I know it's just a box, but has anyone that got their set from HTS a little put off by the fact they discarded the big white Planeswalker box that everyone @ SDCC got? Just to put it in that insanely over-sized shipping box! I guess only collectors would care, right?
Yeah, I am disappointed we did not get the white PW box with the carry handle. However, I'm far more disappointed in what I had to pay for a NERF axe when all I wanted were the cards. Considering the set last year was $60 + $10 S/H, this year the final cost doubled since the set was $110 + $23 S/H for the oversized box. Factor in sales tax and the cost went from $73 in 2013 to $144 this year. OK, so there were six PWs instead of five, but I'm still out $50 give-or-take in the difference because of a prop.
And yes, the outer shipping carton the SDCC product arrived in was at least six times bigger than it needed to be.
Sped through checkout so fast that they could have had standard shipping at 200.00 and I wouldn't have checked it.
Did anyone who also got one notice any heavy traffic on the site or was it pretty smooth?
I did the same. Went through checkout so fast I could've selected next day air and gift wrapping and would not have noticed. QTY 1 and my addresses were up to date, so I didn't even read anything. Just clicked next through every prompt as fast as I could.
Grrr...had the website on 5 second refresh, had it in cart immediately....and the website treats 'proceed to checkout' clicks as 'refresh this page', regardless of which button I use (fails to proceed to checkout). I was using Firefox and AlertBox; For those of you who were successful, what programs/browsers/etc. did you use? It'll be helpful info for next year.
I'm using Chrome and Page Monitor. Didn't have any issues.
I would like to know if we have any confirmation that the promos will be on sale on thier website. I remember last year they said they would. Have they stated that for this year?
Hasbro does not release official statements any longer regarding SDCC exclusive availability through HTS. They used to give a date and a ballpark time once upon a time, and they were typically very accurate with hitting their estimates, but they do not suggest timeframes anymore. If you call or greet their reps at SDCC, they are usually forthcoming about the fact items are always posted online the week after.
SDCC last year was July 18-21. The planeswalkers appeared on HasbroToyShop on July 24 in the mid-afternoon (~4:00PM EDT) and were gone within about 6 or 7 minutes.
You will want to have a HTS account already created well beforehand, otherwise you may get lost in registration hell and have your cart contents sniped by other people that have previously registered.
I like the changes given what they're trying to do; it'll make reading the collector info text on red & green cards much easier. Only gripe is the rounded corners at the bottom going behind the text box, which make the card frame look unbalanced to me. Or maybe it's the fact the rounded corners at the bottom are a different radius than the top -- not sure exactly. Either way, would have rather they just had the card frame fade into the black. The example for Waste Not almost appears to do this, and in my view the Waste Not looks much better than the Wall of Fire.
I think the thing that would provide you the most peace of mind is to buy from a reputable vendor or trusted seller that has an established online history and all positive feedback, then inspect the card received with a jewelers loupe or scanner upon receipt. Whenever the subject of counterfeiting comes up you'll hear about bend tests, water/smudge tests, UV tests, light tests, and the special blue paper that is in the middle of a card, but the problem with all of these is that if performed incorrectly there's a real risk of you ruining an authentic card just as well as a counterfeit one, or misinterpreting the results and presuming a real card is fake or vice-versa.
The best non-destructive method to authenticate old cards is still heavy magnification IMHO, because the offset print process is extremely hard to duplicate correctly. Real Magic cards have their colorized parts printed in easily recognized CMYK circular clusters, while the black ink is added as an additional step later in the process. You can quickly sift through the majority of counterfeits with 10x or more magnification as the text in the text box on an authentic card will appear to pop off the card face since that part of the card was added as a separate layer from the colorized ink and does not use the same circular cluster pattern. The lines on the black ink should be very sharp. This sort of print technique cannot be properly duplicated with a run-of-the-mill desktop printer. I 30x-21mm folding loupe, which can be found online for less than $5 shipped, is more than powerful enough to demonstrate this. Alternately you could use a flatbed scanner and scan the card at 1200dpi. Other areas of the card where you can identify the distinct printing techniques are any parts of a colorless mana cost, the card name, the type line, and the artist credit, which will all be distinctly just black ink tones and contain no color pigments.
The newer high quality counterfeits presumably coming from China, as well as some notorious high quality fakes printed on professional Xerox equipment back in the mid 90s, are properly offset printed. However, to replicate this step the text had to be redone from scratch, and there are obvious inconsistencies in the font face, kern, and proportions on many of these fakes. They can be much more difficult to spot if you don't have a verifiable authentic for reference, but if you need one I've found the hi-res scans of valuable cards at the abugames online store to be the most helpful.
You hear about NBA players playing with the flu, I'm sure it happens in other sports leagues as well. With something like Magic where it's an all-day event, the effect is magnified.
Wait. Are you saying running up-and-down a NBA court for 48 minutes while dehydrated and running a fever of 105 during a physical sport against some of the most impressive athletes on the planet whilst risking the embarrassment of diarrhea all over your own shorts or vomiting on national television is less impressive than sitting in a folding chair and playing cards all day at a convention center?
Anyone see the price of foil Disfigure recently? A few weeks ago it was a dollar foil, now it's basically sold out on TCGPlayer and the few copies left are fetching a $29 price tag. What's the demand for this? I don't see Disfigure in Modern at all.
Modern Junk/Rock and Legacy BUG. Jeffrey Chen had two maindeck in his list at SCG Dallas two weeks ago. It's also popular in pauper/peasant cubes where pimp is often desired so cube owners want the foil, and as it happens Disfigure has only ever been printed in Zendikar, so there are no lower-cost promos or alternates to keep the price in check since the supply has dried up.
That said, Disfigure is not a $25-30 foil, but these absurd swings are what happens in a sellers market. It won't correct unless people that are holding copies put them up for sale en masse so that supply again exceeds demand.
Theoretically if demand for shock lands in say a year or two's time is driven by new players entering modern, would we see the prices level out? I know if I was new to modern I'd be looking to get a deck cheaply, rather than concerning myself over art or rarity (maybe that's unusual?). Perhaps I'll try to pick up some older ones, but the price puts me off a little!
Even if every new player from here forward considered only cost and bought the best value, and even if shocks continue to make an appearance in a large expansion every four or five years, it won't change the fact a large number of Ravnica-block shocks have been removed from circulation effectively forever. Over the past eight or nine years many have certainly been lost/destroyed, and a large number of others are finding homes in hand-collated complete sets and cubes. Many of these complete sets are in the hands of 20 & 30-somethings and will remain bindered in 9-pocket pages on their bookshelves for the next 50 years.
The limited pool of available copies virtually guarantees the Rav-block versions will command a premium over all subsequent reprints.
Recently made the decision to foil-out a pauper cube so placed an order for a number of the lower priced FNM promos I did not already have through TCGPlayer. Just six days ago I put the FNM Gitaxian Probe in my cart at $4.00, but later removed it in favor of a quantity of other $1 and less FNM promos alongside other regular common foils in the 25 cent range.
I see that Gitaxian Probe sells for $16.00 today. *sigh*
If it were me, I'd use a hobby knife or box cutter and start by cutting the seams off all three sides of the sleeve and see if I can safely peel the sleeve off the card. Start with the least valuable card, or put a basic land in a similar sleeve and dunk it in water so you can have a trial run to see if the cards can even be rescued at all.
After that I'd lay them all out on the kitchen counter between two paper towels and cover the top with uncooked rice overnight. The rice will leech the moisture out, and the weight of the rice should help keep the cards flat.
Yeah, I am disappointed we did not get the white PW box with the carry handle. However, I'm far more disappointed in what I had to pay for a NERF axe when all I wanted were the cards. Considering the set last year was $60 + $10 S/H, this year the final cost doubled since the set was $110 + $23 S/H for the oversized box. Factor in sales tax and the cost went from $73 in 2013 to $144 this year. OK, so there were six PWs instead of five, but I'm still out $50 give-or-take in the difference because of a prop.
And yes, the outer shipping carton the SDCC product arrived in was at least six times bigger than it needed to be.
I did the same. Went through checkout so fast I could've selected next day air and gift wrapping and would not have noticed. QTY 1 and my addresses were up to date, so I didn't even read anything. Just clicked next through every prompt as fast as I could.
I'm using Chrome and Page Monitor. Didn't have any issues.
This year it'll be the Transformers Knights of Unicron box set. '84 original transformers with mullets and keytars ... who can say no to that?
Hasbro does not release official statements any longer regarding SDCC exclusive availability through HTS. They used to give a date and a ballpark time once upon a time, and they were typically very accurate with hitting their estimates, but they do not suggest timeframes anymore. If you call or greet their reps at SDCC, they are usually forthcoming about the fact items are always posted online the week after.
2008 & 2012: Monday
2009 - 2011: Tuesday
2013: Wednesday
2014: [still pressing F5 on Thursday]
$110.99, according to the link in the first post. Last year the boxes were $59.99, IIRC.
SDCC last year was July 18-21. The planeswalkers appeared on HasbroToyShop on July 24 in the mid-afternoon (~4:00PM EDT) and were gone within about 6 or 7 minutes.
You will want to have a HTS account already created well beforehand, otherwise you may get lost in registration hell and have your cart contents sniped by other people that have previously registered.
The best non-destructive method to authenticate old cards is still heavy magnification IMHO, because the offset print process is extremely hard to duplicate correctly. Real Magic cards have their colorized parts printed in easily recognized CMYK circular clusters, while the black ink is added as an additional step later in the process. You can quickly sift through the majority of counterfeits with 10x or more magnification as the text in the text box on an authentic card will appear to pop off the card face since that part of the card was added as a separate layer from the colorized ink and does not use the same circular cluster pattern. The lines on the black ink should be very sharp. This sort of print technique cannot be properly duplicated with a run-of-the-mill desktop printer. I 30x-21mm folding loupe, which can be found online for less than $5 shipped, is more than powerful enough to demonstrate this. Alternately you could use a flatbed scanner and scan the card at 1200dpi. Other areas of the card where you can identify the distinct printing techniques are any parts of a colorless mana cost, the card name, the type line, and the artist credit, which will all be distinctly just black ink tones and contain no color pigments.
The newer high quality counterfeits presumably coming from China, as well as some notorious high quality fakes printed on professional Xerox equipment back in the mid 90s, are properly offset printed. However, to replicate this step the text had to be redone from scratch, and there are obvious inconsistencies in the font face, kern, and proportions on many of these fakes. They can be much more difficult to spot if you don't have a verifiable authentic for reference, but if you need one I've found the hi-res scans of valuable cards at the abugames online store to be the most helpful.
Wait. Are you saying running up-and-down a NBA court for 48 minutes while dehydrated and running a fever of 105 during a physical sport against some of the most impressive athletes on the planet whilst risking the embarrassment of diarrhea all over your own shorts or vomiting on national television is less impressive than sitting in a folding chair and playing cards all day at a convention center?
Modern Junk/Rock and Legacy BUG. Jeffrey Chen had two maindeck in his list at SCG Dallas two weeks ago. It's also popular in pauper/peasant cubes where pimp is often desired so cube owners want the foil, and as it happens Disfigure has only ever been printed in Zendikar, so there are no lower-cost promos or alternates to keep the price in check since the supply has dried up.
That said, Disfigure is not a $25-30 foil, but these absurd swings are what happens in a sellers market. It won't correct unless people that are holding copies put them up for sale en masse so that supply again exceeds demand.
Qasali Pridemage
Even if every new player from here forward considered only cost and bought the best value, and even if shocks continue to make an appearance in a large expansion every four or five years, it won't change the fact a large number of Ravnica-block shocks have been removed from circulation effectively forever. Over the past eight or nine years many have certainly been lost/destroyed, and a large number of others are finding homes in hand-collated complete sets and cubes. Many of these complete sets are in the hands of 20 & 30-somethings and will remain bindered in 9-pocket pages on their bookshelves for the next 50 years.
The limited pool of available copies virtually guarantees the Rav-block versions will command a premium over all subsequent reprints.
I see that Gitaxian Probe sells for $16.00 today. *sigh*
After that I'd lay them all out on the kitchen counter between two paper towels and cover the top with uncooked rice overnight. The rice will leech the moisture out, and the weight of the rice should help keep the cards flat.