Secret Lair is known for taking an existing Magic card and re-imagining it into a different art style or a Universes Beyond skin. The drops often feel bizarre, creative, unique, but this morning’s Chaos Vault drop was something entirely different.
Companies for a will often need raw data on how a product might sell at different price points. That’s not really a surprise nor is it shocking when aggressive market research helps to determine a certain price. Wizards even pays attention to how well their product sells to help determine future pricing. What may be a first in market research is doing it as a purchasable product.
That’s exactly what happened this morning when Wizards dropped a Chaos Vault called Prints Charming. Prints Charming was a drop of four cards that sold at five different prices. It’s important to note that none of the different prices changed the contents of the drop.
Prints Charming:
Pricing:
- Traditional
- $9.99
- $19.99
- $29.99
- $34.99
- $39.99
- Foil
- $19.99
- $29.99
- $39.99
- $44.99
- $49.99
It’s worth repeating that the contents of the drop didn’t change between spending 10 dollars or spending 40. Each traditional drop included the same four cards. Each foil drop included the same four cards with foil treatment. It led many online like Jack Coleman at The Gamer to call it “cynical” market research. Matt Bassil at Wargamer said it felt like “a social experiment.” Each listing had a 1 per customer rule but that still meant you could potentially buy 10 copies of the drop. Despite that and the fact that it only dropped this morning, as of writing this, they’re already sold out and shipping is expected to begin tomorrow morning.
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