Bank of America is mad at Hasbro because their MTG card collection is losing value

[Lakados]

https://kotaku.com/mtg-30th-anniversary-black-lotus-transformers-warhammer-1849779811
https://www.polygon.com/23458064/magic-the-gathering-overprinting-hasbro-stock-downgrade
https://www.investing.com/news/stoc...bofa-to-double-downgrade-hasbro-432SI-2943159

TLDR;
Hasbro is starting to print official tournament legal "proxies" of cards they said they would never reprint, this has the potential to deflate the value of collector cards like Black Lotus currently valued between $4000-$5000 USD.
Investors claim they are "overproducing" cards so rare cards aren't actually that rare, they also claim there are too many releases.


Note:
Official proxy cards are tournament legal as long as they are in a solid-backed opaque sleeve so you can not see the different backing from the official cards.

 

[gamerk2]

Translation: We invested heavily into the resale markets and are upset you are diluting our financial holdings.

Nothing to see here. It's actually a *good* thing for people who actually want to use said cards; the only people being hurt here are collectors and investors.

 

[modi123]

These are not tournament usable reprints, right?

 

[Comixbooks]

They switched to digital Art is the reason MTG failed all the cards look the same today.

 

[toast0]

These are not tournament usable reprints, right?

I thought I saw that you can use them in tournaments as long as your deck is in opaque backed sleeves so you can't tell what's what.

 

[modi123]

Granted I've been out of the game for a good while, but the local tournaments required everyone to unsleeve their cards as a check before play.

So it goes.

 

[LukeTbk]

Translation: We invested heavily into the resale markets and are upset you are diluting our financial holdings.

Nothing to see here. It's actually a *good* thing for people who actually want to use said cards; the only people being hurt here are collectors and investors.

People that just wanting to use cards can just print them and use them (or play the digital engine with all the cards), that never what this is about and the enjoyment Magic achieve to create via rarity is a balancing act. Everyone that buy them instead are "collectors" or sort an embay with others in an exercise of 100% made up scarcity.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

As a former T1 and T2 player (which I know now they've renamed to vintage and standard), I can say for the most part this will only affect collectors.

T1 is a virtually impossible to penetrate format. There are basically no decks you can play that are remotely competitive that won't cost you nearly $10k. All of them will contain at least Black Lotus and another piece of power. It's easy to exceed $20k in card value with certain decks that contain (Mishra's) Workshop, are "Blue", require a slew of dual lands, or other cards that haven't been printed since the beginning of the game. Stuff that at this point is 25+ years old and were printed during a time where the game was less popular, and therefore had significantly smaller print runs.

For the most part I would say reprints would help those formats for people who do want to play tournament legal decks. However what I will say is destroying the game is Hasbro's relentless assault on watering down the card pool in standard. They've created so many formats and way too many expansions per year. It's all are designed to push booster pack sales. And frankly unless you're an adult, this is a serious hobby, and you're willing to invest $500+ a year, it's pretty much impossible to play competitively in standard. It's another sign that corporatism is destroying fun. Straight up. They're effectively killing a golden goose to try and increase short term profits or to only cater to competitive players that are willing to buy at least a box an expansion and do extensive trading.

I've been out of the game for a bit over a decade. However, stuff like this means I'll never come back.

 

[Bigbacon]

that one dude on youtube, forget the page, Alpha Investments maybe?? that dude is screwed.

 

[LukeTbk]

who do want to play tournament legal decks.

who are all by definition, collectors ?, people for who the amassing cards, their value and rarity and building it in between tournament are part of the fun ? Specially at the price we are talking about of those reprints there is no sense to argue that it is purely for the fun of the play mechanics in any way.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

who are all by definition, collectors ?, people for who the amassing cards, their value and rarity and building it in between tournament are part of the fun ? Specially at the price we are talking about of those reprints there is no sense to argue that it is purely for the fun of the play mechanics in any way.

I had to read this sentence like 10 times to even get what you were saying, but anyway, think I've figured it out.

But to respond: no. Just because someone wants to play in a format, it doesn't mean they are a collector. I'll put it another way, if some guy has a vintage Stingray Corvette, it's his hobby, and he likes to drive it on the weekends, that doesn't make him a collector either. That's a guy that enjoys his car and doesn't have any hope of amassing a Jay Leno like garage (Leno being a collector).
There are other parts to that too, namely the difference between wanting to play the cards vs keeping them in a locked vault somewhere. Play, inherently decreases the "value" of the cards like the mileage does on a car. A vintage Ferrari 305 with 10 miles on the odometer is worth much more than a driven hard and later restored one. A Black Lotus that is mint and PSA grade 10 is always going to drive a much higher price than a grade 6 that has spent its entire life in tournament play. Players are wiling to take "lower graded cards" because they want to play them.

However, you are directly illustrating what players are forced to become. If I could play a T1 Tounament legal deck that was competitive and valued at $10, I probably would (or would have in the past anyway). It wasn't about the value of the deck, but the fun I wanted to have in the format. But, such as it is if you want to play in the format you're 'forced' to become a 'collector'. Some people just want to play the flippin game. Some people just want to drive the flippin car. It's not all about money to everyone, it's about the joy that the experience of doing the thing has. Not the monetary value behind it.

tl;dr: Collectors don't play. Their cards stay in thick pieces of polycarbonate, they're graded, and never touched. They aren't touched precisely because everything I've said above. That would hurt their investment.

 

[LukeTbk]

But to respond: no. Just because someone wants to play in a format, it doesn't mean they are a collector.

Someone want to play in a format and it is important that it is with legit collectible item for that person to enjoy it...

That person could play for almost free in that format has he want, he choose to spend time and a small fortune to be via the collectible route no ?

To take your stingray covertte example, if they gave chinesse version of the exact same car that drive the exact same way for 1/10th of the price but that person enjoyment is for the car to be an orignal one, he is an collector. Jay Leno collect and drive cars.

Collector does not mean you to not play with your collectible, Magic The Gathering has always been about a playable collectible item that the very point of the hole things, every one could have played for free printed card, we were buying booster and playing the deck building game because that what made it fun.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Someone want to play in a format and it is important that it is with legit collectible item for that person to enjoy it...

That person could play for almost free in that format has he want, he choose to spend time and a small fortune to be via the collectible route no ?

That is also inherently not what most players do or even can do. In standard I only kept things that were tournament legal for the format. And I would sell off basically everything as it rotated out of the format. The most expensive decks in T2 (or standard) generally were at most maybe $200. If you had multiple decks that didn't share a ton of cards, you might have $500 +/- worth of cards at any given time.
In T1 it wasn't viable to keep cards lying around that I wasn't playing. There is a huge amount of diversity in T1. If you wanted to have access to all the cards that would be necessary to play every T1 viable deck, you'd be sitting on $30k worth of cards or more. And that isn't viable for 99.999% of players. I don't know anyone personally other than literal MTG stores that has that level of collection. That isn't to say those people don't exist, but to say that's even a remote percentage of T1 players isn't true.

The part you're missing there is it's also likely if you're interested in playing in tournaments that you're constantly buying and selling parts of your "collection". One of my good friends that still plays has likely bought and sold 4 copies of Workshops at least half a dozen times. If it was about merely collecting and amassing cards because they had some sort of sentimental value you'd never do that. Players by definition have to be pragmatic. Usually players will theory craft, make proxies, then play internally with either teams or friends to test viability. Then and only then would they buy some amount of cards which would also force them to liquidate some amount of cards in order to show up with a tournament legal deck. Or otherwise have to borrow cards from other people that are willing to trust them with pieces of cardboard valued at $100's to $1000's of dollars in value. Although I can't speak about this anecdotally, it's also theoretically possible to buy what is necessary to play a tournament and then unload all the cards afterwards. Which I'm sure has also happened. That's another behavior a player would do that a collector would never do.

tl;dr: Players don't keep cards around that they aren't using. The hobby already costs $100's if not $1000's of dollars. Players play, and if the cards aren't legal or viable in the formats you want to play, you get rid of them. If you want to switch decks in T1, then also you'd basically get rid of everything you aren't using. Players can't afford to have stacks of cards they're not using in T1. They can't collect like collectors and also play the game unless they're an absolute whale.

To take your stingray covertte example, if they gave chinesse version of the exact same car that drive the exact same way for 1/10th of the price but that person enjoyment is for the car to be an orignal one, he is an collector. Jay Leno collect and drive cars.

This isn't relevant to MTG. But I'll tell you this: if a Chinese knockoff set of Power 9 was tournament legal (as in Wizards of the Coast was aware of the existence of these reprinted cards and were okay with it) I absolutely would use that Chinese set, and I'm 1000% sure a huge amount of the community would as well. This goes back to what I said earlier, if I could play in T1 with a tournament legal deck that was competitive for $10 I would. What I was directly saying is that the value of the cards wasn't the important part at all: it was about playing the game. If it was about value then it would be the other way around. I'd say: I won't play this format unless it costs me $50k! But who thinks like that? That's absurd.

Because frankly there isn't a structural difference between one piece of cardboard and another.

Collector does not mean you to not play with your collectible, Magic The Gathering has always been about a playable collectible item that the very point of the hole things, every one could have played for free printed card, we were buying booster and playing the deck building game because that what made it fun.

I wanted to play the game. And that's what a lot of people also want to do. You honestly think that if MTG was free, people would stop playing it? Before MTG made their own official app and started selling digital booster packs, people spent the time to build an entire online platform to play MTG for free, which also contained matchmaking. And you'll never guess: people actually did it! Surprise, it was about the game and the strategy, not staring at pretty pictures of cards or about how much money was in your collection. Again, players have a very different mentality than collectors. I and many others have played entire decks full of proxies, expecially when theory crafting type 1. I even "proxied" basic islands (which are worth 10 cents) just as a joke to go with those proxied T1 decks. If I could go to a tournament and play with 100% proxies, I would probably still play MTG today. No joke. Take all the money out of it, it would probably be more fun for me, not less.

This isn't to say there can't be overlap. There are. Some people want to have their expensive, all foil, crimped, Japanese, beta, whatever. And show off, sure. There will always be that person. However most people going to tournaments like States/Nationals/Worlds, aren't that person. Trust me, I was around Magic players for well over a decade. You can tell a huge amount of difference between people that want to amass cards, and people that want to play in tournaments. Is there overlap? Yes, but because of the money involved there is far fewer there then you might think.

 

[LukeTbk]

What does stop people to make tournament that accept free printed card ?

Why are they not popular ?

: I won't play this format unless it costs me $50k! But who thinks like that? That's absurd.

Everyone that do play those format

people spent the time to build an entire online platform to play MTG for free, which also contained matchmaking. And you'll never guess: people actually did it! Surprise, it was about the game and the strategy,

Yes some do and despite that existance people played online paid version and still buy card, there is some that play for the strategy, they play for free, those who like the collectible element and buy expensive cards.

The idea that people do not have a subjective experience when they play an actual real Black Lotus and-or a different subjective experience achieving to get an real Black Lotus in a context that it mean something in protected context for them to be rare like fully made Up rules that make no sense if we remove the collectible element like tournament that only accept real card, seem to not understand the attraction for those people.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

What does stop people to make tournament that accept free printed card ?

Why are they not popular ?

Because of the governing bodies that have rules against them. Wizards of the Coast (before being purchased by Hasbro so not sure how it is now, but I imagine mostly the same) literally has an entire handbook of all rules that have to be adhered to if you want to play in any "sanctioned" tournament. Playing in sanctioned tournaments is how you build points to play in the higher level competitive scene. As you go "up the ladder", tournaments also have increasing level of scrutiny and competitiveness.
I ran my own sanctioned tournaments, which meant I had oversight from WotC. The things I did were low tier. Higher tier requires higher level judges and has much more scrutiny and oversight.
Higher level tournaments also had to have judges, which also were tiered into a group of 5 categories that had to in increasing order know not only all the card interaction but also penalties for incorrect play.
Whether you're aware of it or not, those tournaments I listed aren't just names. Worlds is "the entire World". People take MTG and tournament play very seriously. It is very similar to other 'over the top' games that have ruling bodies and very specific rules like Chess as well as tournament play and structure like chess.

tl;dr: because it's illegal in competitive play. Obviously.

Everyone that do play those format

I can tell you've literally never played a game of T1 in your life, let alone in a T1 tournament. You're arguing from a position of complete ignorance.

Yes some do and despite that existance people played online paid version and still buy card, there is some that play for the strategy, they play for free, those who like the collectible element and buy expensive cards.

So basically your solutions is: if you can't afford it too bad so sad. Good job missing the whole point.

 

[LukeTbk]

I can tell you've literally never played a game of T1 in your life, let alone in a T1 tournament. You're arguing from a position of complete ignorance.

I mean everyone that play between each other with real card.

So basically your solutions is: if you can't afford it too bad so sad. Good job missing the whole point.

Or simply play for free....

If they started to sell fully legit black lotus, the Mox, Time Walk, dual land 50 cents, it would reduce the fun of the hole things for many people, not just purely collector in box people.

The reason why the many fully free open source version of magic never got popular.

It is so trivial that I am sure we understand each other, I am just terrible in English.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I mean everyone that play between each other with real card.

They do. I described the process of T1 players making proxies and spending time theory crafting and testing.

Or simply play for free....

If they started to sell fully legit black lotus, the Mox, Time Walk, dual land 50 cents, it would reduce the fun of the hole things for many people, not just purely collector in box people.

No, it would only upset collectors. If you want to see this in action, you can look at games like Yugioh, that would literally make the most powerful cards of the previous set rotations "common" so that everyone would have them. Zero players cared about this.

This is also ignoring the fact that MTG reprints cards ALL THE TIME. They reprint cards and place them back into rotation using the "basic set". If it was about "fear of collectibility" and everyone loving the money value of their cards: they would never do this. Every 2 years a new basic set comes out and rotates the old one. 100% of the cards found in the basic set ARE REPRINTED CARDS. In fact even these cards we're talking about like Black Lotus was printed three times in a row with Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited.

New players would be absolutely thrilled to play with cards from Beta again. Because it's FUN. I'm 100% sure kids in highschool like I was would absolutely go berserk to play with all of these old cards. They could seriously give a hoot about how much damage that does to collectors. It's not as if they were going to go and buy a Black Lotus anyway, no kid in High-school can. Just like every other player that wants to play the format but can't because of absolutely absurd cost reasons. The truth is the biggest reason(s) why these cards aren't reprinted other than upsetting Bank of America and other collectors is that those old cards are way too powerful and if they were put into any modern format, they would ruin the balance of the game.

WotC and Hasbro by extension makes ZERO money from people buying and selling vintage cards. They don't have an interest in protecting them other than pissing them off from the game. It would likely make players happy and tick off collectors. Which has been my point the entire time. If you understand the MTG market however, different prints do have different valuations. Although it would decrease the demand and therefore the value of the original prints of the cards, collectors would likely still want the originals. Players would happily use all the reprints and not care. And they would also likely release all of their original prints to simply get their money back and let some collector stick it in their vault or whatever.

The reason why the many fully free open source version of magic never got popular.

It is popular. Amongst people that actually play the game. Especially for people that specifically want to play test Type 1 online, because Wizards of the Coast have never gone back and digitally "printed" old cards. Meaning it's not possible to play T1 through WotC's official app.
And you're also ignoring the fact that there is an official digital version of MTG that exists. If it was about collecting cardboard, no one would buy digital packs or play that version of the game. Guess what? They do. Here is popular streamer Day9's Youtube video feed, in which most of his recent videos are all from Magic the Gathering Online. You'll note that he's been streaming this game on Twitch for several years now. And it has existed for much longer than that. It's not only popular enough that people play it, it's also popular enough for people to watch other people play it. MTG online according to official statements is between 30 and 50% of the entire MTG business. Again, if it was about collecting cardboard, no one would buy digital packs or play online.

It is so trivial that I am sure we understand each other, I am just terrible in English.

We understand each other, but you don't know MTG players and you're arguing about things you don't know about.

 

[LukeTbk]

We understand each other, but you don't know MTG players and you're arguing about things you don't know about.

I think you put some has all of them. The idea that absolutely no one that play care about the rarity value system (and yet they buy expensive cards) cannot be true.

And you're also ignoring the fact that there is an official digital version of MTG that exists. If it was about collecting cardboard, no one would buy digital packs or play that version of the game

No that was my point, even if there is a free version online we bought official digital, the fact official digital card exist so how much collecting matter to some.

When I finished to build my first deck (took time) on the online digital version with official cards, lot of the fun was over, building and grinding to achieve it was fully part of the experience.


No, it would only upset collectors. If you want to see this in action, you can look at games like Yugioh, that would literally make the most powerful cards of the previous set rotations "common" so that everyone would have them. Zero players cared about this.

The fact that the notion of common or not would exist show that I am not sure we fully understand each other, if the notion of common meant something, it is again a game constructed around made up scarcity and collectible.

 

[Denpepe]

Reprinting old cards does not make the new ones "old" and should not do much to the value, the value for collectors is only in the fact that a card is originaly from a certain series.

What they do to the game that's another matter

 

[UnknownSouljer]

I think you put some has all of them. The idea that absolutely no one that play care about the rarity value system (and yet they buy expensive cards) cannot be true.

I never said that. You're ignoring nuance. I've said more than once that there are people that will care about: beta, crimped, foil, Japanese, whatever that also play the game. Some will always want to roll into a tournament and want to show off. But that is an extreme minority versus people that just want to play the game. I would say that in a tournament, those players represent less than 5%. Players that will pimp their deck out some-what but won't bother to do so with the most expensive cards might be another 20% (I fit into that category). I would say at minimum 60% if not all the way up to 75% of tournament players don't really care about collecting or pimping out their decks.

In over a decade of play, I think I may have seen a full foil deck exactly 1 time. And a deck that had intentionally the rarest copies of cards maybe a half dozen times (intentionally beta, crimped, foreign, and foil - whichever combination was the most expensive). And there was a lot of overlap from it being the same people. And NONE of them were T2 or in otherwords Standard/Modern players. Which is the biggest format in the game with the most players in it. And it's also the one that makes WotC the most money. Vintage makes WotC the absolute least amount of money.

No that was my point, even if there is a free version online we bought official digital, the fact official digital card exist so how much collecting matter to some.

What? Digital cards carry nowhere near the value of a physical asset (you can check sites like Cardshark for pricing). MTGO is all about the matchmaking and the programming time. They actually spent the resources to program in all of the card mechanics so that it's impossible to misplay cards. That has a lot of intrinsic value as all of the free variations didn't do that and relied on player honesty and hopefully that players wouldn't misplay (or cheat). Plus, you know pretty card art and animation, that draws people too.
If you don't think people would play MTG's official online version if it was free, you're crazy. I think if anything it would be played 10x more. WotC would never do that though since it is 30-50% of their business. Even with that said WotC gives away 1000 new cards to new players. If they were concerned about protecting their digital asset that also wouldn't be a thing. Because at the end of the day WotC only makes money when they sell things. They make zero money from the vintage market.

Some digital card games like Hearthstone don't even let you trade cards. They sit forever in your account doing nothing if you stop playing. You never recoup your money spent or your time. You can collect all the cards you want in that game but they will never have any value since you can't trade them or sell them.

When I finished to build my first deck (took time) on the online digital version with official cards, lot of the fun was over,

Okay? I won't say that it's not fun to break open an entire booster box worth of packs. At the time, that was a lot of fun for me. But that is all gamble mechanics. Literally every rare that I didn't use from each of those packs immediately was flipped for something that I would. Keeping cards with no utility to me made zero sense.
If you're an ultra casual and you spend $50 or less a year on this game then we're not talking remotely about the same type of people. I'm not talking about someone who opens a starter and 3 boosters and tries to build a deck and then never invests another dime. I'm talking about players trying to play competitively in tournaments. However in both cases you could argue neither cares about collecting because the first player never buys enough to actually have a collection and the second player only has cards based around utility and only for the limited amount of time that those cards are legal.

building and grinding to achieve it was fully part of the experience.

Sure, but that is scratching the same proverbial itch that people get with all other games. Like RPGs.
At a certain point though, if you're a serious player that's the boring part. I played for 10 years. After a while you buy/sell/trade like a boss because you have to and at the end of the day you're trying to get the cards you need to be competitive for the least amount possible. I can tell you that flipping cards becomes "not fun" after a while unless you're really into that particular aspect of the game.
And keep in mind I'm talking about doing this with physical cards. Meaning I had to at some point interact with other people or package physical things to buy and sell. Even with eBay that is a massive headache. And when you're talking about a $5000 piece of cardboard that someone could steal, claim is fake, misrepresents condition, or any other number of nasty things, believe me when I say that for players who have to buy/sell/trade constantly it looses its luster.

Is having cool looking cards "cool"? Yes of course. You can see this today in 'special' $100 CS:GO and $10 Overwatch 2 skins. Yeah, people value cosmetics. Is that the driving force of playing CS:GO or Overwatch 2 or MTG? No, no it's not. If the core gameplay loop is bad, if tournament play sucks, I don't care how cool you look in any game: it dies. Period. MTG doesn't exist without players and the tournament scene. Collection is a subset of that. Not the other way around.

 

[LukeTbk]

What? Digital cards carry nowhere near the value of a physical asset

Obviously of course, but digital cards were still hard to get, via grinding or money, and this was in parrallely to being able to all the deck we wanted full for free on an alternative, many like me did choose the collectible online version of the game.

Okay? I won't say that it's not fun to break open an entire booster box worth of packs. At the time, that was a lot of fun for me. But that is all gamble mechanics. Literally every rare that I didn't use from each of those packs immediately was flipped for something that I would. Keeping cards with no utility to me made zero sense.

Chasing card with utility is exactly what I am talking about, instead of not and just playing with a made up without having to find card, collecting here is the activity of amassing a deck of card to play with has part and trill of it.

With who does MTG make money, people that just want to play for free or the MTG Arena/people that care that they play with reel card against player with reel card ? I.e. collector.

Maybe we just use different one for collector I use has the generic term of someone that care that the cards are genuine has it create rarity and make more fun the part of making deck, almost all those person will try out with false card (online or real) to test things.

it is not everyone/group of friends that did pay generous money (more than the amount that it was not worth it to take the time to prints instead) that did it to turn pro and would have got on MTG radar with their false cards, it is because collecting was part of the experience. You have been maybe for a while in people now adults for who it does not matter (once you get a bit of money I do not imagine that part stay except if you want to go play old school with big priced card where you can find it again, thus the point of this thread), but Magic was built among schools kids that got excited when they got a Shivan Dragon out of a pack and continue to build on that, that mechanic is an hard to balance that would hurt players and future one, not just collection in a box people.

They have economist-mathetician which jobs are making sure cards are priced in the price range kids get excited when they find one in a pack but not too high that they will not play with them, not so long ago $30 being a nice spot, playable collectible being the goal.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Maybe we just use different one for collector I use has the generic term of someone that care that the cards are genuine has it create rarity and make more fun the part of making deck, almost all those person will try out with false card (online or real) to test things.

I think our entire discussion may simply be one of semantics. You define what a collector is and does very differently than I do. And what a player is and does is also a very different type of person to me.

A player doesn't care all that much about card value. The act of "collecting cards" as you put it is merely so that they can do the mechanics of playing the game. When the cards no longer have utility for them, they will sell them. If it was about physically having the cards, they would never sell them. If you're playing Modern (Standard/T2), it's almost ritualistic the loading and unloading of cards during rotation.

A collector is interested in building a collection. That is to say a series of cards that will likely never see or enter play for the purposes of either their intrinsic value or because they enjoy the act of collecting (like Hummel figures, or spoons, or other things people collect). Having mint perfect copies is part of the attraction. As is the rarity and value of certain cards.

These two groups of people are like two circles in a Venn Diagram. There is overlap in the middle with people who like to show off and in truth it's a bit more like a gradient where there are people on either side like a curve. But I've met plenty of people that collected MTG and NEVER played a single card. And similarly I'm telling you if people could print all their own cards (or buy Chinese knockoffs as you described before) and play in T1, there would be 100s or 1000s of players that would do so. This has been hotly debated for a long time. A huge amount of the player base wants WotC to sanction "Collectors Edition" cards which was a complete reprint of the Beta set (if you bought a box you'd have 1 of each card from Beta). Completely identical other than the backs having Gold text instead of Black text and square corners instead of rounded ones. A CE Black Lotus last time I checked was valued at $50. A far cry from $5000. If this was all about collection and not about playing the game, no one would care that CE cards aren't tournament legal.

(Just rechecked right now, people are trying to sell CE lotuses that they acknowledge aren't tournament legal for $3000+ dollars. Which is totally dumb.)

it is not everyone/group of friends that did pay generous money (more than the amount that it was not worth it to take the time to prints instead) that did it to turn pro and would have got on MTG radar with their false cards, it is because collecting was part of the experience.

In higher level tournament play, cards had to be de-sleeved and inspected. In T1, that was met with quite a lot of ire. De-sleeving $20k made a lot of players unhappy to say the least. But WotC's ruling bodies did that.

Also, I would say you're not aware of how many fakes are out there. You're talking about a piece of cardboard that is worth $5000. You think no one is trying to replicate that and sell it off as a real one? The are entire sites dedicated to spotting forgeries. If it was possible to fool everyone with fakes and play with them easily, then people would. Especially if it is the difference between spending $100 on a deck (lets say that's what it costs to print and manufacturer) vs $20k. The fact that you can't see that one of those is financially much more difficult to enter than the other is honestly baffling to me. If I was into pro racing or pro biking as an example, do you honestly think I care if I have the brand name? I just want to go fast and win. If it was possible to buy an F1 card for 1/1000th of the price, even if it was a "Chinese knockoff" you'd better believe that every racing team would.

Thankfully depending on which side of the fence you're on, MTG cards are pretty difficult to forge. Whether by design or not, they figured out specific fiber sandwich techniques, and are using specific materials as well as very specific methods of printing (not to mention the design details themselves being difficult to forge). Which allow numerous tests (such as the bend test) to show whether a card is real or fake.

You have been maybe for a while in people now adults for who it does not matter (once you get a bit of money I do not imagine that part stay except if you want to go play old school with big priced card where you can find it again, thus the point of this thread), but Magic was built among schools kids that got excited when they got a Shivan Dragon out of a pack and continue to build on that, that mechanic is an hard to balance that would hurt players and future one, not just collection in a box people.

Well, lets be really honest then. The point of selling these cards to school kids was about selling a randomized product to a larger group of people with pretty art. Arcade Games, MTG, Barbies, whatever are definitely designed to target kids. Part of MTG's appeal yes, is to appeal to a wider demographic. Kids being definitely a part of that.

However tournament play is a totally different world.
I played in tournament in High School along with my friends and we absolutely made proxies all the time in order to do deck testing. I might be an outlier in comparison to the people you're describing above. But what you're describing to me is the difference between a "casual player" and a "tournament player". It's the difference between someone who "owns a chess board" and someone with an ELO Rating above 2000. Are there casual players of Chess, who just know the rules but know none of the strategy? Yes. But they aren't really the "players of the game".

Again, our conversation may not be going anywhere more because what you consider to be a player of the game and what I consider to be a player of the game are very different. I suppose it's the difference between casuals that play CS:GO, vs those that do tournament play. There are players and then there are players. Casuals add extra money to WotC's pockets. But let's be candid: it's the pros that are buying box after box, not the kid's in HS trying to get another Shivan Dragon. WotC still has to make cards that will appeal to kids to get that extra income. But it has to be balanced around tournament players and is built to support tournament play.

They have economist-mathetician which jobs are making sure cards are priced in the price range kids get excited when they find one in a pack but not too high that they will not play with them, not so long ago $30 being a nice spot, playable collectible being the goal.

Maybe they do. As much work as WotC does for card balance, the truth is they can't predict with 100% certainty what the meta will be like and therefore what the most desirable cards will be priced at. They can of course know which 30 or so cards or whatever that will be the best from a given set (by testing what is powerful and they have pros that help with that). But to know in what order of popularity and therefore price is definitely some level of guesswork.
I can remember quite a few specific cards getting banned in certain formats precisely because they didn't know just how powerful those cards were going to be when made. And I'm talking about cards just released within a set. It happened during Urza block and Invasion Block for all Block based tournemanets. And card price is directly correlated with card power, desirability, and rarity. In American English, they use the term "Broken" for an overpowered card. That still happens today. And it doesn't help that WotC introduced "Mythic" card quality type that intentionally inflated the price of certain cards due to artificially making them more rare.

All that to say, there are tons of cards worth far more than $30. We're talking about Power Nine in this thread, all of which cost a minimum of $1000 even for copies in poor condition (so long as it's at least not warped and can be played in a tournament). And even if we're talking about Modern (Standard/T2), there have been plenty of cards that reach over that price. Especially considering they also printed Foil cards which are definitely designed to be for collectors. All those high play cards will be easily double if not triple the cost of regular cards. Things like Foil Vampiric Tutor when in T2 play were $100 whereas a regular copy would be around $20.

 

[chameleoneel]

Magic should be as low cost as possible.

Every card should have limitless printing.

You should be able order any individual card you want. And no card should cost more than any other. Literally should be as low cost as possible.

You should have to order individual cards through your local game store.

Walmart and Amazon could still sell packs, boxes, pre-constructed products, etc.

 

[Starfalcon]

Magic should be as low cost as possible.

Every card should have limitless printing.

You should be able order any individual card you want. And no card should cost more than any other. Literally should be as low cost as possible.

You should have to order individual cards through your local game store.

Walmart and Amazon could still sell packs, boxes, pre-constructed products, etc.

Thats what they are doing now, you buy a box that costs $200 and a month later same box is $100 and all the individual cards are worthless. Thats why back in the day fallen empires/ ice age/ homelands/ 4th edition are all worthless too, they printed metric tons of those also and made all the cards worthless too. Who is going to want to buy a box at $150 when the max value of cards you get in the box once opened is $25?

 

[chameleoneel]

Thats what they are doing now, you buy a box that costs $200 and a month later same box is $100 and all the individual cards are worthless. Thats why back in the day fallen empires/ ice age/ homelands/ 4th edition are all worthless too, they printed metric tons of those also and made all the cards worthless too. Who is going to want to buy a box at $150 when the max value of cards you get in the box once opened is $25?

its not what they are doing now

Boxes and packs would only be for people who want to play games/events based around opening fresh packs.

They could also create more pre-constructed deck products. A big problem with those, now, is that most of the time they are crap. Its pretty rare that a pre-made product is playable at a local game night. And that's because, they can't add good cards and keep it affordable. If all cards were limitelessly printed and cheap----it would eliminate this issue. They could sell pre-made, good decks. and that would save new and average players a lot of time trying to 'build' a deck. It could also help players understand more quickly, how cards are meant to interact with their set. Rather than waiting for a couple of pro events to happen, first.

They could sell official boxes with all commons in a set for a specific colorway, etc.

I suppose they could make it so that foil cards are only available randomnly, in packs and boxes. The resell market could go crazy on foils, but the core game would still be super cheap.

 

[Starfalcon]

If you just want cheap cards, just buy a set of playing cards and write names on them. A collectable card game does not work when everything is common and worthless. If everything is common, then everyone makes the same deck to play with, and no one has fun. People try to come up with new ways around just buying all the power cards to put in a deck. If everyone that started magic was given a cheap set of the power 9, all the dual lands, and every powerful card...how much fun would there be?

 

[chameleoneel]

If you just want cheap cards, just buy a set of playing cards and write names on them. A collectable card game does not work when everything is common and worthless. If everything is common, then everyone makes the same deck to play with, and no one has fun. People try to come up with new ways around just buying all the power cards to put in a deck. If everyone that started magic was given a cheap set of the power 9, all the dual lands, and every powerful card...how much fun would there be?

The only thing separating the people who get to play the cool stuff and the people who don't, is money. Which is shit.

Make more interesting and fleshed out sets. Instead of making garbage cards to pad their products and segregate players.

 

[Starfalcon]

They wont be able to pay people to come up with interesting sets because they wont make any money selling cards since they will all be cheap. All you will get is the same cards over and over with different names.

its like saying that it isnt fair that some people drive a ferrari while your stuck driving a honda civic, and eveyone should get a ferrari. If eveyone has the same cheap stuff there is nothing to look forward or dream about. Or if you started playing a MMO and they gave everyone all the best gear and tons of gold, how much fun would everyone have playing?

 

[ZodaEX]

They wont be able to pay people to come up with interesting sets because they wont make any money selling cards since they will all be cheap. All you will get is the same cards over and over with different names.

its like saying that it isnt fair that some people drive a ferrari while your stuck driving a honda civic, and eveyone should get a ferrari. If eveyone has the same cheap stuff there is nothing to look forward or dream about. Or if you started playing a MMO and they gave everyone all the best gear and tons of gold, how much fun would everyone have playing?

It's not like that at all. Ferraris are more expensive to make than Honda Civics, hence them costing more money to purchase.
A black lotus card doesn't cost Hasbro any more money to print than a level 1 slime card costs to print. Your analogy is poor.

 

[Starfalcon]

It's not like that at all. Ferraris are more expensive to make than Honda Civics, hence them costing more money to purchase.
A black lotus card doesn't cost Hasbro any more money to print than a level 1 slime card costs to print. Your analogy is poor.

No it is correct as the previous person wanted all the powerful cards to be cheap. There is a reason that they are expensive as they give you a lot of power or horsepower to continue the car analogy. He wanted ferrari power at honda cost, as in all the most powerful cards to be easily available and cheap. Yes the cards may cost the same to make in their base form, but the quantities they print of the rares, uncommons, and commons are vastly different. To go back to alpha print runs there are only 1,100 of each rare printed versus 15,000 of each common printed. So technically the common cards cost more to print as they make many more of them versus the rare cards.

 

[chameleoneel]

No it is correct as the previous person wanted all the powerful cards to be cheap. There is a reason that they are expensive as they give you a lot of power or horsepower to continue the car analogy. He wanted ferrari power at honda cost, as in all the most powerful cards to be easily available and cheap. Yes the cards may cost the same to make in their base form, but the quantities they print of the rares, uncommons, and commons are vastly different. To go back to alpha print runs there are only 1,100 of each rare printed versus 15,000 of each common printed. So technically the common cards cost more to print as they make many more of them versus the rare cards.

Your angle on this is weird.

To Wizards of the Coast, all of the cards cost the same. Because they do not sell individual cards. They sell packs, boxes, and pre-constructed products. Which cards you actually get from WoZ, is based on luck and probability (unless its a pre-constructed product).

The way to get the high power cards, is to buy lots of boxes and packs. To brute force a successful pull. The only entities which can do this, are individuals with expendable cash, businesses, or teams. This I guess, is how WoZ made its money. At least before the digital version of MAGIC. Which I have never payed any attention to, at all.

The businesses resell them for huge markup. The teams can't play without doing this. The individuals with money might play. Or they might put that card in plexiglass and it never gets into the playing rotation. Which is stupid for the health of the game, itself.

This leaves regular people with only two options: get lucky on a few packs or maybe a single box purchase (note: I have purchased 3 boxes in my life, and never got much of anything from them)-------or spend potentially hundreds, to make the deck you want; buying cards individually from local stores and resellers. Additionally, regular people whom get lucky, may be tempted to sell a rare card. Rather than play it. Which also dillutes the game. Not only because it leads would be players away from playing the cards----it also leave it open to be abused by scalpers, whom have no interest in ever playing. But instead buy up packs and boxes, hoping to swipe a good card to flip for cash. Lowering probability for people whom actually want to play those cards.

Magic is pretty cool. And its absolutely stupid that you can't really play the true potential of this cardboad and ink card game, without having hundreds to spare. IMO, WoZ could make a lot more money, if they endlessly printed cards, made it easy to order them, and otherwise fleshed out the sets with cards that make sense to the core of the game. Instead of padding for this stupid probability model. Tons of cards from every set, are considered essentially not worth using. And that is bad for the game.

 

[Starfalcon]

Well Ive been playing magic since it came out so I have a better perspective on it that someone who has come along later and has not seen everything that has happened over the years. See back in the day they did exactly what you wanted and almost destroyed the game. The set was called chronicles and they reprinted a ton of powerful old cards so that new players would be able to play with them and not have to pay a lot.

This crashed the value of tons of cards and led directly to the creation of the reserve list to restore stability to the game. It caused all sorts of problems with massive amounts of people leaving due to buying these cards before they were reprinted for decks then the cards becoming worthless overnight. Everyone though they were going to eventually reprint all the cards, screwing over all their old time players. Most people stopped buying cards, because they figured they would all be reprinted and to just wait for the cheap reprints. It nearly snowballed out of control before they came up with the reserve list at the last hour to bring the game back from the brink of failure.

You may want to go back and read about what happened back then, before wishing for cheap cards for everyone.

 

[chameleoneel]

Well Ive been playing magic since it came out so I have a better perspective on it that someone who has come along later and has not seen everything that has happened over the years. See back in the day they did exactly what you wanted and almost destroyed the game. The set was called chronicles and they reprinted a ton of powerful old cards so that new players would be able to play with them and not have to pay a lot.

This crashed the value of tons of cards and led directly to the creation of the reserve list to restore stability to the game. It caused all sorts of problems with massive amounts of people leaving due to buying these cards before they were reprinted for decks then the cards becoming worthless overnight. Everyone though they were going to eventually reprint all the cards, screwing over all their old time players. Most people stopped buying cards, because they figured they would all be reprinted and to just wait for the cheap reprints. It nearly snowballed out of control before they came up with the reserve list at the last hour to bring the game back from the brink of failure.

You may want to go back and read about what happened back then, before wishing for cheap cards for everyone.

Magic should be about playing the game and making interesting decks (And WoZ providing us with interesting cards, rather than filler).

It should not be about the monetary value of your deck.

I really do not care that hardcore players were upset that their decks were de-valued and/or no longer could look forward to obtaining new high dollar value cards.

 

[Starfalcon]

Magic should be about playing the game and making interesting decks (And WoZ providing us with interesting cards, rather than filler).

It should not be about the monetary value of your deck.

I really do not care that hardcore players were upset that their decks were de-valued and/or no longer could look forward to obtaining new high dollar value cards.

Well you dont seem to understand how every collectable card game need to have scarcity to thrive. There are players like you that want every card to be commmon and worthless. Then there are the whales that spend the cash to buy everything to beat everyone else. Lastly there are the collectors that want to chase all the rare cards to get them all.

You pretty much want a free to play MMO with only free players and no whales to keep the servers running. Without all these groups of people to keep the game going, the game fails. The free/cheap people arent going to keep the lights on at WOTC. Its those whales that pay to keep the people employed, the artists paid, the cards printed and shipped.

Just think of it another way, with the [H] if the people here just wanted a free forum to come to and post, but no one wanted to pay for the server costs to keep it up....where would this site be? There are plenty of people donating and giving money behind the scenes to keep it up and running so the free people can come here and enjoy the forum.

 

[ZodaEX]

Well you dont seem to understand how every collectable card game need to have scarcity to thrive. There are players like you that want every card to be commmon and worthless. Then there are the whales that spend the cash to buy everything to beat everyone else. Lastly there are the collectors that want to chase all the rare cards to get them all.

You pretty much want a free to play MMO with only free players and no whales to keep the servers running. Without all these groups of people to keep the game going, the game fails. The free/cheap people arent going to keep the lights on at WOTC. Its those whales that pay to keep the people employed, the artists paid, the cards printed and shipped.

Just think of it another way, with the [H] if the people here just wanted a free forum to come to and post, but no one wanted to pay for the server costs to keep it up....where would this site be? There are plenty of people donating and giving money behind the scenes to keep it up and running so the free people can come here and enjoy the forum.

That's under the assumption that I care wether or not the game "thrives". I don't care if it does and neither do my friends who also play MTG. So this just boils down to a difference of opinion. You like the game having rare cards, while others don't. That's fine.

 

[Starfalcon]

That's under the assumption that I care wether or not the game "thrives". I don't care if it does and neither do my friends who also play MTG. So this just boils down to a difference of opinion. You like the game having rare cards, while others don't. That's fine.

If you and your friends dont care if the game thrives, why are you playing it? Ive never seen a player that doesnt care about the game doing well. If the game dies then you will never get more cards to play with. I just dont get the idea with people wanting no "rare cards" and all cards to be worthless. Are people that mad they missed out on the early days and didnt get them before they were super expensive?

There are pleny of cheap cards already, you can get complete sets of fallen empires and ice age for nearly nothing nowdays, even over 20 years later. You can just play with certain sets and pretend the rare cards dont even exist. You can even just make a proxy deck and play with that with friends and not have to spend a dime. There are all sorts of ways to play and rare cards will never even effect you.