FRIEND (6:10:28 PM): Yes it is a game, but the prices are such that it is really more of an investment than it was meant to be originally
ME (6:11:37 PM): this all boils down to selfishness on behalf of jaded players who now exploit the game they used to love.
The truth hurts. When you put it that way, it's almost moves one to tears.
Once a warm, friendly game - now an investment as cold as the coin it is worth.
Has anyone mentioned that most Vintage tournaments allow 10+ proxies and yet none of the high value cards have fallen in value greatly, even though they can be easily replaced with a basic land and a sharpie? If this trend continues, we'll either see 1.) More and more proxies to the point where there aren't enough expensive cards to go around and are simply proxied. 2.) Some form of reprint for these valuable cards and the proxy limit being stabilized.
So let me ask all of you, would you rather play against Basic-Sharpie.Dec over and over, or would you rather see some real cards across the table?
Play poker if you want a card game. Or crazy eights.
If you want to collect, buy antiques.
If you want to play a card game and collect at the same time; chose Magic.
Magic is a COLLECTABLE card game: not the same as a card game.
From the mouth of the people who make the game; Emphasis mine:
Quote from Official Reprint Policy Update Page »
The Magic trading card game has tremendous appeal as both a game and a collectible. For us, however, the Magic game is first and foremost a supreme game of strategy and skill. We choose to reprint cards because we believe (a) the cards we reprint make for enjoyable game play, and (b) all Magic players deserve an opportunity to play with these cards. Any card that isn't on the reserved list may be reprinted.
Also, Magic has never used CCG (Collectible Card Game) to describe itself. If you want to get nitpicky, it's considered itself a TCG (Trading Card Game). You can argue the semantics if you want.
I worry for you legacy players that got your way. I think things will play out like this-- P9 will come to mtgo, cards will be valuable but players will buy them in order to have the chance to play touneys in the more expensive formats. Paper t1 suffer.
Over the last month or so I'd started researching legacy since we have a pretty good community for it around here (weekly tourney, 10-15 players). Started looking into decks I could justify as a birthday present splurge or something ... and found I'd probably need prices on the landbase to drop a little bit if I wanted to be competitive.
Never going to happen, though. Got kinda down about it and dropped by Target and bought two packs of Worldwake. One Strength of the Tajuru and one Agadeem Occultist later, it struck me that that was the idea all along, I suppose.
What would be so bad about a paper master's edition set that is stated from the outset not to be standard legal? i mean, unhinged and unglued, the from the vault series, and the duel decks are known to not be standard legal the day of their release. To keep the chases like duals to a premium, make them mythic. Money in WOTC's pocket, values don't largely change, supply is increased...i don't see too much flaw in that. The $5 to $10 rares like Sol Ring and Wheel of Fortune wouldn't be hurt by being reprinted at rare, and with more accessibility, the eternal formats grow, demand on unreprinted originals increase so the store owners are happy, and this complaining about the reserve list would come to an end after years of waiting.
The concept to me sure beats the situation in my area. In western NY, we don't have eternal formats in a 70 mile radius, despite having a very healthy player base. The biggest shop in the area has been holding 2 moxes and a beta lotus in their case for the better part of a year now, with good cause. And as long as the format is dead in our area, they're likely going to sit there doing no one any favors, least of all our shop owner. Only with more access and reasonable prices to get into the format could he ever hope to move them outside of the internet.
The argument of protecting investments is silly to me. For every time I run jund at a tourney, i bring along my $.75 blightnings. My opponents with less of a budget in mind are rocking a foil playset or a textless one. My point is, in a healthy format, the people with money to burn are still going to go after the most premium version they can find to pimp out their decks. Sure beats sitting in a display case.
That said, I am growing more convinced that we might have seen a situation where, say, WotC Legal examined the situation, saw a minute but real risk of an estoppel case, and passed down an absolute edict that no further explorations of Reserved List modifications were to be considered ever in any form because Legal didn't feel like working out how to protect WotC in those circumstances.
WoTC/Hasbro's legal team is incredibly conservative lately. The original GSL license for D&D 4e was quite scary. It read like a credit card agreement. These terms can change at any time; you are liable for legal fees if you breach it; can be terminated without warning and you must destroy now infringing inventory. But it got revised to some better, so fan outrage may still help.
This is a horrible, horrible move, and I hope that WotC sees the idiocy and reverses it.
This does a number of things, from assuring the eventual descent of Legacy into a "club format" like Vintage is now, to assuring both formats eventually losing their access to old cards due to diminishing supply, to making customers everywhere lose their faith in WotC's ability to make rational decisions. What a terrible idea.
Odd that they're not allowed to talk about it. Leads me to believe there were some legal shennanigans going on in the background. If this was just WotC choosing a particular policy, I'd expect them to send out the troops to rally everyone behind it.
What would be so bad about a paper master's edition set that is stated from the outset not to be standard legal? i mean, unhinged and unglued, the from the vault series, and the duel decks are known to not be standard legal the day of their release. To keep the chases like duals to a premium, make them mythic. Money in WOTC's pocket, values don't largely change, supply is increased...i don't see too much flaw in that. The $5 to $10 rares like Sol Ring and Wheel of Fortune wouldn't be hurt by being reprinted at rare, and with more accessibility, the eternal formats grow, demand on unreprinted originals increase so the store owners are happy, and this complaining about the reserve list would come to an end after years of waiting.
The concept to me sure beats the situation in my area. In western NY, we don't have eternal formats in a 70 mile radius, despite having a very healthy player base. The biggest shop in the area has been holding 2 moxes and a beta lotus in their case for the better part of a year now, with good cause. And as long as the format is dead in our area, they're likely going to sit there doing no one any favors, least of all our shop owner. Only with more access and reasonable prices to get into the format could he ever hope to move them outside of the internet.
The argument of protecting investments is silly to me. For every time I run jund at a tourney, i bring along my $.75 blightnings. My opponents with less of a budget in mind are rocking a foil playset or a textless one. My point is, in a healthy format, the people with money to burn are still going to go after the most premium version they can find to pimp out their decks. Sure beats sitting in a display case.
Except that WOTC has stated, repeatedly that lands will NEVER be mythic?!
A paper masters edition would be a good idea, but the idea should be to split up the duals in each set, like ME1 having 5 of the 10 lands in the set, and the next one does the rest.
idk, but I think if we all write, we could get SOMETHING done.. Nonviolent protest.
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People who keep action figures in their boxes are not collecting, but investing.
That's not true at all. Check any major collectors and you will find people with items in their original packaging and no intent to sell. I keep the comics, video games, books and music I collect in it's original packaging and have no intent to sell any of it. I have only sold a single comic in 15 years of collecting, and actually regret doing so.
It's frustrating when you spend months seeking out a collectible and then get a great deal for it, just for it to become rendered meaningless due to a reissue. This is with collectibles, unlike MTG, that do not have a policy in place declaring that these collectibles will not be reissued. If a card mtg promised to not reissue, actually do get reissued, it would be far more then just frustrating.
But, that's the thing about collections. The quality of your collection depends on the items being status symbols. It's not about reselling, but being the only one who was able to put in the work to obtain it. If I didn't care about the status or the quality of my collection, I would be an enthusiast. An enthusiast can also be a collector, but they do not abide by the same values a collector would. An enthusiast will open and play with his Steve Austin figure, because that's where the value lies. The collector would be much happier to have Steve Austin figure in it's original packagaing, because it's rarity is the value to a collector. Remember, the most thought after collection pieces are not so because of their price, but because of how hard it is to obtain them.
Now, this is considerably different then an investor. Because unlike an investor, a collector never intends to sell their collection. So if a reissue accurse, an investor should be aware of it and cash out as soon as possible. The collector on the other hand, has no recource but to see the rarity of it's collactable loose all value. That's the big difference between collectors an investors. Investors feed off collectors, because the collectors make the suply more limited with each purchase, thus increasing the price due to lowered supply. Investors sell to collectors, whom pay a premium for the most 'mint' version of the product. If collectors didn't care about packaging being opened, they would not sell for a premium.
I collect figures and statues, old vinyl, as well as cards, but I collect i don't invest in them.
Because you are an enthusiast, you collect to play with. I am a collector who does not play with his collection as you do. Your value, or investment, is the ability to play with these collectibles, which makes you an enthusiast. The value of my collection, lies in the rarity and the quality of my collectibles. Not because I want to sell them, but because I get as much joy from hunting down the rarest of the rare, as you do in playing with it. This is completely destroyed if I could have waited a few months and not wasted my time and payed a premium.
I want to have them, not prevent anybody else to have them as well...
Same here, I do not care if you have "it". But, can you imagine the bitterness when the maker of the collectibles changes their mind on a promise that these collectibles will hold the same rarity?
Oh, just because I was willing to do more then you did to obtain a card on the reserved list, does not make me privileged. Feel free to perhaps pick up another job, get a better education or make changes to your life that would let you obtain these cards. because I can assure you, that me obtaining my collection was not a result of being privileged, but a lot of hard work.
@topic:
call me naive, but i think there's an extremely simple solution to this whole thing:
screw the reserved list.
make a few expensive box sets/FTV/collector'd Ed./wtf ever they want to call it to include these old cards.
suck it up and take one for the team with all the lawsuits that they are afraid of dealing with.
pay off all the jerks that sue them, and roll in the money they make from reprinting sought-after cards for older formats.
seriously. if they don't shoot themselves with a extremely limited print run, a product like that would easily make back enough revenue to counterbalance the legal fees.
Everyone who wishes to play Legacy, will be able to do so on MTGO.
Magic is first and foremost a game of strategy and skill, but the fact of the matter is there are tons more affordable ways to play Magic, draft, pauper, standard for a season. There's a small format, which has rare and expensive cards to play in. Some can afford and some can't. Welcome to the real world. If WotC wanted to make Legacy more affordable, don't you think they'd have printed Force of Will or Wasteland or Tarmogoyf by now? The RL isn't preventing that. Why haven't they done that?
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"I have seen the true path. I will not warm myself by the fire—I will become the flame."
—Lim-Dûl, the Necromancer
Same here, I do not care if you have "it". But, can you imagine the bitterness when the maker of the collectibles changes their mind on a promise that these collectibles will hold the same rarity?
Wouldn't a The Dark Squire be just as rare after 2007 as it was before 2005? (if not rarer due to the destruction of possible Squires from The Dark)
Wouldn't a The Dark Squire be just as rare after 2007 as it was before 2005?
No, it gets rarer as time goes by. Things get lost, damaged and secured in collections. As time goes by, if a collectible is not reprinted, it gets rarer.
My fear, however small, is that something akin to what happened to the comic book industry will happen to MtG on whatever scale. In that it is to my understanding that comic books had a big boom in the 80s, 90s area where people wanted to collect, but realized those collections weren't worth anything because everyone had them (like Beanie Babies) and the industry suffered because demand dropped sharply.
My point is not people's investments will suffer, it is that MtG is attracting many new players. They are printing more than ever and overall having fun good times. But when new players get tired of standard and limited, they will want something else. Obviously many will look at eternals, see the few hundred dollar price tag on basically every deck, and eventually get bored and leave. That is a very bad thing for the game.
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We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.
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No, it gets rarer as time goes by. Things get lost, damaged and secured in collections. As time goes by, if a collectible is not reprinted, it gets rarer.
The thing is, even reprinting doesn't change this. As a collector, as you have said, you are seeking rarities. Foil reprints of Beta cards does not AT ALL change the rarity of the Beta card you collected - it's an ENTIRELY different object. If all you care about is having the rare collectibles, then they could print a foil Black Lotus and hand them out at FNM and you shouldn't care one bit, because you still have a BETA lotus. If anything, reprinting the cards gives you MORE to collect, so there is no reason to complain from your standpoint.
That is, of course, unless you actually care about the content of the card and not the object, which is where a reprint will overlap with the original, and in that case, if you were to complain you may be considered as bad as a player hoarding cards to have an advantage.
I once again site the case of From the Vault Exiled Berserk vs. ABU Berserk - very little price change despite the reprinting, because the rare OBJECT that collectors care about is still exactly as rare as before.
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My fear, however small, is that something akin to what happened to the comic book industry will happen to MtG on whatever scale. In that it is to my understanding that comic books had a big boom in the 80s, 90s area where people wanted to collect, but realized those collections weren't worth anything because everyone had them (like Beanie Babies) and the industry suffered because demand dropped sharply.
My point is not people's investments will suffer, it is that MtG is attracting many new players. They are printing more than ever and overall having fun good times. But when new players get tired of standard and limited, they will want something else. Obviously many will look at eternals, see the few hundred dollar price tag on basically every deck, and eventually get bored and leave. That is a very bad thing for the game.
This. Also I would add that if the game as a whole dies (not likely soon) the value will decrease. A good chuck of that value is pushed by desirability. A healthy game is key to value. As someone who is just dipping his toes into legacy I am saddened by this.
No, it gets rarer as time goes by. Things get lost, damaged and secured in collections. As time goes by, if a collectible is not reprinted, it gets rarer.
Exactly my point? Squire was reprinted in 2006 as a Timeshifted card. A collector's complete set of Tempest will not become "less rare" if they reprinted cards from Tempest in a new set, in foil, in a collector's edition, etc.
Exactly my point? Squire was reprinted in 2006 as a Timeshifted card. A collector's complete set of Tempest will not become "less rare" if they reprinted cards from Tempest in a new set, in foil, in a collector's edition, etc.
I think I see what you're saying, but I don't think it works that way with Magic. Take the first issue of Spider-Man. An original copy is worth way more than a reprint, and there have been many, many, many reprints, because the collector cares about the particular original copy, and not the content of the story.
With Magic, I would imagine that most of the price in old cards is because people want to play with them, not because collector's drive up the price of the originals. The pure collectors who might want both an Alpha Black Lotus and a theoretical 2011 Black Lotus, and thus put a much greater value on the former over the later (because the former is much rarer), are probably not a significant force in the price of the Alpha Black Lotus. To most players, the two cards would be pretty fungible (though, obviously, the Alpha would retain a higher value because of its rarity) and the existence of the 2011 Black Lotus would probably drive down the price of the Alpha Black Lotus.
I once again site the case of From the Vault Exiled Berserk vs. ABU Berserk - very little price change despite the reprinting, because the rare OBJECT that collectors care about is still exactly as rare as before.
Huh. Or I could be totally wrong if that's the case.
I'm not convinced that this issue is not easily resolvable through the way WotC would approach a hypothetical dissolution of the List. Estoppel is based on the concept that an individual exposed themselves to risk on the basis of a specific promise and that they then suffered measurable loss as a direct result of this promise not being followed.
Since the principle isn't as favorable as judgment in a case where an explicit contract is violated, and it's based on people actually taking measurable losses as a result of the promise, it should be easy to shield WotC against problems here by approaching list changes in a way that keep people from taking unexpected losses. Example: announce that WotC has chosen to eliminate the Reserved List, but due to their previous commitments, they are announcing this change two or three years in advance. During that time, no Reserved Cards will be reprinted. That would give anyone currently invested in Reserved Cards plenty of lead time to divest themselves of cards if they decided they didn't want to take the risk of them being reprinted; meanwhile, because the demand for these cards is almost entirely based on demand rather than speculation, the cards would be unlikely to significantly devalue during that three year window.
That said, I am growing more convinced that we might have seen a situation where, say, WotC Legal examined the situation, saw a minute but real risk of an estoppel case, and passed down an absolute edict that no further explorations of Reserved List modifications were to be considered ever in any form because Legal didn't feel like working out how to protect WotC in those circumstances.
.
You are more than likely right here, but I am not sure how estoppel can apply on a collectible. They make no promise of these cards value, they don't control the secondary market. The only real promise is that you will get X cards in a pack, etc, etc. I supposed the original reserve list and acknowledgement of the secondary market might have put them in a bad place (in D&D Minis WoTC never acknowledged the existence of a secondary market, I now see that this might be the reason why) but it still seems vague to me at best. I guess the pull away from this is that in general it is best that they do not acknowledge the secondary market or anything that they have no control over.
My fear, however small, is that something akin to what happened to the comic book industry will happen to MtG on whatever scale. In that it is to my understanding that comic books had a big boom in the 80s, 90s area where people wanted to collect, but realized those collections weren't worth anything because everyone had them
What happened with comics is the market became flooded. People saw their old, limited print run comics rise in value. So, people started buying comics as an investment. The prices would fluctuate greatly, with some people making money on them as investments. The problem came up about 10-15 years after this began. People realized that unlike the old comics that were high in value, there were almost limitless supplies of comics from when the boom began. The reaction of the comic book industry was printing limited covers, which would appear 1 in 20 comics. This made things even worse as retailers would over buy issues in attempts to get as many limited issues as they could. As you can imagine, a lot of comic went unsold and many store owners went belly up due to over purchasing occurring at the same time as people started bailing. Peoples collections became worthless as people left the industry and their collection prices fell under the realization that the supply was far greater then the demand.
and the industry suffered because demand dropped sharply.
Yep, but they could have suffered less damage if they didn't saturate the market with different commics and over ordering of retailers. When the comic book boon began, we had 2-3 monthlyee X-Men comics. Currently, Xmen is pretty much it's own imprint with around 10 monthly comics.
Beany babies are actually a cyclical trend, see Furbies and Cabbage Padge kids. The collectors grow out of their collections.
The only way out from this now is to remove cards from the Reserve List. They've done that before on several occasions. So if they eliminate the cards on the list, there can't be a breach of the list. It's one way to get around it.
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WoTC, thank you for finally announcing the Modern format, an eternal format where everyone can participate.
Exactly my point? Squire was reprinted in 2006 as a Timeshifted card. A collector's complete set of Tempest will not become "less rare" if they reprinted cards from Tempest in a new set, in foil, in a collector's edition, etc.
A collection of Tempest that do not include Squire became less rare. Squire him self became less rare. If squire had any sort of collectible value or had any sort of difficulty in obtaining, it would have been a far greater impact. If MTG promised to never reprint Squire, prior to reprinting him in Timeshifted, it would also be a different story.
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The truth hurts. When you put it that way, it's almost moves one to tears.
Once a warm, friendly game - now an investment as cold as the coin it is worth.
So let me ask all of you, would you rather play against Basic-Sharpie.Dec over and over, or would you rather see some real cards across the table?
From the mouth of the people who make the game; Emphasis mine:
Also, Magic has never used CCG (Collectible Card Game) to describe itself. If you want to get nitpicky, it's considered itself a TCG (Trading Card Game). You can argue the semantics if you want.
* Chaotix shrugs.
(Also known as Xenphire)
Never going to happen, though. Got kinda down about it and dropped by Target and bought two packs of Worldwake. One Strength of the Tajuru and one Agadeem Occultist later, it struck me that that was the idea all along, I suppose.
The concept to me sure beats the situation in my area. In western NY, we don't have eternal formats in a 70 mile radius, despite having a very healthy player base. The biggest shop in the area has been holding 2 moxes and a beta lotus in their case for the better part of a year now, with good cause. And as long as the format is dead in our area, they're likely going to sit there doing no one any favors, least of all our shop owner. Only with more access and reasonable prices to get into the format could he ever hope to move them outside of the internet.
The argument of protecting investments is silly to me. For every time I run jund at a tourney, i bring along my $.75 blightnings. My opponents with less of a budget in mind are rocking a foil playset or a textless one. My point is, in a healthy format, the people with money to burn are still going to go after the most premium version they can find to pimp out their decks. Sure beats sitting in a display case.
WoTC/Hasbro's legal team is incredibly conservative lately. The original GSL license for D&D 4e was quite scary. It read like a credit card agreement. These terms can change at any time; you are liable for legal fees if you breach it; can be terminated without warning and you must destroy now infringing inventory. But it got revised to some better, so fan outrage may still help.
This does a number of things, from assuring the eventual descent of Legacy into a "club format" like Vintage is now, to assuring both formats eventually losing their access to old cards due to diminishing supply, to making customers everywhere lose their faith in WotC's ability to make rational decisions. What a terrible idea.
Except that WOTC has stated, repeatedly that lands will NEVER be mythic?!
A paper masters edition would be a good idea, but the idea should be to split up the duals in each set, like ME1 having 5 of the 10 lands in the set, and the next one does the rest.
idk, but I think if we all write, we could get SOMETHING done.. Nonviolent protest.
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That's not true at all. Check any major collectors and you will find people with items in their original packaging and no intent to sell. I keep the comics, video games, books and music I collect in it's original packaging and have no intent to sell any of it. I have only sold a single comic in 15 years of collecting, and actually regret doing so.
It's frustrating when you spend months seeking out a collectible and then get a great deal for it, just for it to become rendered meaningless due to a reissue. This is with collectibles, unlike MTG, that do not have a policy in place declaring that these collectibles will not be reissued. If a card mtg promised to not reissue, actually do get reissued, it would be far more then just frustrating.
But, that's the thing about collections. The quality of your collection depends on the items being status symbols. It's not about reselling, but being the only one who was able to put in the work to obtain it. If I didn't care about the status or the quality of my collection, I would be an enthusiast. An enthusiast can also be a collector, but they do not abide by the same values a collector would. An enthusiast will open and play with his Steve Austin figure, because that's where the value lies. The collector would be much happier to have Steve Austin figure in it's original packagaing, because it's rarity is the value to a collector. Remember, the most thought after collection pieces are not so because of their price, but because of how hard it is to obtain them.
Now, this is considerably different then an investor. Because unlike an investor, a collector never intends to sell their collection. So if a reissue accurse, an investor should be aware of it and cash out as soon as possible. The collector on the other hand, has no recource but to see the rarity of it's collactable loose all value. That's the big difference between collectors an investors. Investors feed off collectors, because the collectors make the suply more limited with each purchase, thus increasing the price due to lowered supply. Investors sell to collectors, whom pay a premium for the most 'mint' version of the product. If collectors didn't care about packaging being opened, they would not sell for a premium.
Because you are an enthusiast, you collect to play with. I am a collector who does not play with his collection as you do. Your value, or investment, is the ability to play with these collectibles, which makes you an enthusiast. The value of my collection, lies in the rarity and the quality of my collectibles. Not because I want to sell them, but because I get as much joy from hunting down the rarest of the rare, as you do in playing with it. This is completely destroyed if I could have waited a few months and not wasted my time and payed a premium.
Same here, I do not care if you have "it". But, can you imagine the bitterness when the maker of the collectibles changes their mind on a promise that these collectibles will hold the same rarity?
Oh, just because I was willing to do more then you did to obtain a card on the reserved list, does not make me privileged. Feel free to perhaps pick up another job, get a better education or make changes to your life that would let you obtain these cards. because I can assure you, that me obtaining my collection was not a result of being privileged, but a lot of hard work.
ahem...Eye of Ugin
@topic:
call me naive, but i think there's an extremely simple solution to this whole thing:
screw the reserved list.
make a few expensive box sets/FTV/collector'd Ed./wtf ever they want to call it to include these old cards.
suck it up and take one for the team with all the lawsuits that they are afraid of dealing with.
pay off all the jerks that sue them, and roll in the money they make from reprinting sought-after cards for older formats.
seriously. if they don't shoot themselves with a extremely limited print run, a product like that would easily make back enough revenue to counterbalance the legal fees.
Magic is first and foremost a game of strategy and skill, but the fact of the matter is there are tons more affordable ways to play Magic, draft, pauper, standard for a season. There's a small format, which has rare and expensive cards to play in. Some can afford and some can't. Welcome to the real world. If WotC wanted to make Legacy more affordable, don't you think they'd have printed Force of Will or Wasteland or Tarmogoyf by now? The RL isn't preventing that. Why haven't they done that?
—Lim-Dûl, the Necromancer
Wouldn't a The Dark Squire be just as rare after 2007 as it was before 2005? (if not rarer due to the destruction of possible Squires from The Dark)
I have a foil Squire in my trade binder and everyone always asks about it xP
No, it gets rarer as time goes by. Things get lost, damaged and secured in collections. As time goes by, if a collectible is not reprinted, it gets rarer.
My point is not people's investments will suffer, it is that MtG is attracting many new players. They are printing more than ever and overall having fun good times. But when new players get tired of standard and limited, they will want something else. Obviously many will look at eternals, see the few hundred dollar price tag on basically every deck, and eventually get bored and leave. That is a very bad thing for the game.
Gen. George S Patton, Jr
The thing is, even reprinting doesn't change this. As a collector, as you have said, you are seeking rarities. Foil reprints of Beta cards does not AT ALL change the rarity of the Beta card you collected - it's an ENTIRELY different object. If all you care about is having the rare collectibles, then they could print a foil Black Lotus and hand them out at FNM and you shouldn't care one bit, because you still have a BETA lotus. If anything, reprinting the cards gives you MORE to collect, so there is no reason to complain from your standpoint.
That is, of course, unless you actually care about the content of the card and not the object, which is where a reprint will overlap with the original, and in that case, if you were to complain you may be considered as bad as a player hoarding cards to have an advantage.
I once again site the case of From the Vault Exiled Berserk vs. ABU Berserk - very little price change despite the reprinting, because the rare OBJECT that collectors care about is still exactly as rare as before.
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This. Also I would add that if the game as a whole dies (not likely soon) the value will decrease. A good chuck of that value is pushed by desirability. A healthy game is key to value. As someone who is just dipping his toes into legacy I am saddened by this.
Exactly my point? Squire was reprinted in 2006 as a Timeshifted card. A collector's complete set of Tempest will not become "less rare" if they reprinted cards from Tempest in a new set, in foil, in a collector's edition, etc.
I think I see what you're saying, but I don't think it works that way with Magic. Take the first issue of Spider-Man. An original copy is worth way more than a reprint, and there have been many, many, many reprints, because the collector cares about the particular original copy, and not the content of the story.
With Magic, I would imagine that most of the price in old cards is because people want to play with them, not because collector's drive up the price of the originals. The pure collectors who might want both an Alpha Black Lotus and a theoretical 2011 Black Lotus, and thus put a much greater value on the former over the later (because the former is much rarer), are probably not a significant force in the price of the Alpha Black Lotus. To most players, the two cards would be pretty fungible (though, obviously, the Alpha would retain a higher value because of its rarity) and the existence of the 2011 Black Lotus would probably drive down the price of the Alpha Black Lotus.
Huh. Or I could be totally wrong if that's the case.
You are more than likely right here, but I am not sure how estoppel can apply on a collectible. They make no promise of these cards value, they don't control the secondary market. The only real promise is that you will get X cards in a pack, etc, etc. I supposed the original reserve list and acknowledgement of the secondary market might have put them in a bad place (in D&D Minis WoTC never acknowledged the existence of a secondary market, I now see that this might be the reason why) but it still seems vague to me at best. I guess the pull away from this is that in general it is best that they do not acknowledge the secondary market or anything that they have no control over.
What happened with comics is the market became flooded. People saw their old, limited print run comics rise in value. So, people started buying comics as an investment. The prices would fluctuate greatly, with some people making money on them as investments. The problem came up about 10-15 years after this began. People realized that unlike the old comics that were high in value, there were almost limitless supplies of comics from when the boom began. The reaction of the comic book industry was printing limited covers, which would appear 1 in 20 comics. This made things even worse as retailers would over buy issues in attempts to get as many limited issues as they could. As you can imagine, a lot of comic went unsold and many store owners went belly up due to over purchasing occurring at the same time as people started bailing. Peoples collections became worthless as people left the industry and their collection prices fell under the realization that the supply was far greater then the demand.
Yep, but they could have suffered less damage if they didn't saturate the market with different commics and over ordering of retailers. When the comic book boon began, we had 2-3 monthlyee X-Men comics. Currently, Xmen is pretty much it's own imprint with around 10 monthly comics.
Beany babies are actually a cyclical trend, see Furbies and Cabbage Padge kids. The collectors grow out of their collections.
A collection of Tempest that do not include Squire became less rare. Squire him self became less rare. If squire had any sort of collectible value or had any sort of difficulty in obtaining, it would have been a far greater impact. If MTG promised to never reprint Squire, prior to reprinting him in Timeshifted, it would also be a different story.