You're forgetting the multitude of lesser Legends rares like Invoke Prejudice, In The Eyes Of Chaos there are quite a few $20-40 ones. And also Chain Lightning is a $15 common now.
For me honestly even if I were to open boxes of Legends in italian and the cards individually arent worth as much as in english I mean i dont care if i make profit or not i want the cards. i would look at it as how many cards am I getting at what cost. the answer is basically any box under $1000 is not so bad. quite honestly. if it is extremely old. I would buy Antiquities if I had the stones in a second just ebcause the artwork in that one particularly is so beautiful. cards like Phyrexian Gremlins are so whimsical and cool. The same reason I like many cards from the Dark the spookiness of that set is just palpable.
They don't make them like they used to? After Alliances i dont know what happened the game took a nosedive in artistic quality by and large.
Oh yeah WOTC stopped paying artist royalties and the spirit of the game rage quit
1) Your prices listed are way out of whack with real street prices, and I'm not sure where you're getting them from.Originally Posted by Troll_ov_Grimness
2) Future Sight boxes are not incredibly cheap, but let's say you open one and get all of the cards you listed. Here's the street value of those cards:
Tarmogoyf - $65
River of Tears - $1
Grove of the Burnwillows - $4
Tombstalker - $6.75
Epochrasite - $.75
Narcomoeba - $.75
Yixlid Jailer - $.25
Magus of the Moon - $3.75
Pact of Negation - $4.75
Total: $87
So you spent over $100 for a box of Future Sight, lost money, and probably ended up with a bunch of crap you didn't want or need in the first place. Congratulations! Let's move on.
3) Coldsnap box example:
Adarkar Valkyrie - $3.50
Commandeer - $1
Counterbalance - $5
Dark Depths - $24
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge - $1
Jester's Scepter - $.50
Jötun Grunt - $1.75
Ohran Viper - $2.75
Rite of Flame - $.50
Scrying Sheets - $.75
Zur the Enchanter - $2
Total: $42.75
So once again you lost money opening a box and probably ended up with a bunch of crap you didn't need. I'm starting to sense a trend here.
4) Italian Legends generally run about $600 a box, so let's break down an Italian Legends box.
Mana Drain - $70
Moat - $110
Reset - $8
The Abyss - $45
Invoke Prejudice - $8
Mirror Universe - $30
Chain of Mephistopheles - $35
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale - $200
Chain Lightning - $8
Acid Rain - $4
All Hallow's Eve - $12
Sylvan Library - $4
In the Eye of Chaos - $12
Karakas - $8
Total: $554 plus whatever other random crap you got, assuming you pulled every money rare in your 36 packs, out of the 138 possible Legends rares
Once again opening an entire box is a losing proposition financially. That's why most people don't do it.
The more product is opened and the more copies are floating around it will most likely drive down the price of singles from that set (see Zendikar, Onslaught, Fallen Empires, etc.). Your argument for opening old boxes doesn't really hold water by any reasonable financial metric that I can see.
Find me on Twitter at @JMJACO and @EternalCentral. If you have an interest in Vintage Eldrazi, check out my book Eldrazi Meditations.
I'd be happy to open old boxes.
At the MSRP of that time.
:)
I read but seldom post, so here's my .02 worth...
The local card shop is a legacy hot spot and this topic came up. Someone suggested WotC do boosters for the format. I like the idea of a Legacy booster pack. WotC could release release product in small batches to avoid wrecking card prices and get new old stuff in more players hands. What's interesting, is even one collector with 30+ Taiga's was for a controlled reprint of the dual lands.
I don't think reasonable reprint rates will hurt the prices of good playable cards. Wrath of God has been reprinted many many times and still holds it's value pretty well despite not being in Type 2 for the moment. It's been in like ABUR4th-10th. With that said the off color duals probably will take a price hit because demand isn't as strong but really is a scrubland selling for $15 to $20 instead of $25 a big deal?
Deep down, I don't think the orginal dual lands should have ever been placed on the reserve list.
BTW - while it isn't perfect in some decks, running three real dual lands & one Ravinca dual can work ok with all the fetch land goodness. It can also help friends make the supply of duals go a little futher. Likewise, 4 real dual's and one Ravinca seems to work pretty well too. Often people that don't know you or your decks will quickly wasteland that Ravi dual thinking you don't have the real ones...
To be honest the only real way wizards can increase supply is through reprints or promos. Reprints are pretty much out of the question as WotC doesn't want certain legacy staples in newer formats and promos can only do so much.
If for example wotc decided to do something like ftv legacy here would be the problems...
It is still a limited print run.
Most stores will just hike up prices so players will still pay through the nose.
If wotc decided to do legacy packs or something like that the issue is that opening the packs would be worthwhile if they were loaded with money cards and assuming they have an unlimited print run prices will be destroyed. If the packs are on a limited print run you face the same problems as with a ftv legacy.
Straight up reprinting certain cards is also problematic. Some people have suggested reprinting things like ravages of war and tabernacle as they wouldn't really cause problems in newer formats, but reprinting them would completely destroy the price of them. Players and collectors won't be happy when their $300 card is now worth $1.
I'm for promos all the way. Think about judge/legacy top 8 foil portal playables. You can slowly increase the supply of VERY scarce cards without having to make a massive print run.
I believe that the best way to release old reprints is through modern dday Precon decks, like Duel Decks. Imagine $15-20 precons that contained say, 1 dual land along with some other halfway decent cards. There's not even a need for promo foils, just the reprint.
I'm for promos, duel deck reprints as well as something akin to masters edition in paper. There's absolutely nothing stating that any 'current' set needs to be standard legal. Unhinged wasn't standard legal when it was in print.
And I'm not happy when new players have to stick to Merfolk, Goblins and Dredge just because they can't afford buying cards for the decks they would like to play.
I'm not happy that my Onslaught-era Rift Slide deck has lost almost all of its value either. Akroma's Vengeance is now a dollar rare instead of a $10 staple, Exalted Angel is a $6 imitation of Baneslayer instead of a $20 unrivaled beatstick, Decree of Justice is now a dollar rare instead of being the $10 defining control card of the era, same for Eternal Dragon. Wrath is down to $6. Don't even get me started on foil Slides and Rifts. I sunk hundreds of dollars into that deck and someone could probably put it together for $50 today, maybe less if you were halfway decent at scouring eBay. I know I'm not alone here either, anyone who didn't sell their standard deck before it rotated (pretty much any deck, any standard environment from the last fifteen years) has watched their "investments" plummet in value over night. This happens to hundreds of thousands of people ever year, even if you sell out before your standard cards devalue, the poor sucker who bought them from you gets crushed at rotation time instead.
Yet for some reason when we're talking about a $300 Tabernacle instead of a $300 deck, suddenly we're concerned for the plight of the guy who sunk money into it because WotC made a painfully bad promise fifteen years ago. I'm pretty sure that if you totaled up the amount of money that goes down the drain when standard rotates each season, it would be far more than the amount of money that would be lost if every card on the reserved list suddenly dropped to $1.
But that's about rotation, not reprinting. standard-only cards plummeting is bound to happen, something you can anticipate. Not so if cards didn't have a no-reprints guarantee. Also the price alteration is caused by players (demand) and not wizards (supply)
But the more popular Legacy gets, the harder it will be to not reprint staples...
I think you were missing his point – which I tend to think is an excellent one. Card values decrease. Live with it. Whether values drop because of reprinting (which has never really been proven) or because of rotation, or because of being punted by the natural evolution of the game, players have to deal with the fluctuations and instabilities of their card values.
Who says the Internet isn't full of <3?
That point is an absolute joke.
Why don't all you people who whine about card value increasing just live with that? Card values increasing are much better for the game then card values decreasing.
If you have a problem with card values increasing odds are you aren't buying cards or contributing to the increased prices anyway and they will keep rising regardless of your opinion and all your whining will be in vain.
How are increasing values better for the game than decreasing values?
And, my point was not to put a value judgement (good or bad) on increasing/decreasing card values, just that fluctuations are an inherent natural part of the game we play. Also, why is it that discussion always equals whining? How can we make progress without discussion and debate?
Who says the Internet isn't full of <3?
If card values are decreasing naturally it is because demand is decreasing which means the game is dying.
If card values fluctuate as you say then you should accept increased prices on legacy staples. Also we really can't make any progress as the decision ultimately lies with WotC not us. They probably don't give much of a damn either way as 99% of what they do is geared towards type 2 players and yugioh players.
This is the whining that is going on...
I have to respectfully disagree on a number of points. First, as I said, decreasing values occur for several reasons. Like Ben said in his article, Birds of Paradise maintained its value through countless reprints and only significantly dropped when it was power-crept to tier 2 by the superior Noble Hierarch. That doesn't point to moribundity as much as evolution.
Secondly, the entire reason Wizards sticks to the Reserved list, according to Mark Rosewater, is because it is worried about its corporate image and integrity in the eyes of its customers, so I think they do care when we have these debates. Wizards may not be reading, but Ben has certainly mentioned in his article things we have been discussing here and since Wizards invited him to give his opinion, ideas do filter through and discussion and debate does have an impact.
Lastly, I have seen some whining sometimes, but the quote you give does have another non-whiny reality that is the more geared to the health of the format. If we can all agree that the health of the format is most important, I don't see anything wrong with someone being displeased that entry into the format limits a player's choice based on card values. I'm not saying I agree with that, but I do think it's a valid opinion and shouldn't be disregarded as whining.
Who says the Internet isn't full of <3?
Do a Google search for T1 Players Make Me Cry: the Rebuttal. Some guy was whining about card prices in Vintage and I wrote a response article. You know what I said? I said that T1 was cheaper than standard in the long run and that prices were fine. You can see how alive and well T1 is today. 15 proxy tournaments and all. I was a know-it-all asshole back then and I was wrong. I don't want to see Legacy go the way T1 did.
I have to agree with some number of posters: Andrew77, his point that a higher card value is better for the game. If cards aren't worth anything, people won't buy or spend their time playing a "worthless" game. Let's face it, one reason magic is popular is that the cards are semi-valuable. There's so many other similar tcgs, which I absolutely love playing, like for example Jyhad, which was a great game on its own. For whatever reason, it didn't make it. Now no-one plays it. The cards are worth nothing. People play Yu-gioh, people magic. Therefore the cards are worth something. LotFR, Wyvern, Star Wars, Pokemon, Warcraft. Less people play: cards worth less. Everyone can play these games, for a very small investment. But no one does. Instead more people would rather pay hundreds of dollars on Magic. How is that bad?
GP Madrid. The largest Magic tournament ever. Is it partly responsible for the recent price hikes? Yes. Has it affected the game of Magic in a negative way? FUCK NO. The numbers tell the story. The players have shown their support. Would there have been an extra few hundred people if prices were decreased? Would there have been less variety in the number of deck archetypes if prices were decreased? Who knows... In WotC "sample" of 100 decks from the event, there wasn't a single 40 land list. Is this because of the price and scarcity of Tabernacles? Probably. Is it better for the format that there's other decks which take it's place? In my mind, yes. And this is the difference between Legacy and Vintage. In Vintage you have 10 or so power cards, which themselves warp the entire format. Does Tabernacle or Loyal Retainers warp the format like Lotus or Ancestral Recall do Vintage? I don't think so. In Vintage, there are no other options. In Legacy there are. I personally don't think it's a valid comparison.
I also agree with ramunajan, "buy" into the format. The majority of people who complain about Legacy prices also play Standard regularly, and spend more cash drafting and playing standard constructed. Which is fine. But if you ain't rich, make a choice, then. My friend who started Magic with 2010, played alot of Standard, until I introduced him to Legacy. Now he has a tier 1 Legacy deck. Trading and selling your standard cards can go a loooong way into your first Legacy deck. I've seen it happen. Even in the midst of this current price increase. Legacy is going thru a growth spurt. Wizards is noticing this I'm sure, and it wouldn't surprise me at all for them to take advantage of it. Although I would be disappointed.
I could have brought Lands or Eternal Garden to the tournament today, but decided against it because the meta wasn't right for it. Pretty sure at least some other people had the same concerts. Just saying......
I agree with your other words though, although I still believe a 30% decrise in prices wouldn't hurt.
4th: 293/363
5th: 82/434
Vi: 159/167
Wl: 100/167
Te: 318/335
St: 132/143
Ex: 136/143
US: 235/335
3/8 Sealed boosters
1/8 Sealed boosterboxes
Only 632 cards left for a full Korean set, over 69% done (last update 05/27)
Always looking for sealed product!
You're talking about a healthy format, right? I hope your understanding of a healthy format does not include a format that is reigned by rising cardprices and decreasing cardavailability.
Sure, my 1-liner might've looked whiny, but there is a sad truth in it which MMogg already pointed out.
New players with limited budget will pick up the decks I mentioned rather than building something more expensive like Bant Survival or Tempo Thresh.
This leads to a few decks being played very much, more than today and this destroys the variety so many people like about Legacy.
This may be quite a bit in the future, but well, do we know how many people will attend other Legacy GPs?
my hope is that WotC see how big GP: Madrid was and that there is money to be made with this format - and I hope they look at what would help the format health: Increased availability of format staples.
The other option they could choose would be to translate the power creep to format staples and quasi-reprint them.
Imagine a Dual that gives 1 life when it EtB. This would result in increased cardavailability, but I guess the prices of the old Duals would go down.
But in the end, it's up to WotC to realize that they can both make money and help the players.
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