You're exaggerating in favour of the negative. The only thing that's missing from this discussion is "THIS IS THE DEATH OF MAGIC YOU GUYS".
But since the current point of the argument is "how will people acquire the basic lands they so desperately need now?", let's consider a couple of factors:
The average magic player these days has too many basic lands. I have boxes of unused basics that may never be shuffled into a 60-card deck unless I give them away at some point. Future magic players may not have as many basic lands as I do, but they'll still have enough (assuming they don't have "too many"). New supplies of cards might be going up in price, but the surplus of basic lands currently available is huuuuge, by which I mean it's very big to the point of being HUUUUUUUUGE.
New players buy precons and everyone buys duel decks, which have "good mana" and shiny cards. Friends also don't deny their friends a couple of basic lands if they need them. (Unless they're full art, in which case they can pry them from my cold, dead hands)
The average magic player these days has too many basic lands. I have boxes of unused basics that may never be shuffled into a 60-card deck unless I give them away at some point. Future magic players may not have as many basic lands as I do, but they'll still have enough (assuming they don't have "too many"). New supplies of cards might be going up in price, but the surplus of basic lands currently available is huuuuge, by which I mean it's very big to the point of being HUUUUUUUUGE.
And yet, Wizards justified the inclusion of basic lands in the common slot of booster packs like so, as recently as Shards of Alara:
at my local during drafts we removed the lands and tokens and the store kept a land bin. the store took all the lands and we could get lands from the bin if we needed them. we returned them when we were done but ya this wont bother me.
Edit before someone replies, "But inflation!" - According to this website, Wizard's booster pack price increases have outpaced inflation, so that they charge $.50/pack more than they did circa Ice Age packs, adjusted for inflation. In case you're curious, that's $1.54/pack price increase since Ice Age, with no adjustment for inflation.
Further edit: That means that every time Wizards has found it necessary to adjust its prices, someone has said, "You know, we could just raise our prices to match inflation, but you know what? Let's really put the screws to our loyal customers and offer the same product for more money (or less value for the same money, if you prefer...) In reply to the post above me, this seems like a rolling douche move over several turns.
First of all you did the calculator wrong. What on earth did you put in for the pack price. I'm showing Wotc is $0.50 UNDER inflation for the period.
IA pack cost $2.99 (if it were more then this would really not hold water).
Current pack cost $3.99.
IA pack cost adjusted for inflation by your linked calculator $4.43.
I've been selling lands on eBay in packs of 100 for about $10 shipped. I don't know who who exactly is buying it, but I suspect it's either families, new players or T.O.s who can't get it anywhere else.
Lands are like a necessary scourge. Once you get about 200 of them it's unlikely that you really need any more, but just like any other common if you play enough you'll end up with surplus lands.
Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
First of all you did the calculator wrong. What on earth did you put in for the pack price. I'm showing Wotc is $0.50 UNDER inflation for the period.
I put in the information from the link included in my original post, which you apparently are unwilling or unable to read.
In September 1995, Wizards increased the cost of booster packs from $2.45 to $2.95. Ice Age was released in June 1995, which means it was selling for $2.45/booster for about three months before the priced bump. It is you who entered the wrong data in the website.
That really sucks, our LGS are trying to get more players so we can finaly have the "100 different players" so we can get basic lands. We draft and they take the basic lands from the pack and get donations from older players so we can draft, we always allow the players with mono color decks to proxy their lands with the type we have the most.
Wizards' looking at this situation and saying, "Hm... I see an alternate income stream." is analogous to a fast food establishment charging for napkins, straws, and packets of salt and pepper. While they're free to do so, it's asinine, casts them in a poor light, and encourages people not to do business with them.
Fast food restaurants now charge $.50 to not have ice in your soft drink because you're using more Coke/Pepsi/Whatever. The actual price of the drink is so cheap, you could probably purchase it for that $.50 and the restaurant would still be making money. That didn't stop them from charging for no ice, did it?
I think that this is the lesser of many evils that could possibly have been chosen. Wizards could have increased the price of their other product instead, to compensate for the land they were giving away. Instead, they chose to charge for something that most people will buy in limited amounts anyway, instead of just giving them out for free.
I'm ok with this.
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"Each year that passes rings you inwardly with memory and might. Wield your heart, and the world will tremble."
So, in the last few weeks, Independent TO's have lost :
FNM, Launch Parties, Prerelease, Gateway, and Basic Lands to assist in limited events.
Why not just kill off the WPN program, and go back to the old sanctioning system? They've basically just undid about 4 years of effort in the span of a few months.
In the span of about 2 years, they've choked the life out of small community Magic in the name of the dollar, and smiled the whole way because their bottom line looks better.
Most guys I know bring a pack of 100 lands (20 of each) to most limited events. Basic lands have been hard to come by for some time at the release events I go to so this is a non-issue for me.
i thought this was against tourney rules wheres the judge?!?!
No matter where i go I always have a pack of 18 basics of each type with me...
At the moment its 18 of each basic land of Veronique Meignaud from zendikar (Beautifull lands from pretty lady)...
So i never use basics from a store...
I believe the world would be a lot more fun to live in if everyone did this... (from other artists ofc, or the veronique lands from zendikar would be worth more then a black lotus each)
The 1-land-per-booster method should provide more than enough lands to keep magic players stocked. Not for a single prerelease no, but considering all the additional sealed deck and draft tournaments that go on at a store it shouldn't be a problem. The problem is that people throw away/take home the lands and don't bring them for the next tournament.
That being said, I don't think it's more unreasonable to charge 50 cents for basic lands than charging 50 cents for a pen. Both items can easily be brought by the player if he considered the extra 50 cent cost unfair, but many are lazy and don't really care if their prerelease is gonna cost $25 or $26.
From what I heard from the owner of the local shop the land packs cost would be fairly minimal. It was nice to get them for free for a while, but with the increasingly higher costs of postage these days, Im not surprised that wizards would rather streamline their shipping process and seperate the lands and basically pass on the shipping costs to those wanting the lands. If non-shop TOs need basic lands, then Im sure there are plenty of online stores willing to sell them for next to nothing (maybe 1 cent each land) and then a reasonable shipping charge. Just plan ahead and buy a LOT to tide you over for a while so you only have to pay one shipping charge and you shouldnt have that big an issue.
From what I heard from the owner of the local shop the land packs cost would be fairly minimal. It was nice to get them for free for a while, but with the increasingly higher costs of postage these days, Im not surprised that wizards would rather streamline their shipping process and seperate the lands and basically pass on the shipping costs to those wanting the lands. If non-shop TOs need basic lands, then Im sure there are plenty of online stores willing to sell them for next to nothing (maybe 1 cent each land) and then a reasonable shipping charge. Just plan ahead and buy a LOT to tide you over for a while so you only have to pay one shipping charge and you shouldnt have that big an issue.
This is key, we don't even know how much the boxes of land are going to cost.
If the cost is somewhere reasonably close to shipping, then can you blame WOTC for not wanting to bleed $8-15 every time they ship out an 800 count box of land?
If it's more like $25-30 then I can see some people crying "gouging" and finding alternate ways to provide lands that are in tournament-legal condition for a sealed event.
For example, bringing lands to a sealed tournament - you ought to bring lands that are from the same expansion block as the one you're opening. This is to ensure the backs of the lands are the same shade and amount of wear as the backs of your other cards. Some judges will allow players to make an exception, if the lands are in good condition and backs are visibly indistinguishable from current expansion's card backs.
But you can't simply walk in and use say, Mirage lands or Alpha lands. No matter what condition they are in. Because the print runs differed so much, and the backs of these cards are darker than the backs of newer expansions.
Tournament organizers have to provide the closest thing to this standard, for all players. That's why they are interested in getting bulk land from the latest expansion block.
although I would think that it's more accurate to start at the date of the first price change
If you take the 1995 price ($2.95) and extend it to now, you get $4.26 -- meaning the price of packs has stayed below the rate of inflation measured over the last fifteen years, and literally the entirety of the "gap" in booster cost compared to inflation is from that first price hike in 1995. $2.45 was too low of a price given the nature of the product and, yes, what they could get players to pay for it -- WotC set the price per pack at $3 pretty quickly after the game's release and it's risen only a dollar since then.
The only way you can even come up with your 50 cent figure is to take the $2.45 price but measure it from 1995 -- which is simply wrong. If you want to measure the price increase of a product over time, you have to measure a price from the date it was introduced, not the date that it was replaced by a higher price.
The observation that the price of booster packs is outpacing inflation is empirical
It's based on you picking inappropriate numbers to draw your conclusion from. You're providing actively inaccurate and misleading data (whether through ignorance or intentional disingenuity) to support your argument and you need to stop doing so.
From what I heard from the owner of the local shop the land packs cost would be fairly minimal. It was nice to get them for free for a while, but with the increasingly higher costs of postage these days, Im not surprised that wizards would rather streamline their shipping process and seperate the lands and basically pass on the shipping costs to those wanting the lands.
Right. There's a central difference, economically, between providing something for free and charging a nominal fee for it: everyone will take free things whether they need them or not, while only those who need things will generally take them if they cost even a tiny amount. Turning free lands into extremely-inexpensive lands will allow WotC to narrow their costs in this area by only sending lands to people who need them, and by pushing TOs who constantly need to restock on lands to think about why they don't have any lands (thereby possibly changing their own business practices to stop people walking off with them.)
It might be mildly annoying, but it's also a legitimate business change, and entirely reasonable. This is not in any way akin to the WPN sanctioning changes (for which it's entirely possible to offer up a convincing argument that they're a mistake or poorly conceived.)
I don't know why you would want to shuffle up your betas w/out sleeves anyway, although I know that currently esp in white decks the Revised lands are in vogue.
Anything printed after 97 or so will be rather hard to tell unless they are beat up or something.
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Out of the blackness and stench of the engulfing swamp emerged a shimmering figure. Only the splattered armor and ichor-stained sword hinted at the unfathomable evil the knight had just laid waste.
I've never seen a problem with allowing players with acceptable opaque sleeves to bring whatever lands they want.
Even then, you need to be capable of playing without sleeves (judge orders a player to desleeve, you break or tear so many sleeves during shuffling that you do not have enough replacements). Unlikely scenarios, but important to you if you drove >2 hours to play in an event.
Some print runs of even recent sets have reddish or greenish tinge to the inking on the backs. Under the typical artificial lighting of a tournament hall, it's not so apparent, but if your match is close to a skylight or window, or a different light source, it may become apparent. This is true of some foreign print runs e.g. BB Russian 9th basic lands. Sleeving them up hides this, but a player who wishes to could opt not to use sleeves and instead use his subtle hue perception to gain an advantage. It's the same as letting a player use beta lands or Mirage lands in sealed, but to a lesser degree (and harder to catch).
Of course, the TO is equally responsible for providing the tools to ensure the integrity of the event, just as the judges are. It's usually the TO's job to provide land, if land is needed for deck construction. He can dig around in the back room for loose basic lands and throw them all in a box and be done. Or he can go a step further and provide new lands from the current block, ensuring uniformity and helping players avoid preventable penalties. If I were a TO, I'd love to continue getting fresh lands for free. In my opinion it's worth a little extra money to provide this extra level of support.
The only way you can even come up with your 50 cent figure is to take the $2.45 price but measure it from 1995 -- which is simply wrong. If you want
...
It's based on you picking inappropriate numbers to draw your conclusion from. You're providing actively inaccurate and misleading data (whether through ignorance or intentional disingenuity) to support your argument and you need to stop doing so.
If one were to take the average of your starting point(WAY off base, for reasons given above- do you really think the conditions at the start of the game are comparable to the state of the game during Ice Age or now?) and my starting point (which I obviously prefer), and use 1994 as the starting point (instead of your choice of 1993 or my choice of 1995) one still comes to the conclusion that booster prices are outpacing inflation by $0.36.
In fact "the only way" to come up with a figure that shows anything else is to include data from Alpha, Beta, and Arabian Nights- like anyone was paying MSRP at that point anyway.
I would say that anyone who disagrees that the cost of booster packs is outpacing inflation can only do so via an emotional argument and disregarding the evidence.
Actually, no, the premise of a price increase is 'this is the point at which market forces and costs dictate that we make the price Y instead of X'. The same theory is also how you decide to initially price a product ('Our costs indicate that the price of the product needs to be Z to make the desired profit'). So $2.45 was the appropriate price when the game was introduced (or else they would have picked a different one). In 1995 the market forces and costs indicated the price should be $2.95, so they made that change. But 1993 is the correct starting point...
And a random aside..if players would simply RETURN the lands the store lends them when events are done this wouldn't be an issue..;-)
Actually, no, the premise of a price increase is 'this is the point at which market forces and costs dictate that we make the price Y instead of X'. The same theory is also how you decide to initially price a product ('Our costs indicate that the price of the product needs to be Z to make the desired profit'). So $2.45 was the appropriate price when the game was introduced (or else they would have picked a different one). In 1995 the market forces and costs indicated the price should be $2.95, so they made that change. But 1993 is the correct starting point...
If supply had met demand since 1993, yes, absolutely. However, you're overlooking that no one paid MSRP for the first year (at least) due to scarcity, making that data extremely misleading.
You either pretend that people were buying packs of Arabian Nights and Antiquities for $2.45 (most assuredly not the case), or you try to estimate the markup at the time, which skews the calculation for later years (Hey, the price for booster packs dropped from around $20/pack to $2.95! The $20 figure is ex anus, but you get the idea.) My solution was to begin calculating after supply met demand.
This was true up to Fallen Empires, but certain participants in this thread protested loudly when I began my calculations at the point supply actually met demand, so I compromised and included a year's worth of skewed data to show that only maximum cherry-picking of the data can allow one to escape the conclusion that booster pack prices are increasing faster than inflation.
Anyone complaining about the pricing of this is just insane. Go to your stores local drafts for a week or two and pull all the basic lands you need therefrom draft leftovers, THEN KEEP THEM. Don't use them for proxies, and you'll be just fine.
People complaining that this is a price gauging thing are honestly the reason it needs to happen. The majority are just used to having lands available to them, and are apparently beyond the concept of having a stack of 20-30 of each land to use for limited.
Anyone complaining about the pricing of this is just insane. Go to your stores local drafts for a week or two and pull all the basic lands you need there, THEN KEEP THEM. Don't use them for proxies, and you'll be just fine.
People doing this is the problem. Don't do that. Give your lands back.
People doing this is the problem. Don't do that. Give your lands back.
I'm referring to the ones from the packs, not from the lands given by your local store. I've thrown away countless tokens and lands from drafters leaving them after finishing the draft.
What difference does it make whether they have intrinsic worth? It costs real money to print Baneslayer Angels, Basic Forests, and the wrappers they come in. You also have to pay artists, designers, developers, managers, truck-drivers, and I'm sure many more people to get a booster from an idea to a printed piece of cardboard.
Edit before someone replies, "But inflation!" - According to this website, Wizard's booster pack price increases have outpaced inflation, so that they charge $.50/pack more than they did circa Ice Age packs, adjusted for inflation. In case you're curious, that's $1.54/pack price increase since Ice Age, with no adjustment for inflation.
Hmm, I followed your links:
Quote from dollartimes.com »
$3.69 in 2006 had the same buying power as $4.05 in 2010.Annual inflation over this period was 2.35%.
So, boosters are actually cheaper today than they were in 2006.
Quote from maestrogrande »
I would say that anyone who disagrees that the cost of booster packs is outpacing inflation can only do so via an emotional argument and disregarding the evidence.
I'd do better research before you come to those conclusions. According to your link if you thought $2.99 was a fair price for one booster back in 1998 then you're still paying the same amount today:
Quote from dollartimes.com »
$2.99 in 1998 had the same buying power as $4.00 in 2010.Annual inflation over this period was 2.46%.
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But since the current point of the argument is "how will people acquire the basic lands they so desperately need now?", let's consider a couple of factors:
The average magic player these days has too many basic lands. I have boxes of unused basics that may never be shuffled into a 60-card deck unless I give them away at some point. Future magic players may not have as many basic lands as I do, but they'll still have enough (assuming they don't have "too many"). New supplies of cards might be going up in price, but the surplus of basic lands currently available is huuuuge, by which I mean it's very big to the point of being HUUUUUUUUGE.
New players buy precons and everyone buys duel decks, which have "good mana" and shiny cards. Friends also don't deny their friends a couple of basic lands if they need them. (Unless they're full art, in which case they can pry them from my cold, dead hands)
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And yet, Wizards justified the inclusion of basic lands in the common slot of booster packs like so, as recently as Shards of Alara:
Take that with a pillar of salt, considering the source.
Replies:
"Mythic rarity doesn't make another 'Goyf priced card inevitable any more than printing more cards makes another 'Goyf inevitable." -UrzasSedatives
"Seriously, $80 cards? There's no conceivable way. If even one mythic card hit that price point, everyone and their mother would start buying boxes of Alara to "flip" him." -Charlequin
Being listened to would've beat saying I TOLD YOU SO 3 years later.
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First of all you did the calculator wrong. What on earth did you put in for the pack price. I'm showing Wotc is $0.50 UNDER inflation for the period.
IA pack cost $2.99 (if it were more then this would really not hold water).
Current pack cost $3.99.
IA pack cost adjusted for inflation by your linked calculator $4.43.
I've been selling lands on eBay in packs of 100 for about $10 shipped. I don't know who who exactly is buying it, but I suspect it's either families, new players or T.O.s who can't get it anywhere else.
Lands are like a necessary scourge. Once you get about 200 of them it's unlikely that you really need any more, but just like any other common if you play enough you'll end up with surplus lands.
I put in the information from the link included in my original post, which you apparently are unwilling or unable to read.
In September 1995, Wizards increased the cost of booster packs from $2.45 to $2.95. Ice Age was released in June 1995, which means it was selling for $2.45/booster for about three months before the priced bump. It is you who entered the wrong data in the website.
Replies:
"Mythic rarity doesn't make another 'Goyf priced card inevitable any more than printing more cards makes another 'Goyf inevitable." -UrzasSedatives
"Seriously, $80 cards? There's no conceivable way. If even one mythic card hit that price point, everyone and their mother would start buying boxes of Alara to "flip" him." -Charlequin
Being listened to would've beat saying I TOLD YOU SO 3 years later.
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Fast food restaurants now charge $.50 to not have ice in your soft drink because you're using more Coke/Pepsi/Whatever. The actual price of the drink is so cheap, you could probably purchase it for that $.50 and the restaurant would still be making money. That didn't stop them from charging for no ice, did it?
I think that this is the lesser of many evils that could possibly have been chosen. Wizards could have increased the price of their other product instead, to compensate for the land they were giving away. Instead, they chose to charge for something that most people will buy in limited amounts anyway, instead of just giving them out for free.
I'm ok with this.
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FNM, Launch Parties, Prerelease, Gateway, and Basic Lands to assist in limited events.
Why not just kill off the WPN program, and go back to the old sanctioning system? They've basically just undid about 4 years of effort in the span of a few months.
In the span of about 2 years, they've choked the life out of small community Magic in the name of the dollar, and smiled the whole way because their bottom line looks better.
I think I'm just about done with this.
i thought this was against tourney rules wheres the judge?!?!
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At the moment its 18 of each basic land of Veronique Meignaud from zendikar (Beautifull lands from pretty lady)...
So i never use basics from a store...
I believe the world would be a lot more fun to live in if everyone did this... (from other artists ofc, or the veronique lands from zendikar would be worth more then a black lotus each)
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That being said, I don't think it's more unreasonable to charge 50 cents for basic lands than charging 50 cents for a pen. Both items can easily be brought by the player if he considered the extra 50 cent cost unfair, but many are lazy and don't really care if their prerelease is gonna cost $25 or $26.
This is key, we don't even know how much the boxes of land are going to cost.
If the cost is somewhere reasonably close to shipping, then can you blame WOTC for not wanting to bleed $8-15 every time they ship out an 800 count box of land?
If it's more like $25-30 then I can see some people crying "gouging" and finding alternate ways to provide lands that are in tournament-legal condition for a sealed event.
For example, bringing lands to a sealed tournament - you ought to bring lands that are from the same expansion block as the one you're opening. This is to ensure the backs of the lands are the same shade and amount of wear as the backs of your other cards. Some judges will allow players to make an exception, if the lands are in good condition and backs are visibly indistinguishable from current expansion's card backs.
But you can't simply walk in and use say, Mirage lands or Alpha lands. No matter what condition they are in. Because the print runs differed so much, and the backs of these cards are darker than the backs of newer expansions.
Tournament organizers have to provide the closest thing to this standard, for all players. That's why they are interested in getting bulk land from the latest expansion block.
I just did. Boosters were $2.45 when Magic was released in August of 1993.
If you take the 1995 price ($2.95) and extend it to now, you get $4.26 -- meaning the price of packs has stayed below the rate of inflation measured over the last fifteen years, and literally the entirety of the "gap" in booster cost compared to inflation is from that first price hike in 1995. $2.45 was too low of a price given the nature of the product and, yes, what they could get players to pay for it -- WotC set the price per pack at $3 pretty quickly after the game's release and it's risen only a dollar since then.
The only way you can even come up with your 50 cent figure is to take the $2.45 price but measure it from 1995 -- which is simply wrong. If you want to measure the price increase of a product over time, you have to measure a price from the date it was introduced, not the date that it was replaced by a higher price.
It's based on you picking inappropriate numbers to draw your conclusion from. You're providing actively inaccurate and misleading data (whether through ignorance or intentional disingenuity) to support your argument and you need to stop doing so.
Right. There's a central difference, economically, between providing something for free and charging a nominal fee for it: everyone will take free things whether they need them or not, while only those who need things will generally take them if they cost even a tiny amount. Turning free lands into extremely-inexpensive lands will allow WotC to narrow their costs in this area by only sending lands to people who need them, and by pushing TOs who constantly need to restock on lands to think about why they don't have any lands (thereby possibly changing their own business practices to stop people walking off with them.)
It might be mildly annoying, but it's also a legitimate business change, and entirely reasonable. This is not in any way akin to the WPN sanctioning changes (for which it's entirely possible to offer up a convincing argument that they're a mistake or poorly conceived.)
I don't know why you would want to shuffle up your betas w/out sleeves anyway, although I know that currently esp in white decks the Revised lands are in vogue.
Anything printed after 97 or so will be rather hard to tell unless they are beat up or something.
Even then, you need to be capable of playing without sleeves (judge orders a player to desleeve, you break or tear so many sleeves during shuffling that you do not have enough replacements). Unlikely scenarios, but important to you if you drove >2 hours to play in an event.
Some print runs of even recent sets have reddish or greenish tinge to the inking on the backs. Under the typical artificial lighting of a tournament hall, it's not so apparent, but if your match is close to a skylight or window, or a different light source, it may become apparent. This is true of some foreign print runs e.g. BB Russian 9th basic lands. Sleeving them up hides this, but a player who wishes to could opt not to use sleeves and instead use his subtle hue perception to gain an advantage. It's the same as letting a player use beta lands or Mirage lands in sealed, but to a lesser degree (and harder to catch).
Of course, the TO is equally responsible for providing the tools to ensure the integrity of the event, just as the judges are. It's usually the TO's job to provide land, if land is needed for deck construction. He can dig around in the back room for loose basic lands and throw them all in a box and be done. Or he can go a step further and provide new lands from the current block, ensuring uniformity and helping players avoid preventable penalties. If I were a TO, I'd love to continue getting fresh lands for free. In my opinion it's worth a little extra money to provide this extra level of support.
If one were to take the average of your starting point(WAY off base, for reasons given above- do you really think the conditions at the start of the game are comparable to the state of the game during Ice Age or now?) and my starting point (which I obviously prefer), and use 1994 as the starting point (instead of your choice of 1993 or my choice of 1995) one still comes to the conclusion that booster prices are outpacing inflation by $0.36.
In fact "the only way" to come up with a figure that shows anything else is to include data from Alpha, Beta, and Arabian Nights- like anyone was paying MSRP at that point anyway.
I would say that anyone who disagrees that the cost of booster packs is outpacing inflation can only do so via an emotional argument and disregarding the evidence.
Replies:
"Mythic rarity doesn't make another 'Goyf priced card inevitable any more than printing more cards makes another 'Goyf inevitable." -UrzasSedatives
"Seriously, $80 cards? There's no conceivable way. If even one mythic card hit that price point, everyone and their mother would start buying boxes of Alara to "flip" him." -Charlequin
Being listened to would've beat saying I TOLD YOU SO 3 years later.
And a random aside..if players would simply RETURN the lands the store lends them when events are done this wouldn't be an issue..;-)
If supply had met demand since 1993, yes, absolutely. However, you're overlooking that no one paid MSRP for the first year (at least) due to scarcity, making that data extremely misleading.
You either pretend that people were buying packs of Arabian Nights and Antiquities for $2.45 (most assuredly not the case), or you try to estimate the markup at the time, which skews the calculation for later years (Hey, the price for booster packs dropped from around $20/pack to $2.95! The $20 figure is ex anus, but you get the idea.) My solution was to begin calculating after supply met demand.
This was true up to Fallen Empires, but certain participants in this thread protested loudly when I began my calculations at the point supply actually met demand, so I compromised and included a year's worth of skewed data to show that only maximum cherry-picking of the data can allow one to escape the conclusion that booster pack prices are increasing faster than inflation.
Replies:
"Mythic rarity doesn't make another 'Goyf priced card inevitable any more than printing more cards makes another 'Goyf inevitable." -UrzasSedatives
"Seriously, $80 cards? There's no conceivable way. If even one mythic card hit that price point, everyone and their mother would start buying boxes of Alara to "flip" him." -Charlequin
Being listened to would've beat saying I TOLD YOU SO 3 years later.
People complaining that this is a price gauging thing are honestly the reason it needs to happen. The majority are just used to having lands available to them, and are apparently beyond the concept of having a stack of 20-30 of each land to use for limited.
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Slaughter Cry
I'm referring to the ones from the packs, not from the lands given by your local store. I've thrown away countless tokens and lands from drafters leaving them after finishing the draft.
My twitter account: @Kengy5
My blog about cube:
Slaughter Cry
What difference does it make whether they have intrinsic worth? It costs real money to print Baneslayer Angels, Basic Forests, and the wrappers they come in. You also have to pay artists, designers, developers, managers, truck-drivers, and I'm sure many more people to get a booster from an idea to a printed piece of cardboard.
Hmm, I followed your links:
So, boosters are actually cheaper today than they were in 2006.
I'd do better research before you come to those conclusions. According to your link if you thought $2.99 was a fair price for one booster back in 1998 then you're still paying the same amount today: