The bauble will burst when Chinese fakes become good enough to pass most of the tests, or when MTG itself collapses (so, when Arena kicks the bucket). They may already pass. From what I see, there's not really anything to pull out the bottom of prices on these cards. Playable cards will continue to have a hard baseline that adjusts with each buyout. Even garbage like Fluctuator (price of $2.50 for years) still maintains a $6 price after its spike failed.
I think players would slowly accept good Chinese fakes in EDH (I imagine Cradle is a huge staple, along side the Vaults, Grim Monolith, etc) and from there they could slip into Legacy or Modern (Liliana, Snap, Goyf, Bob). With a good enough fake that passes the feel test they'll be good for tournaments. I doubt GP or Open judges are going to be louping every Reserved List card during a deck check - not to mention the aggravation of having to desleeve double sleeves. And good luck convincing a player that some grubby neckbeard needs to desleeve his NM $4000 Tabernacle or playset of $500 LEDs.
Originally Posted by Acclimation
I'm not missing it at all. Why would I sell them when I bought them because I wanted to use them in the game? Sure, then I have cash but no cards, when I bought cards in the first place because I wanted them...
Ha, not going to work. Just the two missing Juzams are more than two Libraries.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Most people have no idea how far these fakes have already gone...
Obviously you should continue doing whatever you want! Your 'portfolio' has accumulated more value over time than even the highest returning stocks.
But when you consider that there isn't a situation in which you can actually play with more than one library, the 2 others you have can't really be justified as 'but what if I want to play with them?'
Now you can justify them as a collectible. You can justify them as an investment. You can justify them as 'f-off buddy, I'll do what I want!' But if the idea is to have them around to play Magic with them, then you have a bunch of value tied up in something you actually can't use.
The same could be said for the 2 Juzams you have. Unless you play or intend to play Old School, those cards won't see play in anything else. But of course, if you sell them then you miss out on any future value they accumulate.
I think fakes are more a risk for modern cards or maybe revised duals (all of the good look ones are allready suspicious). I dont think LEG/AN/A/B fakes will become a problem. It is near impossible to print something new that is adequatly similar to 20+-year old cardboard.
Well, there are situations were they might be unrestricted (in Vintage) or unbanned (in EDH or Legacy) but yeah, the extra Libraries mainly do nothing.Obviously you should continue doing whatever you want! Your 'portfolio' has accumulated more value over time than even the highest returning stocks.
But when you consider that there isn't a situation in which you can actually play with more than one library, the 2 others you have can't really be justified as 'but what if I want to play with them?'
Now you can justify them as a collectible. You can justify them as an investment. You can justify them as 'f-off buddy, I'll do what I want!' But if the idea is to have them around to play Magic with them, then you have a bunch of value tied up in something you actually can't use.
The same could be said for the 2 Juzams you have. Unless you play or intend to play Old School, those cards won't see play in anything else. But of course, if you sell them then you miss out on any future value they accumulate.
Thing is, I was going to play Old School, except I live in the middle of nowhere now, so there is no one to play with. Once my kids are older, travel might be more of an option.
But as for why I have as much as I do, well, I like that if I want to try a card in a new deck, or play a different deck, I pretty much can. Also, not really in the case of Juzam, but you never know what might come out that makes some old card much better (like Helm of Obedience). I actually recently considered moving my two Juzams to a friend who was interested, but he ended up not wanting them and so I still have them. The thing also is that I have 6 kids and chances are good at least one or two will want to play. Should I sell stuff stuff and deny them that opportunity? Nah, I'll hang on to what I have and see what happens.
I'm not afraid of "losing" value, because I didn't buy them for value, I bought them for utility. And in the mean time, the size of my collection allows some of our local players to use cards they couldn't have before.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Regardless of your intention when buying these objects, they have nevertheless accumulated quite a bit of value, and you're in possession of that value.
It's like if you inherit some valuable heirloom from your grandparents... you didn't INTEND to own that $50,000 diamond necklace, but now that you're in possession of it, you'd be a little naive not to develop some plan to acknowledge and exploit that newfound value.
- 'Pathy' on MTGO
- Eastern PA player
I have no doubt that counterfeits already see play in modern, and have probably tainted the trading pool to some degree. Modern cards are both a lot more liquid and not as easy to 'catch' because people don't think of modern cards when they think of counterfeits, and on top of that most people buying RL cards are probably getting them for EDH since the people playing Legacy and Vintage are probably smaller to begin with.
Yeah, last I checked, people are having to pull out a 20x loupe to check the MTG Logo's green dot for a single red pixel as the definitive test. Or checking the scimitar of Arabian Nights to be sure it has the appropriate shading profile.
And even then, batch to batch/site to site is so variable that even that can be difficult. Something weird about one LED set symbol is completely fine because that quirk happened on Gen 3 printings.
Then, throw absolutely everything you know about fakes out the window if it's a foreign card, because they're completely different. Different stock, registration, all sorts of keys that are much less known about.
In recognition of this reserved list kerfuffle I bought my LGS entire stock (1x) of Wall of Kelp for $1
Time to HODL
Sure, but by the same token, there is something in saying, "this is a family heirloom and we intend to keep it." Now, it's not exactly the same, because there is no way I'd consider cards actual heirlooms, but the general idea is that, with the way things are currently, my own finances and prices in general, anything I sell is irreplaceable. Having bought the cards to have the option to play them, if I sell them, I lose that option and gaining an arbitrary amount of cash (that isn't enough for me to retire on) doesn't really put me anywhere. I bought them for entertainment value, not monetary value. If I sell them, what do I use that money to do? If I reinvest that money into some other entertainment value, it will certainly immediately lose the monetary value. So, I am right back where I was, except now I don't have cards to play the game, which is what I wanted in the first place. Hell, at this point, I'm getting further entertainment value just watching things in my binders go up in "value." You'd probably think I'd be sad though when things I have tank in price, but it just doesn't happen (I didn't bat an eye when Imperial Seal was reprinted, even though that "lost" me value, in fact, I am glad they reprinted it).
I'm not knocking anyone who sells into the spikes. It makes logical sense. It just doesn't do what I want it to do.
My wife knows that these things are worth a bunch, so should something happen to me, she can take appropriate action and do what she feels is best. If the market "crashes" before then, sure there was a missed opportunity, but since there is no way I am selling my whole collection, a couple grand here or there really isn't life changing.
"The Ancients teach us that if we can but last, we shall prevail."
—Kaysa, Elder Druid of the Juniper Order
Be careful. He who fights with hoarders should look to it that he himself does not become a hoarder. And if you gaze long into a buyout, the buyout also gazes into you.
I always read this but no one ever posts any proof. The way I see it, there's only 2 reasons that's the case:
1. Fakes aren't as good as people claim so people just want to stir the pot by saying otherwise or
2. Fakes are that good and these people are actually trying to pass them off as genuine on the secondary market, and showing proof that superfakes exist would bring the market to a standstill
In either case, the people saying that "fakes are as good as real cards now" are really just scumbags with nothing better to do with their lives. The only difference is what kind of scumbag you are: the shitposting type or the criminal type.
The purpose of any moat is to impede attack. Some are filled with water, some with thistles. Some are filled with things best left unseen.
except that fakes are getting better and better and I am very positive that 95% of legacy palyers wouldn't tell a difference between original and a good fake
It makes 0 sense that all RL cards are spiking left and right like crazy if the market had fakes coming in and increasing supply.
But... who would make fakes of Elvish Farmer, or Wormwood Treefolk?
Cockatrice: Bosque
I'll never forget at an SCG classic sitting next to nedleeds. Round 1 first thing his opponent does is fetch a volcanic island in his double sleeved deck. Nedleeds almost immediately calls a judge, claims its a fake, and they look at the card and take it to vendor and he was right.
I think if people educated themselves on it they could spot the fakes. I myself don't know them, but I think it could be done
I imagine the first gen fakes were pretty bad. There's a vendor that's prominent on /bootlegmtg who is now on the 7th generation of fakes. Not sure if they just have the most advertising, but there are a ton of vendors available. Probably comes down to sampling a few of them and then ordering full playset of Reserved List for $100 from your chosen shop.
Took a look around there and it seems now the best bet is light test and feel of the card to accurately spot a fake - no light passes through most good fakes. Outside of Revised cards where the print run was relatively small and has been studied to death, print quality is so varied across the board that off colors, smudges, different set symbols can be attributed to the dogshit quality from Wizards's printers. Even with duals there are still a lot of small variances from run to run so there's not a lot of hard rules. Counterfeit groups on Facebook focus on louping once you get past the feel of the card, but that goes back to print quality variance.
If you really want to have a good fake that can't be definitively called out across the table, just get a foreign counterfeit. People on that sub are even publishing ways to artificially age card ("light aging" seems to be the big one) so good luck...
I think the market has had bad fakes. Stuff is getting more accurate, and with cards like Mox Diamond going from $25 to $500 in just a few years more and more people will seek them out. It will be interesting to see what happens. You do have the split of players, group A who will never buy fakes and will continue to save up, and then group B who says "screw this, it's cardboard with ink on it, I'm paying $2.50 for Drop of Honey". I'm not sure when Group A starts converting to Group B though.It makes 0 sense that all RL cards are spiking left and right like crazy if the market had fakes coming in and increasing supply.
If counterfeiters can barely get English printings right, how would foreign printings be easier to copy? Or is there more inconsistency in those printings meaning that the fake might even look better than the original?
The purpose of any moat is to impede attack. Some are filled with water, some with thistles. Some are filled with things best left unseen.
It's more so that much less is known about foreign language cards. Different card stock, colors may be off, text differences. How do you compare the textbox of a Russian or Korean card to an English one? Outside of obvious stuff like printing the black layer separate, generally harder to do 1:1 comparisons. Good luck trying to find a Russian Liliana for comparison in a tournament dispute.
Even wizards acknowledges that the Japanese stock/coating is different, so they changed all sites to Japanese style. So you could point to that as evidence of why a foreign fake feels different than a English comparison card.
Edit: Past that I'm sure there are a lot more variances in foreign shops in lot to lot printings...but again, I haven't seen a lot of people come forward asking if their foreign card is legit or not.
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