A brief thought about MTG pricing

Stop being poor.

Also, get smart.

Not everyone started playing magic 15-20 years ago.

You still could've gotten them for less than $400 a playset about 3 years ago.

Can't they just print very similar cards to the ones on the reserved list?

Every now and again, old cards that don't move very much get bought up and the price gets inflated because there's nothing anyone can do to stop it. This was a pretty extreme case.

No.

They could do functional reprints or even semi-reprints. I'd like to see them do that with Serra's Sanctum so that Leylines could maybe be a real deck.

Oh, it was that easy? How could I have been so foolish?

Then they give legacy decks 8 ofs instead of 4 ofs for cards

Ban the reserved equivalent

>being poor
>playing mtg

I don't understand these people

>100$ a card is normal
kek

I own a lot of expensive cards. I would gladly have them lose 75% of their value if it meant people could play Legacy with me in paper and not via shit like Cockatrice.

Cards should be valuable, but this is insane.

Until you remember that they can't do functional reprints.

And why not?

Because of the Reserved List.

See functionally identical.
magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/official-reprint-policy-2010-03-10

Color shifted? Make them better or slightly worse?

They can just remove the Reserved List if they wanted to, it's not a legally binding agreement.

>1) Prices become so high that it genuinely causes people to stop playing
This is the situation right now with Legacy. Prices don't go down anyway, because they are largely controlled by the big vendors. It's pretty much impossible to move your Legacy cards by now, so you are effectively holding worthless pieces of paper with high potential value that's impossible to cash in.

... There're like entire sets on there.

That's rather retarded.

Of course, the shit that people really want on there are fast ramp, drawbackless flexibility, and cards that are still crazy powerful.

Meanwhile, R&D seem to want to move the meta from turn 4 to turn 6... Which is my most modern ramp costs 2cmc minimum. With land fetching starting at 3 anymore...

They can't just go on and risk the trust on their product. If it might harm them getting rid off RL, they won't do it hence it's never going to go away.

Hasbro just doesn't literally get anything out of getting rid of RL and it can potentially be harmful for the image, which is extremely valuable in companies.

I really can't understand why wizards is okay with this. Control of their game has been stolen from them and they're just sitting there letting it happen.
They try so hard to dumb the game down for new players, but new players want to play the same game they see people telling stories about and making huge plays early on at their lgs or wherever they first saw it. They don't want the castrated cards for babbies, they want in on the action too.
Wizards' solution? Better print some more women and gays!
Modern marketing is so fucked, it's entirely dependent on screwing over the established loyal customer to chase that shiny new minority demographic who will only fleetingly and casually spend their money before hopping to the next fad.

Reading that document, there is no other conclusion than WotC are not telling us the whole truth. Their no-reprint promise says
>Reserved cards will never be printed again in a functionally identical form. A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness.

Color shifting and changing creature subtype falls outside of what WotC said they wouldn't do. Therefore, Twincast should have been fine. The reprint policy has nothing to do with the RL promise.

It doesn't matter. They have to follow it in the spirit or the trust isn't there, get it?

And their reprint policy is to milk reprints as selling point and keep standard separated from the eternal power level for whatever the reason they decided on.

If this isn't a speculative bubble, then why did prices only go up when speculators started doing buyouts?

And why is it still possible to buy all these cards at maybe $10 higher than you could a week ago?

Is it because the supply hasn't actually changed, and because cards aren't oil we don't need to buy them, no matter what price they are?

Thats some cute baseless tin foil speculation you've got there.

I think this is the difference between players and collectors. If the bottom dropped out on MTG tomorrow, collectors would be up in arms, while players would be disappointed. Pushing this "magic stock market" retardery to its natural conclusion is probably best for the players.

Because I only have disposable income now you fuck tard. I didn't have it way back when Black Lotus were only 300$, and duals were 25$ (at most).

If I did I would have bought them back then. Now that their are 1000$ and up is a slightly taller order.

Because if you want RL cards, this is the last chance to get them before the price is out in heavens.....

Actually fuck it, the time to buy duals, LEDs etc is gone already. Same with serra's sanctum. If you wanted it, it's already too late. Buy out happened, nobody really wants them anymore with new prices and legacy will die in near future. RL won't go away and WotC will just drop the support for eternal formats. Actually they already did with legacy and vintage ages ago.

>They have to follow it in the spirit or the trust isn't there, get it?

This is another bullshit excuse. Trust in what? WotC is a company, not a politician. Besides, at this point, reprinting RL cards would create such a massive wave of good sentiment from players that the few speculators and grognards that would be pissed because "mah Black Lotus" would have to suck it.

I heard one of the employees talking at my LGS about how TCGplayer changed their pricing system, and as a result the store lost a lot of money. Anyone care to explain that?

store.tcgplayer.com/help/buyoutresponse

That's a link to the article, but as far as I can tell they're still winning out. If the store has, say, 40 Gaea's Cradles, and they're now selling for let's say 200 on the low, and they bought them at 100 or something (stores usually pay a little more for Eternal playables), how have they lost money? I'm confused anons.

If WotC drops support for legacy, then what happens to prices? They always come back down

And that's another fucking bullshit you are saying. If company sets a rule they pledge to obey and they suddenly say "fuck it, we won't follow it", it's a clear fucking sign you can't trust on their action.

Yes. Wotc is a company that wants to make as much money as possible. But they also want to maintain image they have. You won't maybe like it, but people expect their cards to hold a value. That's why they are so careful with reprints for fucks sake. You may think whatever you like, but when people buy cards for 1$, 10$ or 100$, they won't like it if they suddenly drop into 0,1$ range, okay? This is what holds the secondary market up and why so many people don't mind shilling money into new sets, because they expect their cards to hold some value for them. It's stupid fucking illusion, but it works and why they keep such a good care to keep that up.

>What is promissory estoppel
Because the prices have gone so high and it's stood for so long, it's become legally binding.

They lost potential money to be made. When there is a site that makes it easy to find the seller with lowest price point and data for how much the cards are going, you can find the real price point of cards. This is bad for shops that want to fuck people over for maximum monies, as people can just go over this site and buy from someone else because fuck your prices, they suck.

When the RL was printed, the rules were:
>Every rare or U1 that was printed before chronicles that hasn't been reprinted since is Reserved
>Until further notice every Rare/U1 that isn't reprinted in the very next core set is Reserved (this lasted until Tempest Block)
>Any card we deem to be Reserved is Reserved.

>when people buy cards for 1$, 10$ or 100$, they won't like it if they suddenly drop into 0,1$ range, okay?

You just went full potato. This is exactly what happens when you buy new cards. There is no fucking guarantee that your cards are going to hold their value. They can get reprinted at any time, or worse they can get banned. Why are people doing buying cards then? There is no promise protecting their value.

The only thing WotC needs to be careful with is MASSIVE reprints, not reprints per se. And that has nothing to do with promises or the fucking RL. No one is advocating for flooding the market with duals, but the secondary market for RL cards is not healthy. Any retard can see that those formats need new cards in them. If they suddenly reprinted duals and other staples in a sufficient number that they would drop to say, $30 a piece tops, people would then be able to play Legacy without mortgaging their house. Only the fucking speculators could see that as a bad move, or a smear on WotC white soul.

So this is Martin Skrillex General?

Chinamen, you are our only hope!

No I did not go full potato. What I'm saying is that when people open a 10$ card, they expect it to be same price or higher later on. That's why WotC hasn't done massive reprints like you said and are careful to not fuck the prices. This of course has nothing to do with the reserved li- oops, maybe we forgot it fucking does have a lot of things to do with reserved list. Historically reserved list came out as a promise to not do such massive reprints like that, because the card prices people had plummeted into oblivion due to chronicles (if I recall set names correctly). They have done reprint sets lately a lot, but notice how they are very limited and they have made carefully sure that their reprint won't fuck the secondary market.

RL secondary market isn't healthy, I agree. But if they were to reprint anything even the slightest from there, the same illusion they are keeping up wouldn't hold true anymore. And as such, RL won't be going away and wizards are just better off killing the format than make any kind of risk, was it how small or justifiable.

That makes sense. Their prices are usually pretty fair, they tend to use TCGplayer Mid. I guess what hurts them is removing the High from the equation, which in turn puffs up the Mid price?

Also I'm still wondering how many shops lost money on Splinter Twin considering that ban was leaked but seemed a little too outrageous to be true.

already a thread for that.

For real, this card was about 50 cents at best a week ago, and now it's shy of $4.

What the fuck even happened.
I know price wise its not a huge jump, but a jump up of price by over 300% is pretty crazy

>Homelands cards actually gaining value

The amount of players who benefit from the reserved list are painfully small. The bulk of those who want it to remain aren't players, they're collectors who just hoard cards because they're too scared to play the real stocks. The rest who own cards on the reserved list are legacy and vintage players, most of whom would love reprints so there will be more people able to play those formats with them.

No player who doesn't have cards on the reserved list cares that it's kept intact, and the few collectors who would throw a fit would be completely drowned out in the wave of support from the playerbase when that wall comes down and legacy is a playable format again.

Besides, reprinting Moxen or Lotuses will barely devalue the originals at all. They're valuable because they're old and sought after. Alpha Lotus prices aren't going anywhere just because a new version on the awful new border exists. We've seen the same occur with reprints of non-reserve list older cards. Older printings always maintains value above that of reprints, particularly with new art, which I don't think anyone who just wants the cards so they can enter the format will complain about.

I'm not on RL list side, I'm just saying it won't go away no matter how much you rationalize it. Whatever you say is negletted by the fact that there is risk for people getting butthurt by demolishing it.

Besides. I'm quite sure there is many who would agree with your points. But remember that legacy players with huge collection probably bought them when they were cheap ages ago and aren't that active on the game anyway. Other half has paid ridiculous amount of money to be able to play and believe me when I say this, will get assblasted their 2k deck will from this day on cost only 200$. They won't stay in the game. And those guys willing to put 2k into their deck are willing to put money to new cards as well. Usually that's the case.

Mtg is more popular than it has ever been. Legacy jsut isn't WotC in the best of their interest as it's playerbase is so marginal. Of course it would be more popular with lower price point, but why bother when you can just keep on doing standard?

>the eternal formats will die in your lifetime

>You've had 15-20 years to get most of these cards
i'm 25 years old

>Eternal formats die
>Demand plummets
>Card prices follow suit
>Eternal formats live again

Seriously though, Legacy is so fun that people aren't most going to decide that they don't want to play any more. WotC has very little to do with the eternal scene as is, if they axe support the formats aren't just going to go away.

Because it's a Ghostly Prison in black, which is nuts

>it won't go away

It will go away the minute it is in WotC interest that it goes away. The whole "it's a promise, and we don't break promises" rationale is a childish way of looking at it. Hasbro will find a way if they need to. Believing your duals are a safe investment because of the RL promise is living in la la land. The RL stays because Hasbro is concentrated on increasing the player base and in selling sealed product. The RL is just a perfect excuse to tell Legacy and Vintage players that they need to get with the program and trade their duals for basics and start going to FNM. And by the way, I think it is a good strategy on their part. But just stop with the RL bullshit.

Companies care about thier customers trusting them. Consumer trust gets you a loyal consumer base.

The whole twin ban and following pro tour caused trust in the company to lower at least temperarily which could have lost customers if not for changes made.

Finally someone understood what I kept writing for a fucking hour. I'm just saying it will never be in Hasbro's interest to remove RL.

>Print strictly better dual lands
>Old dual lands price plummet
There are ways to drive down the prices, Wizards is just Shit. also there are a lot of people that defend the high prices of cards, but hate counterfeits. if it's freemarket to charge 100 dollars on cardboard, it's also freemarket to sell fake versions of that cardboard

How would you improve the old dual lands?

Volcanic island enters untapped to the BF
when VI enters the battlefield, draw a card

Just buy fakes for 10-20 bucks a sheet depending on the quality.

That wouldn't lower the prices of duals, that would just be a retardedly OP card that would get banned before even being released.

>if not for changes made.

The changes were made because there was a huge social uproar about them. If people had gone "meh" when the Pros got fucked, WotC would not have gone back on their changes. The immense majority of players are against the RL. Shit, I'm willing to bet that if they announced a paper version of Vintage Masters, people would damn near celebrate on the streets. If you can satisfy a large majority of your consumer base while angering a very small number of them, you do that every single time. Vintage Masters creates customer loyalty.

Is just a fucking example, you can put them to gain you 1 life, to scry 1, or even do tricolored lands that don't enter untaped. yes, original duals are op, if you want to do a better version of them, then they will be more op

You don't need to improve the RL cards, only replace them. Just make snow-covered duals and ban the originals. Underground Sea becomes strictly a collector's item, people are happy playing with $30 Frozen Underground Seas. Problem solved.

The only scenario I can conceive where it would be is if the game goes in the shitter and they need a triumphant return of super classic OP stuff to make a final buck before closing shop.

Banning all cards on the reserved list seems more realistic than hoping Wizards removing it.

I disagree. That is actually a scenario where nobody wins. They would effectively kill the value of all RL cards, while giving players no substitute or making a buck themselves.

Presumably someone used it in some list that someone else took note of. And that someone else decided to buy it out and hike the price to cash in on that list's notoriety.

Same thing happened to Ensnaring Bridge when that gimmicky Lantern Control was flavor of the month. Jumped from 10ish to 40 overnight and only ever settled back down to 30-35.

The reserved list, realistically, isn't even the problem. It's the starkest example, sure, but the problem would still exist if they got rid of the reserved list while keeping to their general reprint policy otherwise. It's not like they've been aggressive about making sure that people can play with Force of Will.

Ultimately, Wizards does not want to reprint cards that are worth money in meaningful numbers. That's not a reserved list thing. Their general policy about reprints is wildly, wildly disproportionate to the demand for cards. I mean, Christ, this is a problem in Modern. There aren't any reserved list cards in Modern.

These cards should have been this expensive for years and probably just never had their prices meaningfully updated to reflect changing interest in Magic as a game and the resulting demand.

Same thing I've always suggested. Snow duals.

RL says no snow reprints. Try cutting the basic land types instead?

Then those would be shit and legacy would still be expensive as fuck

They're budget versions, man.

They're... not really. if we're talking about dual lands, we mean lands gettable by fetchlands that don't CIPT or damage you. The cards they just don't do the job that they need to do. It's not the budget version, it's a totally different thing.

I would love to play Legacy, I've been on the fence of putting a Sneak and Show deck together for a while

I just don't know anyone that plays and I don't know if any LGSes near me have events

What if you just gave them one basic land type and a tap ability for the other color?

Decide on a new, slightly lower power level.

Ban all cards that breach this new power level.

OH FUCK I FIXED ALL OF MAGIC FOREVER

There is no reason to play this game.

They could probably print that.

But that's not the point. They could print those, like they could print Snow Duals, but they won't, because Wizards does not want to print anything that functionally replicates duals. It is a decision that Wizards made, for whatever reason, and they're not going to change it.

Except that what I said isn't a functional reprint because the missing type changes the cards function.

I keep hearing that if they print stuff off of the reserve list, they'll get sued.

Why is this?

The Reserve List is an official promise from the company, collectors could sue due to reprints damaging the value of their collections

>Reserved Cards

>A card is considered functionally identical to another card if it has the same card type, subtypes, abilities, mana cost, power, and toughness. No cards will be added to the reserved list in the future. No cards from theMercadian Masques set and later sets will be reserved. In consideration of past commitments, however, no cards will be removed from this list. The exclusion of any particular card from the reserved list doesn't indicate that there are any plans to reprint that card.

I've got it!

Eldrazi Savannah
Tribal Land- Eldrazi Forest Plains

That sounds like hogshit to me, but I guess 'false advertising' is a broad blanket.

There is a very minor precedent that because it was a promise made, it could be legally upheld. It's iffy, but if they found the right lawyer, they could sue over it. That said, Hasbro is a multi-billion dollar corporation and no grognard who's been sitting on a few Moxen for two decades actually has the funds to take them to court.

It's not a real threat.

Make them artifact lands.

Again: they could do this if they wanted to. The issue is not finding some clever trick.

They don't want to.

Trust is actually more important for a business than a politician

It's not that I don't have the cards, it's that I don't have enough opponents because others don't have the cards.

The average player is the young teenager off the street buying boosters to play standard or casual with their friends.

They don't stand to lose anything with that target demographic, and only stand to lose with the collectors who aren't buying new cards or doing anything for the game community anyway.

Yes, they showed it's so with Harmless Offering and MaRo's rather cut off-ish response to criticism of it in blogatog seems to augur it happening again wether "collectors" believe color-shifting is enough distinction from functional reprints or not.

For a while MaRo was very meek and avoided any talk of the Resseved List other than telling us WotC employees were banned fro discussing the RL at all. He also once said semi-functional reprints violated the "spirit" of the resserved list and would never be attempted.

Now WotC has a new CEO and MaRo stifled all discussion on wether Harmless Offering broke the resserved list as a semi-functional reprint of Donate with a very straightforward "No, it requires red mana instead of blue".

We may be back on track to getting powerful cards and one single word in the card text or different mana symbol being enough to make a card entirely new and unburdened by the list.

>none of this has any effect on me
I've been buying all my cards from chinamen