segment of the fastest-growing format in the 'this product isn't for you' category. For Commander players, a good chunk of the best Commander cards came in at Mythic, so not drafting this set and just taking advantage of reduced-price singles is probably the only saving grace of the entire set.
Then you have all this talk about EV that pops up, and everyone wants to break out their Economics 101 textbook and dust it off. For everyone that thinks the packs cost too much, you're going to be right in 90% of cases (foil or Mythic lottery notwithstanding). To everyone that says a $10 pack of cards can't have a $20 EV without costing that much, you seem to be neglecting both equilibrium and averages. The way WotC has it set up now, they're packing 50 cent rares in with $80 mythics, and there's more of the former than the latter. It is not only possible, but probable that any given pack will not net you anywhere near the value you paid for it, which is why packs are notoriously a sucker's bet. Couple that with the fact that EV is not a concrete number. Prices on the cards in the set dip every time a Masters set releases. If you're going to say the EV on a pack is $7 for a $10 pack at release, at 2-3 weeks in that number can go to $4 or 5, depending on how many of the 'chase' cards were expensive based on rarity and not playability, and let's not forget that commons and uncommons usually take permanent reductions. By a month after release there's virtually no chance with these sets that you're going to crack a junk rare and have the rest of the cards make up the price tag on the pack. (This is even true of MM1, go crack a Skeletal Vampire, Lava Spike, and a Kitchen Finks, you're still nowhere near $20), so the pack become even MORE of a lottery. The short version of this conversation is EV is a shifting number that always shifts down, people need to stop holding it up on a pedestal to justify the insanely crappy card choices going into these sets, especially at the common/uncommon level.
Lastly, since I mentioned card choice, I am solidly convinced WotC is trying to either sabotage themselves by flipping off the community or really is so inept as to not make proper choices based on response. I mean, Wrath of God over Damnation? People have been screaming for a Damnation reprint for 4 years or more at this point, what the hell is the holdup? This was a perfect opportunity. Wouldn't it have made more sense with what White is doing in this set to have included Ravages of War, and let black have Damnation? Snapcaster and Tarmogoyf are Legacy staples, but we needed Control Magic at rare and Argothian Enchantress at Mythic. Really? You're sure about that? Where the hell is Lotus Petal? I know the whole spiel, 'they gotta save something for the next set', but we've been saying that for years and the best they do is maybe trickle 1 or 2 while the other 30 we're asking for get more expensive every year. It's just plain dumb to trust this company anymore. They don't even seem to be looking to sell packs to us, they just want their product bought in bulk by SCG and let the secondary market have it's way with us.
A couple of comments. I generally agree with you that EV is a moving target. It's consistently changing right up until sets are released. However, as we saw with MM1 if EV is significantly higher than MSRP, the secondary market will just adjust upwards and you will still pay about EV pricing regardless of MSRP. People make decisions based on whatever available information they have. Rarely do you have complete and perfect information to make decisions, so you go with what you know. Based on EV being a generally accepted methodology, it's the primary guideline that retailers are using to set prices on these reprint sets. At least with these, there's really only one shot. They have typically sold out pretty quick. I think people stick to EV because it is a good predictor of what the street cost of boxes will be.
On the lottery aspect of EMA, I think it's kind of how Magic works all around. You can make the same claim for SOI, or BFZ or just about any standard print set that Wizards' has released. I'm not really sure what you were expecting or hoping for, but even in standard 80% of the packs you open lose money too.
I actually think its an OK move not to put Damnation here. I'd rather it show up in Conspiracy 2 that has a full print run, or if push comes to shove, MM3 would be adequate. As much as I'd like to see Damnation here, I think it'll spice up MM3 limited to have wraths in sealed. Keeping EV in mind does limit some of Wizards' choices in cards. I know that you're not a fan of this methodology, but we already saw what happens when EV and MSRP don't match up. This does mean that Wizards simply will not load up the set with every power card that we could ever want in it. It's a tradeoff.
On Wizards sabotaging themselves and not knowing what they are doing, I respectfully disagree. They've managed to not only stay in business for over 20 years. They have managed to grow from essentially nothing into what is generally considered the best TCG in existence (arguable with Yu-Gi-Oh!). They have to balance several groups whose interests directly conflict with one another (collectors wanting rare and valuable cards, with high prices versus players who want everything cheap and accessible), grow the game, keep their retailers sustainable (major places for many to play the game), and keep their overlords (Hasbro) happy. We may not understand, like, or agree with the decisions they make but to think they are purposely screwing up their business model or giving the bird to those who purchase their game doesn't make sense. If that were the case, the game simply would stop growing, and eventually die. All evidence currently points to the direct opposite.
Here is the only point I would have to respectfully disagree right back. The 'they managed to stay business...' bit has been an argument beaten to death. Quite honestly, it's patently false for several reasons. Chronicles, Combo Winter, Affinity, Cawblade, to a much lesser extent Fairies, 6th Ed. rules changes, 10th Ed. rules changes, etc. - they've come within striking distance of killing the game on a number of occasions. Be it good will, community, or turning a corner with a great set, WotC has been able to save itself more than once and rebuild the player base. One could see it as good job on their part for pulling it off, but the cynic in me says the community shouldn't have been put there in the first place. So no, I don't feel they deserve pats on the back for recovering from disastrous mistakes like those when they did the damage to themselves. So no, I can't say I 'trust their expertise', because evidence shows a terrible track record. When they're good, they're great, and when they're bad, they're really bad. Instead of striving for greatness, they've decided to balance these 'conflicting desires' you mentioned by settling for mediocrity. Nothing here is so great collectors get upset, nothing here is so great it justifies the price, nothing here is so reasonably priced it makes sense to draft, and nothing here is so good you can make a Legacy deck out of a box.
There is one caveat to all of the above, though, and I've seen a few of your posts, so you may not appreciate the opinion, but - collectors are the only segment of these conflicting desires NO ONE has to appeal to. In order for Gaea's Cradle, for example, to maintain it's value, all WotC has to do is NOT print it. By virtue of it's exclusion in this set (yes, I'm aware of its status), the price rose on the value of the card. Somewhere along the line 'collectors' began feeling entitled to this imaginary number on paper. If you're holding the card, it's cardboard. If you're playing with the card, it's really good cardboard. If you're cube drafting it, it's still cardboard. If it's sitting in a binder to show off to people, or yourself, it's vanity. Only if you're actually buying, selling or trading it does the dollar value assigned to it become relevant. Yet somehow, my ability to get one by way of reprint falls second to a collector's desire to hang on to whatever the market price is when he wakes up that morning, on some trust or implied promise that someday when said collector is no longer loyal to the game, he can cash out and retire on it?
If EV is entering into WotC's equations, then they're lying or stupid when they say they're blind to the secondary market. When they print a 2cc-creature that's a guaranteed staple 4-of at mythic, they're either lying or stupid. When they opt to not reprint a card despite player demand for it to satisfy a collector that isn't purchasing product, they're either lying or stupid. Lastly, when they're printing top-heavy lottery ticket sets, they're either lying or stupid.
Magic has a vastly large player base. You presented the lack of the death of the game as 'evidence' that they know what they're doing. Action, not a lack of reaction, is the evidence I've based my opinions on. I guess it all comes down to how much you trust them with the future of the game. You do, I don't.
The correct way to adjust to MM1's slightly higher EV would have been to do a much higher print run. If the print run were 5x the print run of MM1 then the EV would drop with increased availability and we'd have a nice happy medium where customers pay MSRP or slightly below MSRP like they do for most MTG products. The secondary market only adjusted upward because the product was printed in such limited supply.
Instead of simply increasing supply and keeping price and quality the same, they got greedy as they realized that price elasticity of demand could handle a price hike, even with a higher print run. $7.99 was already a bit ridiculous for the same exact cardboard that they sell for 3.99 but $10 for a pack of cardboard is just insane and unfortunately there's enough people willing to pay that much.
There is always a lottery aspect to sealed product but there is a drastic difference in paying $90 for something with an EV of $75 and paying $250 for something with an estimated value of under $200. First off, there are other value additives to sealed product such as limited or the thrill of opening a new set which helps fill in the gap of price and EV. Masters products don't really add much extra value in that area even though the price and EV gap are wider. The other problem is that with masters products you typically either win big or lose bad since they seem to have a bad habit of putting most of the value in mythics. Losing bad on a $250 dollar premium product is much worse than getting a stinker box from a standard set.
Looking back 20 years is a poor method of evaluating Wizard's recent decisions. Masters sets are a newer thing and just go to show how Wizards has become greedier in recent years. Rather than print sufficient quantities of format staples, they wait until they get so expensive that they are afraid of offending collectors by printing the card at a sufficient quantity. See Wasteland as an example of a card that should be at most a $5 uncommon had they reprinted it a long time ago as they should have. Only in recent years have we seen the massive price spikes, buyouts, and large amount of speculation that contributes to the mtg bubble. Only time will tell if Wizard's new greedier strategy will pay off or whether it'll ultimately lead to the bubble bursting.
To be fair. The collectors could probably not care less that you don't get the legacy staples that they already paid lots of money to store on a shelf or lock away in a safety deposit box. I'm not saying things couldn't be done a little different, but it's a little short sighted to think that your perspective is the only p.erspective that should be cared about
I guess time will tell which of us is right if Wizards' knows what they are doing or not.
You are certainly right that Wizards has made some bonehead decisions over the years - most notably being Chronicles - and have come within inches of its demise. I like to think they've learned from their mistakes. And while we still see design mistakes like many of the decks you just mentioned and even the recent Eldrazi Winter, I don't believe that any event in the last 10 years or so has really threatened the livelihood of the game itself. Yes, their decisions anger portions of the player base, collectors, LGS's, etc... I can only speak effectively to what I've seen over the last 8 or 9 years - and the last 5 or 6 have been exceptionally good.
Actually, I've gone back through a number of Wizards' posts through MaRo and others. I couldn't specifically find a post anywhere where Wizards said they specifically do not pay attention to the secondary market. On the contrary, I did find a post from Maro stating that the reason Goyf was a mythic was to preserve its value. While not specifically tied to the secondary market they do mention they didn't want to crash that cards value.
I read through your portion on collectors, but I didn't really get the gist of it. I'm guessing that you say that card values only matter if you're actually buying or selling? If that's the case, it's sort of true, but sort of not. There is a psychological portion that also ties to the value of cards. My collection is pretty valuable and something that is an asset. If something catastrophic were to happen, I would liquidate it for some portion of its value. It wouldn't be my first alternative, but it's a financial source at my disposal if times get rough. Collectors are kind of an oddity all around. But they(we) do reasonably expect our collections to be worth what we paid for it - even if that value is as ethereal as card prices.
So, if you really don't trust Wizards' to do right by their game, are you liquidating out of it? It seems to me that if you think things are going to go off a cliff, the smart move would be to pull out before things go bad.
/edit ok I've gone back and re-read your post a few more times and I wanted to make one comment about collectors. Wizards has stated from the onset of the game that Magic is a collectible card game. There will always be a collectible element to it. Wizards' does have to cater to collectors since they make up a substantial portion of those who buy their products. They do so in a number of ways. One of them is not over-reprinting cards into oblivion.
Problem here is that we all can safely assume the EV driving up the price of the packs was a combination of how limited the print run is, which is also a problem with EMA, and because of how much it meant to everyone at the time, people wanted to get reprints of cards we hadn't seen in 5-10 years and there was a thought among many that it was possible we wouldn't be seeing something like this again for some time, so everyone jumped on it. Not to mention how many people swarmed into Modern because of it as they thought it would be easier to get into, which only backfired and increased prices a month after the set came out.
Now MM1 was an experiment and we can all agree that it was better to be cautious, but if the print run was much higher, at MM2 levels at least, we could figure that the secondary market wouldn't have increased the price so much, if not at all. With EMA having a near MM1 print run we have $15 packs being sold. You can have a higher print run and a set that has more expensive boosters and not affect the secondary market on the scale of Chronicles, then again we'll never see that again so I'm not sure why WoTC is so worried about something we've yet to even see on the horizon for almost 20 years.
Size of the print run is still probably the most hotly contested part of these reprint sets. If the only lens you look through is that of the player, you will never be happy with the size of the print run until it is unlimited. Understand there are other forces at work here.
I suppose the biggest point of view to look at is Wizards' itself. Why would Wizards' want any non-rotating format to decrease in price? They've said stated their bread-and-butter formats are standard and limited. Lowering the barrier to entry for Modern and Legacy will actually cost Wizards money in the long run. They are intelligently and slowly injecting cards into the Modern environment so we don't see the runaway prices of cards that we have seen in Legacy, while making money in the process.
You say I won't be happy and yet I stated a minimum in which would have been good, and if that minimum is hit then would I not be happy by it?
You must also look at it with players becoming irritated by these decisions and end up buying less of all products. Customers being unhappy will definitely hurt more than MM3 or EMA being printed more than EMA or MM1.
It was PAX East, where they previewed Theros and Modern Masters 2013. They had a Q&A panel, they were specifically asked about card choice in the set vs. secondary market pricing, their response was we don't concern ourselves with the secondary market. So whether the lopsidedness of MMA2 was stupidity or an about-face on that policy remains to be seen, but surely we can agree that the egregious lack of transparency on this issue leads to speculation that their motives are exactly as I said above - stupidity, or they're intentionally doing this to the community. The worst they can do is say nothing on the subject.
That last sentence in the second paragraph REALLY irks me. What makes you think that you, as a collector, are in any way entitled to an expectation of ANY return close to what you paid for a product after you walk out of the store with it? It's paper. For a card game. I could understand if you felt that way if the paper was a treasury bond, but it's not true of cars, stocks, houses, or most any other commodity in this life. Also, and I can't believe I have to say this, you seem like a really intelligent cat, but Magic cards are NOT an investment! Not, with a big ol' N. You invest money into it with no expectation but the fun to have collected all of a set, finished a deck, played with your friends, made some new ones, nailed a cool trade, etc.
To make matters worse, this has seriously spiraled downwards over the last 3-4 years. Players with sets of ABU duals saw their 'investment' almost double in price, and now feel they're entitled to not what they paid for it, but the doubling the market said it did. Legacy loses its tournament support, prices barely waffle, and so it goes. Congrats, y'all, you killed the format. But at least you have $300 Tundras to sit in your binder for a format you can't ever really play. On the other end of the spectrum, Modern, the format that's supposed to be immune to this toxicity the RL created, has watched prices rise while we keep getting 'wait for the next set' for every missed reprint for 4 years now. C'mon, man, I paid $8 for my first Snapcaster. There's no reason the guy next to me has to pay $50 to play at the same table so I can 'keep' that value, man, that's just greed.
For your last point, yes, I did. I kept about 1500 cards, all Modern, and sold my collection of 10 years, some 50,000 cards, in February. The collection was valued at approx. 16k. Know what I got for it? 6,000. That's right, one-third. I kept everything in binders by set, ordered by collector number/color, no more than 4 copies of any given card. I took meticulous care of that collection. Some 9-12 complete sets. I wasn't in a bind, or hurting for cash. Commander hasn't been the same since Wizards stuck it's nose in it. I played with BFZ and I hated it. I was never going to be stupid enough to get into the dying format that is Legacy. So I said screw it, you can't take it with you when you die, let's cash out. Do something nice with the family. Breaking the chains of being a 'gotta catch them all' collector was probably the single most freeing thing I've ever done. I crack prize packs now and keep only what I think I can use. I just recently opened a pack of Oath and was more excited for the Pulse of Murasa than I was the foil Kozilek behind an Eldrazi Displacer. I bindered both of those for a wopping 5 minutes before someone offered stuff I actually wanted for them. No, I don't trust Wizards with the future of the game, so yeah, I put my money where my mout was and cashed out. I still love hanging with my friends and going to tournaments, but now I do it on my terms. WotC has to earn back my trust before I give them another red cent. My LGS, however, I'll still support them with entry, singles, and supplies. Might even draft here and there (I tried the EMA lottery last night, actually - a $15 Gamble and I won 4-0 with a peasant deck...just like every draft I've played for 5 sets now), but I've spent such a fortune on this game, I think it's long overdue I be shown some good will on the part of WotC.
Give me a product with real value, and i don't mean EV, I mean stop stuffing reprint sets with filler trash and calling it a limited format, and I'll buy in. I want to pay Wizards, not some company that bought 1800 cases from them to flip to me for a profit for the few singles I need. Then they can have my money again.
Thanks for clearing up the not paying attention to the secondary market question. I probably spent an hour looking for that quote but couldn't find it. Definitely concerning when you two entities at Wizards (PAX panel and MaRo) saying things that directly contradict one another. This is an issue Wizards really needs to get a stance on and then stick with it. I get that flip flopping on it is a problem, and potentially a serious one.
On the issue of collections being worth what we paid for it, I do think it is reasonable for it to be valued at something close to what I paid for it. I do want to note that I believe there is a huge difference between the value of a collection and its true selling price. I didn't say I expect it to appreciate over time, or that I should be guaranteed a return. There are no guarantees. But many assets do appreciate over time with the exception of cars. I also do not think of my collection as an investment. An investment implies that I am specifically looking for growth and will eventually sell for a profit. While I am hopeful the value of my collection grows, I have absolutely no intention of selling it. And even if I did as you mention, I would take a bloodbath trying to sell it for about 1/2 of what its worth. With all that said, I do understand the risks associated with buying cards that are not on the RL. There is no expectation on my part of Wizards preserving the value of the cards in my collection and I understand that any of them could be reprinted in the next set.
I understand your point about card prices being nuts. Modern as a format has probably gone up 50-60% in the 5 years since the format has been created. No disagreements there. But Modern and Legacy are different beasts. The RL pretty much guarantees that Legacy will never be a supported format. But if you look at it from Wizards POV, this is a good thing. Modern as a format doesn't really make them any money. It's a place where people who are entrenched in the game can still play with old cards and give them a place to hold value. Standard and Limited is what Wizards wants to push since that is where they make money. A high barrier to entry pushes people into the arena Wizards wants them to play in. I understand from the players' POV that this sucks if you are trying to enter the format since it's (comparatively speaking to standard) prohibitively expensive. But once you're in, it doesn't really effect you that dramatically. Wizards' thought process (I believe) is that they do not want to actively promote growth in that format, but want to reward long time players that retained cards from their time in standard and give players a reason to hold on to them.
Right, wrong or indifferent, this appears to be their strategy.
I'm sorry you sold out of the game. My hope is that Wizards is able to do enough to get your confidence back and you buy in again. I agree that they certainly are not perfect in their decision making, but they are successfully growing the game and its player base and have been for several years. You are certainly doing what you feel best by voting with your wallet. If enough people think like you, at the minimum you will get Wizards' attention.
One thing that does frustrate me is that everyone thinks these sets should be full of value with no filler. That just doesn't fit up with the current model of selling cards by packs. Every set that Wizards' releases, be it EMA, SOI, or even Alpha, has an overwhelming majority of filler. That is the model of randomized cards in packs. I actually think you have a better chance of pulling some money in EMA than you do in, say, BFZ.
/edit I wanted to take a second to say thank you SephX. I've appreciated the tone of your posts. It's refreshing to have an intelligent discussion with someone of a differing opinion that hasn't resorted to personal attacks or sniping at one another.
This is my main issue. I love opening sealed product but it's just so scandalous now. They have handed the reins over to SCG and the like. I feel the need to sell my collection simply because I feel the need to, and if I feel this way, more like me probably do as well. (The casual player with a $20k+ collection that just doesn't want to support being taken for a fool)
1/3 of the value of my collection is a tough pill to swallow indeed, but I understand the liberation you feel from doing it, and it makes sense. It is just an estimated value after all.
If you want to be a conceited, arrogant, "I have this so I don't want you to have it" childish mentality stuck up, then go seek company on a dating site; it's the closest thing you'll likely get to a real connection.
Meanwhile, I frequent sites regarding Magic to discuss the game I love, playing it, and why more people deserve that same experience. If more people play my game, I'll get more value from my cards than I anticipated to when I bought them. "WOW OMG NO ONE HAS EVER THOUGHT OF THAT THAT'S CRAZY WOW!"
It makes more sense to hold onto the boxes and wait til they rise in worth. But for people like me, you want to see what you paid for, so you open it.
First off, thank you as well, it's been a pleasure.
I'd never say NO filler is acceptable. I mean, for some of us, red cards are filler in any given pack. A 7-drop 5/5 blue flyer might be a bomb in limited even if it'll never see constructed play. I get that, and that's fine. But with these reprint sets, the cards we want, use, and/or need are already well known. Charging 7 dollars on a pack on MMA with the possibility of cracking a Skeletal Vampire is a slap in the face. It's becomes unconscionable at $20 a pack. When 2/3 of the rares are at that status, it still goes back to my point that they're either lying or stupid as it relates to not just the secondary market, but listening to their community. Yes, I get that magic Christmasland is a box will get you into Modern and that's absurd. But the other end of the spectrum isn't working, either, trickling down cards we need in dribs and drabs, while everything missed gets exponentially more expensive. Aggressive reprinting for needed cards was the entire concept behind this format, so why am I still going to SCG to get the singular printing of staple cards from 8 years ago?
And this ties right into this other argument I hear a lot of, that Standard and Limited are their cash cows. My wife owns a store herself, and diversification is key there. Opening new revenue streams. I mean, if I'm pushing around an apple cart and somebody stops me and says, 'I'd buy, but you don't have bananas', you can be damn sure I have an apple and banana cart the next day. Modern is always looking for new players, and 'scaring' people away with the barrier to entry is flat stupid. At one point, I had 2 Commander Decks, 2 Modern decks, a Standard and Legacy deck in my bag every Friday. Just because I love Modern doesn't mean Wizards can't make money on me. Acting like we need to be herded to their cash cow format sounds like a bit of ineptitude on their part for not finding a way to properly monetize their other formats.
Meanwhile the existence of the RL and inflated market price of cards prevents Jane Doe from actively engaging and playing the game, because all the best cards are in the hands of collectors who have deluded themselves into thinking that they actually own something of more inherit value than what they paid/traded for. It boggles my mind that people do not understand how badly they are being suckered by the fake secondary market of Magic.
Boggles!*
*Yes, I am aware the spelling is completely different and means two entirely different things. I was making a pun!
First two packs, Jace and mana crypt. Gamble, mystical tutor, and several other things. Had plenty more, hell a foil night whispers sold at the store for 6 change and that was the last on my mind compared to the other foil uncommons and commons.
Sold what we didn't need (only play edh) but kept the big stuff. Draft only cost me and my gf 10 dollars today. She pulled a force of will and sneak attack. I got another gamble and a foil enlightened tutor. And again, plenty of small stuff.
I have to say when you hit it with this set, you hit it. That and my gf has magical opening powers, im not allowed to open anymore
I've heard people talk like this since the 90s bro, it hasn't happened in the 20ish years MTG has been around. Prices will tumble for a time when the game wanes in popularity but it has never come to the point of truly "crashing down". Back in the 90s when I was much younger my friends and myself scoffed at power selling for $100-150 each, and if we would have bought in at that time we would have all had $1000s worth of power alone.
Feel free to bid on my cards here!