A video essay that we all pretty much knew (or dreaded), and that is the state of the game as we see it now is the way it will be moving forward. So if you're emotionally vested in the game from the days of yore, then it's a good time to reconsider your connection to the "game" and where you see yourself in it. The days of old are gone.
What are your thoughts/feelings about the current state of affairs with the game? I'm not sure how to feel about it to be honest.
I can only imagine how some of you feel.
'buster
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'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset. Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
Rudy may be burning out. Its easy to be chipper and gung ho when the money is rolling in. When it starts to dry up you get more sour, bitter and jaded.
With that said MTG is changing. It needs to go back to a similar formula that got it there. I predicted this mess years ago that it would go down the same route as Baseball Cards in the mid to late 90's. I saw it then, same thing is happening now. Young players don't have the past experience to let them see that history repeats itself. It is repeating itself. Baseball and Sports cards took a good 20 years to make a comeback from the mess they put themselves in. It may take that long for Magic unless WotC wises up.
With that said.... There is opportunity for shrewd buyers. Buy what you want to play with LOW. Pass up the garbo. Those that plan for the long game will make it and will enjoy it more. Others will burn bright and burn out fast.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Guess I never really had anything good to contribute to this conversation. This really seems to be more of a sales and distribution issue with the way Paper Magic is being marketed now rather than faults within card design and card quality. All I know with what you guys are talking about is that aside from Secret Lair drops, Amazon is apparently the future of Paper Magic going forward as Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro continues to neglect the importance of the Local Game Store (LGS). It's really the social aspect that puts the "Gathering" in Magic: The Gathering because otherwise what would be the point of purchasing the cards anyway? I'm not a huge fan of Rudy's business model where he doesn't provide In-Store play and manages everything by himself so take it for what you will. I don't agree with the business model, I think it takes away from players having a chance to actually play Paper Magic In-Person but that's just me personally.
So you're telling me that in order for Single prices not to skyrocket that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro needs to keep printing more Secret Lairs for adding more reprints into the market as well as encouraging business owners who operate under Rudy's model to bankrupt 3,000 Local Game Stores (LGSs) nationwide? How does that make any sense? Am I missing something here? My problem with Secret Lairs are Local Game Stores (LGSs) not being allowed to have any in stock especially from local distributors who are willing to buy them off of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro. What are your guys' opinions on serialized cards for Paper Magic and potentially other Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games across the board in the near future? Rudy was going on about serialized cards being a big deal which made me a bit curious on the subject matter.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
…I am sorry if this sounds ignorant but can someone give me the short version about how the recent changes are bad for non-investing consumers?
It sounds like buying standard-legal sets in vast bulk (outside of collector boosters) is no longer worthwhile… in part because Amazon is offering comparable prices in the short-term… which sounds good.
It sounds like investors are now focusing on secret lairs, meaning that they are focusing their efforts on Products that are print to demand rather than gouging products like Commander’s Arsenal… which sounds good.
It sounds like the lack of value in standard legal sets comes in part from the fact that valuable cards are more likely than ever to be reprinted within the following 5-10 years… which sounds good.
Did I miss the apocalyptic part at some point? Does the lack of investors cashing in investments 5-10 years later and providing delayed influxes of singles mean that prices are likely to skyrocket (in spite of frequent reprints)? Is it expected that a lack of people like Rudy buying 1,000+ boxes will increase single prices?
It sounds like buying standard-legal sets in vast bulk (outside of collector boosters) is no longer worthwhile… in part because Amazon is offering comparable prices in the short-term… which sounds good.
If boxes aren't opened en masse, that leaves less supply for singles driving prices for singles up. Lower supply, higher demand, higher prices for players.
It sounds like investors are now focusing on secret lairs, meaning that they are focusing their efforts on Products that are print to demand rather than gouging products like Commander’s Arsenal… which sounds good.
Investors have the money. WotC will produce more and more of these products and less of the product for players. Lower supply equals higher demand equals higher prices for players.
It sounds like the lack of value in standard legal sets comes in part from the fact that valuable cards are more likely than ever to be reprinted within the following 5-10 years… which sounds good.
Keep the value cards out of Standard (strongly playable and strongly valuable) and the sets again don't sell. No big openings to drive single prices down.
Is it expected that a lack of people like Rudy buying 1,000+ boxes will increase single prices?
Yes it will, most definitely.
This may be overly simplistic, but I am not far from the mark. Without a healthy collectability aspect, the game will shrink and die off quickly or become a mere shadow of what it currently is. I may not like all the aspects of a capitalistic business model but without it the game will crumble.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
It sounds like buying standard-legal sets in vast bulk (outside of collector boosters) is no longer worthwhile… in part because Amazon is offering comparable prices in the short-term… which sounds good.
If boxes aren't opened en masse, that leaves less supply for singles driving prices for singles up. Lower supply, higher demand, higher prices for players.
Its possible I'm missing something but people not hoarding isn't going to affect the number of boxes opened but rather the number of boxes printed. Which will only have an effect years later, or not at all. Again, I may be way off. If I am please explain exactly what is feared to be going on in plain english.
It sounds like investors are now focusing on secret lairs, meaning that they are focusing their efforts on Products that are print to demand rather than gouging products like Commander’s Arsenal… which sounds good.
Investors have the money. WotC will produce more and more of these products and less of the product for players. Lower supply equals higher demand equals higher prices for players.
What do you think these words here mean because they don't make any logical sense. Wizards will keep printing cards that are bought. They aren't going to rework their printers to only make products that investors want at the expense of players that just isn't realistically possible.
It sounds like the lack of value in standard legal sets comes in part from the fact that valuable cards are more likely than ever to be reprinted within the following 5-10 years… which sounds good.
Keep the value cards out of Standard (strongly playable and strongly valuable) and the sets again don't sell. No big openings to drive single prices down.
Standard has a pseudo hard cap on how expensive it can get. Also, if sets don't sell well you can expect an immediate(12-18months) shift in policy. They won't allow their largest sales driver to underperform.
Is it expected that a lack of people like Rudy buying 1,000+ boxes will increase single prices?
Yes it will, most definitely.
This may be overly simplistic, but I am not far from the mark. Without a healthy collectability aspect, the game will shrink and die off quickly or become a mere shadow of what it currently is. I may not like all the aspects of a capitalistic business model but without it the game will crumble.
This is a repeat of the first section. While a healthy collectible aspect is a key to magic's longevity is there any proof or even hint that driving away speculators or hoarders will negatively impact this longevity? I haven't seen any. If you know of a source that would be great to see.
user_938036 does a good job of explaining my skepticism.
1. When you talk about Speculators buying hundreds of boxes in the way Rudy was in this episode, it is normally discussed in the context of people buying onto boxes to hold onto them for several years before reselling them for a profit. As those hundreds of boxes sold to these people are adding ZERO new singles into circulation while the set is new, it would stand to reason that the direct and immediate impact of those unopened boxes not existing on singles prices is (at least initially) relatively small, if not non-existent.
2. I do want to differentiate these people from short-term box flippers, however, who buy pallets of cases in bulk and who try to make their money back through single sales rather than letting products mature. These are the people who tear open collector box after collector box and who floods the market with foils, showcase frames, borderless rares, and more to keep costs down. In my eyes, These are the investors who keep standard affordable. If you look at the video, though, Rudy wasn't talking too much about these people (almost everything was about long-term investment, not flipping) and collector boxes were specifically identified as a possible exception to boxes not holding value any more so I'm not really worried about these guys going away.
3. A separate concern I've heard that may have some credence is that people buying tons and tons of boxes to invest in them may contribute to WotC's bottom line and contribute meaningfully to the good quarters that they and papa Hasbro have been reporting. If MTG is making less money, it may receive less resources, have fewer releases, and shrink accordingly. Rudy identifies in his video however that a good investment for MTG still exists, however, and that it just happens to be secret lairs now... so I'm not too concerned about this, either.
My personal conclusions: Long-term investors are better suited by buying secret lairs than standard boxes at this time but I honestly kind of doubt that will harm either singles prices or Wizards profits at this time. It is ultimately the behavior of short-term collector box crackers that determines the affordability of standard (as far as investor influence goes). Rudy's statements about investing in secret lairs did not seem specifically aimed at this group, however, so I'm not sure where all of the doom and gloom comes in.
I'm not a financial guru or a business major, though. I'm sure that there is a lot I am missing or misconstruing. Can someone clarify?
Their existence means you can buy singles easier and cheaper, but they require a large market to sell the product for a profit to.
The large amounts of product sold that way benefits everyone in the game, from WotC down to the player.
The entire point of selling booster packs is to fuel a market that consumes them.
Speculation into buying product to keep it is a long term option. Almost all boxes increase in value if they go out of print and if they have the potential for big hits, their "unknown" value average is better than opening them.
If nobody would keep boxes around product would vanish after its out of print. As long as there are people interested in sealed product, thats a thing that neither hurts or benefits a player, that is just interested in a bunch of singles anyway.
Some people even never open any boxes, as they quite literally collect the sealed boxes (like video game collectors, comic books and all of that, you want them "sealed" and not use them, as the real value is in keeping them as pristine as possible).
Old school cards are limited and basically art-pieces. From a time where keeping them in folders and secure was not very common, very pristine cards even up to Urza Block are quite rare (the foils are especially difficult to store in good condition).
The entire market strives of nostalgia of a few selected cards, the vast majority of cards is not worth anything, even old.
Entire sets of cards are better collectables, special things that have some kind of noteworthy history, like Summer Magic are great things for collectors to go for, as lots of players have no idea what that is in the first place (so the market of collectors vs players is very distinct, little crossover with specific playable cards, but thats just a extremely tiny part of collectables in the game).
Secret Lairs and the like are a two-edged sword.
On one side they are indeed collectable due to the nature of going out of print right away, but on the other side, they are also the kind of product WotC is "flooding" into the market, and little of them carry nostalgia value.
The people that actually collect Secret Lairs are overall few, its mainly for playable cards, and people that play the cards in some Commander deck.
If a product line is discontinued its the best for a collector, as you can actually get a "full" set and complete the collection.
As WotC is still printing more and more Secret Lairs, its simply "too much" for a collector with basically no real value of nostalgia, its just "like them ? fine", but any product you can just outright order and buy without randomness or chasing them, is a bad collectable item, if anything its the Fear of missing out that drives the Secret Lair market, which is a terrible approach long term and very anti-consumer (as it prays on weak people that fall for these manipulations).
But if there is a demand for "sealed" Secret Lair, plenty of people will have them. Singles market of Secret Lair is already extremely flooded simply because players actually put them in decks, so the value of a Secret Lair is very much in how playable the cards are (which is also true for sealed product in general if rarity is not the critical factor).
To put Secret Lair as something nice in a storage to look at, the black boxes are pretty bad for that (compared to sealed boxes with art on them).
The "box topper" cards in premium product started as a very collectable item, as it was rare and difficult to get a complete set of all box toppers.
Now its actually very easy to get a full set of a collectors set, so the aspect to actually collect them is pretty low, especially long term as people have a much lower "bond" to sets now cause of the flooding of product (i couldnt tell you of my head what the last 2 years of sets are, or how much Secret Lairs they made, or premium cards they give out ... 15+ years ago that was very different, as premium cards where overall more well known and fewer to make them more chase able and collectable).
Judge promos for example where a pretty big market.
Now with the "owl" variations, the judge promo demand is extremely low, as there are too many.
Lots of what WotC is doing now is artificially pumping up the quantity of product, but it takes away the actual collectability of the product as its just too much disconnected product.
Their existence means you can buy singles easier and cheaper, but they require a large market to sell the product for a profit to.
The large amounts of product sold that way benefits everyone in the game, from WotC down to the player.
The entire point of selling booster packs is to fuel a market that consumes them.
Speculation into buying product to keep it is a long term option. Almost all boxes increase in value if they go out of print and if they have the potential for big hits, their "unknown" value average is better than opening them.
If nobody would keep boxes around product would vanish after its out of print. As long as there are people interested in sealed product, thats a thing that neither hurts or benefits a player, that is just interested in a bunch of singles anyway.
Some people even never open any boxes, as they quite literally collect the sealed boxes (like video game collectors, comic books and all of that, you want them "sealed" and not use them, as the real value is in keeping them as pristine as possible).
Old school cards are limited and basically art-pieces. From a time where keeping them in folders and secure was not very common, very pristine cards even up to Urza Block are quite rare (the foils are especially difficult to store in good condition).
The entire market strives of nostalgia of a few selected cards, the vast majority of cards is not worth anything, even old.
Entire sets of cards are better collectables, special things that have some kind of noteworthy history, like Summer Magic are great things for collectors to go for, as lots of players have no idea what that is in the first place (so the market of collectors vs players is very distinct, little crossover with specific playable cards, but thats just a extremely tiny part of collectables in the game).
Secret Lairs and the like are a two-edged sword.
On one side they are indeed collectable due to the nature of going out of print right away, but on the other side, they are also the kind of product WotC is "flooding" into the market, and little of them carry nostalgia value.
The people that actually collect Secret Lairs are overall few, its mainly for playable cards, and people that play the cards in some Commander deck.
If a product line is discontinued its the best for a collector, as you can actually get a "full" set and complete the collection.
As WotC is still printing more and more Secret Lairs, its simply "too much" for a collector with basically no real value of nostalgia, its just "like them ? fine", but any product you can just outright order and buy without randomness or chasing them, is a bad collectable item, if anything its the Fear of missing out that drives the Secret Lair market, which is a terrible approach long term and very anti-consumer (as it prays on weak people that fall for these manipulations).
But if there is a demand for "sealed" Secret Lair, plenty of people will have them. Singles market of Secret Lair is already extremely flooded simply because players actually put them in decks, so the value of a Secret Lair is very much in how playable the cards are (which is also true for sealed product in general if rarity is not the critical factor).
To put Secret Lair as something nice in a storage to look at, the black boxes are pretty bad for that (compared to sealed boxes with art on them).
The "box topper" cards in premium product started as a very collectable item, as it was rare and difficult to get a complete set of all box toppers.
Now its actually very easy to get a full set of a collectors set, so the aspect to actually collect them is pretty low, especially long term as people have a much lower "bond" to sets now cause of the flooding of product (i couldnt tell you of my head what the last 2 years of sets are, or how much Secret Lairs they made, or premium cards they give out ... 15+ years ago that was very different, as premium cards where overall more well known and fewer to make them more chase able and collectable).
Judge promos for example where a pretty big market.
Now with the "owl" variations, the judge promo demand is extremely low, as there are too many.
Lots of what WotC is doing now is artificially pumping up the quantity of product, but it takes away the actual collectability of the product as its just too much disconnected product.
Okay, that's an interesting perspective.
While I do believe that long-term investors spending tons of money on magic in one form or another is important for the current health of the game (as it exists right now), Rudy reports the belief in his video (in the OP) that while things are uncertain and while most boxes go up or at the very least maintain their value, the smart money may be with secret lairs precisely because there is such a flood of them. With so many lairs being produced (to the point where it would cost over $100,000/year to get the maximum number of copies of each, by his count), there is an increased chance that some lairs are going to slip through the cracks and go under the radar as even low-level investors need to start making active choices, meaning that any given Secret lair has the chance to increase in value in a big way.
My question is the following:
As long as box-flippers continue their current habits, would casual collectors suffer any sort of negative effects if long-term investors switched from boxes to lairs (assuming those long-term investors spend about the same amount)? I expect that the answer would be no and that Rudy's video is thus largely of little to no consequence to most players but I am open to arguments to the contrary.
The secret lairs that sell the best are the ones that also have the most expensive cards as singles in them.
If someone wants to buy a foil Preaetor and can get the entire set of foil for cheaper, they will go for it.
So these Secret Lairs are easy to flip right away, as they are already more expensive than the cost to buy them.
That way people that spend money to "invest" in them will make money, its just a question of time to sell them of, and if you are left with some, thats fine, as you made your money back already with the initial flipping.
The bad Secret Lairs, which seem to look more like collectors items are the ones with cards that have basically no play value, or are just plain ugly.
So they are "rare" but also suffer from being not interesting ... so the only people that will chase them years after are the ones that might want to collect all Secret Lairs (which certainly exist, but the quantity of Secret Lairs is much larger than the amount of collectors).
Investing in Secret Lairs is "basically" investing in singles.
As people can order the entire "set" of Secret Lair, they often do so as its cheaper to buy than single Secret Lairs, and then they sell the "bad" Secret Lairs they dont want, so the bad Secret Lairs are also flooded, as they are catched up by the Set selling WotC is doing.
That means, there are Secret Lairs with little to no demand by anyone, but they are still sold in these sets and people still have them.
The "non-foil" are also overall terrible value.
So you could argue there is someone that wants to collect specifically non-foil Secret Lairs ... but there simply cant be many of them, and these are still plenty available, so its a hard call to claim that market might switch.
For very playable cards, the value will always be there, as a lot of Commander decks of players are pimped out over a long course of time, people gradually invest even in more expensive product and that market is quite large.
The Secret Lairs are also not really "Reserved", so WotC might totally reprint them or make a "best of" Secret Lair or something along the line, which can substantially disrupt the value of them.
I wouldnt trust in them in the long run, but any Secret Lair that contains very playable cards for general use should be attractive to have.
A bunch of foil Secret Lairs ship in bad condition or WotC "glues" them on some cardboard, and safely removing them becomes a hazard to deal with.
So the overall quality control of Secret Lair is also quite questionable.
So which is better for reprint equity long term? Secret Lairs or The List? Personally I like reprints from The List more because it encourages people to buy booster packs and support Local Game Stores (LGSs) while at the same time the pull rates as Tolarian Community College already outlined are terrible in comparison to Secret Lairs where you're guaranteed the actual card except you're forced to order them online. This undercuts Local Game Stores (LGSs) and local distributors while banking on the hopes that someone is generous enough to Buylist their Secret Lair cards at their LGS but then again that's just wishful thinking. Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro also seems to put most of their monetary budget for Paper Magic into Secret Lair products more so than reprints from The List which are randomly selected reprints with the planeswalker symbol on the bottom left hand corner not to mention we've been getting less good reprints in the newer Commander Precons to avoid price gouging like what they did with the recent Pioneer Theme Deck Starters at $50+. They're too focused on cutting corners and playing it safe.
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has been shying away from doing Masters sets like they used to because apparently it's cutting into their profits more and they don't want to risk devaluing most of the expensive cards in the game at the expense of making EDH / Commander more affordable when they're unable to keep up with Secondary Market demand for the format especially Reserve List cards where they're unable to add more supply to offset demand. Collectors and EDH / Commander players take advantage of this through buyouts and we're at a point now where most of the supply is all dried up from Whales sitting on sealed product by refusing to sell them to the open market to all the best Commander staples from the Reserve List no longer being in circulation right now. Whales have sort of used this hobby as a business model similar to Rudy's either to crack boxes for Patrons on YouTube or to wait for the right time to sell to make themselves rich. Either way I think it'd be better to turn their sealed product into singles inventory to sell If they're looking to open up their own LGS but as we've learned beforehand the risk isn't worth it.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Hasbro will print to where the money is coming from, plain and simple. Its as easy as that to understand.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Wizards of the Coast's recent move to begin including numbered Magic: The Gathering cards in Secret Lair sets thrusts Magic into a whole new world of card variants called parallels, a tactic used to enhance collectability employed by the big players in the sports card market. While this is generally good news for retailers and collectors, as rare parallels will likely make Magic sealed product more valuable and easier to sell, increasing the number of variant styles per individual card may have the potential to cause gameplay issues down the road, with risks for the brand.
Upper Deck, one of the pioneers of parallels in the trading card industry, defines them as follows:
"A card that is a serial numbered version of another non-serial numbered card. For instance, a base card would be unnumbered, but a parallel of that base card would have a serial number. Parallels typically have the same design and photo, but offer different color schemes."
While the Magic parallels that have been revealed so far don't feature new color schemes (as color is actually a mechanic in the game and doing so might affect gameplay), they do feature serial numbers and otherwise fit the bill. The print run numbers are stamped on the card to indicate both what number a card is in the run and the total size of the print run. Cards with lower print runs are sometimes more valuable, depending on their desirability.
The move to parallels is part of a broader strategy by WotC to ramp up the number of individual card variants available on the market by printing showcase cards, borderless cards, and Secret Lair special sets. The increase in variants may be driven, in turn by the increasing number of Magic products the company is releasing each year (see "'Magic: The Gathering' Release Calendar for 2020/2021").
Parallels are not a new phenomenon in the trading card industry, this is simply the first time WotC has employed this tactic with Magic: The Gathering. Parallels have shown up regularly in sports trading card packs since the early 90s. As far the games industry goes, Japanese TCGs, such as Bushiroad's Weiss Schwarz (see "'Weiss Schwarz' Sets") and Bandai's Dragon Ball Super Card Game (see "'Dragon Ball Super' Goes 'Mythic'"), have been including parallels in their booster sets for some time now.
One of the classic strengths of Magic, important to both gameplay and branding, is its card art recognition amongst the player community. Essentially, players know what cards do because they recognize their artwork when played. Magic's card art recognition is so strong that WotC has printed textless variants of cards like Lightning Bolt, Wrath of God, and Damnation and integrated those cards into gameplay without issue. Players not having to constantly read card text keeps gameplay moving along and allows players to play faster, part of an enjoyable play experience and an important brand attribute.
The more parallels and variant printings of cards out there, the more challenging card art recognition may become. This is an even bigger issue with the Universes Beyond sets (see “Wizards Rethinks their Approach to ‘Magic: The Gathering’ ‘Universes Beyond’ Releases”), in which parallels of staple cards could also have artwork of a secondary licensed brand as well as an entirely different name for the card.
Without solid card art recognition, players could end up spending more time reading the text of multiple versions of the same card, which leads to slower, less satisfying gameplay and poor associations for the brand. WotC will have to manage this move carefully to avoid those pitfalls.
With the announcement of the introduction of card parallels in Magic: The Gathering sets (see "WotC Adds Card Parallels to 'Magic'"), I do wonder if anyone overseeing the Magic line at Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast remembers the 1990s. During that decade, multiple covers, plastic crystals, and lenticular covers paved the way for the comic crash of the late 90s as The Hollywood Reporter points out. Happily, those days have not returned, though there are certainly a lot of variant covers out there now. Similarly as Slate, points out, during the same period, sports cards evolved from a humble hobby pursued primarily by boys to something touted by no less than the Wall Street Journal as an "inflation hedge." Companies such as Upper Deck and Donruss introduced autograph cards, swatch cards and other chase cards further driving a speculation boom, leading to the eventual collapse of the market and cards that sold for hundreds of dollars now worth a fraction of that.
Similarly, I fear that WotC/Hasbro has glommed onto the "collectible" aspect of the collectible card game aspect while downplaying the "game" aspect of it. The introduction of Set Boosters and Collector Boosters does little to enhance gameplay, but instead targets the collector market, and while collecting has always been part and parcel of the Magic universe, it was subsidiary to gameplay: "How will this card improve my deck?" While early sets of Magic did, on occasion, include multiple types of the same card (the various season illustrations on Urza’s Tower, for example), they were few and far between, with most players happy to have four to put into their deck, without worrying about getting all the variants.
From what I can tell, WotC’s current marketing plan, with the introduction of Alchemy, focuses on moving actual play online (as I have had a number of customers comment), while promoting the collectible aspect of the game with a number of variants of each card available with each release. Set boosters and Collector boosters are specifically designed for this market, which, according to WotC, is large enough to drive demand for the two additional varieties of card sets within the past two years to what is essentially a segment of the Magic target market. Add in, by my count, 45 Secret Lair releases in the past year, and the Magic market has seen a lot of product flooding into the market within a short period of time.
Unlike the sports cards and comic book boom and bust of the 1990s, most of the revenues from the Magic boom funnel into one company, so flooding the market with Magic product primarily benefits WotC/Hasbro. Given Hasbro’s current market capitalization of $13.6 billion, according to CNN Business, any implosion of the Magic market would have serious repercussions to the company, especially since much of its current growth has come from the WotC division, but would not drive the company into bankruptcy (as was the case for a number of 90s-era sports card and comic publishers after the implosion of their respective markets). Maybe WotC has done the analysis as to how much Magic product the market can absorb and has determined the company can safely ramp up its number of releases without oversaturating the market. I hope so.
I think what makes this so frustrating is ALL the broken promises that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has made in regards to their recent handling with Paper Magic going forward. They claim they love Local Game Stores (LGSs) when in reality they make Direct-to-Consumer Unique Card Singles, say they won't do it again after the Nexus of Fate fiasco, and then proceeds to print The Walking Dead Secret Lair drops. Realistically how many new Paper Magic players did The Walking Dead Secret Lair drops add? Well it's impossible to know because the majority of purchases were made by the MTG Finance Crowd looking to invest in what might be a high ticket collectible within a decade from now. Why not leave the Intellectual Property for The Walking Dead as it's own Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game instead of being used as an advertisement for another whose company / developers lack enough confidence in their own Intellectual Property (IP) to get the kind of sales and revenue they need to appeal to a wider audience.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
He helped Whales price players out of Paper Magic as current market inflation woes have only worsened the situation. As an end result, Arena and EDH / Commander have taken any potential new blood for Paper Magic while pushing them to go Digital only thus discontinuing Paper Standard at LGSs because apparently that's where the big money is now.
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"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
WotC is aiming for a group of whales that before that could just buy entire sets or had to find something special on their own, like very rare misprints, foil sets of foreign languages and special editions like Summer magic.
Special promos like Judge Foils had a purpose and the rarity fueled the judge program, so it benefited everyone.
The current business model is flooding the game with "promo" and "special" products directly from WotC , which kinda eliminates the entire point of making stuff rare and special, as its made rare and special by design.
Producing cards that are numbered and special by design is kinda questionable, but there is certainly some group of people that will like that, just to collect something that has a guaranteed rarity.
But all of that is so artificial and produced , that its just not enjoyable for me at least.
Its not "rare" or "special" because of circumstances and a story to tell, but just because WotC wants it to be that way to sell it for more money.
If all of that stuff would simply be put in Booster-Packs, and that would be the only product they sell, it would be a great way to get the extra benefit of value in the entire economy of the game.
By making it a product they sell themselves directly, its not randomness, its not packs, nothing to store and gamble, nothing really interesting, as you just buy a product directly.
I am very skeptical how that entire mess will turn out.
As we know, WotC will not do anything, unless its a social media panic that forces them to act.
If a product does not sell, they will abandon it instantly, even if they made decisions that lead to that product selling bad (like Booster Packs are completely outclassed by other Pack-products, so its totally obvious that they dont sell in comparison).
Digital will always work, as the overall cost is much smaller and as long as people are interested in just "playing" the game, Digital is fine.
But in the current age, people even go to collect just digital goods, even if they dont "own" them at all, cant resell them or they dont have any proper value, some people still want to collect all Arena cards or stuff like that.
Overall the digital and paper market have some crossover , but to abandon paper will likely hurt them very severely in the long run, as the strongest feature of Magic is the Nostalgia with its long history, and that dies with paper.
They claim they love Local Game Stores (LGSs) when in reality they make Direct-to-Consumer Unique Card Singles
They also make high-value products for LGSs, like Commander Collection and the Standard/Pioneer precons. And so far they've made a grand total of 4 direct-to-consumer unique card singles, and I believe that they are no longer going to be unique, having new Magic versions of these cards showing up in Set boosters.
Realistically how many new Paper Magic players did The Walking Dead Secret Lair drops add? Well it's impossible to know because the majority of purchases were made by the MTG Finance Crowd looking to invest in what might be a high ticket collectible within a decade from now.
This is just speculation. We don't know how many TWD Secret Lairs were produced, and what percentage of those were purchased by the MTG Finance crowd. Did MTG Finance buy a lot of them? Probably. Did non-Magic TWD fans buy a lot of them too? We don't know, but the number purchased by the MTG Finance crowd would not have affected the sales to non-Magic TWD fans, because it was print-to-demand.
I do have to laugh at the "this is a problem because players recognize cards by the art" only because they immediately contradict themselves by using the textless promos as an example of this, WHEN THEY HAD ALTERNATE ARTS. Not saying some people don't know a card entirely by the art, but I think more people know a card from the name.
My wife played paper MtG for the first time in years because of the TWD stuff, which is completely different than the Nexus of Fate issue. Nexus of Fate was an issue because it was a top tier card in Standard, was a BaB promo only, and could only be purchased in Foil. Regardless of what else you might think, the TWD cards have had a nominal impact on the game, with only one of the cards occasionally showing up in a lower-tier deck in a barely-supported format. Nexus of Fate and Kenrith were problems; TWD isn't.
I've only played 12 years and I can think of 3-4 separate occasions where the community was convinced the game was dying, yet somehow they keep making more money. Weird.
Rudy recently floated a rumor that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is planning on doubling the price of 15 card Draft Booster Packs at MSRP which didn't make sense to me since they actually got rid of MSRP when they first partnered with Amazon. He did say that market inflation, rising costs, and how it affects paper / print related products, logistics, and things are going to continue to be more expensive. If we have $8 15 card Draft Booster Packs and If they stick with a 36 pack Booster Box then that would be $288 MSRP for a Draft Booster Box of any Standard legal set containing Universes Beyond cards with all the flashy variants. The reason why it's more expensive is because Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro is paying Intellectual Property (IP) royalties and they have to pay a large fee in order to use the rights to these Intellectual Properties (IPs).
We know they can easily get away with it with Set Booster Boxes and as we continue to move forward they're eventually going to "phase" out Draft Booster Boxes (no pun intended). It's possible that 36 pack Draft Booster Boxes could be reduced to 24 pack Draft Booster Boxes which would completely undermine Draft experiences since lowering the amount of packs gives out an uneven distribution among players playing in that format. The biggest concern or takeaway is really the price increase with all these crossovers and different brands as Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has been changing directions for a long time as Magic: The Gathering as we know it from the past no longer exists anymore. This is something that we all need to come to terms with. It's less about how old school the cards are when it's more about how flashy the products are.
That's the business model where they focus more on using relatable cultural recognizable images and names to move the product. Like I said before it really shows just how Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't confident enough with the Magic: The Gathering brand because they feel like they're being pressured to be more mainstream with today's pop culture when they got where they are now because they weren't as mainstream. They're taking this huge gamble to win over these people of the IP's they're advertising to become permanent Paper Magic players when in actuality is only a short-term spike compared to how many people they'd get on board If Paper Standard was a much healthier format than it is right now with In-Person Organized Play at LGSs which they're actively trying to distance themselves away from. It shows that their public image matters more than the game itself which is very unfortunate.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
But again, this is all rumors and completely baseless speculation. First, it's ludicrous to think they'd double the cost of booster packs--if they do raise the price for some reason, you'll see packs selling for $4.50, not $8. Also, it's worth pointing out that sealed boxes aren't sold at pack price x number of packs. Draft booster boxes don't cost $144 (4x36).
I also don't know why you think expanding to other IPs shows desperation--to me it shows they have the additional revenue which they're using to expand more into pop culture. Like it or not, the more visibility MtG has, the more new players get interested. We'll have to see in a few years if this really pays off, but I have no reason to believe it won't. I think the number of enfranchised players who actually decide to stop playing is a LOT lower than comments on social media would indicate.
Doubling of a pack price (and by default every other piece of sealed product) would be the death knell of the game. It won't happen. (At least not yet) Incremental increase will be what happens. I am actually shocked that with inflation running rampant that big box stores, LGS and online sellers haven't started jacking up prices on sealed product by any significant amount.
I am seeing signs. I think 2022 is going to be called the year of inflation.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
The Local Game Store (LGS) business model wasn't built to sustain itself under a public health crisis such as the pandemic we're still in and we're already seeing the pressure this is having on Paper Magic players still attached to this abusive and corrupt Loot Box / Loot Crate business model that does nothing but satisfy people at the price of playing with a luxury item that instead of making players happy is only making them more miserable with Stockholm syndrome and questions why they've spent as much as they have. Then you take FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) into the equation where If someone today whose been playing Paper Magic for a long period of time decided to sell their MTG collection now then they wouldn't be able to buy all those cards back due to high market inflation and how predatory the Secondary Market is especially with how Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro doesn't reprint as much to make the game more affordable like they once did. The way they're going about it now with Secret Lairs and "The List" where you're paying twice If not triple as much money to obtain these reprints makes the barrier level of entry into a format like EDH / Commander even higher and less attractive to those which is the majority of Paper Magic players who don't have the disposable income to deal with that sort of thing and it's like what Rudy pointed about during the height of the pandemic last year about how the risk we take certain things in life simply isn't worth the reward that we're trying to get out of it.
I disagree with Rudy in the belief that serialized cards and mass box openings will unite Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro and Local Game Stores (LGSs) when the damage has already been done partnering with Amazon and with no Organized Play due to the pandemic it's literally given them a free pass to bankrupt these local retailers so we already know that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't looking to win back the confidence of Local Game Stores (LGSs) because they want to push Paper Magic in a direction that makes it hard for people to actually play the game or go full on Digital. Their public image matters more to them than the health of Paper Magic in general which is why there's no accountability for what they do and when things don't go their way they blame it on the MTG community by complaining on Social Media via Twitter or reddit but when they go on YouTube posting MTG content they pretend as though the drama never happened or occurred with Tolarian Community College being the only one as the voice of reason of sorts. Much like Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro other competitors within the world of Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games they too are in an abusive relationship with Local Game Stores (LGSs) because they probably feel as though In-Person Social Interaction with other players regardless of age groups potentially attracts something socially inappropriate and they feel as though pushing these card games as online exclusives are a one size fits all solution that actually isn't.
We want what we don't have in this world and the problem with this philosophical thinking as well as the way we're all wired internally is that it leads us to make bad decisions and by always being on the chase of trying to acquire the one thing we don't have many times If we DO get that goal it's not going to make us satisfied. We're going to realize that what we were seeking isn't satisfying and maybe it was a mistake because we all want what we don't have where we want the opposite of the situation that we're in and a lot of the things we already have in Paper Magic are now proving to be useless. This oversaturation of new card variants and planeswalkers have really done nothing but damage and dilute Paper Magic as a brand overall and hopefully Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro starts to realize now that less is more because what got Paper Magic to where it is today was so simple that even a caveman could do it even though that GEICO meme is long gone and dead. Everybody demands more and it continues to have negative ill impacts across the board as we're already seeing the domino effect this is having on Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games which is now a dying industry thanks to COVID-19 making Organized Play and Events almost next to impossible nowadays. I'd rather be advocating more people to be extroverts rather than introverts secluding themselves in a digital space that's less fulfilling than socializing In-Person.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
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A video essay that we all pretty much knew (or dreaded), and that is the state of the game as we see it now is the way it will be moving forward. So if you're emotionally vested in the game from the days of yore, then it's a good time to reconsider your connection to the "game" and where you see yourself in it. The days of old are gone.
What are your thoughts/feelings about the current state of affairs with the game? I'm not sure how to feel about it to be honest.
I can only imagine how some of you feel.
'buster
HR Analyst. Gamer. Activist | Fearless, and forthright | Aggro-control is a mindset.
Elspeth and Jhoira rock my world.
With that said MTG is changing. It needs to go back to a similar formula that got it there. I predicted this mess years ago that it would go down the same route as Baseball Cards in the mid to late 90's. I saw it then, same thing is happening now. Young players don't have the past experience to let them see that history repeats itself. It is repeating itself. Baseball and Sports cards took a good 20 years to make a comeback from the mess they put themselves in. It may take that long for Magic unless WotC wises up.
With that said.... There is opportunity for shrewd buyers. Buy what you want to play with LOW. Pass up the garbo. Those that plan for the long game will make it and will enjoy it more. Others will burn bright and burn out fast.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
So you're telling me that in order for Single prices not to skyrocket that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro needs to keep printing more Secret Lairs for adding more reprints into the market as well as encouraging business owners who operate under Rudy's model to bankrupt 3,000 Local Game Stores (LGSs) nationwide? How does that make any sense? Am I missing something here? My problem with Secret Lairs are Local Game Stores (LGSs) not being allowed to have any in stock especially from local distributors who are willing to buy them off of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro. What are your guys' opinions on serialized cards for Paper Magic and potentially other Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games across the board in the near future? Rudy was going on about serialized cards being a big deal which made me a bit curious on the subject matter.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
It sounds like buying standard-legal sets in vast bulk (outside of collector boosters) is no longer worthwhile… in part because Amazon is offering comparable prices in the short-term… which sounds good.
It sounds like investors are now focusing on secret lairs, meaning that they are focusing their efforts on Products that are print to demand rather than gouging products like Commander’s Arsenal… which sounds good.
It sounds like the lack of value in standard legal sets comes in part from the fact that valuable cards are more likely than ever to be reprinted within the following 5-10 years… which sounds good.
Did I miss the apocalyptic part at some point? Does the lack of investors cashing in investments 5-10 years later and providing delayed influxes of singles mean that prices are likely to skyrocket (in spite of frequent reprints)? Is it expected that a lack of people like Rudy buying 1,000+ boxes will increase single prices?
What is up?
If boxes aren't opened en masse, that leaves less supply for singles driving prices for singles up. Lower supply, higher demand, higher prices for players.
Investors have the money. WotC will produce more and more of these products and less of the product for players. Lower supply equals higher demand equals higher prices for players.
Keep the value cards out of Standard (strongly playable and strongly valuable) and the sets again don't sell. No big openings to drive single prices down.
Yes it will, most definitely.
This may be overly simplistic, but I am not far from the mark. Without a healthy collectability aspect, the game will shrink and die off quickly or become a mere shadow of what it currently is. I may not like all the aspects of a capitalistic business model but without it the game will crumble.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
What do you think these words here mean because they don't make any logical sense. Wizards will keep printing cards that are bought. They aren't going to rework their printers to only make products that investors want at the expense of players that just isn't realistically possible.
Standard has a pseudo hard cap on how expensive it can get. Also, if sets don't sell well you can expect an immediate(12-18months) shift in policy. They won't allow their largest sales driver to underperform.
This is a repeat of the first section. While a healthy collectible aspect is a key to magic's longevity is there any proof or even hint that driving away speculators or hoarders will negatively impact this longevity? I haven't seen any. If you know of a source that would be great to see.
1. When you talk about Speculators buying hundreds of boxes in the way Rudy was in this episode, it is normally discussed in the context of people buying onto boxes to hold onto them for several years before reselling them for a profit. As those hundreds of boxes sold to these people are adding ZERO new singles into circulation while the set is new, it would stand to reason that the direct and immediate impact of those unopened boxes not existing on singles prices is (at least initially) relatively small, if not non-existent.
2. I do want to differentiate these people from short-term box flippers, however, who buy pallets of cases in bulk and who try to make their money back through single sales rather than letting products mature. These are the people who tear open collector box after collector box and who floods the market with foils, showcase frames, borderless rares, and more to keep costs down. In my eyes, These are the investors who keep standard affordable. If you look at the video, though, Rudy wasn't talking too much about these people (almost everything was about long-term investment, not flipping) and collector boxes were specifically identified as a possible exception to boxes not holding value any more so I'm not really worried about these guys going away.
3. A separate concern I've heard that may have some credence is that people buying tons and tons of boxes to invest in them may contribute to WotC's bottom line and contribute meaningfully to the good quarters that they and papa Hasbro have been reporting. If MTG is making less money, it may receive less resources, have fewer releases, and shrink accordingly. Rudy identifies in his video however that a good investment for MTG still exists, however, and that it just happens to be secret lairs now... so I'm not too concerned about this, either.
My personal conclusions: Long-term investors are better suited by buying secret lairs than standard boxes at this time but I honestly kind of doubt that will harm either singles prices or Wizards profits at this time. It is ultimately the behavior of short-term collector box crackers that determines the affordability of standard (as far as investor influence goes). Rudy's statements about investing in secret lairs did not seem specifically aimed at this group, however, so I'm not sure where all of the doom and gloom comes in.
I'm not a financial guru or a business major, though. I'm sure that there is a lot I am missing or misconstruing. Can someone clarify?
Their existence means you can buy singles easier and cheaper, but they require a large market to sell the product for a profit to.
The large amounts of product sold that way benefits everyone in the game, from WotC down to the player.
The entire point of selling booster packs is to fuel a market that consumes them.
Speculation into buying product to keep it is a long term option. Almost all boxes increase in value if they go out of print and if they have the potential for big hits, their "unknown" value average is better than opening them.
If nobody would keep boxes around product would vanish after its out of print. As long as there are people interested in sealed product, thats a thing that neither hurts or benefits a player, that is just interested in a bunch of singles anyway.
Some people even never open any boxes, as they quite literally collect the sealed boxes (like video game collectors, comic books and all of that, you want them "sealed" and not use them, as the real value is in keeping them as pristine as possible).
Old school cards are limited and basically art-pieces. From a time where keeping them in folders and secure was not very common, very pristine cards even up to Urza Block are quite rare (the foils are especially difficult to store in good condition).
The entire market strives of nostalgia of a few selected cards, the vast majority of cards is not worth anything, even old.
Entire sets of cards are better collectables, special things that have some kind of noteworthy history, like Summer Magic are great things for collectors to go for, as lots of players have no idea what that is in the first place (so the market of collectors vs players is very distinct, little crossover with specific playable cards, but thats just a extremely tiny part of collectables in the game).
Secret Lairs and the like are a two-edged sword.
On one side they are indeed collectable due to the nature of going out of print right away, but on the other side, they are also the kind of product WotC is "flooding" into the market, and little of them carry nostalgia value.
The people that actually collect Secret Lairs are overall few, its mainly for playable cards, and people that play the cards in some Commander deck.
If a product line is discontinued its the best for a collector, as you can actually get a "full" set and complete the collection.
As WotC is still printing more and more Secret Lairs, its simply "too much" for a collector with basically no real value of nostalgia, its just "like them ? fine", but any product you can just outright order and buy without randomness or chasing them, is a bad collectable item, if anything its the Fear of missing out that drives the Secret Lair market, which is a terrible approach long term and very anti-consumer (as it prays on weak people that fall for these manipulations).
But if there is a demand for "sealed" Secret Lair, plenty of people will have them. Singles market of Secret Lair is already extremely flooded simply because players actually put them in decks, so the value of a Secret Lair is very much in how playable the cards are (which is also true for sealed product in general if rarity is not the critical factor).
To put Secret Lair as something nice in a storage to look at, the black boxes are pretty bad for that (compared to sealed boxes with art on them).
The "box topper" cards in premium product started as a very collectable item, as it was rare and difficult to get a complete set of all box toppers.
Now its actually very easy to get a full set of a collectors set, so the aspect to actually collect them is pretty low, especially long term as people have a much lower "bond" to sets now cause of the flooding of product (i couldnt tell you of my head what the last 2 years of sets are, or how much Secret Lairs they made, or premium cards they give out ... 15+ years ago that was very different, as premium cards where overall more well known and fewer to make them more chase able and collectable).
Judge promos for example where a pretty big market.
Now with the "owl" variations, the judge promo demand is extremely low, as there are too many.
Lots of what WotC is doing now is artificially pumping up the quantity of product, but it takes away the actual collectability of the product as its just too much disconnected product.
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Okay, that's an interesting perspective.
While I do believe that long-term investors spending tons of money on magic in one form or another is important for the current health of the game (as it exists right now), Rudy reports the belief in his video (in the OP) that while things are uncertain and while most boxes go up or at the very least maintain their value, the smart money may be with secret lairs precisely because there is such a flood of them. With so many lairs being produced (to the point where it would cost over $100,000/year to get the maximum number of copies of each, by his count), there is an increased chance that some lairs are going to slip through the cracks and go under the radar as even low-level investors need to start making active choices, meaning that any given Secret lair has the chance to increase in value in a big way.
My question is the following:
As long as box-flippers continue their current habits, would casual collectors suffer any sort of negative effects if long-term investors switched from boxes to lairs (assuming those long-term investors spend about the same amount)? I expect that the answer would be no and that Rudy's video is thus largely of little to no consequence to most players but I am open to arguments to the contrary.
If someone wants to buy a foil Preaetor and can get the entire set of foil for cheaper, they will go for it.
So these Secret Lairs are easy to flip right away, as they are already more expensive than the cost to buy them.
That way people that spend money to "invest" in them will make money, its just a question of time to sell them of, and if you are left with some, thats fine, as you made your money back already with the initial flipping.
The bad Secret Lairs, which seem to look more like collectors items are the ones with cards that have basically no play value, or are just plain ugly.
So they are "rare" but also suffer from being not interesting ... so the only people that will chase them years after are the ones that might want to collect all Secret Lairs (which certainly exist, but the quantity of Secret Lairs is much larger than the amount of collectors).
Investing in Secret Lairs is "basically" investing in singles.
As people can order the entire "set" of Secret Lair, they often do so as its cheaper to buy than single Secret Lairs, and then they sell the "bad" Secret Lairs they dont want, so the bad Secret Lairs are also flooded, as they are catched up by the Set selling WotC is doing.
That means, there are Secret Lairs with little to no demand by anyone, but they are still sold in these sets and people still have them.
The "non-foil" are also overall terrible value.
So you could argue there is someone that wants to collect specifically non-foil Secret Lairs ... but there simply cant be many of them, and these are still plenty available, so its a hard call to claim that market might switch.
For very playable cards, the value will always be there, as a lot of Commander decks of players are pimped out over a long course of time, people gradually invest even in more expensive product and that market is quite large.
The Secret Lairs are also not really "Reserved", so WotC might totally reprint them or make a "best of" Secret Lair or something along the line, which can substantially disrupt the value of them.
I wouldnt trust in them in the long run, but any Secret Lair that contains very playable cards for general use should be attractive to have.
A bunch of foil Secret Lairs ship in bad condition or WotC "glues" them on some cardboard, and safely removing them becomes a hazard to deal with.
So the overall quality control of Secret Lair is also quite questionable.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has been shying away from doing Masters sets like they used to because apparently it's cutting into their profits more and they don't want to risk devaluing most of the expensive cards in the game at the expense of making EDH / Commander more affordable when they're unable to keep up with Secondary Market demand for the format especially Reserve List cards where they're unable to add more supply to offset demand. Collectors and EDH / Commander players take advantage of this through buyouts and we're at a point now where most of the supply is all dried up from Whales sitting on sealed product by refusing to sell them to the open market to all the best Commander staples from the Reserve List no longer being in circulation right now. Whales have sort of used this hobby as a business model similar to Rudy's either to crack boxes for Patrons on YouTube or to wait for the right time to sell to make themselves rich. Either way I think it'd be better to turn their sealed product into singles inventory to sell If they're looking to open up their own LGS but as we've learned beforehand the risk isn't worth it.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Wizards of the Coast Adds Card Parallels to Magic: The Gathering
https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/49954/wotc-adds-card-parallels-magic-the-gathering Rolling for Initiative - Are the 90's Back?
https://icv2.com/articles/columns/view/49967/rolling-initiative-are-90s-back I think what makes this so frustrating is ALL the broken promises that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has made in regards to their recent handling with Paper Magic going forward. They claim they love Local Game Stores (LGSs) when in reality they make Direct-to-Consumer Unique Card Singles, say they won't do it again after the Nexus of Fate fiasco, and then proceeds to print The Walking Dead Secret Lair drops. Realistically how many new Paper Magic players did The Walking Dead Secret Lair drops add? Well it's impossible to know because the majority of purchases were made by the MTG Finance Crowd looking to invest in what might be a high ticket collectible within a decade from now. Why not leave the Intellectual Property for The Walking Dead as it's own Paper Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game instead of being used as an advertisement for another whose company / developers lack enough confidence in their own Intellectual Property (IP) to get the kind of sales and revenue they need to appeal to a wider audience.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Special promos like Judge Foils had a purpose and the rarity fueled the judge program, so it benefited everyone.
The current business model is flooding the game with "promo" and "special" products directly from WotC , which kinda eliminates the entire point of making stuff rare and special, as its made rare and special by design.
Producing cards that are numbered and special by design is kinda questionable, but there is certainly some group of people that will like that, just to collect something that has a guaranteed rarity.
But all of that is so artificial and produced , that its just not enjoyable for me at least.
Its not "rare" or "special" because of circumstances and a story to tell, but just because WotC wants it to be that way to sell it for more money.
If all of that stuff would simply be put in Booster-Packs, and that would be the only product they sell, it would be a great way to get the extra benefit of value in the entire economy of the game.
By making it a product they sell themselves directly, its not randomness, its not packs, nothing to store and gamble, nothing really interesting, as you just buy a product directly.
I am very skeptical how that entire mess will turn out.
As we know, WotC will not do anything, unless its a social media panic that forces them to act.
If a product does not sell, they will abandon it instantly, even if they made decisions that lead to that product selling bad (like Booster Packs are completely outclassed by other Pack-products, so its totally obvious that they dont sell in comparison).
Digital will always work, as the overall cost is much smaller and as long as people are interested in just "playing" the game, Digital is fine.
But in the current age, people even go to collect just digital goods, even if they dont "own" them at all, cant resell them or they dont have any proper value, some people still want to collect all Arena cards or stuff like that.
Overall the digital and paper market have some crossover , but to abandon paper will likely hurt them very severely in the long run, as the strongest feature of Magic is the Nostalgia with its long history, and that dies with paper.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
They also make high-value products for LGSs, like Commander Collection and the Standard/Pioneer precons. And so far they've made a grand total of 4 direct-to-consumer unique card singles, and I believe that they are no longer going to be unique, having new Magic versions of these cards showing up in Set boosters.
This is just speculation. We don't know how many TWD Secret Lairs were produced, and what percentage of those were purchased by the MTG Finance crowd. Did MTG Finance buy a lot of them? Probably. Did non-Magic TWD fans buy a lot of them too? We don't know, but the number purchased by the MTG Finance crowd would not have affected the sales to non-Magic TWD fans, because it was print-to-demand.
My wife played paper MtG for the first time in years because of the TWD stuff, which is completely different than the Nexus of Fate issue. Nexus of Fate was an issue because it was a top tier card in Standard, was a BaB promo only, and could only be purchased in Foil. Regardless of what else you might think, the TWD cards have had a nominal impact on the game, with only one of the cards occasionally showing up in a lower-tier deck in a barely-supported format. Nexus of Fate and Kenrith were problems; TWD isn't.
I've only played 12 years and I can think of 3-4 separate occasions where the community was convinced the game was dying, yet somehow they keep making more money. Weird.
We know they can easily get away with it with Set Booster Boxes and as we continue to move forward they're eventually going to "phase" out Draft Booster Boxes (no pun intended). It's possible that 36 pack Draft Booster Boxes could be reduced to 24 pack Draft Booster Boxes which would completely undermine Draft experiences since lowering the amount of packs gives out an uneven distribution among players playing in that format. The biggest concern or takeaway is really the price increase with all these crossovers and different brands as Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro has been changing directions for a long time as Magic: The Gathering as we know it from the past no longer exists anymore. This is something that we all need to come to terms with. It's less about how old school the cards are when it's more about how flashy the products are.
That's the business model where they focus more on using relatable cultural recognizable images and names to move the product. Like I said before it really shows just how Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't confident enough with the Magic: The Gathering brand because they feel like they're being pressured to be more mainstream with today's pop culture when they got where they are now because they weren't as mainstream. They're taking this huge gamble to win over these people of the IP's they're advertising to become permanent Paper Magic players when in actuality is only a short-term spike compared to how many people they'd get on board If Paper Standard was a much healthier format than it is right now with In-Person Organized Play at LGSs which they're actively trying to distance themselves away from. It shows that their public image matters more than the game itself which is very unfortunate.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
I also don't know why you think expanding to other IPs shows desperation--to me it shows they have the additional revenue which they're using to expand more into pop culture. Like it or not, the more visibility MtG has, the more new players get interested. We'll have to see in a few years if this really pays off, but I have no reason to believe it won't. I think the number of enfranchised players who actually decide to stop playing is a LOT lower than comments on social media would indicate.
I am seeing signs. I think 2022 is going to be called the year of inflation.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
I disagree with Rudy in the belief that serialized cards and mass box openings will unite Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro and Local Game Stores (LGSs) when the damage has already been done partnering with Amazon and with no Organized Play due to the pandemic it's literally given them a free pass to bankrupt these local retailers so we already know that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro isn't looking to win back the confidence of Local Game Stores (LGSs) because they want to push Paper Magic in a direction that makes it hard for people to actually play the game or go full on Digital. Their public image matters more to them than the health of Paper Magic in general which is why there's no accountability for what they do and when things don't go their way they blame it on the MTG community by complaining on Social Media via Twitter or reddit but when they go on YouTube posting MTG content they pretend as though the drama never happened or occurred with Tolarian Community College being the only one as the voice of reason of sorts. Much like Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro other competitors within the world of Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games they too are in an abusive relationship with Local Game Stores (LGSs) because they probably feel as though In-Person Social Interaction with other players regardless of age groups potentially attracts something socially inappropriate and they feel as though pushing these card games as online exclusives are a one size fits all solution that actually isn't.
We want what we don't have in this world and the problem with this philosophical thinking as well as the way we're all wired internally is that it leads us to make bad decisions and by always being on the chase of trying to acquire the one thing we don't have many times If we DO get that goal it's not going to make us satisfied. We're going to realize that what we were seeking isn't satisfying and maybe it was a mistake because we all want what we don't have where we want the opposite of the situation that we're in and a lot of the things we already have in Paper Magic are now proving to be useless. This oversaturation of new card variants and planeswalkers have really done nothing but damage and dilute Paper Magic as a brand overall and hopefully Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro starts to realize now that less is more because what got Paper Magic to where it is today was so simple that even a caveman could do it even though that GEICO meme is long gone and dead. Everybody demands more and it continues to have negative ill impacts across the board as we're already seeing the domino effect this is having on Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games which is now a dying industry thanks to COVID-19 making Organized Play and Events almost next to impossible nowadays. I'd rather be advocating more people to be extroverts rather than introverts secluding themselves in a digital space that's less fulfilling than socializing In-Person.
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta