There's not a lot of good excuses to reprint Force of Will, I'd say that right now or after EMA release seems to be a good time to start snagging copies inexpensively, they will rebound at least to some extent down the line. FoW has a reputation few cards enjoy and is one of the most recognizable cards in tournament level Magic, with its reputation extending to inclusion in EDH as well. I believe it will bounce back; maybe not all the way, but I expect it will rebound and enjoy a $75 pricetag down the line.
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There's not a lot of good excuses to reprint Force of Will, I'd say that right now or after EMA release seems to be a good time to start snagging copies inexpensively, they will rebound at least to some extent down the line. FoW has a reputation few cards enjoy and is one of the most recognizable cards in tournament level Magic, with its reputation extending to inclusion in EDH as well. I believe it will bounce back; maybe not all the way, but I expect it will rebound and enjoy a $75 pricetag down the line.
Unless FOW is part of WOTC'S medium-term strategy to add top-end value to Eternal products (like how Goyf is a massive incentivizer in Modern products). I'm not sure if that's the case, but I wouldn't rule it out.
I really feel like Force dropping to anything less than $60 is too much of a knee jerk reaction, at that point I'd be grabbing all I could because a bounceback would be inevitable, barring additional reprints of course. Not that Tarmogoyf has really cared THAT much, it's taken extensive reprinting just to get the price down to $144 for the latest printing. Couple that with Alliance's smaller print run, and the more prohibitive pricing of EMA packs, and I think it's going to be more resilient than goyf is to price changes.
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Does anyone out there want to tell me where the market pressure came from to boost the price of one of the most iconic cards printed - Chaos Orb?
It's the '93/'94 format. For that format, it got errata'd so that you pick a single target, instead of nuking everything it touches, meaning that there's no shenanigans with spreading out your entire play area.
It's restricted in '93/'94, which is why the price hasn't gone completely bonkers, but it's pretty much the best removal in the format according to friends of mine who play it.
I've been out of the loop since Return to Ravinca. Why did Lion's Eye Diamond spike? Somebody with a Legacy open with storm or something?
Eternal Masters was announced, and LED is on the reserved list. Same for Mox Diamond, City of Traitors, and various smaller spikes. Basically people picking up cards that could be more in demand if the cheaper parts of their respective decks get reprinted this summer.
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Yeah LED and other reserved list cards all collectively spiked when EMA was announced and they literally said they wouldn't reprint reserve list cards in it. LED being reserved got snatched up quickly since it's one of the best cards in the game and in terms of a new card getting printed that rivals its powerlevel the chances of that are virtually nonexistent I'd wager as any card that makes mana is put under a microscope in R&D.
Chaos orb is '94 indeed. Pretty damn powerful when it's just vindicate for 3 colorless/anything can run it.
Not sure if it's legacy but dark petition is at $5.74 TCG Mid as of this writing with the lower priced sellers having little quantity available. Not sure what it means since petition is such a recent card I don't see the price really going up especially if people become aware of the new price and bring them out of storage.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
Not sure if it's legacy but dark petition is at $5.74 TCG Mid as of this writing with the lower priced sellers having little quantity available. Not sure what it means since petition is such a recent card I don't see the price really going up especially if people become aware of the new price and bring them out of storage.
Not sure if it's legacy but dark petition is at $5.74 TCG Mid as of this writing with the lower priced sellers having little quantity available. Not sure what it means since petition is such a recent card I don't see the price really going up especially if people become aware of the new price and bring them out of storage.
And Finkel made T8 with the deck, going 8-1-1 in the Standard portion of the PT with it. Not sure if it will hold, as this seems like a great PT meta deck, but might not translate well to the more general meta. It is super sweet, though.
So why have duel lands tripled in price in 3 years? I thought the curve for these is normally a lot slower. FBB underground seas are on ebay for $900.
Revised, Unlimited and FBB duels have all risen and the price of Underground sea, Volcanic Island and Tropical island is eye watering now.
Can we expect in a years time for them to be around $1500? [FBB underground sea]. In which case, I'd pull real shares. 300% return in three years, I'll take that thanks.
The explosion in price has a lot to do with the player base. Magic experienced a major influx of players around the time of Zendikar. Some portion of them obviously wanted to explore EDH and Legacy, therefore needing dual lands. It should be noted that until Eternal Masters was released, they were sliding down in price. Seas could be had for as low as $220 in some places. That's all history now.
The duals are in kind of a weird place. At their current price, they just are too expensive for most of the player base to bite the bullet on. There are also enough of them in circulation that as they go up in price, people dump more on the market. It isn't like the the Power 9 where there is a very finite amount of them.
My thoughts on the dual lands is that they will continue to fluctuate and slowly increase in time. I'd guess that seas will be closer to $500 in 3 years - representing about 50% growth. This is pure substantiation on my part though and could easily be wrong.
I feel like dual prices are acutely tied to Legacy support. There's a whole lotta rumor (and I know this isn't a rumor thread) that legacy is going to shift to include the entirety of the reserve list in it's banned list in the near future - so shifting to a format like this could allow all playable cards in the format to be reprinted in future Eternal Masters supplements. I can't help but think that if that happens and duals become legal only in Vintage and EDH that the prices will tank.
While I'm not giving much credence to the rumor, I'm still not acquiring any more Duals until a little bit after Eternal Masters comes out.
I really can't see Wizards banning what makes Legacy Legacy. Also, banning all cards on the reserve list would pretty much kill or weaken most decks to where you might as well go play modern. These rumors are, IMO, nothing more than wishful thinking on behalf of some misguided individuals that probably have no idea what a huge mistake that would be. If you're playing Legacy with that kind of banlist, is it really Legacy?
To that end, I agree with sealteamfive, duals are in a really weird place right now, I believe they are at a peak for a while. EMA was supposed to revitalize interest in Legacy, but the vendors raising prices in response to its announcement has negated the impact EMA might have. For now. As the rate of sales for duals declines, and more people seek to offload theirs while the prices are this high, I think we'll see the price of duals slip back down. Unfortunately, this may only happen after EMA has been out for a little while, I think vendors are planning on holding out in the hopes that once EMA comes out, their expectations for people willing to pay $300+ will come true. I doubt it. Due to these prices, I'm afraid that EMA will really only result in a set that doesn't do much but add some fancy new arts and give Legacy players an opportunity to maybe fill in a few gaps in their decks and get some pretty foil alternate art staples here and there, and maybe help out some EDH players obtain some needed cards for their decks.
If it wasn't for the price hikes, EMA might have had a decent shot at revitalizing the format. Not that I think it needs revitalization mind you, Legacy's players are some of the most die-hard players in the game, and the issue with Legacy isn't really its # of players, it's the fact that they're kind of spread out. As Magic has expanded, we're seeing more and more communities with 3 or 4 people playing Legacy where there used to be 0. But 3 or 4 isn't enough to fire events so it gives the illusion that Legacy is suffering. In reality, I bet there's actually a pretty healthy number of Legacy players, except they're so spread out that it's difficult to build a community of 8+ people that are willing to invest in the format. The fact that Legacy has continued to attract players and that it's taken $250 dual lands to finally slow the growth speaks volumes about the desire to play the format.
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One thing I think could happen is that WotC decides to correct the one thing that never really made any sense when they created the RL: bring the Revised duals out of the list. They were added to the RL retroactively way back then despite being reprinted in Revised, and it's very obvious that it never belonged. I'm perfectly fine with other RL cards staying in the RL, but Duals do have a precedent and would be justified for them to get a reprint, and I'm pretty sure that whewn most people complain about the RL 90% of that is due to the Rev Duals being in it.
The creation of the reserve list happened in '96, after Revised. Dual lands have always been on it, specifically as a result of this clause: "All cards from Alpha / Beta that had not appeared in Fourth Edition or Ice Age." To my knowlege, there is no precedent for duals to receive a reprint more than any other card, though they are probably the biggest source of pain for players looking to play Legacy.
If WoTC removed duals from the list, you might as well not even have the list at all anymore if you can just remove things from it willy-nilly. Which brings us back to the original problem.
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The creation of the reserve list happened in '96, after Revised. Dual lands have always been on it, specifically as a result of this clause: "All cards from Alpha / Beta that had not appeared in Fourth Edition or Ice Age." To my knowlege, there is no precedent for duals to receive a reprint more than any other card, though they are probably the biggest source of pain for players looking to play Legacy.
If WoTC removed duals from the list, you might as well not even have the list at all anymore if you can just remove things from it willy-nilly. Which brings us back to the original problem.
I believe originally the reserved list was any card that was not reprinted outside of it's original expansion or Limited (A/B)/Unlimited.
I think that if it was reprinted in revised on it was supposed to be on the reserved list.
That said it's been changed so many times it's pretty hard to keep track.
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Currently Playing: Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me! Legacy: RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R RGBelcherRG WSoldier StompyW BReanimatorB EDH: BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
These are the guidelines for the first incarnation of the reserve list, duals have never been an exception or excluded from the reserve list in any way throughout the changes that have been made:
All cards from Alpha / Beta that had not appeared in Fourth Edition or Ice Age.
All uncommon and rare cards from Arabian Nights and Antiquities that had not been reprinted in white border at that time (i.e., that did not appear in Revised, Fourth Edition or Chronicles).
All rare cards from Legends and The Dark that had not yet been reprinted in white border.
To that end, back on track, I think LED's found a new settled price at $130ish. I always felt this was a more appropriate pricetag for it anyway, it had been at $80 for faaaar too long with pretty much no movement. It might slip a little further, but I feel like Lion's Eye Diamond, regardless of EMA, is a card that won't see any kind of significant loss in the foreseeable future, and certainly won't ever be $80 again I suspect without something unexpected happening.
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Banning the entire reserve list would be the very best thing for WotC to do period. It will cause an outrage, which will dwindle down and in a few years everybody will be used to it. It's like banning smoking from the work space. Outrage, but nowadays people would never want to go back.
There are millions of players who are completely untouched because they don't own reserve cards with any kind of significant value. The outrage will be by very vocal old school players and some shops with big investments. But it will die eventually. And MTG will be the better game for it.
Banning the reserved list makes no sense. Absolutely none. It's bad for everyone. Players/stores/collectors/investors with reserved list cards would no longer be able to use them, and they would lose more money that if they were just reasonably reprinted. Those without reserved list cards would be in the same situation as before. Everybody would be less willing to spend a lot of money in Magic after an event that depreciates cards so heavily. Abolishing the reserved list makes, comparatively, much more sense.
From everything I've read from people that work for WOTC, the idea of altering the Reserve list in any way - much less abolishing it - is so off-the-table that it's a non-starter.
Having an eternal format to please the old players and allow full repints of all legal cards in the format seems (to me, at least) like the best way to save Legacy.
Then, give Vintage some kind of non-ProTour spotlight as a way to publicly display these classic cards and carry on the legacy of the game without incurring the FOMO that competitive Legacy currently creates.
Even if this rumor were true, the cards would still be legal in Vintage, EDH and 93-94.
Speaking of 93-94, if you judge metrics based on sites like Dawnglare, it seems like the format drives the overwhelming majority of market movement right now. Obviously it doesn't take volume of sales into account, though.
Alright, because this is a subject I'm fond of addressing, I'll go ahead and share my thoughts on said reserve list and the impact its removal would have on the game. Not that it's a relevant conversation, because it's been pretty much cemented in stone that it's not going anywhere, but let's play pretend for a minute.
One of the issues facing the reserve list is that at this point, it's too late to get rid of without causing major damage. So many cards are worth so much money now that the fallout from this would extend well beyond players. Okay, I get it, the sweeping majority of players would be happy if WoTC got rid of it. The vast majority of players would also like to get to work on magical unicorns that breathe fire and poop rainbows, but that's probably not the greatest idea either, even if it was possible, when you get into the logistics of where you're going to keep said unicorn, feed it, and so on. There's a lot of things people want that would make them happy...at first...but they fail to consider the actual ramifications of it.
April 27th, 2016: The reserve list is announced as a relic and WoTC is doing away with it. Let's look at what happens here.
1. Inventory is going to get dumped as stores and collectors/players try to move their RL cards in fierce competition with each other before the cards are actually reprinted. The secondary market will pretty much implode itself as everyone tries to undercut everyone in an effort to try and recoup some of their value before the cards are worth a fraction of what was paid for them. Stores have a great deal of versatility in how aggressive they can cut their prices and still manage to break even, with a 50% cost reduction being the best maximum average. Then some store is going to come along and say "ya know, I'm okay with taking a 10% loss if I can unload all my duals ahead of schedule", and the rest of the stores will follow suite. This is the same approach people take months in advance when rotation approaches in standard. Much like rotation, we'll see no one wanting to pay high prices for cards they KNOW are going to drop, stores will be trying to sell them at an urgent pace before that happens, and no store will want to be buying them. I would expect by the end of day 1 for most RL cards to lose 50% of their current pricetags, and in the coming weeks, I can see duals in the $50 range.
Upon this announcement, you're going to see prices drop like a rock. We all know how fast they go up, but they cards getting reprinted are going to come down just as quickly. Especially when you consider that the prices for reserve list cards are high due to demand, not scarcity (dual lands) and super high when scarcity is a factor (The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Moat). Dual lands are not high because they are rare, they're high because demand exceeds supply. Just a few years ago, Underground Seas were sub $100, it seemed like they went from $50ish to $150ish almost overnight (they did actually, back when SCG bought up all those RL cards and drove the prices everywhere sky high) It's not that dual lands don't exist or are unavailable, pretty much every vendor on TCGplayer has some you can buy if you're willing to pay the price and they're plentiful at events like GPs. The price right now is even higher just because of anticipation of increased demand from EMA, not even actual demand. Anyway, removal of the reserve list can only mean one thing, and every knows it, it's been removed because there are plans to reprint these cards in some capacity, or there would be no point to stirring up a hornet's nest of consequences. At this point you're going to have two groups of people that are quite upset.
I) The first group are the players who have invested a lot of time and money to get these cards. "Old money" players are less likely to be upset because they've had the cards all their lives, when they were worth $10, $300, and now, back down to sub $50 levels, but "new money" players who spent a lot of time and money to get their decks together and built them with lots of hours on the clock at their jobs are going to feel VERY lied to. A lot of these players would not have put that much money into Magic if they didn't consider a safe investment because of what a hardline stance WoTC has taken on the RL. You don't put that much money into a card game without some assurance that your cards are going to maintain the vast majority of their value. No one is grumbling that their Forces took a price hit because those weren't RL cards, they're fair game and we all knew it. Same for Wasteland. The issue here is that these people are some of the most die hard Magic fans, the kind that are willing to convert that much blood, sweat and tears into the game to play it, and they felt safe doing so. Now they are going to feel VERY betrayed, and while they might be in the minority, they will be a very VOCAL minority and that's all that's needed to cause an array of problems.
II) The second group of upset people are going to be much more problematic. The stores. WotC's income isn't tied to singles, but stores are, and WotC IS tied to the stores in order to move their sealed product. Stores that have invested lots of $$$ into purchasing collections from retiring players are suddenly going to find themselves having VASTLY overpaid for those collections and a large chunk of their assets suddenly worth a fraction of what they were bought for. Stores that depend on the sales of singles and the wheeling and dealing of Magic will collapse. More fortunate stores that have other revenue streams might survive, but it's doubtful that they will want to carry Magic or invest in it the same way they did before. The reserve list made stores comfortable stocking large amounts of Magic product and dedicating a significant amount of space and support because Magic's market, for better or worse, is much more stable and predictable than other CCGs. Go to your local LGS and look at their selection of Magic vs. Pokemon vs YugiOh vs Force of Will. 9 times out of 10, Magic takes up as much room as all the others combined, and maybe more. Do you think those stores are going to want to invest in the game at that level again once they've sold off that inventory at a significant loss, IF they're able to sell it and recoup the loss at all? As a business, I think I'd rather have the space dedicated to a product from a company that is much more stable anhd consistent (miniatures or board games perhaps) as well as from a compnay that DIDN'T cost me thousands of dollars in a massive backstab. The WoTC/store relationship will be irreparably damaged, WoTC needs stores, but stores don't necessarily need WoTC. The ones that do, are not going to have a good time for a while. I haven't even gotten to the lawsuits that might be opened up by surviving stores, but that's a lot of conjecture. I'm just trying to look at tangible ramifications that are a given, particularly since I'm not a lawyer, but I would almost guarantee that there will be some.
2) Alright, so you have a bunch of happy players, a few super pissed off ones, and some mega pissed off stores, and probably a bunch of closed stores as well. LGS' are not known for being hugely successful business ventures and depend heavily on market stability, they don't have the capitol to survive major crashes, and there WILL be some stores that close as a result of the announcement alone I suspect. We haven't gotten to the actual printings yet, so let's fast forward a few months and get to that part. No point in shaking everything up like this if you're not going to actually reprint them is there?
First batch of cards hit the market and the expansion set "Reserved Kingdoms" is released. To what extent? Is the print run like RtR? Like MMA? Like Legends? Like Commander or FTV? Are the prices like a normal booster or are they EMA pricings? Here's the first problem. If you print the set too conservatively, and in a limited run, you haven't really accomplished much except screwing over a bunch of stores. If the renewed interest and revitalization of Legacy is the goal, and then you don't actually put out much product, you're not really serving to revitalize the interest. You can't ask very much for a booster anyway, why would I buy a booster of Reserved Kingdoms for $10 or $8 if the dual land I need is now $20 or $30. This is assuming that Reserved Kingdoms follows a print run/ price structure similar to MMA. Also, why would you nuke the reserve list, just to make a limited print run of a set? So let's make the print run similar to RTR and try and actually supply product for everyone that wants it and reasonable pricing to boot. Well crap, now you've just totally made dual lands worthless. You've probably also damaged standard and basically wiped modern out entirely, along with their associated markets. Why play Hallowed Fountain when you can play Tundra? Why play Standard when you can play Legacy or Vintage? Who wants to play JvP when you can play JtMS? Every format that isn't Legacy will feel like an underpowered waste of time. And if no one is playing standard, why try to develop it? Same for Modern, which is much closer to Legacy. Modern would just stop existing altogether. Why would I play modern Storm when I can play big boy storm with LED? Standard and Modern depend on the RL more than we like to think, having these formats is a GOOD thing for the game. It gets new cards pumped into it and occasionally, Legacy benefits from standard cards as well (Abrupt Decay, Delver, etc). No one benefits when the only cards getting printed are reprints or new sets have to be so broken because they're competing against frikking dual lands, LED, Reanimate, and Gaea's Cradle. Now you're playihng YuGioH, the Gathering.
So you can't print the cards in an MMA volume (or less) because it doesn't accomplish anything after you've spilled a lot of blood, and you can't print it in an RTR volume because....well...you'll ruin every format that isn't Legacy or Vintage and destroy any motive for printing any set that isn't broken to hell and back. But hey, everyone who wants dual lands can buy 'em now! I mean, a good percentage of them will have lost their LGS and place to play, but it's ok, they're having fun at the kitchen table. At the kitchen table where no one is buying any product. This transition won't happen overnight, but it will happen as Standard and Modern continue losing their appeal and support in favor of Legacy. Sure, there might be some people that enjoy a continually changing format that doesn't have power cards, but the people that like buying a new deck every year so they can keep pace with a neutered format will be much, much smaller, and any new "standard" sets will see significantly decreased sales, why buy underpowered product for a format no one plays? We would continue gravitating more and more to Magic becoming a singular format, it would only be a matter of time before sets containing power reprints would be released, and Legacy and Vintage would grow closer and closer together. In the meantime, WotC is looking at R&D and telling them to figure out how to make cards more exciting and powerful than Legacy has ever seen so they can sell SOME kind of product, and Hasbro is looking at WoTC going "gosh, you guys are sure losing us a lot of money......."
The Reserve List MUST exist, even if it kills Legacy. I don't personally think that's going to happen anytime soon. If Legacy gets to a point where it severely starts to suffer in attendance and people leaving it, you'll see card prices drop naturally as their demand decreases, which will renew interest in the format again and the market will continually naturally correcting itself. Let me elaborate on why I think there's a perception that Legacy is dying and why I think that's not an accurate interpretation of what's actually going on.
Magic at this time is now bigger than ever. We say that every year because it keeps growing. People are joining the game and older players are rediscovering it with newfound disposable income. The vast majority of players are of the same age group they've always been and I recall using my lunch money for booster packs like many of you do. But now in my 30's, with a decent job, I no longer balk at spending $50 on a single card like I did when I was 15. I have cards worth more than I made all summer mowing lawns. And there are plenty of people I see at GPs and such that have better collections than myself, but they're all the same age as me with very, very rare exceptions. While we're not the majority of players by any means, that doesn't mean there aren't still thousands of us. Probably tens of thousands. And we do have the cash to play the formats if that's what we choose to do with our money. Other players my age are discovering the game for the first time, and want to play the cool old cards they see me playing my weird Legacy format with where sometimes it doesn't even look like the same game due to the insanity that's happening, and these guys are maybe career professionals that don't have any kids and are fine with sinking a few thousand bucks into a hobby, especially when they're reassured that the reserve list protects their hobby. To a 15 year old (and when I use this age I really mean 15-22 year old demographic), a $4,000 Legacy deck sounds like a LOT of money. To a 32 year old professional, it sounds like a single semi-annual or quarterly bonus check. But there's a LOT more 15 year olds playing the game, and a lot of ramen eating college students.
Problem is, there's lots of 15-22 year olds everywhere there's Magic. But there's not a lot of 32 year old professionals that play Magic in the same area. Your smaller towns might have a handful that have to travel to play and only get to really play the decks against their friends casually or at the GPs they might attend. Small cities might get 8-16 players and can kick off an event once a month if everyone has the same free weekend. But in your larger cities where there are more than that, you see that Legacy doesn't have any problem thriving. Dual lands, again, are at their pricetags not due to scarcity, but due to demand, that demand is just less concentrated and as a result isn't as visible, but it's clearly there. Someone was buying duals at $230, and there's probably a few people that are buying at $350, but I think that pricetag isn't sustainable; demand for Legacy will not increase with EMA till these prices fall. If I'm wrong about that, then Legacy is healthier than I thought.
*Edit* Again, to stay on topic, I'd like to point out only a single MP copy of Tabernacle exists right now on TCG player at $900. There's that an Italian Legends one for $850, and that's all. Did someone with deep pockets buy them up?
Tabernacle is scarce enough that it doesn't take someone buying them out for the supply to dwindle. I picked mine up on TCGplayer last month and there were only half a dozen or so on there at the time. It's well within the realm of possibility that people looking at the reserved list spikes in the last couple months are pulling the trigger on Tabernacle, particularly if they had been considering it previously.
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This seems like a logical and likely explanation. Tabernacle has traditionally been in short supply, but obtainable. There's always been a dozen or so at least on TCGplayer in varying conditions. Now the only one you can get is MP for $900, and SCG is out of stock on them as well and asking $1k for a NM.
I wanted to close my "Legacy isn't dying" argument with one final addition:
There are now more people than ever playing Magic. This means there are now more people than ever priced out of Legacy, and as a result, now more people than ever talking about how bad the reserve list is. I don't think many people have thought through the fact that if Legacy really were as affordable as standard/modern because the RL got removed, why would anyone play either of those formats? Especially standard, where you have to keep buying in every year? As I stated before, if WoTC wants people to keep buying product, it will have to compete with Cradle and Duals and all kinds of insanity, and now you're just talking about playing a format controlled only by a banlist where any card or an even more insanely powerful version of it could be printed at any time. There is already a game like that, it's called YuGiOh, and last I checked it wasn't doing so hot with very many people outside the 13 year old demographic. The summary of it is that every player, whether they play Standard, Modern, or Legacy, needs the reserve list. Arguably, Legacy is the format being most harmed by it, but that's really only because so many kids that want to play it are priced out of it unless they're willing to mow a helluva lot of lawns. There's enough demand for Legacy that there are enough people willing to pay the price to play it, or else it wouldn't be that price. It sucks that a lot of people are priced out of it, I agree, I wish it was open to a larger range of people, but that's not the way it is. The way it is kinda sucks, but it HAS to be the way it is unless you want to go play YuGiOh.
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EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Okay I'm curious as all hell as to why phyrexian devourer and phelddagrif are spiking?? I mean I have a bunch of these and now they're both above $6 that isn't a huge spike but I have never seen these used anywhere unless its commander. any thoughts would be appreciated.
Okay I'm curious as all hell as to why phyrexian devourer and phelddagrif are spiking?? I mean I have a bunch of these and now they're both above $6 that isn't a huge spike but I have never seen these used anywhere unless its commander. any thoughts would be appreciated.
I believe they are both on the reserved list, it's just more random reserve list cards spiking.
A 40 dollar mythic rare would constitute a must have 4 of that goes in many decks.
Stats About Mythics
-Mythics are on average 40% rarer than pre-mythic rares
(old blocks about 200 rares, Mythic blocks 35+ mythics)
-They are printing more new cards a year not less
(about 665 now vs. 630 in most pre-mythic block)
-To drop the value of a rare by $1 a mythic must go up $2
-In a 3 year time span deck prices doubled. I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.
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EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Unless FOW is part of WOTC'S medium-term strategy to add top-end value to Eternal products (like how Goyf is a massive incentivizer in Modern products). I'm not sure if that's the case, but I wouldn't rule it out.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Old School format.
It's the '93/'94 format. For that format, it got errata'd so that you pick a single target, instead of nuking everything it touches, meaning that there's no shenanigans with spreading out your entire play area.
It's restricted in '93/'94, which is why the price hasn't gone completely bonkers, but it's pretty much the best removal in the format according to friends of mine who play it.
Chaos orb is '94 indeed. Pretty damn powerful when it's just vindicate for 3 colorless/anything can run it.
Not sure if it's legacy but dark petition is at $5.74 TCG Mid as of this writing with the lower priced sellers having little quantity available. Not sure what it means since petition is such a recent card I don't see the price really going up especially if people become aware of the new price and bring them out of storage.
Currently Playing:
Retired
Dark Petition increase is because of Pro Tour Shadows over Innistrad. Brian Kibler was running a deck with Dark Petition, Seasons Past, and Nissa's Renewal.
And Finkel made T8 with the deck, going 8-1-1 in the Standard portion of the PT with it. Not sure if it will hold, as this seems like a great PT meta deck, but might not translate well to the more general meta. It is super sweet, though.
The explosion in price has a lot to do with the player base. Magic experienced a major influx of players around the time of Zendikar. Some portion of them obviously wanted to explore EDH and Legacy, therefore needing dual lands. It should be noted that until Eternal Masters was released, they were sliding down in price. Seas could be had for as low as $220 in some places. That's all history now.
The duals are in kind of a weird place. At their current price, they just are too expensive for most of the player base to bite the bullet on. There are also enough of them in circulation that as they go up in price, people dump more on the market. It isn't like the the Power 9 where there is a very finite amount of them.
My thoughts on the dual lands is that they will continue to fluctuate and slowly increase in time. I'd guess that seas will be closer to $500 in 3 years - representing about 50% growth. This is pure substantiation on my part though and could easily be wrong.
While I'm not giving much credence to the rumor, I'm still not acquiring any more Duals until a little bit after Eternal Masters comes out.
To that end, I agree with sealteamfive, duals are in a really weird place right now, I believe they are at a peak for a while. EMA was supposed to revitalize interest in Legacy, but the vendors raising prices in response to its announcement has negated the impact EMA might have. For now. As the rate of sales for duals declines, and more people seek to offload theirs while the prices are this high, I think we'll see the price of duals slip back down. Unfortunately, this may only happen after EMA has been out for a little while, I think vendors are planning on holding out in the hopes that once EMA comes out, their expectations for people willing to pay $300+ will come true. I doubt it. Due to these prices, I'm afraid that EMA will really only result in a set that doesn't do much but add some fancy new arts and give Legacy players an opportunity to maybe fill in a few gaps in their decks and get some pretty foil alternate art staples here and there, and maybe help out some EDH players obtain some needed cards for their decks.
If it wasn't for the price hikes, EMA might have had a decent shot at revitalizing the format. Not that I think it needs revitalization mind you, Legacy's players are some of the most die-hard players in the game, and the issue with Legacy isn't really its # of players, it's the fact that they're kind of spread out. As Magic has expanded, we're seeing more and more communities with 3 or 4 people playing Legacy where there used to be 0. But 3 or 4 isn't enough to fire events so it gives the illusion that Legacy is suffering. In reality, I bet there's actually a pretty healthy number of Legacy players, except they're so spread out that it's difficult to build a community of 8+ people that are willing to invest in the format. The fact that Legacy has continued to attract players and that it's taken $250 dual lands to finally slow the growth speaks volumes about the desire to play the format.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
If WoTC removed duals from the list, you might as well not even have the list at all anymore if you can just remove things from it willy-nilly. Which brings us back to the original problem.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I believe originally the reserved list was any card that was not reprinted outside of it's original expansion or Limited (A/B)/Unlimited.
I think that if it was reprinted in revised on it was supposed to be on the reserved list.
That said it's been changed so many times it's pretty hard to keep track.
Currently Playing:
Standard:
Nothing, the format Bores me!
Legacy:
RBurn (Made on the Cheap!)R
RGBelcherRG
WSoldier StompyW
BReanimatorB
EDH:
BUGRWSliver OverlordWRGUB
BGeth, Lord of the VaultB
All cards from Alpha / Beta that had not appeared in Fourth Edition or Ice Age.
All uncommon and rare cards from Arabian Nights and Antiquities that had not been reprinted in white border at that time (i.e., that did not appear in Revised, Fourth Edition or Chronicles).
All rare cards from Legends and The Dark that had not yet been reprinted in white border.
To that end, back on track, I think LED's found a new settled price at $130ish. I always felt this was a more appropriate pricetag for it anyway, it had been at $80 for faaaar too long with pretty much no movement. It might slip a little further, but I feel like Lion's Eye Diamond, regardless of EMA, is a card that won't see any kind of significant loss in the foreseeable future, and certainly won't ever be $80 again I suspect without something unexpected happening.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
Banning the reserved list makes no sense. Absolutely none. It's bad for everyone. Players/stores/collectors/investors with reserved list cards would no longer be able to use them, and they would lose more money that if they were just reasonably reprinted. Those without reserved list cards would be in the same situation as before. Everybody would be less willing to spend a lot of money in Magic after an event that depreciates cards so heavily. Abolishing the reserved list makes, comparatively, much more sense.
Having an eternal format to please the old players and allow full repints of all legal cards in the format seems (to me, at least) like the best way to save Legacy.
Then, give Vintage some kind of non-ProTour spotlight as a way to publicly display these classic cards and carry on the legacy of the game without incurring the FOMO that competitive Legacy currently creates.
Even if this rumor were true, the cards would still be legal in Vintage, EDH and 93-94.
Speaking of 93-94, if you judge metrics based on sites like Dawnglare, it seems like the format drives the overwhelming majority of market movement right now. Obviously it doesn't take volume of sales into account, though.
One of the issues facing the reserve list is that at this point, it's too late to get rid of without causing major damage. So many cards are worth so much money now that the fallout from this would extend well beyond players. Okay, I get it, the sweeping majority of players would be happy if WoTC got rid of it. The vast majority of players would also like to get to work on magical unicorns that breathe fire and poop rainbows, but that's probably not the greatest idea either, even if it was possible, when you get into the logistics of where you're going to keep said unicorn, feed it, and so on. There's a lot of things people want that would make them happy...at first...but they fail to consider the actual ramifications of it.
April 27th, 2016: The reserve list is announced as a relic and WoTC is doing away with it. Let's look at what happens here.
1. Inventory is going to get dumped as stores and collectors/players try to move their RL cards in fierce competition with each other before the cards are actually reprinted. The secondary market will pretty much implode itself as everyone tries to undercut everyone in an effort to try and recoup some of their value before the cards are worth a fraction of what was paid for them. Stores have a great deal of versatility in how aggressive they can cut their prices and still manage to break even, with a 50% cost reduction being the best maximum average. Then some store is going to come along and say "ya know, I'm okay with taking a 10% loss if I can unload all my duals ahead of schedule", and the rest of the stores will follow suite. This is the same approach people take months in advance when rotation approaches in standard. Much like rotation, we'll see no one wanting to pay high prices for cards they KNOW are going to drop, stores will be trying to sell them at an urgent pace before that happens, and no store will want to be buying them. I would expect by the end of day 1 for most RL cards to lose 50% of their current pricetags, and in the coming weeks, I can see duals in the $50 range.
Upon this announcement, you're going to see prices drop like a rock. We all know how fast they go up, but they cards getting reprinted are going to come down just as quickly. Especially when you consider that the prices for reserve list cards are high due to demand, not scarcity (dual lands) and super high when scarcity is a factor (The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, Moat). Dual lands are not high because they are rare, they're high because demand exceeds supply. Just a few years ago, Underground Seas were sub $100, it seemed like they went from $50ish to $150ish almost overnight (they did actually, back when SCG bought up all those RL cards and drove the prices everywhere sky high) It's not that dual lands don't exist or are unavailable, pretty much every vendor on TCGplayer has some you can buy if you're willing to pay the price and they're plentiful at events like GPs. The price right now is even higher just because of anticipation of increased demand from EMA, not even actual demand. Anyway, removal of the reserve list can only mean one thing, and every knows it, it's been removed because there are plans to reprint these cards in some capacity, or there would be no point to stirring up a hornet's nest of consequences. At this point you're going to have two groups of people that are quite upset.
I) The first group are the players who have invested a lot of time and money to get these cards. "Old money" players are less likely to be upset because they've had the cards all their lives, when they were worth $10, $300, and now, back down to sub $50 levels, but "new money" players who spent a lot of time and money to get their decks together and built them with lots of hours on the clock at their jobs are going to feel VERY lied to. A lot of these players would not have put that much money into Magic if they didn't consider a safe investment because of what a hardline stance WoTC has taken on the RL. You don't put that much money into a card game without some assurance that your cards are going to maintain the vast majority of their value. No one is grumbling that their Forces took a price hit because those weren't RL cards, they're fair game and we all knew it. Same for Wasteland. The issue here is that these people are some of the most die hard Magic fans, the kind that are willing to convert that much blood, sweat and tears into the game to play it, and they felt safe doing so. Now they are going to feel VERY betrayed, and while they might be in the minority, they will be a very VOCAL minority and that's all that's needed to cause an array of problems.
II) The second group of upset people are going to be much more problematic. The stores. WotC's income isn't tied to singles, but stores are, and WotC IS tied to the stores in order to move their sealed product. Stores that have invested lots of $$$ into purchasing collections from retiring players are suddenly going to find themselves having VASTLY overpaid for those collections and a large chunk of their assets suddenly worth a fraction of what they were bought for. Stores that depend on the sales of singles and the wheeling and dealing of Magic will collapse. More fortunate stores that have other revenue streams might survive, but it's doubtful that they will want to carry Magic or invest in it the same way they did before. The reserve list made stores comfortable stocking large amounts of Magic product and dedicating a significant amount of space and support because Magic's market, for better or worse, is much more stable and predictable than other CCGs. Go to your local LGS and look at their selection of Magic vs. Pokemon vs YugiOh vs Force of Will. 9 times out of 10, Magic takes up as much room as all the others combined, and maybe more. Do you think those stores are going to want to invest in the game at that level again once they've sold off that inventory at a significant loss, IF they're able to sell it and recoup the loss at all? As a business, I think I'd rather have the space dedicated to a product from a company that is much more stable anhd consistent (miniatures or board games perhaps) as well as from a compnay that DIDN'T cost me thousands of dollars in a massive backstab. The WoTC/store relationship will be irreparably damaged, WoTC needs stores, but stores don't necessarily need WoTC. The ones that do, are not going to have a good time for a while. I haven't even gotten to the lawsuits that might be opened up by surviving stores, but that's a lot of conjecture. I'm just trying to look at tangible ramifications that are a given, particularly since I'm not a lawyer, but I would almost guarantee that there will be some.
2) Alright, so you have a bunch of happy players, a few super pissed off ones, and some mega pissed off stores, and probably a bunch of closed stores as well. LGS' are not known for being hugely successful business ventures and depend heavily on market stability, they don't have the capitol to survive major crashes, and there WILL be some stores that close as a result of the announcement alone I suspect. We haven't gotten to the actual printings yet, so let's fast forward a few months and get to that part. No point in shaking everything up like this if you're not going to actually reprint them is there?
First batch of cards hit the market and the expansion set "Reserved Kingdoms" is released. To what extent? Is the print run like RtR? Like MMA? Like Legends? Like Commander or FTV? Are the prices like a normal booster or are they EMA pricings? Here's the first problem. If you print the set too conservatively, and in a limited run, you haven't really accomplished much except screwing over a bunch of stores. If the renewed interest and revitalization of Legacy is the goal, and then you don't actually put out much product, you're not really serving to revitalize the interest. You can't ask very much for a booster anyway, why would I buy a booster of Reserved Kingdoms for $10 or $8 if the dual land I need is now $20 or $30. This is assuming that Reserved Kingdoms follows a print run/ price structure similar to MMA. Also, why would you nuke the reserve list, just to make a limited print run of a set? So let's make the print run similar to RTR and try and actually supply product for everyone that wants it and reasonable pricing to boot. Well crap, now you've just totally made dual lands worthless. You've probably also damaged standard and basically wiped modern out entirely, along with their associated markets. Why play Hallowed Fountain when you can play Tundra? Why play Standard when you can play Legacy or Vintage? Who wants to play JvP when you can play JtMS? Every format that isn't Legacy will feel like an underpowered waste of time. And if no one is playing standard, why try to develop it? Same for Modern, which is much closer to Legacy. Modern would just stop existing altogether. Why would I play modern Storm when I can play big boy storm with LED? Standard and Modern depend on the RL more than we like to think, having these formats is a GOOD thing for the game. It gets new cards pumped into it and occasionally, Legacy benefits from standard cards as well (Abrupt Decay, Delver, etc). No one benefits when the only cards getting printed are reprints or new sets have to be so broken because they're competing against frikking dual lands, LED, Reanimate, and Gaea's Cradle. Now you're playihng YuGioH, the Gathering.
So you can't print the cards in an MMA volume (or less) because it doesn't accomplish anything after you've spilled a lot of blood, and you can't print it in an RTR volume because....well...you'll ruin every format that isn't Legacy or Vintage and destroy any motive for printing any set that isn't broken to hell and back. But hey, everyone who wants dual lands can buy 'em now! I mean, a good percentage of them will have lost their LGS and place to play, but it's ok, they're having fun at the kitchen table. At the kitchen table where no one is buying any product. This transition won't happen overnight, but it will happen as Standard and Modern continue losing their appeal and support in favor of Legacy. Sure, there might be some people that enjoy a continually changing format that doesn't have power cards, but the people that like buying a new deck every year so they can keep pace with a neutered format will be much, much smaller, and any new "standard" sets will see significantly decreased sales, why buy underpowered product for a format no one plays? We would continue gravitating more and more to Magic becoming a singular format, it would only be a matter of time before sets containing power reprints would be released, and Legacy and Vintage would grow closer and closer together. In the meantime, WotC is looking at R&D and telling them to figure out how to make cards more exciting and powerful than Legacy has ever seen so they can sell SOME kind of product, and Hasbro is looking at WoTC going "gosh, you guys are sure losing us a lot of money......."
The Reserve List MUST exist, even if it kills Legacy. I don't personally think that's going to happen anytime soon. If Legacy gets to a point where it severely starts to suffer in attendance and people leaving it, you'll see card prices drop naturally as their demand decreases, which will renew interest in the format again and the market will continually naturally correcting itself. Let me elaborate on why I think there's a perception that Legacy is dying and why I think that's not an accurate interpretation of what's actually going on.
Magic at this time is now bigger than ever. We say that every year because it keeps growing. People are joining the game and older players are rediscovering it with newfound disposable income. The vast majority of players are of the same age group they've always been and I recall using my lunch money for booster packs like many of you do. But now in my 30's, with a decent job, I no longer balk at spending $50 on a single card like I did when I was 15. I have cards worth more than I made all summer mowing lawns. And there are plenty of people I see at GPs and such that have better collections than myself, but they're all the same age as me with very, very rare exceptions. While we're not the majority of players by any means, that doesn't mean there aren't still thousands of us. Probably tens of thousands. And we do have the cash to play the formats if that's what we choose to do with our money. Other players my age are discovering the game for the first time, and want to play the cool old cards they see me playing my weird Legacy format with where sometimes it doesn't even look like the same game due to the insanity that's happening, and these guys are maybe career professionals that don't have any kids and are fine with sinking a few thousand bucks into a hobby, especially when they're reassured that the reserve list protects their hobby. To a 15 year old (and when I use this age I really mean 15-22 year old demographic), a $4,000 Legacy deck sounds like a LOT of money. To a 32 year old professional, it sounds like a single semi-annual or quarterly bonus check. But there's a LOT more 15 year olds playing the game, and a lot of ramen eating college students.
Problem is, there's lots of 15-22 year olds everywhere there's Magic. But there's not a lot of 32 year old professionals that play Magic in the same area. Your smaller towns might have a handful that have to travel to play and only get to really play the decks against their friends casually or at the GPs they might attend. Small cities might get 8-16 players and can kick off an event once a month if everyone has the same free weekend. But in your larger cities where there are more than that, you see that Legacy doesn't have any problem thriving. Dual lands, again, are at their pricetags not due to scarcity, but due to demand, that demand is just less concentrated and as a result isn't as visible, but it's clearly there. Someone was buying duals at $230, and there's probably a few people that are buying at $350, but I think that pricetag isn't sustainable; demand for Legacy will not increase with EMA till these prices fall. If I'm wrong about that, then Legacy is healthier than I thought.
*Edit* Again, to stay on topic, I'd like to point out only a single MP copy of Tabernacle exists right now on TCG player at $900. There's that an Italian Legends one for $850, and that's all. Did someone with deep pockets buy them up?
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
I wanted to close my "Legacy isn't dying" argument with one final addition:
There are now more people than ever playing Magic. This means there are now more people than ever priced out of Legacy, and as a result, now more people than ever talking about how bad the reserve list is. I don't think many people have thought through the fact that if Legacy really were as affordable as standard/modern because the RL got removed, why would anyone play either of those formats? Especially standard, where you have to keep buying in every year? As I stated before, if WoTC wants people to keep buying product, it will have to compete with Cradle and Duals and all kinds of insanity, and now you're just talking about playing a format controlled only by a banlist where any card or an even more insanely powerful version of it could be printed at any time. There is already a game like that, it's called YuGiOh, and last I checked it wasn't doing so hot with very many people outside the 13 year old demographic. The summary of it is that every player, whether they play Standard, Modern, or Legacy, needs the reserve list. Arguably, Legacy is the format being most harmed by it, but that's really only because so many kids that want to play it are priced out of it unless they're willing to mow a helluva lot of lawns. There's enough demand for Legacy that there are enough people willing to pay the price to play it, or else it wouldn't be that price. It sucks that a lot of people are priced out of it, I agree, I wish it was open to a larger range of people, but that's not the way it is. The way it is kinda sucks, but it HAS to be the way it is unless you want to go play YuGiOh.
EDH: Grand Arbiter $tax, Freyalise Stompy, Mimeoplasm Death From the Grave
~Duxx
The funniest thing about this particular signature is that by the time you realize it doesn't say anything it's too late to stop reading it....
I believe they are both on the reserved list, it's just more random reserve list cards spiking.
Stats About Mythics
-Mythics are on average 40% rarer than pre-mythic rares
(old blocks about 200 rares, Mythic blocks 35+ mythics)
-They are printing more new cards a year not less
(about 665 now vs. 630 in most pre-mythic block)
-To drop the value of a rare by $1 a mythic must go up $2
-In a 3 year time span deck prices doubled.
I am petitioning for the removal of mythic rarity. Sig this to join the cause.