lol, yes, reading the EMA comments has hammered that home. People complain about weak mythics...but would also complain if WOTC responded by bumping Wasteland up to mythic.
The real take away from that is that there is too much range between the best mythics and complete chaff. A tighter range with the same average would be closer to ideal.
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That was pretty interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!
The real take away from that is that there is too much range between the best mythics and complete chaff. A tighter range with the same average would be closer to ideal.
Yeah, like in MM2. There's a bunch of dollar rares and then a small number of good ones like Cryptic Command and Fulminator Mage and Spellskite I find it awkward how I'd have the same odds of getting a $.50 Hellkite Charger or a $25 Cryptic!
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EDH/Commander
UBR Sedris RG Omnath, Locus of Rage UB The Scarab God RUG Maelstrom Wanderer WU Dragonlord Ojutai
Having chase rares that are worth well more than the price of a pack helps sell the set though. There's no way Wizards will stop setting it up that way.
The real take away from that is that there is too much range between the best mythics and complete chaff. A tighter range with the same average would be closer to ideal.
This is another source of incongruity: We want the value to be averaged out so that we almost always get our EV from cracking a pack, yet we also desperately want them to reprint Force of Will, Karakas, Wasteland, JTMS, Mana Crypt, Dack Fayden, Top, Vampiric Tutor, Natural Order... even though reprinting very valuable cards will make a set top-heavy.
See also: "MM2 was a complete Goyf lottery! Boo!" vs. "They must reprint Goyf, that price tag is unacceptable!".
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When I hit my 3000 post mark, I'm gone for good.
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
OP makes apt points. They certainly could make the average value of Mythics and Rares closer in range. But how much are you willing to pay per pack? You wouldn't even be able to approach MSRP on a pack if the average price of the rare/mythic exceeds MSRP.
Pack EV is not just a function of booster price + contents. Print run is also a factor.
Imagine WotC released a set where every pack was guaranteed a P9 plus 14 garbage cards, and they sold the packs for $1. Clearly pack EV would be very high if they only printed a single box. But if they printed 1,000,000,000 boxes, pack EV would be pretty much $1.
Everybody wants cards cheap. The people who want to make money of packs want to see the print runs kept small. That way WotC can cram >$10 of value into every $10 pack without crashing values (these people are relying on their wealth get packs/boxes/cases before the supply runs dry).
People who want cheap high end cards so they can play (including the benefits of format growth) want to see large print runs. These guys want Goyfs for <$50 not so they can turn around and sell them at profit! They just want cards at affordable prices. These people ultimate lately want WotC to print the ***** out of high end staples so that non-rotating formats are affordable to a wider demographic. Another way to think of it is that these folks want to see a high EV based on the prices before the set was released, but they are perfectly happy if the prices tank to the point where opening packs becomes EV neutral.
Obviously there are irrational people who want to have their cake and eat it too. But wanting a bigger flood of high end cards in a Masters set is by no means hypocritical.
Pack EV is not just a function of booster price + contents. Print run is also a factor.
Imagine WotC released a set where every pack was guaranteed a P9 plus 14 garbage cards, and they sold the packs for $1. Clearly pack EV would be very high if they only printed a single box. But if they printed 1,000,000,000 boxes, pack EV would be pretty much $1.
Everybody wants cards cheap. The people who want to make money of packs want to see the print runs kept small. That way WotC can cram >$10 of value into every $10 pack without crashing values (these people are relying on their wealth get packs/boxes/cases before the supply runs dry).
People who want cheap high end cards so they can play (including the benefits of format growth) want to see large print runs. These guys want Goyfs for <$50 not so they can turn around and sell them at profit! They just want cards at affordable prices. These people ultimate lately want WotC to print the ***** out of high end staples so that non-rotating formats are affordable to a wider demographic. Another way to think of it is that these folks want to see a high EV based on the prices before the set was released, but they are perfectly happy if the prices tank to the point where opening packs becomes EV neutral.
Obviously there are irrational people who want to have their cake and eat it too. But wanting a bigger flood of high end cards in a Masters set is by no means hypocritical.
So we hear a lot about what the player wants. But the player isn't the only entity in Magic. There is also the Collector, the distributors, the retailer (typically LGS's), and Wizards' itself.
Wizards has to balance all of these entities into something that everyone gets something, but no one gets everything. While certainly not perfect, these reprint sets have done a good job of balancing all of these entities.
It's nice to see that others realize that the player point of view isn't the only one in Magic.
My issue with Wizards is the power gap they've introduced between common, uncommon, rare, and mythic, and how it has played into "forcing" chase rares to be worth so much more than the rest of the chaff. Then when they finally release a set with a good balance of power across all lines of commonality, they charge a higher MSRP and expect people will want to buy the packs as much as, say, their latest standard offering.
What people want are Standard level price tags on sets with a power distribution like EMA. EMA's price itself isn't the issue: The issue is that EMA is the first set in ages to have a proper power distribution and is costing people who were waiting on a "good" magic set way more than what a standard player has to pay.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
1. I want cards to be cheap so that I don't have to spend much money on them.
BUT
2. I want cards to be expensive so that when I open packs I get value.
The interplay between these two causes most of the problems.
Well, that's one aspect of the discussion; the motivators. Note, however, that most packs only cost like $3.50, so you don't need $100.00 cards in a set to make cracking a pack worth value.
People want EMA to have a $10 EV but cost $4. It's not going to happen. There's no incentive to do this when Wizards knows they can get $10. This is a business and they are obligated to the Hasbro shareholders to generate revenue.
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These days, some wizards are finding they have a little too much deck left at the end of their $$$.
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Mine is more along the lines of... I want them to print way more (specifically with the specialty sets), with better cards (doesn't necessarily mean expensive, just better... there are much better cards then some of the crap that is chosen in these MM and VM sets) to drop the price so hard collectors crap their pants. And to stop designing the MM and VM sets for Limited.
All that and to get rid of the Mythic rarity.
This way there are more cards on the market, more even distribution of good cards at rare (so Mythics do not go for $40-100+), and the average price of all high money cards will drop (including the ones I own - It wouldn't bother me one bit).
I don't buy cards for their future value, I buy them to use and play with.
It sucks to see decent cards in a new set and the speculators and stores drive them up to ridiculous levels, before there is even any actual demand for them. It's to the point where I have changed my buying habits to picking up cards once they rotate out of standard. It's odd too, given I make way more now then when I started this game, but spend much less now (went from 3 boxes per release, to singles day of release to singles after the set leaves standard - cut the money I spend in half each time).
I know there are reasons ($$$) why it won't happen, but it's just what I would like to see happen.
Yeah, like in MM2. There's a bunch of dollar rares and then a small number of good ones like Cryptic Command and Fulminator Mage and Spellskite I find it awkward how I'd have the same odds of getting a $.50 Hellkite Charger or a $25 Cryptic!
One solution to that problem is to take Cryptic Command out of the set. Would you have wanted that?
The real take away from that is that there is too much range between the best mythics and complete chaff. A tighter range with the same average would be closer to ideal.
This is another source of incongruity: We want the value to be averaged out so that we almost always get our EV from cracking a pack, yet we also desperately want them to reprint Force of Will, Karakas, Wasteland, JTMS, Mana Crypt, Dack Fayden, Top, Vampiric Tutor, Natural Order... even though reprinting very valuable cards will make a set top-heavy.
See also: "MM2 was a complete Goyf lottery! Boo!" vs. "They must reprint Goyf, that price tag is unacceptable!".
Both of those can be true, meaning that Goyf should have been printed in a quantity high enough to bring it down to a less insane price point.
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That was pretty interesting. But dropping a warship on me is cheating. Take it back!
A card costs what people are willing to play for it. The prices are all due to netdecking. If no one buys Jaces for $100, people will stop selling them at $100. If every single deck in the top 8 run a card, people are going to want it. How much are they willing to pay for each of those cards? $10? $20? $50? If people stopped paying $150 per Tarmogoyf, the price is gonna drop to something people would start buying it for.
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A card costs what people are willing to play for it. The prices are all due to netdecking. If no one buys Jaces for $100, people will stop selling them at $100. If every single deck in the top 8 run a card, people are going to want it. How much are they willing to pay for each of those cards? $10? $20? $50? If people stopped paying $150 per Tarmogoyf, the price is gonna drop to something people would start buying it for.
The problem with this is that you aren't accounting for the rampant price manipulations that occur in the MTG singles market due to relatively small supply.
So far, there are literally just as many Omnath, Locus of Mana in the wild as Jace, the Mindsculptor. Both being a mythic rare from the same set and both appearing in a From the Vault product. So, they have been literally printed the same amount of times. One costs $11 and the other costs $85. Supply has nothing to do with that; it's demand. And since so many people want it, sellers ask for an exorbitant amount of money for them. Since people buy them at those prices, those are the prices that stick.
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If there's one thing you learn from a microeconomics class, it's that a company's goal is to MAXIMIZE PROFIT. Not our profit, theirs. If they think that pricing packs at a certain price and printing a certain amount will maximize their profit, then that's what they will do. The higher their price, the fewer they'll sell, and vice versa, but they will always choose to sell where total revenue is the farthest above total cost. Faulting them for that is holding them to a double standard, why do you expect a major corporation to go against conventional economics for the purpose of pleasing a small portion of the general public with something that is so far from a necessity that the socially optimal quantity isn't even really defined.
A card costs what people are willing to play for it. The prices are all due to netdecking. If no one buys Jaces for $100, people will stop selling them at $100. If every single deck in the top 8 run a card, people are going to want it. How much are they willing to pay for each of those cards? $10? $20? $50? If people stopped paying $150 per Tarmogoyf, the price is gonna drop to something people would start buying it for.
The problem with this is that you aren't accounting for the rampant price manipulations that occur in the MTG singles market due to relatively small supply.
So far, there are literally just as many Omnath, Locus of Mana in the wild as Jace, the Mindsculptor. Both being a mythic rare from the same set and both appearing in a From the Vault product. So, they have been literally printed the same amount of times. One costs $11 and the other costs $85. Supply has nothing to do with that; it's demand. And since so many people want it, sellers ask for an exorbitant amount of money for them. Since people buy them at those prices, those are the prices that stick.
Do you understand the concept of price manipulation?
The supply/demand ratio (ie, the number of copies of a card in comparison to the number of players representing demand) is constantly shrinking due to the growing playerbase of the game. It may have been adequate when the cards existed in Standard, but 5-10 years later, there are way more players wanting those cards now than before so the price rises. The smaller the percentage of cards to players is, the easier it is to manipulate the prices on the cards. We've seen this countless times before and it will continue to happen because Wizards refuses to reprint cards in a meaningful capacity. How many times do we have to watch people buyout cards like Storm World just for the sole purpose of spiking it for personal gain before something is done to stop this shameful practice?
Cards suffer from price manipulation, price memory, speculator outcry, poor reprint policies, and the inevitable increasing amount of demand that continues to drive up prices on cards with fixed supplies. For ****'s sake, does anyone here actually believe that places like SCG have never done this sort of thing? I mean, I wouldn't blame them because I sure as hell would do it in a heartbeat if I had that much control over the market with no regulations preventing me from doing so. Saying cards are expensive purely due to netdecking is pretty much the single most ignorant thing I've ever heard on the subject. There are about a million different factors that play into the ever increasing cost of the game. My personal opinion, for what it's worth, is that Magic cards aren't supposed to be investments that are all but guaranteed to increase in price over time; they're god damn trading cards meant to be used to play a game.
Again, you can't use the argument of cards to player ratio when the amount of cards in the wild in my example (Omnath and Jace) are the same. Price manipulation is a whole other argument - one which I also (indirectly) addressed. If those places in your border-line conspiracy theory were to drive up the prices on cards and no one buys them at that price, then they have no other choice than to lower the price because the demand at that price would be 0. Since people buy them at those prices regardless because they need it for their photocopy deck of the top 8 decks, then the price vultures will continue to sell them at such prices. If people stopped buying the cards at those prices the price will drop. That's simple economics. If someone sells something at a price no one will buy it at, they'd have to drop to price to be able to sell them.
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WotC had no influence on what the initial price for a card is going to be. That is all caused by the secondary market. WotC cannot come out and say stores cannot do that with their product either because if brick and mortar stores don't survive WotC goes out of business.
The only influence WotC has for prices is reprints. This is also a big problem with a collectible card game. Collectors want their collection to have value and increase in value over time. If WotC keeps reprinting cards to keep the price in check or lower it it hurts collectors.
You cannot make everyone happy. The game is expensive. Just accept it for what it is. Or play on MGTO it is much cheaper than paper magic but less quality as well.
I can't decide if this thread has been derailed or if this was the purpose all along.
I believe in the above example, both parties are correct. From an economics standpoint, DementedKirby is correct in the understanding of the market. Had Storm World been priced at, say, $10,000 instead of $50, I'd wager that 0 copies would have moved and the price would have decreased. Even after the buyout, pricing on that particular card has already fallen back down to $15. Economics at work! Price was too high and not enough copies moving, so price tanks. Granted, it's taken 8 months for it to happen, but the market does regulate itself.
I also believe that there are some individuals that do attempt to manipulate the market, but that it only happens on rare circumstances (yes - I believe Storm World was the object of a price manipulation). I also agree with MagicMan that people in general are stupid and panic when buying into spikes. That is more of a psychology question than an economics one. It's the psychological part that the price manipulators prey on.
I can't decide if this thread has been derailed or if this was the purpose all along.
I believe in the above example, both parties are correct. From an economics standpoint, DementedKirby is correct in the understanding of the market. Had Storm World been priced at, say, $10,000 instead of $50, I'd wager that 0 copies would have moved and the price would have decreased. Even after the buyout, pricing on that particular card has already fallen back down to $15. Economics at work! Price was too high and not enough copies moving, so price tanks. Granted, it's taken 8 months for it to happen, but the market does regulate itself.
I also believe that there are some individuals that do attempt to manipulate the market, but that it only happens on rare circumstances (yes - I believe Storm World was the object of a price manipulation). I also agree with MagicMan that people in general are stupid and panic when buying into spikes. That is more of a psychology question than an economics one. It's the psychological part that the price manipulators prey on.
Exactly my point. People need to be educated and stop buying cards when they're too expensive. If people stopped netdecking or being desperate when buying cards, their prices would stabilize. There are those who take advantage of this constantly. For example, I predicted that Seedborn Muse would explode in price when Prophet of Kruphix was banned in EDH. A couple of days later Seedborn Muse tripled in price. If people don't buy it at that price, then it'll drop again. If people become desperate and buy it regardless, the price won't drop. Again, the common factor remains the same: people should not buy expensive cards.
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I can't decide if this thread has been derailed or if this was the purpose all along.
I believe in the above example, both parties are correct. From an economics standpoint, DementedKirby is correct in the understanding of the market. Had Storm World been priced at, say, $10,000 instead of $50, I'd wager that 0 copies would have moved and the price would have decreased. Even after the buyout, pricing on that particular card has already fallen back down to $15. Economics at work! Price was too high and not enough copies moving, so price tanks. Granted, it's taken 8 months for it to happen, but the market does regulate itself.
I also believe that there are some individuals that do attempt to manipulate the market, but that it only happens on rare circumstances (yes - I believe Storm World was the object of a price manipulation). I also agree with MagicMan that people in general are stupid and panic when buying into spikes. That is more of a psychology question than an economics one. It's the psychological part that the price manipulators prey on.
Exactly my point. People need to be educated and stop buying cards when they're too expensive. If people stopped netdecking or being desperate when buying cards, their prices would stabilize. There are those who take advantage of this constantly. For example, I predicted that Seedborn Muse would explode in price when Prophet of Kruphix was banned in EDH. A couple of days later Seedborn Muse tripled in price. If people don't buy it at that price, then it'll drop again. If people become desperate and buy it regardless, the price won't drop. Again, the common factor remains the same: people should not buy expensive cards.
If you figure out the secret to make people stop doing stupid things that act against their own interest, by all means let me know. Meanwhile, I'll be here in the US where we're getting ready to elect one of the two most absolutely hated people in the country as president.
Don't remind us... I would say that "hopefully when this is recorded in the history books people will learn from history" but people don't learn anything. Trump/Clinton is literally the worst-case scenario in the history ever of the US. You can bet your sweet can that some Nostradamus scholar is looking for the quatrain that predicts the beginning of the end times as the point in human history when the US has to vote between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as their president. Isn't this scenario the deleted prologue of the movie "Idiocracy"? But, I digress... I guess there are worse things to worry about than cracking open a pack of Eternal Masters and have your mythic rare be Worldgorger Dragon.
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I can't decide if this thread has been derailed or if this was the purpose all along.
I believe in the above example, both parties are correct. From an economics standpoint, DementedKirby is correct in the understanding of the market. Had Storm World been priced at, say, $10,000 instead of $50, I'd wager that 0 copies would have moved and the price would have decreased. Even after the buyout, pricing on that particular card has already fallen back down to $15. Economics at work! Price was too high and not enough copies moving, so price tanks. Granted, it's taken 8 months for it to happen, but the market does regulate itself.
I also believe that there are some individuals that do attempt to manipulate the market, but that it only happens on rare circumstances (yes - I believe Storm World was the object of a price manipulation). I also agree with MagicMan that people in general are stupid and panic when buying into spikes. That is more of a psychology question than an economics one. It's the psychological part that the price manipulators prey on.
Exactly my point. People need to be educated and stop buying cards when they're too expensive. If people stopped netdecking or being desperate when buying cards, their prices would stabilize. There are those who take advantage of this constantly. For example, I predicted that Seedborn Muse would explode in price when Prophet of Kruphix was banned in EDH. A couple of days later Seedborn Muse tripled in price. If people don't buy it at that price, then it'll drop again. If people become desperate and buy it regardless, the price won't drop. Again, the common factor remains the same: people should not buy expensive cards.
What makes this even more brutal is EDH is the nearest example of a an Eternal Format at "low" prices for everyone. The price of creating such a format was to have it revolve around Color restrictions, have it be a 99 singleton-format and be a Multiplayer format, which is a major reason for it to be unqualified to be at a GP-level and-above format (because let's face it, the nature of Multiplayer by itself has issues that keep higher-level tournaments at bay). Despite all that twisting to ensure it stays at a Casual Level, in even tournaments (at least relatively), the Secondary Market impact could still be seen from the Seedborn Muse example.
Even at the most casual of formats Magic players are so jumpy... and then we take that jumpiness as "demand" and then push the complete fault to WotC for not being as "jumpy" as we are. I'm not saying WotC is completely blame-free (they've been too cautious recently for my liking), but WoTC doesn't buy into the jumpiness because they know it's way too elastic and can crash way too easily with the wrong move. Even the bubble forming now was just the result of Jumpiness combined over the years. WotC might have done a terrible job at trying to retain them from combining, but to say the solution is the equal combined opposite is honestly just a terrible business decision no matter how you look at it.
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1. I want cards to be cheap so that I don't have to spend much money on them.
BUT
2. I want cards to be expensive so that when I open packs I get value.
The interplay between these two causes most of the problems.
Yeah, like in MM2. There's a bunch of dollar rares and then a small number of good ones like Cryptic Command and Fulminator Mage and Spellskite I find it awkward how I'd have the same odds of getting a $.50 Hellkite Charger or a $25 Cryptic!
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
See also: "MM2 was a complete Goyf lottery! Boo!" vs. "They must reprint Goyf, that price tag is unacceptable!".
Stay reasonable, be mindful of your expectations and don't feed the trolls.
Doomsdayin'
Imagine WotC released a set where every pack was guaranteed a P9 plus 14 garbage cards, and they sold the packs for $1. Clearly pack EV would be very high if they only printed a single box. But if they printed 1,000,000,000 boxes, pack EV would be pretty much $1.
Everybody wants cards cheap. The people who want to make money of packs want to see the print runs kept small. That way WotC can cram >$10 of value into every $10 pack without crashing values (these people are relying on their wealth get packs/boxes/cases before the supply runs dry).
People who want cheap high end cards so they can play (including the benefits of format growth) want to see large print runs. These guys want Goyfs for <$50 not so they can turn around and sell them at profit! They just want cards at affordable prices. These people ultimate lately want WotC to print the ***** out of high end staples so that non-rotating formats are affordable to a wider demographic. Another way to think of it is that these folks want to see a high EV based on the prices before the set was released, but they are perfectly happy if the prices tank to the point where opening packs becomes EV neutral.
Obviously there are irrational people who want to have their cake and eat it too. But wanting a bigger flood of high end cards in a Masters set is by no means hypocritical.
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RUGLegacy Lands.dec
RUGBLegacy Lands.dec
RGLegacy Lands.dec
WUBRG EDH Lands.dec
UBR EDH Artificer Prodigy
B EDH Relentless Rats
So we hear a lot about what the player wants. But the player isn't the only entity in Magic. There is also the Collector, the distributors, the retailer (typically LGS's), and Wizards' itself.
Wizards has to balance all of these entities into something that everyone gets something, but no one gets everything. While certainly not perfect, these reprint sets have done a good job of balancing all of these entities.
It's nice to see that others realize that the player point of view isn't the only one in Magic.
What people want are Standard level price tags on sets with a power distribution like EMA. EMA's price itself isn't the issue: The issue is that EMA is the first set in ages to have a proper power distribution and is costing people who were waiting on a "good" magic set way more than what a standard player has to pay.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Well, that's one aspect of the discussion; the motivators. Note, however, that most packs only cost like $3.50, so you don't need $100.00 cards in a set to make cracking a pack worth value.
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Mine is more along the lines of... I want them to print way more (specifically with the specialty sets), with better cards (doesn't necessarily mean expensive, just better... there are much better cards then some of the crap that is chosen in these MM and VM sets) to drop the price so hard collectors crap their pants. And to stop designing the MM and VM sets for Limited.
All that and to get rid of the Mythic rarity.
This way there are more cards on the market, more even distribution of good cards at rare (so Mythics do not go for $40-100+), and the average price of all high money cards will drop (including the ones I own - It wouldn't bother me one bit).
I don't buy cards for their future value, I buy them to use and play with.
It sucks to see decent cards in a new set and the speculators and stores drive them up to ridiculous levels, before there is even any actual demand for them. It's to the point where I have changed my buying habits to picking up cards once they rotate out of standard. It's odd too, given I make way more now then when I started this game, but spend much less now (went from 3 boxes per release, to singles day of release to singles after the set leaves standard - cut the money I spend in half each time).
I know there are reasons ($$$) why it won't happen, but it's just what I would like to see happen.
http://www.cubetutor.com/visualspoiler/20765
One solution to that problem is to take Cryptic Command out of the set. Would you have wanted that?
that and people complaining about getting bulk rares i
Both of those can be true, meaning that Goyf should have been printed in a quantity high enough to bring it down to a less insane price point.
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So far, there are literally just as many Omnath, Locus of Mana in the wild as Jace, the Mindsculptor. Both being a mythic rare from the same set and both appearing in a From the Vault product. So, they have been literally printed the same amount of times. One costs $11 and the other costs $85. Supply has nothing to do with that; it's demand. And since so many people want it, sellers ask for an exorbitant amount of money for them. Since people buy them at those prices, those are the prices that stick.
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Again, you can't use the argument of cards to player ratio when the amount of cards in the wild in my example (Omnath and Jace) are the same. Price manipulation is a whole other argument - one which I also (indirectly) addressed. If those places in your border-line conspiracy theory were to drive up the prices on cards and no one buys them at that price, then they have no other choice than to lower the price because the demand at that price would be 0. Since people buy them at those prices regardless because they need it for their photocopy deck of the top 8 decks, then the price vultures will continue to sell them at such prices. If people stopped buying the cards at those prices the price will drop. That's simple economics. If someone sells something at a price no one will buy it at, they'd have to drop to price to be able to sell them.
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
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The only influence WotC has for prices is reprints. This is also a big problem with a collectible card game. Collectors want their collection to have value and increase in value over time. If WotC keeps reprinting cards to keep the price in check or lower it it hurts collectors.
You cannot make everyone happy. The game is expensive. Just accept it for what it is. Or play on MGTO it is much cheaper than paper magic but less quality as well.
I believe in the above example, both parties are correct. From an economics standpoint, DementedKirby is correct in the understanding of the market. Had Storm World been priced at, say, $10,000 instead of $50, I'd wager that 0 copies would have moved and the price would have decreased. Even after the buyout, pricing on that particular card has already fallen back down to $15. Economics at work! Price was too high and not enough copies moving, so price tanks. Granted, it's taken 8 months for it to happen, but the market does regulate itself.
I also believe that there are some individuals that do attempt to manipulate the market, but that it only happens on rare circumstances (yes - I believe Storm World was the object of a price manipulation). I also agree with MagicMan that people in general are stupid and panic when buying into spikes. That is more of a psychology question than an economics one. It's the psychological part that the price manipulators prey on.
Exactly my point. People need to be educated and stop buying cards when they're too expensive. If people stopped netdecking or being desperate when buying cards, their prices would stabilize. There are those who take advantage of this constantly. For example, I predicted that Seedborn Muse would explode in price when Prophet of Kruphix was banned in EDH. A couple of days later Seedborn Muse tripled in price. If people don't buy it at that price, then it'll drop again. If people become desperate and buy it regardless, the price won't drop. Again, the common factor remains the same: people should not buy expensive cards.
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
Don't remind us... I would say that "hopefully when this is recorded in the history books people will learn from history" but people don't learn anything. Trump/Clinton is literally the worst-case scenario in the history ever of the US. You can bet your sweet can that some Nostradamus scholar is looking for the quatrain that predicts the beginning of the end times as the point in human history when the US has to vote between Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as their president. Isn't this scenario the deleted prologue of the movie "Idiocracy"? But, I digress... I guess there are worse things to worry about than cracking open a pack of Eternal Masters and have your mythic rare be Worldgorger Dragon.
BGU [Primer] Sidisi, Brood Tyrant BGU | BG [Primer] Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest BG | G [Primer] Polukranos, World Eater G
My YouTube Channel:
The Commander Tavern - a channel I just started where I'll post deck techs and gameplays. Please support by checking it out. Maybe you'll like its content and subscribe! Thanks!
What makes this even more brutal is EDH is the nearest example of a an Eternal Format at "low" prices for everyone. The price of creating such a format was to have it revolve around Color restrictions, have it be a 99 singleton-format and be a Multiplayer format, which is a major reason for it to be unqualified to be at a GP-level and-above format (because let's face it, the nature of Multiplayer by itself has issues that keep higher-level tournaments at bay). Despite all that twisting to ensure it stays at a Casual Level, in even tournaments (at least relatively), the Secondary Market impact could still be seen from the Seedborn Muse example.
Even at the most casual of formats Magic players are so jumpy... and then we take that jumpiness as "demand" and then push the complete fault to WotC for not being as "jumpy" as we are. I'm not saying WotC is completely blame-free (they've been too cautious recently for my liking), but WoTC doesn't buy into the jumpiness because they know it's way too elastic and can crash way too easily with the wrong move. Even the bubble forming now was just the result of Jumpiness combined over the years. WotC might have done a terrible job at trying to retain them from combining, but to say the solution is the equal combined opposite is honestly just a terrible business decision no matter how you look at it.