MTG Salvation

Quote from joejack8445 »

I think, due to the increasing cost of the game, that proxies should be normalized as being ok. I've been actively trying to get people to proxy expensive cards they are thinking about, but haven't purchased yet, as it would suck if the card wasn't as good as they hoped. I do understand why some people don't use them, though.

The increasing cost of the game is mostly due to market inflation within the antiques & collectibles trade due to companies and corporate conglomerates actively trying to phase out (no pun intended) print media in favor of digital media because the less tangible the product is the more control they have over the consumer. Then you also have to factor in the pandemic's impact on this as well where everything has transitioned online to where the idea of running your own Local Game Store (LGS) is nothing more than a ponzi dream (not to be confused with ponzi scheme). Think of it as like opening up a museum where everyone comes up to it where it has all these awesome video games, comic books, or tabletop games where consumers pay an admission fee to see and partake with these items in person and possibly spend money at your gift shop or whatever else you need to keep that establishment afloat is what is considered to be a ponzi dream.

Now it can work legitimately If the right capitalized people go into that business model with the right approach and usually that's the U.S. Government. That's why the Smithsonian is one of the most successful museums operated by the U.S. Government. Individuals don't own the Smithsonian, they don't own the Philadelphia Art Museum because those establishments are run by the U.S. Government. Now do you see the difference when a person takes on these types of feats especially when we're talking about museums, when we're talking about these visions of grandeur that a lot of these collectors have? Now there are some success stories which are less than 5% however they most likely fail because the profit margins just aren't there or are abysmally small to operate. The same thing is happening with mom-and-pop stores and brick-and-mortar retail right now especially with Local Game Stores (LGSs). Now If you think you can take advantage of the geography of opening up a store near a prestigious college by buying up a big collection and expect to make a fortune you're wrong.

You won't succeed because most of your clientele aren't going to sell it to you at a reduced price when they can pull out their smartphone, take a picture of the item, list it on eBay, and get top dollar. Let's be realistic here, the person whose going to sell to you would have to be extremely desperate in this day and age to be willing to part with an item they know they can flip right online for roughly 80, 90, to 100% of it's value rather than to sell it to you for 20, 30, 40, or 50% of it's value. So that's the current mindset. Another thing to keep in mind is that resellers who go to pawn shops, flea markets, LGSs, and yard sales are going to struggle even more post-COVID to get inventory and the reason is because all those people that sold you their items at these retail businesses are going to get a taste for selling online by getting top dollar while cutting the middle man. If it was already hard for you to get products to flip or sell on eBay going forward it's going to be a lot harder.

If you're an LGS owner or employee how much money would you forgo just to say to yourself that you're self-employed? Is what I do worth said amount of money or whether it's someone else paying you to do the work? What is the opportunity cost for you doing the current job you're in?

So beyond just being careful with MTG cards a lot of players have EDH / Commander decks. If you're five color and you have one of each ABU Dual Land, one of each Fetch Land, and you know Gaea's Cradle and a few other cards particularly those that are highly played in Legacy and Modern, it isn't hard for the monetary value of your EDH / Commander deck to go over $10,000+. So that's crazy, imagine carrying a briefcase with $10,000+ in physical cash with you to a shady Local Game Store (LGS) and you wonder why the need for running proxies in EDH / Commander is now more important than ever to reduce the high risk of theft. Now it might seem unethical at first on the aspect of the principle of "Pay to Win" or "Pay to Play" (no pun intended) but you sort of get the idea of what I'm getting at here. I don't have a problem with players within my playgroup running proxies of expensive cards they actually own in their personal card collections and for those who fully proxy their decks due to the barrier of entry for the format being extraordinarily high right now due to the ongoing pandemic, I honestly don't blame them for it.

One of my friends runs alters of ABU Dual Lands including a lot of the fast mana rocks like Mana Vault, Mana Crypt, and Mox Diamond because the overall power creep of the format is demanding it now more than ever. There's simply not enough supply to meet the demand of much needed reprints in the format to help circumvent the cost to play If you're being pressured to keep up with cEDH decks where it seems as though the format is morphing into something that's no longer what we would perceive to be as "kitchen table casual". If your deck isn't able to stop one of your opponents from winning on turn 5 or earlier especially since you'll be tapped out on lands most of the time then that cuts you off from being able to actually play the game and this is why proxies can make the difference between needing the cards necessary to stop those scenarios from occurring instead of creating a massive paywall to actually get there. It's got less to do with the EDH Rules Committee fixing this problem when the design team at Wizards of the Coast are purposely increasing the speed of the format just to sell more product.