I was looking at Ixalan boxes on ebay yesterday and today, and have found what is almost certainly a scam artist.
First it was seller smgroup1 selling Ixalan boxes for $79.90. He had 2 feedback, 0 previous Magic sales, and no other Magic products for sale, suddenly he has 15 boxes for sale (all sold).
Then it was seller thev_trends, selling for the same $79.90. 42 feedback, 0 previous Magic sales, no other Magic products for sale, suddenly he has 32 boxes for sale (all sold).
Now today it's seller top_sale17, selling 5 boxes, now for $80.90 (3 boxes sold, 2 unsold so far), ZERO feedback. No other Magic products for sale.
ALL THREE use the same distinctive auction listing format (fonts, colors, layout, same exact text word-for-word, etc), all three are supposedly located in St. Louis, and all three are also selling another identical item, an unusual identical monkey finger puppets. It's obviously one person with multiple accounts. Lots of people are about to be disappointed. I've reported top_sale17's listing to ebay but it's automated and there's no place to enter in the information I've gathered so I'm uncertain the listing will come down, because on it's own it's not particularly suspicious (other than a price that's notquite too good to be true, making it all the more likely more people will fall for it).
BTW, if anyone knows how to report a seller rather than report a listing, feel free to let me know.
FLASH SALE, today (Thurs Sept 21st), $15 off $75, use code PSAVE15NOW, ends at 9 Eastern/6 Pacific, so very little time to act. It is not hard to find several sellers of Ixalan at $88 a box, which would translate to $73 after the coupon.
"This can be explained by the loss of lottery-cards (Masterpieces). Their high prices soaked up a large portion of the "overall value" of whichever set they were in which resulted in a depression in value of everything else."
Uhh, yeah, that was exactly my point, didn't think further explanation was needed.
"Factoring in a 1 in 4 boxes chance of breaking even (banking on Masterpieces) is not a sound business model for the stores..or players for that matter."
Masterpieces helped move boxes for store owners, but savvy players know that cracking boxes is nearly always a losing endeavor, with or without Masterpieces. It led to a flood of cheap singles, which lowered the barriers for Standard. The only people it really hurt were people cracking boxes for the express purpose of selling singles. Stores and players were not hurt.
The replies were rather lengthy, so excuse me if this has been said, but one of the purposes of the Masterpiece series was not just to reprint older cards, but to keep the price of Standard down (there have been dozens of articles attesting to this on various websites/forums, and Maro addressed it as well). Hour of Devastation, Amonkhet, Aether Revolt, and Kaladesh have a combined 7 cards that cost more than $10 (and only 2 of those, Chandra and the Scarab God have broken $20). Now, preorders should be taken with some grain of salt, but already Ixalan has 6 cards pre-selling over $10. 6 cards in ONE set vs. 7 cards in FOUR sets.
LOL, yeah, that was the only one I wanted. I'll keep mine together as a set, though. If that means I spent $39 on a Grimlock so be it. The other cards will still hold a little value to collectors. My EDH group while competitive is pretty casual and would probably allow the Sword too.
FYI, shipping was $7 and change (to Florida) and there is tax as well, so expect to pay between $39 and $40 all in for the HasCon cards. I bought one, because Grimlock Naya/DFC looks fun.
Gift cards are already considered a pretty impersonal gift (not that I personally feel that way, but some consider it as not putting much though into the gift), so saying "get me an eBay gift card, which I'll use for Magic" isn't much more "personal" than "please get me a Visa gift card, which I can use at any of dozens of different stores, which I'll use for Magic". If you're already probably gonna get a gift card anyway, getting a Visa is the most flexible one. Problem solved.
There's nothing wrong with the dinosaurs and several look playable, but man have they been dull and uninspired design. They could literally have put these same texts and abilities on any creature.
Of my 24 decks it's in all but four of them, and of those four that don't run it, two are 5-color and the only lands that don't tap for color in those that I can afford to squeeze in are Wasteland and Strip Mine. The other two lacking them are Darien (mono-W) and Krenko (mono-R). But then again, nearly all of my decks have draw of some kind, frequently mass draw (at least 2 or 3 cards that do so), since card advantage (and mana acceleration) are two of the most fundamental paths to victory IMO. I hate discarding down unless I'm playing GY shenanigans.
The card draw and inclusion of Reliquary Tower in my decks don't even account for the card draw opponents may give you too, such as their Howling Mine or an Edric or Nekusar deck (all my games are 4-5 players so there's frequently an opponent giving you a draw in some form or another), so I'd rather be prepared and have it and not need it, at worst tapping for colorless, than need it and not have it. For me it's an auto-include in every 1-3 color deck, a "maybe" in 4-color decks but those are pretty few and far between, and a likely "pass" in Mono-W and Mono-R, colors notorious for lack of card draw.
I just did a quick Google search of Superfiends decks on TappedOut and found that of the first 10 decks I looked at, they averaged nearly 21 PW's per deck (20x, 22, 14, 20, 26, 20, 26, 17, 20, 18), so I undersold them and the value of Untaidake in such a deck. If 1 out of every 5 cards in your deck can benefit from a land, it's a worthy inclusion.
I would not. Both decks can be had for ~$60 (Yidris) and -$70 (Breya) SHIPPED. Assuming you buy for $42 (which I assume would be about $45 after tax?), you've spent $90. If you manage to get $130 for them, you'll lose about $16 to shipping ($8 x 2 unless you luck out and the same buyer takes both and you can combine shipping)and up to 13% in ebay fees which is another $17, which means for your trouble you'll make less than $10. And, I'm not even taking into account any hit you'll take on the beat up boxes, which will eliminate anyone that wants to buy these to keep them sealed or who themselves would be considering their own flip down the road.
If you can sell these locally and in person so as not to get hit with shipping costs and sales/auction fees, perhaps consider it, but you still have to find a buyer for a product that's 10 months old when new products in the same line have just been released.
Yomiji has no appeal to tournament formats and limited appeal in EDH. Foils have already spiked hard, but I wouldn't expect nonfoils to go anywhere.
Untaidake is all speculation and unlikely to maintain a high price point once everyone realizes how bad it is.
Untaidake is fantastic in the right deck with the rules change. Superfriends is both a popular and viable decktype in EDH (see Atraxa). No one is splashing this in their decks that have 2-3 PW's, but put it in a Superfriends decks with 15-17 PW's and it's nearly another Ancient Tomb. It's not speculation, it just has a narrow use in terms of the number/variety of decks that can benefit from it, but the one that can is very popular, and we all know EDH is a pimper's format.
From the revised article on Ixalan mechanics, re: using PW's as Commanders:
Starting with this set, all planeswalkers past, present, and future will have the supertype legendary. They will also be subject to the "legend rule." The "planeswalker uniqueness rule" is going away. What does this mean? In short, everything that's true about legendary permanents will now be true about legendary planeswalkers. Also note that this does not mean legendary planeswalkers can be your Commander unless an ability says so.
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First it was seller smgroup1 selling Ixalan boxes for $79.90. He had 2 feedback, 0 previous Magic sales, and no other Magic products for sale, suddenly he has 15 boxes for sale (all sold).
Then it was seller thev_trends, selling for the same $79.90. 42 feedback, 0 previous Magic sales, no other Magic products for sale, suddenly he has 32 boxes for sale (all sold).
Now today it's seller top_sale17, selling 5 boxes, now for $80.90 (3 boxes sold, 2 unsold so far), ZERO feedback. No other Magic products for sale.
ALL THREE use the same distinctive auction listing format (fonts, colors, layout, same exact text word-for-word, etc), all three are supposedly located in St. Louis, and all three are also selling another identical item, an unusual identical monkey finger puppets. It's obviously one person with multiple accounts. Lots of people are about to be disappointed. I've reported top_sale17's listing to ebay but it's automated and there's no place to enter in the information I've gathered so I'm uncertain the listing will come down, because on it's own it's not particularly suspicious (other than a price that's notquite too good to be true, making it all the more likely more people will fall for it).
BTW, if anyone knows how to report a seller rather than report a listing, feel free to let me know.
Uhh, yeah, that was exactly my point, didn't think further explanation was needed.
"Factoring in a 1 in 4 boxes chance of breaking even (banking on Masterpieces) is not a sound business model for the stores..or players for that matter."
Masterpieces helped move boxes for store owners, but savvy players know that cracking boxes is nearly always a losing endeavor, with or without Masterpieces. It led to a flood of cheap singles, which lowered the barriers for Standard. The only people it really hurt were people cracking boxes for the express purpose of selling singles. Stores and players were not hurt.
Gift cards are already considered a pretty impersonal gift (not that I personally feel that way, but some consider it as not putting much though into the gift), so saying "get me an eBay gift card, which I'll use for Magic" isn't much more "personal" than "please get me a Visa gift card, which I can use at any of dozens of different stores, which I'll use for Magic". If you're already probably gonna get a gift card anyway, getting a Visa is the most flexible one. Problem solved.
The card draw and inclusion of Reliquary Tower in my decks don't even account for the card draw opponents may give you too, such as their Howling Mine or an Edric or Nekusar deck (all my games are 4-5 players so there's frequently an opponent giving you a draw in some form or another), so I'd rather be prepared and have it and not need it, at worst tapping for colorless, than need it and not have it. For me it's an auto-include in every 1-3 color deck, a "maybe" in 4-color decks but those are pretty few and far between, and a likely "pass" in Mono-W and Mono-R, colors notorious for lack of card draw.
If you can sell these locally and in person so as not to get hit with shipping costs and sales/auction fees, perhaps consider it, but you still have to find a buyer for a product that's 10 months old when new products in the same line have just been released.
Untaidake is fantastic in the right deck with the rules change. Superfriends is both a popular and viable decktype in EDH (see Atraxa). No one is splashing this in their decks that have 2-3 PW's, but put it in a Superfriends decks with 15-17 PW's and it's nearly another Ancient Tomb. It's not speculation, it just has a narrow use in terms of the number/variety of decks that can benefit from it, but the one that can is very popular, and we all know EDH is a pimper's format.
Starting with this set, all planeswalkers past, present, and future will have the supertype legendary. They will also be subject to the "legend rule." The "planeswalker uniqueness rule" is going away. What does this mean? In short, everything that's true about legendary permanents will now be true about legendary planeswalkers. Also note that this does not mean legendary planeswalkers can be your Commander unless an ability says so.