So lets assume that wotc reprints shocks in RtRtR what do you think will happen to shock prices?
Go down, go up, stay the dame or get banned in Brawl?
On average, drop slightly. If you just want a copy, they'll be a bit cheaper. If you have an OG copy to move, it'll go up a little. Supply will go way up, but so will demand.
I also have no idea why they'd be instabanned in Brawl, a nascent singleton format that doesn't really care about what one mana-producing land can do.
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Reprints almost universally drop a card's price. In some cases, they crash the card's price.
Let's say they didn't. The why would people want the reserve list to be abolished. After all, if reprinting cards is going to raise prices, why on earth would people want the price of reserve list cards to raised more? Pure and simple, people want reprints because it drops prices.
There are some very minor exceptions to this rule.
1. The accessibility of the reprint. If the reprint is so inaccessible, the increase in supply will be too low to affect the new cards' price. examples include: DCI judge foils, Zendikar Expedition foil reprints possibly, Mutavault full art, etc.
2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.
3. Reprint coincides with a surge in demand. The reprint of Solemn Simulacrum at its time reintroduced solemn into standard. For a little while at least the demand from standard outstripped the increase in supply. It hit a peak of nearly 10 each. After solemn rotated however, the price went lower than ever, and it sits now at 4 for 10.
4. Stunts a card's price. In some case, you fail to notice the drop in cards price because the card was appreciating. A reprint in a low quantity merely stunted the rise in the cards price rather than causing it to drop. Example: mythic rarity reprints in Modern Masters sets.
The community has decided Magic is for players not collectors. You should never ever hold on to any cards. You should sell your cards when you no longer need them. If the first reprint of tarmogoyf didn't convince you, then perhaps the second did. If that didn't then many the third did.
Wizards has gone on a reprinting tear. The long term trend of all non reserve list cards is down. If you want to speculate on a card's rise, you have to be correct in the next few weeks, month, or year. The destiny of every non-reserve list card is to be reprinted. period. end of story.
If you are not playing with the non-reserve list cards: sell. There is nothing in life to stop you from ever buying back your cards.
Even if you buy cards in anticipation of it's removal from a banlist--aka Jace the Mind sculptor in modern, Wizards will reprint it to counteract the speculation and rise of the card.
2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.
That's not at all why a shockland will never be a penny. Shocklands are expensive because they're heavily played in Modern and EDH, and thus there's significant demand for them. There are definitely rares that are worth a fraction of the price of a booster pack. The store isn't losing money on selling those because they're selling other rares (typically, in a set that includes them, shocklands) for more than the price of a pack.
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2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.
That's not at all why a shockland will never be a penny. Shocklands are expensive because they're heavily played in Modern and EDH, and thus there's significant demand for them. There are definitely rares that are worth a fraction of the price of a booster pack. The store isn't losing money on selling those because they're selling other rares (typically, in a set that includes them, shocklands) for more than the price of a pack.
We're talking about different forces here both of which affect price. Mine is a supply side argument and yours is a demand side argument.
One reason why a car will never be a penny is because it costs way more to make the car than a penny. Manufacturers would have to willingly want to lose money to sell their cars for a penny each. Same as with shocklands.
The difference with magic is it's more complex. You're not looking at the physical price of manufacturing a shockland so much as how much money it costs to "generate" a shockland after Wizards R&D, paying the artist(s), promoting their product, and leaving enough money on the table to make a local game shop want to support Magic. It's not so much physically making the cardboard as it is about paying all the people along the way to make it happen. Magic cards can't sell for the price it costs to make them at their physical cardboard price because Wizards can't afford to promote the game at those prices, and local game shops who need to use their shops efficiently can't afford to sell mtg rares at those prices.
Now let's talk about your point which is demand side.
Demand for shocklands come from Modern and EDH. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Let's say a new Modern deck is tearing up the tournament scene and uses 4 Breeding Pools. If UG wasn't a popular color before, the sudden appearance of Breeding pools in a winning new brew will likely spike up demand, causing the prices to be raised.
More demand = Higher price.
Less demand = Lower price.
What if demand is zero, does that mean the price of shocklands is zero?
In a purely theoretical world, yes. If demand is truly zero, there is no sale of the product.
But in a practical world, no. Zero demand means that the price of a product has a floor--the floor being the price it costs to "make" it. And we're back to supply side forces dictating the price.
Edit:
I wanted to add that my discussion of supply side forces is food for thought. Realistically, demand forces overwhelmingly dictate the price of MTG cards.
Where supply side forces really come in is in the form of transaction costs such as shipping and handling, the trouble a seller has to take to sell the cards, or when the the prices of rares of a set cause the EV of boxes of a set to be well below MSRP.
2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.
That's not at all why a shockland will never be a penny. Shocklands are expensive because they're heavily played in Modern and EDH, and thus there's significant demand for them. There are definitely rares that are worth a fraction of the price of a booster pack. The store isn't losing money on selling those because they're selling other rares (typically, in a set that includes them, shocklands) for more than the price of a pack.
We're talking about different forces here both of which affect price. Mine is a supply side argument and yours is a demand side argument.
One reason why a car will never be a penny is because it costs way more to make the car than a penny. Manufacturers would have to willingly want to lose money to sell their cars for a penny each. Same as with shocklands.
The difference with magic is it's more complex. You're not looking at the physical price of manufacturing a shockland so much as how much money it costs to "generate" a shockland after Wizards R&D, paying the artist(s), promoting their product, and leaving enough money on the table to make a local game shop want to support Magic. It's not so much physically making the cardboard as it is about paying all the people along the way to make it happen. Magic cards can't sell for the price it costs to make them at their physical cardboard price because Wizards can't afford to promote the game at those prices, and local game shops who need to use their shops efficiently can't afford to sell mtg rares at those prices.
Now let's talk about your point which is demand side.
Demand for shocklands come from Modern and EDH. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Let's say a new Modern deck is tearing up the tournament scene and uses 4 Breeding Pools. If UG wasn't a popular color before, the sudden appearance of Breeding pools in a winning new brew will likely spike up demand, causing the prices to be raised.
More demand = Higher price.
Less demand = Lower price.
What if demand is zero, does that mean the price of shocklands is zero?
In a purely theoretical world, yes. If demand is truly zero, there is no sale of the product.
But in a practical world, no. Zero demand means that the price of a product has a floor--the floor being the price it costs to "make" it. And we're back to supply side forces dictating the price.
Edit:
I wanted to add that my discussion of supply side forces is food for thought. Realistically, demand forces overwhelmingly dictate the price of MTG cards.
Where supply side forces really come in is in the form of transaction costs such as shipping and handling, the trouble a seller has to take to sell the cards, or when the the prices of rares of a set cause the EV of boxes of a set to be well below MSRP.
That is not necessarily true, You can find stores selling some cards for pennies. Their are garbage rares worth 10cents or less. On Starcity the lowest I found was 0.09. This means they can and do sell cards that low. You can get bulk lots pretty cheap if you break down the per card price. IT is entirely possible for duel lands to be reprinted enough to drop to a penny or less. For example lets say they are printed as a rare but they also print new fancy Trilands (real come in play untapped multiland type trilands with game no negative effects (or even positive ones like gain 2 life when this comes in to play or draw a card ) at mythic in the same set. not to say it will happen its profoundly unlikely but it is possible.
2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.
That's not at all why a shockland will never be a penny. Shocklands are expensive because they're heavily played in Modern and EDH, and thus there's significant demand for them. There are definitely rares that are worth a fraction of the price of a booster pack. The store isn't losing money on selling those because they're selling other rares (typically, in a set that includes them, shocklands) for more than the price of a pack.
We're talking about different forces here both of which affect price. Mine is a supply side argument and yours is a demand side argument.
One reason why a car will never be a penny is because it costs way more to make the car than a penny. Manufacturers would have to willingly want to lose money to sell their cars for a penny each. Same as with shocklands.
The difference with magic is it's more complex. You're not looking at the physical price of manufacturing a shockland so much as how much money it costs to "generate" a shockland after Wizards R&D, paying the artist(s), promoting their product, and leaving enough money on the table to make a local game shop want to support Magic. It's not so much physically making the cardboard as it is about paying all the people along the way to make it happen. Magic cards can't sell for the price it costs to make them at their physical cardboard price because Wizards can't afford to promote the game at those prices, and local game shops who need to use their shops efficiently can't afford to sell mtg rares at those prices.
Now let's talk about your point which is demand side.
Demand for shocklands come from Modern and EDH. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Let's say a new Modern deck is tearing up the tournament scene and uses 4 Breeding Pools. If UG wasn't a popular color before, the sudden appearance of Breeding pools in a winning new brew will likely spike up demand, causing the prices to be raised.
More demand = Higher price.
Less demand = Lower price.
What if demand is zero, does that mean the price of shocklands is zero?
In a purely theoretical world, yes. If demand is truly zero, there is no sale of the product.
But in a practical world, no. Zero demand means that the price of a product has a floor--the floor being the price it costs to "make" it. And we're back to supply side forces dictating the price.
Edit:
I wanted to add that my discussion of supply side forces is food for thought. Realistically, demand forces overwhelmingly dictate the price of MTG cards.
Where supply side forces really come in is in the form of transaction costs such as shipping and handling, the trouble a seller has to take to sell the cards, or when the the prices of rares of a set cause the EV of boxes of a set to be well below MSRP.
That is not necessarily true, You can find stores selling some cards for pennies. Their are garbage rares worth 10cents or less. On Starcity the lowest I found was 0.09. This means they can and do sell cards that low. You can get bulk lots pretty cheap if you break down the per card price. IT is entirely possible for duel lands to be reprinted enough to drop to a penny or less. For example lets say they are printed as a rare but they also print new fancy Trilands (real come in play untapped multiland type trilands with game no negative effects (or even positive ones like gain 2 life when this comes in to play or draw a card ) at mythic in the same set. not to say it will happen its profoundly unlikely but it is possible.
This is a good counter-argument and something I didn't want to get into if I could help it.
Let's talk about it through from a supply side perspective.
Suppose that commons from the next set released for standard were to sell for pennies. Would that affect magic?
The answer is no. In fact that's exactly how mtg works. Most of the value in a set is stored up in a few chase rares, and mythics. Fair enough.
Suppose now that not only do the commons of the next set sell for pennnies, but the uncommons, rares, and mythic rares do as well.
Would that affect magic. as we know it? From a supply side perspective, the answer is yes.
First of all, if the commons, uncommons, rares, and mythics of a set were to each sell for pennies, the EV of the set would be negligible. At such rock bottom prices, local game shops which tend to pick up booster boxes at 60-70 dollars each would be guaranteed to lose money. Stores selling singles would reap pennies of profit. So my argument here is really that you have counter-force unrelated to demand which prevents shocklands from going too low.
From the supply side, the only way you could sell shocks for pennies is if stores could recoup the costs of selling magic through other cards in the set. For all intents and purposes, this is impossible. Theoretically possible, but practically impossible.
Since it's hard to distinguish the supply side and demand side, let's talk about what would happen to shocklands if they sold for pennies from a demand side perspective.
Demand side, people would pick up hundreds of shocklands, jacking up their prices. Hell at pennies each, I could pick up a few hundred for $20 and speculate. It would be pretty hard to lose money. The prices of shocks would skyrocket quickly. The demand would quickly suck out the supply. Let's say shocklands would go to a dollar each. Depending on how many pennies each shock went for, your investment would increase in value 25-50 times. But even at a dollar each, shocks would still go quickly. Stores seeing the demand, and not wanting to run out of inventory would quickly raise their prices to compensate.
Anyways, the reason why we talk about theoretical impossibilities in mtg finance is really to get a better understanding of the various forces that exist in the market. It's not to really argue that something will or even could happen.
You ask yourself a question like...what if shocklands went to 2 cents each. and you raise up in your mind an answer like "hmm, even if no one demanded shocklands at 2cents each, I'm not even sure stores could sell them at that price" Then you explore why.
Let's talk about your direct argument now. Let's say shocklands became garbage rares selling for 10 cents each. It's possible. But certain things have to happen for that to occur.
1) If shocklands drop to dime rare status, then when wizards reprints them in new sets, something else has to take their place in that new set so that the EV of a booster box is roughly equal to that a booster box.
2) Something would have to prevent people from speculating on shocklands, since at 10 cents each, a guy with 5 bucks could pick up 50 of them, and quickly jack up the price again.
3) retail shops that lose money from the value of shocks dropping would have to recoup their costs in other ways to make such shops willing to part with their copies of shocklands at 10 cents each.
I brought up EV a few times, but let's elaborate on how EV affects card prices generally.
EV or expected value is a concept from probability theory. It's basically the value of cards you can expect to crack on average. EV is usually applied to booster boxes.
How to calculate EV?
You multiply the probability of something occurring by the value of the outcome. Then you add up all possible outcomes.
Let's start with a dice. What is the expected value of a dice roll?
(1/6) * 1 + (1/6) * 2 + (1/6) * 3 + (1/6) * 4 + (1/6) * 5 + (1/6) * 6 = EV = 3.5
So let's play a game. You roll a dice and whatever it lands on, I have to pay you that many dollars. You roll a six, I pay you six bucks. You roll a one, I pay you 1 dollar. The question is this. How much do I have to charge you per attempt so that I break even. The answer? 3.5 dollars. Since on average, the value of the roll is 3.5. Intuitively this makes sense. If I charge you 1 dollar per roll, Im definitely going to lose money long term. Likewise if I charge you 6 dollars per roll, you're definitely going to lose money long term.
So, the basic EV calculation is the value of the mtg card * the probability you will get that card for all cards in the set.
Let's assume the price of a booster box is $90 for the sake of discussion.
If the EV of a booster box is greater than 90 dollars, then on average you will make money if you open up a box. You might not make money on that particular box. But if you open many many boxes, you will make money. If the EV is 150 dollars a box, then on average, you will make 60 dollars per box on magic. Wow!
Similarly if the EV of a booster box is 40 dollars, then on average you will lose 50 dollars per box you open.
So how does this affect the market? Simple.
If the EV of a box exceeds the price of a box by alot, you should buy a box. Hell you should buy as many boxes as you can. The more boxes you buy the more money you make. In this scenario what has occurred in the past was the price of booster boxes climbs higher than 90. When RTR first came out and shocklands were really high value, you couldn't get boxes for less than 120. and even then there were shortages!
Alright, what if the EV is way less than the price of a box? Don't buy boxes! Go buy your singles, and go home. Brew!
If memory serves Dragon's Maze was a perfect example of where the EV of the boxes were super low. When this happens inventory tends to sit for awhile. This actually happened with the Kamigawa sets back in the day, before modern.
So let's get a little deeper now, based on analysis and based on mtg history.
If the EV of a box is significantly higher than the price of box, we know people will be incentivized to buy as many boxes as they can. In fact they should crack open packs, sell the singles, and use the cash to buy more boxes. The result of a high EV is usually the following: a) shortage. stores continue to sell boxes for 90 each, but since the value per box is so much higher, people snipe them at every opportunity. Walmart would be an example here for certain commander product. Walmart doesnt care about mtg. They sell at MSRP usually. They also run out. b) price per box rises. stores don't continue to sell boxes for 90 each, instead stores raise prices. This is the typical local game shop and ebay behavior. c) wizards prints a ton. Supply side argument. Don't forget, if the EV of a set is way higher than the retail price of box, Wizards DOES have the power to print a set into oblivion, increasing the supply of 90 dollar boosters by so much, they inflate away the value of the cards. In this case, the EV will drop because the price of the cards in the set will drop from oversupply. RTR had this issue.
Finally remember, these forces are not mutually exclusive. Often times all of the above will be occurring at the same time.
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Go down, go up, stay the dame or get banned in Brawl?
I'm not sure why they'd ban shocks from Brawl though
Draft My Cube!
On average, drop slightly. If you just want a copy, they'll be a bit cheaper. If you have an OG copy to move, it'll go up a little. Supply will go way up, but so will demand.
I also have no idea why they'd be instabanned in Brawl, a nascent singleton format that doesn't really care about what one mana-producing land can do.
Let's say they didn't. The why would people want the reserve list to be abolished. After all, if reprinting cards is going to raise prices, why on earth would people want the price of reserve list cards to raised more? Pure and simple, people want reprints because it drops prices.
There are some very minor exceptions to this rule.
1. The accessibility of the reprint. If the reprint is so inaccessible, the increase in supply will be too low to affect the new cards' price. examples include: DCI judge foils, Zendikar Expedition foil reprints possibly, Mutavault full art, etc.
2. Card value is already too low. There are absolute minimums to which card prices can drop. A shockland can never be a penny. Why not? Because the price of the pack is $3.95 retail. It does not matter how many copies are out there, selling a shockland (the one rare in a pack) at a penny means someone somewhere somehow is taking a huge loss--player or game shop. Similarly reprinting mountains and islands does nothing to their price because they are more or less worthless.
3. Reprint coincides with a surge in demand. The reprint of Solemn Simulacrum at its time reintroduced solemn into standard. For a little while at least the demand from standard outstripped the increase in supply. It hit a peak of nearly 10 each. After solemn rotated however, the price went lower than ever, and it sits now at 4 for 10.
4. Stunts a card's price. In some case, you fail to notice the drop in cards price because the card was appreciating. A reprint in a low quantity merely stunted the rise in the cards price rather than causing it to drop. Example: mythic rarity reprints in Modern Masters sets.
The community has decided Magic is for players not collectors. You should never ever hold on to any cards. You should sell your cards when you no longer need them. If the first reprint of tarmogoyf didn't convince you, then perhaps the second did. If that didn't then many the third did.
Wizards has gone on a reprinting tear. The long term trend of all non reserve list cards is down. If you want to speculate on a card's rise, you have to be correct in the next few weeks, month, or year. The destiny of every non-reserve list card is to be reprinted. period. end of story.
If you are not playing with the non-reserve list cards: sell. There is nothing in life to stop you from ever buying back your cards.
Even if you buy cards in anticipation of it's removal from a banlist--aka Jace the Mind sculptor in modern, Wizards will reprint it to counteract the speculation and rise of the card.
That's not at all why a shockland will never be a penny. Shocklands are expensive because they're heavily played in Modern and EDH, and thus there's significant demand for them. There are definitely rares that are worth a fraction of the price of a booster pack. The store isn't losing money on selling those because they're selling other rares (typically, in a set that includes them, shocklands) for more than the price of a pack.
We're talking about different forces here both of which affect price. Mine is a supply side argument and yours is a demand side argument.
One reason why a car will never be a penny is because it costs way more to make the car than a penny. Manufacturers would have to willingly want to lose money to sell their cars for a penny each. Same as with shocklands.
The difference with magic is it's more complex. You're not looking at the physical price of manufacturing a shockland so much as how much money it costs to "generate" a shockland after Wizards R&D, paying the artist(s), promoting their product, and leaving enough money on the table to make a local game shop want to support Magic. It's not so much physically making the cardboard as it is about paying all the people along the way to make it happen. Magic cards can't sell for the price it costs to make them at their physical cardboard price because Wizards can't afford to promote the game at those prices, and local game shops who need to use their shops efficiently can't afford to sell mtg rares at those prices.
Now let's talk about your point which is demand side.
Demand for shocklands come from Modern and EDH. The higher the demand, the higher the price. Let's say a new Modern deck is tearing up the tournament scene and uses 4 Breeding Pools. If UG wasn't a popular color before, the sudden appearance of Breeding pools in a winning new brew will likely spike up demand, causing the prices to be raised.
More demand = Higher price.
Less demand = Lower price.
What if demand is zero, does that mean the price of shocklands is zero?
In a purely theoretical world, yes. If demand is truly zero, there is no sale of the product.
But in a practical world, no. Zero demand means that the price of a product has a floor--the floor being the price it costs to "make" it. And we're back to supply side forces dictating the price.
Edit:
I wanted to add that my discussion of supply side forces is food for thought. Realistically, demand forces overwhelmingly dictate the price of MTG cards.
Where supply side forces really come in is in the form of transaction costs such as shipping and handling, the trouble a seller has to take to sell the cards, or when the the prices of rares of a set cause the EV of boxes of a set to be well below MSRP.
That is not necessarily true, You can find stores selling some cards for pennies. Their are garbage rares worth 10cents or less. On Starcity the lowest I found was 0.09. This means they can and do sell cards that low. You can get bulk lots pretty cheap if you break down the per card price. IT is entirely possible for duel lands to be reprinted enough to drop to a penny or less. For example lets say they are printed as a rare but they also print new fancy Trilands (real come in play untapped multiland type trilands with game no negative effects (or even positive ones like gain 2 life when this comes in to play or draw a card ) at mythic in the same set. not to say it will happen its profoundly unlikely but it is possible.
This is a good counter-argument and something I didn't want to get into if I could help it.
Let's talk about it through from a supply side perspective.
Suppose that commons from the next set released for standard were to sell for pennies. Would that affect magic?
The answer is no. In fact that's exactly how mtg works. Most of the value in a set is stored up in a few chase rares, and mythics. Fair enough.
Suppose now that not only do the commons of the next set sell for pennnies, but the uncommons, rares, and mythic rares do as well.
Would that affect magic. as we know it? From a supply side perspective, the answer is yes.
First of all, if the commons, uncommons, rares, and mythics of a set were to each sell for pennies, the EV of the set would be negligible. At such rock bottom prices, local game shops which tend to pick up booster boxes at 60-70 dollars each would be guaranteed to lose money. Stores selling singles would reap pennies of profit. So my argument here is really that you have counter-force unrelated to demand which prevents shocklands from going too low.
From the supply side, the only way you could sell shocks for pennies is if stores could recoup the costs of selling magic through other cards in the set. For all intents and purposes, this is impossible. Theoretically possible, but practically impossible.
Since it's hard to distinguish the supply side and demand side, let's talk about what would happen to shocklands if they sold for pennies from a demand side perspective.
Demand side, people would pick up hundreds of shocklands, jacking up their prices. Hell at pennies each, I could pick up a few hundred for $20 and speculate. It would be pretty hard to lose money. The prices of shocks would skyrocket quickly. The demand would quickly suck out the supply. Let's say shocklands would go to a dollar each. Depending on how many pennies each shock went for, your investment would increase in value 25-50 times. But even at a dollar each, shocks would still go quickly. Stores seeing the demand, and not wanting to run out of inventory would quickly raise their prices to compensate.
Anyways, the reason why we talk about theoretical impossibilities in mtg finance is really to get a better understanding of the various forces that exist in the market. It's not to really argue that something will or even could happen.
You ask yourself a question like...what if shocklands went to 2 cents each. and you raise up in your mind an answer like "hmm, even if no one demanded shocklands at 2cents each, I'm not even sure stores could sell them at that price" Then you explore why.
Let's talk about your direct argument now. Let's say shocklands became garbage rares selling for 10 cents each. It's possible. But certain things have to happen for that to occur.
1) If shocklands drop to dime rare status, then when wizards reprints them in new sets, something else has to take their place in that new set so that the EV of a booster box is roughly equal to that a booster box.
2) Something would have to prevent people from speculating on shocklands, since at 10 cents each, a guy with 5 bucks could pick up 50 of them, and quickly jack up the price again.
3) retail shops that lose money from the value of shocks dropping would have to recoup their costs in other ways to make such shops willing to part with their copies of shocklands at 10 cents each.
EV or expected value is a concept from probability theory. It's basically the value of cards you can expect to crack on average. EV is usually applied to booster boxes.
How to calculate EV?
You multiply the probability of something occurring by the value of the outcome. Then you add up all possible outcomes.
Let's start with a dice. What is the expected value of a dice roll?
(1/6) * 1 + (1/6) * 2 + (1/6) * 3 + (1/6) * 4 + (1/6) * 5 + (1/6) * 6 = EV = 3.5
So let's play a game. You roll a dice and whatever it lands on, I have to pay you that many dollars. You roll a six, I pay you six bucks. You roll a one, I pay you 1 dollar. The question is this. How much do I have to charge you per attempt so that I break even. The answer? 3.5 dollars. Since on average, the value of the roll is 3.5. Intuitively this makes sense. If I charge you 1 dollar per roll, Im definitely going to lose money long term. Likewise if I charge you 6 dollars per roll, you're definitely going to lose money long term.
So, the basic EV calculation is the value of the mtg card * the probability you will get that card for all cards in the set.
Let's assume the price of a booster box is $90 for the sake of discussion.
If the EV of a booster box is greater than 90 dollars, then on average you will make money if you open up a box. You might not make money on that particular box. But if you open many many boxes, you will make money. If the EV is 150 dollars a box, then on average, you will make 60 dollars per box on magic. Wow!
Similarly if the EV of a booster box is 40 dollars, then on average you will lose 50 dollars per box you open.
So how does this affect the market? Simple.
If the EV of a box exceeds the price of a box by alot, you should buy a box. Hell you should buy as many boxes as you can. The more boxes you buy the more money you make. In this scenario what has occurred in the past was the price of booster boxes climbs higher than 90. When RTR first came out and shocklands were really high value, you couldn't get boxes for less than 120. and even then there were shortages!
Alright, what if the EV is way less than the price of a box? Don't buy boxes! Go buy your singles, and go home. Brew!
If memory serves Dragon's Maze was a perfect example of where the EV of the boxes were super low. When this happens inventory tends to sit for awhile. This actually happened with the Kamigawa sets back in the day, before modern.
So let's get a little deeper now, based on analysis and based on mtg history.
If the EV of a box is significantly higher than the price of box, we know people will be incentivized to buy as many boxes as they can. In fact they should crack open packs, sell the singles, and use the cash to buy more boxes. The result of a high EV is usually the following:
a) shortage. stores continue to sell boxes for 90 each, but since the value per box is so much higher, people snipe them at every opportunity. Walmart would be an example here for certain commander product. Walmart doesnt care about mtg. They sell at MSRP usually. They also run out.
b) price per box rises. stores don't continue to sell boxes for 90 each, instead stores raise prices. This is the typical local game shop and ebay behavior.
c) wizards prints a ton. Supply side argument. Don't forget, if the EV of a set is way higher than the retail price of box, Wizards DOES have the power to print a set into oblivion, increasing the supply of 90 dollar boosters by so much, they inflate away the value of the cards. In this case, the EV will drop because the price of the cards in the set will drop from oversupply. RTR had this issue.
Finally remember, these forces are not mutually exclusive. Often times all of the above will be occurring at the same time.