MTG Salvation

Purp pretty much says it all. The speed at which all of these products are being released is at a crisis point. I saw Tolarian Community College open FOUR boxes of Baldur's Gate, and on his final box he got <$40 in total value. EAch box cost US$105.

Purp also stated that MaRo said that the practice RN is when a new plane/setting is introduced they tend to load up the power scale. If the set flops, then they pretty much mark that as an indicator of never going back to that setting again, or at least some time. Think of Kamigawa. So by that alone, looks like we won't be returning to the D&D setting any time soon if present sales and financial value are of any indication.

Watch and judge for yourselves. But this is getting overboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C3fQ6fmCRE

'buster

Its too much for a long time.

The entire concept of WotC with "Not all product is made for you" is pretty bad for people that actually want to stay engaged with the game, as they actively want you to basically ignore a bunch of products they make, which you dont want to.

If people would do what WotC is trying to do, they would just play 1 set of magic each year and ignore anything else, but clearly that "cant" be what WotC ACTUALLY wants, they want to make as much money as possible, so the wheels need to be turning quickly.
It also splinters the players.
As right now we have Streets of new Capenna for draft and at the same time Baldurs Gate, so instead of all playing the same, we get just a bunch of players here and some for the other, which actually fractures the players, instead of having them enjoy a set together, thats far worse experience for me then it was.

With double masters coming, we will have THREE sets for draft, and it just gets worse increasingly.

For a shop buying product of all these sets is also bad, as each set is in addition to that splintered into draft/set/collectors packs, and only one of these really has value in each set, and the others will be hard to sell.

I would advocate to make draft packs only, and actually put collector cards into them (just like Masterpieces did, that worked in a way that was sustainable).

Quote from Flamebuster »

EAch box cost US$105.

Starcity seems to have set boxes for $75 eh? Borderless Ancient Silver Dragon pays for 2/3 of the box by itself.
I think the precons might be where most of the power is located, but there's some genuinely nice commons and uncommons in the set to grab. The problem is finding singles to leaf through, for now at least. Drafting the set could be a bit of an ordeal, just like with the last commander set.

I'm keeping my eye on the price of these background cards as well. They're unfunctional in Legacy/Vintage which hurts them a lot, but they're quite nice in partner commander decks. The "choose your background" cards may be distracting a lot of people from their best use.

Quote from Kryptnyt »

Quote from Flamebuster »

EAch box cost US$105.

Starcity seems to have set boxes for $75 eh? Borderless Ancient Silver Dragon pays for 2/3 of the box by itself.
I think the precons might be where most of the power is located, but there's some genuinely nice commons and uncommons in the set to grab. The problem is finding singles to leaf through, for now at least. Drafting the set could be a bit of an ordeal, just like with the last commander set.

I'm keeping my eye on the price of these background cards as well. They're unfunctional in Legacy/Vintage which hurts them a lot, but they're quite nice in partner commander decks. The "choose your background" cards may be distracting a lot of people from their best use.

Dood said that he knows he can get boxes cheaper but chooses to go to his local store, which sells them for $105, and is the place where he would go to sell any cards that net him a value of $105+.

The whole background thing I find confusing. Not sure how it will play out in the long-run for the EDH format but for now we'll have to see how the format will adapt to it.

'buster

Granted this is all being done to make up for the absence of In-Person Organized Play events for Paper Magic on account of an ongoing global pandemic which is nearing it's end as we speak when we now have the implications of market inflation affecting how much players and collectors are willing to spend for Double Masters 2022 as opposed to what occurred with Masters 25 and Iconic Masters where real world events weren't that big of an issue as it is today. Additionally this is going to be a make it or break it moment for A LOT of Local Game Stores (LGSs) looking to cash out of their business for retirement instead of providing a public service for players to play at their venues In-Person where Pre-Orders for Double Masters 2022 are going to be through the roof as the LGSs that do survive from this are those that put local communities first over maximizing profit.

Those that put profit first over local communities were never fully committed to owning and operating a Local Game Store (LGS) because dealing with this sort of business model is supposed to be a labor of love not a side hustle. You don't take the money and run to close your business permanently just to leave players who are wanting to play with the cards they purchased under the rug. Yes the cost of transportation nowadays due to market inflation under terrible economic policies is really bad but that's no excuse to just throw the baby out of the bathwater. The smart thing to do as a LGS owner would be to order less product for Double Masters 2022 and not take as many Pre-Orders that would cause these businesses to sit on products they aren't able to sell for being too expensive and with the absence of MSRP that does tend to complicate this situation even more.

Rudy talks about the state of LGSs and what is transpiring/could transpire as a result of what you state. Makes sense if you think about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JviZQ9xDc4

'buster

The real question is how different this current situation with LGSs, local distributors, and Double Masters 2022 is compared to the fallout we witnessed from Masters 25 and Iconic Masters where there weren't any hurdles to purchase product as we still had MSRP. Nowadays everything has gone up from shipping and transportation to where it's become increasingly harder to keep up with a luxury item like Paper Magic under economic turmoil. The reason why the absence of MSRP is bad in this scenario is that it gives LGSs too much leeway to markup prices that customers might not be able to afford thus losing sales in the process. When your local distributor is secluded to just Amazon fulfillment that makes it even harder for these LGSs to get the piece of the pie that they would've gotten under the local distributors that are now being thrown under the bus.

The recent trend of Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro pumping and dumping one Paper Magic product after another is really reflective of this instant gratification in our society that we've now become accustomed toward due to online algorithms and current market trends. Unfortunately it doesn't give these products enough time to appreciate in monetary value when it's an excuse to lower the cost to make them more affordable to purchase which was only made worse due to the inclusion of card variants with showcases, extended arts, and foils of that nature. It also affects the narrative of the MTG lore and how it's being disregarded because they know If they print cards with really good abilities then players and collectors will buy them. I feel as though the game itself is trying too hard to escape from it's own identity regarding it's own lore in an effort to be more sanitized and consumer friendly.

Short term is the name of the game right now at Hasbro/WotC. Make as much as fast as they can the future be damned.

The gravy train runs out at some point. Magic the Gathering has lost is "soul". It saddens me.

Personally I've just ignored double masters cuz I am not going to play it. I would have ignored the baldurs gate set too because I also don't play EDH but I do play the baldurs gate video game and I was hoping for story spoilers lol. ymmv of course but I really do think the only rational way to approach this game is to take breaks all the time. I think I would be just as mad as some of y'all if mtg was the only hobby I had.

I'm only even here right now because I keep impulse clicking my saved link for mtg salvation at work lol.

Ignoring Magic products just because you don't want to draft them or don't play a particular format they're designed to support is a flawed strategy which will only make it more difficult (or more accurately impossible) to reach your endgame collection goals. Quite frankly, and respectfully, anyone who ignores Double Masters is a negligent fool.

Honestly, in my experience (and I've been playing/collecting for many years off and on), the only way to keep up with the market or "stay ahead of the game" is to figure out during spoiler season which cards in each set have the best presale price to playability ratio (I'm talking about the "hidden gem" rares which go under the radar because they're not obviously great for Standard as they rotate in, and good foil uncommons, not the perceived "best" or trendiest mythics which are overly inflated upon release, and oftentimes so pushed by design that they get banned shortly thereafter and tank like Oko and Uro which were likely a painful baits-and-switches for anyone who bought them at their peak). In fact, ignore the mythics altogether, corner the market on the undervalued/underappreciated gems to the best of your ability (budget permitting) by purchasing more copies of said cards than needed (in addition to playable Reserved List cards which we all know never lose value). After time (which could be weeks, months, or years depending on how fast certain cards rise) you trade your spares back (hopefully just before they get reprinted) for the cards you missed previously (because they were too priced high right out the gate) which you actually do want when your excess inventory rises in value at a faster rate than those other cards (which may even get reprinted and go down significantly...like hydroid krasis which you can then scoop up as they bottom out). The only reason not to do this is impatience and fomo. Be smart, and don't take the bait.

This strategy of purchasing extra cards may seem unnecessary, wasteful, and may even annoy other players who don't appreciate you siphoning up the available inventory and taking certain cards out of circulation (which lets be honest, is essentially what LGSs already do when they open most of their allocated sealed product then withhold the best mythics by artificially inflating them as singles for sale at prohibitively expensive prices), but with patience and a good eye (you have to be good at recognizing patterns), you eventually get most of the cards, if not everything you ever wanted for much less or free by flipping the cards that you don't need or even want to play with (but other players do) once demand peaks and supply becomes scarce, allowing you to free-roll, and build your collection, cube, and/or decks for whichever formats you play at a fraction of the cost they would've cost otherwise through traditional methods, or in a best case scenario for free.

For optimal trade-up value, never buy bulk lots, booster packs, or boxes unless you're participating in a draft, and only buy singles, especially Commander staple foils with the fewest printings. If you win prize packs at a draft, never open them and only use them as trade fodder to sweeten deals when someone has something you want in their trade binder. Also, buy as many specialty limited print run sealed products as possible and keep them that way (ie: From the Vault, Secret Lair). The best part? if you do this with your credit card and always pay that card on time, you can accumulate many reward dollars or air miles for free simply for buying the cards you were going to buy anyway, just in a different order and a larger quantity. And if you think doing this is bad because it onlt adds to the problem, you're simply missing out on opportunity because other people are already doing it regardless. Remember, hating on "whales" will never help you improve your collection for cheap. Becoming one will, so I say "if you can't beat em, join em".

One thing is for certain.... WoTC is printing a ton of product to make it virtually impossible for anyone to become a "completionist" (someone who literally wants a copy or playset of every card ever printed), unless of course they're a billionaire (but if you were, you'd be flipping real estate or real art (canvases, sculptures, etc) for greater profits, not mass-produced cardboard.

Of course, in the end, everyone plays the game (and the game within the game) differently, so you're free to disagree, ignore this advice, and miss as many boats as you wish. Good luck to all!