This is a valid point. I should have said "If the owner is telling people that there is a product shortage when there isn't one, that is dishonest." That is the entire point of that post boiled down to one sentence. Maybe there is a regional scarcity. I don't know. I did ask my distributor about this specifically. They said that it is moving at a good pace but there is no shortage. They can get as much as they want from WotC, and we can get as much as we want from them.
I am not a LGS owner but I have a strong distaste for witch hunts, which this post was from the get-go.
As has been mentioned, if OP had named the store then I might agree with you. We currently don't even know what country it resides in, so I don't see how this thread is trying to bully them. I do work in a LGS and it could be my store for all I know.
where does the "unfair pricing" end? A shop opens up and offers packs for $3.25. Will Hunter go back and scold the owner of the LGS selling packs for $3.75?
This is the strawman I was trying to kill with my last post. Nobody is saying that the price point is unfair. They could charge $100 per pack and it would be fine (if weird). Lying to customers is the part that people have a problem with and the question at hand.
Hey Hunter, why don't you tell us the problems you have had with how the LGS owner runs things. That sentence is so arrogant it takes my breath away.
Are you upset that OP had the audacity to question whether his LGS was lying to him? That's a bold stance.
You're acting as if the thread said "Never go to this shop at this address because they cheat people with their high prices", but that's not what happened. The shop owner said something that sounded shady so OP created a poll to see if it was legit. Could we please lay the price point and the moral outrage to rest and debate the question asked. "Is there a shortage of Battle for Zendikar booster packs like some shop owner told some guy?"
To reiterate my answer: Possibly, but not according to my distributor.
"False scarcity" was the incorrect term, but the question seemed clear to me. It wasn't whether it was the shop's prerogative to charge whatever they like, which it absolutely is, but whether their pricing is honest. The owner wants to charge more than MSRP? That is fine. That's just business. The owner is telling people that there is a product shortage when there isn't one? That is not fine. That is lying to try and trick people into purchasing at an inflated price. Yes, buyer beware and all that, but that doesn't change that this practice is dishonest.
It could be from the pack or it could be "box wear". If you really care about condition then penny sleeves are a good investment.
A small ding is the difference between mint(M) and near mint(NM). Anything more than one small ding and it goes down to slight play(SP) or very fine(VF) depending on the metric being used.
I work at a LGS and do the ordering for MTG. BFZ is not selling any faster than other sets to players. Shops and speculators are cracking tons if it though neither of these demographics are purchasing it through a FLGS.
We can currently order as much BFZ as we want and both of our distributors have no shortages of booster boxes.
If we were hurting for BFZ and had the cash, I could put another 10 cases in our shop by lunchtime.
Yes. This is a relatively rare error, especially at this severity. I would expect these to sell for a couple to several dollars apiece, and they will sell better as a set instead of breaking it up. I would suggest putting them on an auction site and hoping that it starts a bid war. We misprint collectors are rare but we are out there.
Your idea sounds practical in theory but it's more complicated in practice. I used to work in a print shop.
The problem with high-quality overprints is you have to print on a single card. This typically involves affixing the card to a larger piece of stock, aligning it, and hoping real hard that the printer doesn't jam up on it. Accurate printing without dithering or layering errors is a multistep process. This means that you have to run the same card through at least twice. If the alignment for subsequent passes is even slightly off then it'll look like obviously fake garbage. Also, ink processes tend to smear and gain on Magic stock and look oversaturated, and toner tends to flake especially at the edges and looks flat. Both processes feel wrong.
Actual high-quality printing isn't designed to work on something like a single card. Modest machines are the size of a car and designed to print on nothing smaller than 8.5x11 sheets. And they are definitely going to bind up if you affix a card to the stock. I was aware of specialty machines that would do half and quarter sheets, but not poker cards. The non-specialty machine ran about half a million dollars. What Cartamundi uses are the size of a small house and designed to print on nothing smaller than poster size. However, their process can't be perfectly duplicated because nobody else has the separated color plates. Also, their press-coat is a trade secret so getting the "feel" right is very very hard. But I digress.
So it isn't a matter of cost; it's a matter of even finding a process to do it. And if they perfected printing the fronts of the cards, there's no reason that they couldn't print the back of the cards perfectly as well. And since we already know the exact stock Magic cards use, there would actually be little or no benefit to overprinting over making their own.
I've handled a few of their cards so I'll give some impressions. The Italian operation has been around for about a year that I have seen. They are smaller and generally less quality than the current Chinese fakes. If you look at their feedback, you can see that they are still making errors such as cutting cards to the wrong size and using non-water proof ink on their borders.
Most fail the look at it from across the room test. The printing is completely wrong. The color is oversaturated and mottled. The surfaces have a wrong "feel" to them. Some are worse than others but none are convincing up close. Even if you have never seen a real beta card, these look and feel wrong. Their dual lands are higher quality but still not great.
Also, they are in fact not overprints but manufactured cards. That being said, they are using a similar card stock and do pass the bend test (which should never be done anyways). Other sellers on etsy are overprinting, but those are even worse. They have been previously reported for counterfeiting but nothing happened.
That second picture of just the copyright lines. I am 99% sure that the bottom card is fake. The line looks wavy but, like Default said, at this resolution it isn't definitive.
What looks definitive to me is the font. The x-height on the copyright line is wrong. (Compare the height of the 'C' in the copyright symbols).
And you can see clear dithering on the right-hand side. The lpi is too high. (Compare the size of the donuts).
The left black border appears to be dithered. But I can't tell for certain because of the low-resolution.
Without better pictures I won't say 100% on principle, but I don't see how it could be real from here.
The Magic market has gotten really good at absorbing bulk junk. They have been printing a few billion cards per year for a few decades now after all. Most people don't buy sealed product but still need to get their cards somehow. The people who do open product need to get their money back somehow. You'll see lower initial prices as people offload bulk jank for whatever they can get for it. The good cards won't be too strongly affected. I think that the low odds of finding one of these will be off-putting for a lot of people. The shop I work in has had a lot of buzz over these lands, but only the regular number of pre-orders. Still, I'll be buying at least one case for myself.
What Default User said. The text is dithered. This alone means 100% fake. Also the ink is layered wrong, the font tracking is wrong (look at the apostrophe after the word Tarmogoyf in the rules text), and the pen is missing its black layer.
This is definitely one of the Chinese fakes going around.
I remember as a kid wanting nothing more than Shivan Dragon, Serra Angel, Sengir Vampire, and Royal Assassin and after opening dual after dual, being upset.
When Revised became hard to find late in the summer of 1994, I remember finding a few packs in a B Daltons for $5 apiece. I bought two and was so disappointed that they both had dual lands. I already had playsets of all 10. The only saving grace was that I also got a Hypnotic Specter. Every single player I knew already had a playset for every color combination they played which made them worthless as trade fodder even. Nobody would have ever guessed that they would go away and later become valuable.
What's funny is the stated reason that WotC removed duals in the first place.
"Multilands were removed because they were too good. They were rare cards that you had to have in order to play competitively, even in friendly play, and this is bad. Rare cards should be funky, and considered expendable, not cards you need in order to survive."
Tom Wylie - 4 May 1995
I work for a shop and do business directly with two distributors. At least the ones I deal with will not interact directly with the public apart from directing you to a store that orders through them. Authorized retailers can't ship international; you have to sign a contract saying you won't to become one.
This is a valid point. I should have said "If the owner is telling people that there is a product shortage when there isn't one, that is dishonest." That is the entire point of that post boiled down to one sentence. Maybe there is a regional scarcity. I don't know. I did ask my distributor about this specifically. They said that it is moving at a good pace but there is no shortage. They can get as much as they want from WotC, and we can get as much as we want from them.
As has been mentioned, if OP had named the store then I might agree with you. We currently don't even know what country it resides in, so I don't see how this thread is trying to bully them. I do work in a LGS and it could be my store for all I know.
This is the strawman I was trying to kill with my last post. Nobody is saying that the price point is unfair. They could charge $100 per pack and it would be fine (if weird). Lying to customers is the part that people have a problem with and the question at hand.
Are you upset that OP had the audacity to question whether his LGS was lying to him? That's a bold stance.
You're acting as if the thread said "Never go to this shop at this address because they cheat people with their high prices", but that's not what happened. The shop owner said something that sounded shady so OP created a poll to see if it was legit. Could we please lay the price point and the moral outrage to rest and debate the question asked. "Is there a shortage of Battle for Zendikar booster packs like some shop owner told some guy?"
To reiterate my answer: Possibly, but not according to my distributor.
A small ding is the difference between mint(M) and near mint(NM). Anything more than one small ding and it goes down to slight play(SP) or very fine(VF) depending on the metric being used.
I work at a LGS and do the ordering for MTG. BFZ is not selling any faster than other sets to players. Shops and speculators are cracking tons if it though neither of these demographics are purchasing it through a FLGS.
We can currently order as much BFZ as we want and both of our distributors have no shortages of booster boxes.
If we were hurting for BFZ and had the cash, I could put another 10 cases in our shop by lunchtime.
Both versions have been faked. Same for goyf and some others.
To me it's a red flag that someone would be purchasing high-dollar collections and claims they can't spot a fake.
Yes. This is a relatively rare error, especially at this severity. I would expect these to sell for a couple to several dollars apiece, and they will sell better as a set instead of breaking it up. I would suggest putting them on an auction site and hoping that it starts a bid war. We misprint collectors are rare but we are out there.
The problem with high-quality overprints is you have to print on a single card. This typically involves affixing the card to a larger piece of stock, aligning it, and hoping real hard that the printer doesn't jam up on it. Accurate printing without dithering or layering errors is a multistep process. This means that you have to run the same card through at least twice. If the alignment for subsequent passes is even slightly off then it'll look like obviously fake garbage. Also, ink processes tend to smear and gain on Magic stock and look oversaturated, and toner tends to flake especially at the edges and looks flat. Both processes feel wrong.
Actual high-quality printing isn't designed to work on something like a single card. Modest machines are the size of a car and designed to print on nothing smaller than 8.5x11 sheets. And they are definitely going to bind up if you affix a card to the stock. I was aware of specialty machines that would do half and quarter sheets, but not poker cards. The non-specialty machine ran about half a million dollars. What Cartamundi uses are the size of a small house and designed to print on nothing smaller than poster size. However, their process can't be perfectly duplicated because nobody else has the separated color plates. Also, their press-coat is a trade secret so getting the "feel" right is very very hard. But I digress.
So it isn't a matter of cost; it's a matter of even finding a process to do it. And if they perfected printing the fronts of the cards, there's no reason that they couldn't print the back of the cards perfectly as well. And since we already know the exact stock Magic cards use, there would actually be little or no benefit to overprinting over making their own.
Most fail the look at it from across the room test. The printing is completely wrong. The color is oversaturated and mottled. The surfaces have a wrong "feel" to them. Some are worse than others but none are convincing up close. Even if you have never seen a real beta card, these look and feel wrong. Their dual lands are higher quality but still not great.
Also, they are in fact not overprints but manufactured cards. That being said, they are using a similar card stock and do pass the bend test (which should never be done anyways). Other sellers on etsy are overprinting, but those are even worse. They have been previously reported for counterfeiting but nothing happened.
What looks definitive to me is the font. The x-height on the copyright line is wrong. (Compare the height of the 'C' in the copyright symbols).
And you can see clear dithering on the right-hand side. The lpi is too high. (Compare the size of the donuts).
The left black border appears to be dithered. But I can't tell for certain because of the low-resolution.
Without better pictures I won't say 100% on principle, but I don't see how it could be real from here.
This is definitely one of the Chinese fakes going around.
When Revised became hard to find late in the summer of 1994, I remember finding a few packs in a B Daltons for $5 apiece. I bought two and was so disappointed that they both had dual lands. I already had playsets of all 10. The only saving grace was that I also got a Hypnotic Specter. Every single player I knew already had a playset for every color combination they played which made them worthless as trade fodder even. Nobody would have ever guessed that they would go away and later become valuable.
What's funny is the stated reason that WotC removed duals in the first place.
"Multilands were removed because they were too good. They were rare cards that you had to have in order to play competitively, even in friendly play, and this is bad. Rare cards should be funky, and considered expendable, not cards you need in order to survive."
Tom Wylie - 4 May 1995
Oh how the times have changed...