A Sensible Approach To Breaking the Reserved List

[dontbiteitholmes]

Okay, so we all know the argument and most of us agree the reserve list needs to go. The Legacy game is getting too expensive. Not too expensive for me, or maybe you, but the new blood kids who come in and keep the format alive. The kids that don't have the cards yet. If they don't have the cards I can't play against them. This means less fun for me and for them. On top of that WoTC is making no money off the reserved list. This is a problem. WoTC wants to make money, new kids want to play Legacy, and established Legacy players want the new players to play so that we can have the format health we've wanted since day one. Everyone wants something and it seems like no one is getting it with the reserved list and the way things are. We know the reserved list needs to go but all the so called "answers" for how to do it I've heard so far have one thing in common, they all either ruin the value of existing cards (the "new kid" masturbatory fantasy where everyone who already has the cards deserves nothing and they get everything for cheap), or they make the cards too hard to get, or they don't making WoTC any money. Clearly any reasonable solution to the problem fixes the supply issues without completely destroying the value of existing cards and makes the company money at the same time.

So we can establish that our solution must...

1: Make old cards available to newer players.

2: Maintain the value of old cards.

3: Make WotC money. People will complain at this last point but hear me out. WotC puts in an amount of work to keeping the game enjoyable that seems to go unappreciated a lot of the time. When you look at how far Magic has come since Urza's block or hell, even Mirrodin block, you have to give WotC props. They manage to keep the game fresh time after time. I've been playing MtG since Revised off and on and the game is constantly improving, which is why I still play. Not to mention for WoTC to even consider a proposal as serious they would have to make money since they would be devoting time and resources to it. Part of the problem with Eternal formats as they exist is that WotC doesn't make money. Why should a company actively promote a format where 90% of the cards are in the secondary market? It just doesn't make business sense. That's the beauty of my plan, it allows WotC to resume making money off Eternal formats which translates into more support and better prizes in the end which means everyone wins.

THE PLAN

1: First off announce the reprint policy is being repealed. Replacing it is a policy that after an initial period (which I will explain in a second) none of the cards on the reprint list will EVER be reprinted again with their original artwork.

2: Announce that starting next year there will be an additional set released once a year. This set will feature a mix of old and new cards but none of the cards in the set will be legal in Standard or Extended (unless they are already in print in a set that is legal of course). This will be similar to the online "Master" sets except for featuring new cards never seen before.

3: The "Master" sets will be draftable as a stand alone. They will contain Legacy staples, EDH cards, new Eternal/casual/EDH cards, basically everything that doesn't "fit" into the Standard/Extended equation but would be acceptable elsewhere. So insert fun EDH generals here, insert reprints of fetchlands here, insert things that they don't want in Standard here (example reprint of Propaganda that say "you or Planeswalkers you control").

4: This "Master" set is maybe a little larger then the first set of a block. It has commons, uncommons, rares, and Mythics as well as a new rarity, lets say "Super-Mythic". So every pack has it's common/uncommon/rare like a normal pack, but in the foil slot you have an astronomically low chance of getting a non-foil "Super-Mythic", insert Dual Land/power/reserved reprints here. Super low chance of this, maybe one in four/six boxes average if that. This is the new method of distributing "reserved list" cards. Of course if you were to open a random Super Mythic it wouldn't have the same chance of being say a Moat or Mox Emerald as it would have of being say a Mox Diamond, you carefully ration out the cards to keep supply/demand at reasonable and sustainable levels.

5: Now, what to do with the reserved list cards already on the market? Easy, announce that for the grace period of one year anyone can send in a reserved list card in any condition to receive a special foil edition of the same card. So say I have a Plateau that has Sunkist spilled on it, or near mint doesn't matter. I send in my Plateau and WotC sends me back a brand new foiled out Plateau. After the grace period of one year, the cards on the reserved list will never be distributed again as foils except as prize support. So WotC exchanges cards, then locks the rest in their vault and only releases them as prizes for high profile tournaments (example top 8 at a Legacy GP get one each foil dual 1st place gets full set, this means after the initial exchange period roughly 4-6 playsets of foil duals are released a year, at the one-two Vintage events a year top 8 draft a foil P9 and winner gets a set (so 2-3 foil sets of power a year), meaning the foils will always be highly valuable, meaning people who have duals/power now are rewarded for trading in as they will have something valuable and extremely rare thus preserving value on existing collections) Of course the people who don't trade in still have value in their cards as new reprints from the master set will ALWAYS be in white border and with new art and symbol (explained below), so beta duals will still be rare and valuable and even revised as the old art will be more pimp then new art and some people dislike playing with foils so there will always be a bigger market for the old versions (also see symbol below as reason the old cards will be worth more than reprints).

6: At the end of the year grace period release the first "Master" set. New cards that would be cool in Eternal but broken in Standard, some reprints of older cards they just don't want reprinted in Standard, then at Super-Mythic the cards that were traded in to WotC for foils. When WotC runs out of traded in cards they break out the printer. All new reprints are white border, with new art and a green/red/whatever color rarity symbol. Something that has never been used before as a rarity color that stands out from across the room and says "This is a reprint meant to be played with, not collected" similar to the purple symbol on time shifted cards. The point of reprinting the cards is to make them available to new players to actually play with, not to give everyone instant "OMG SUPER PIMP FOIL BLACK BORDER DUAL LANDS IN $50 A BOX SET."

There you have it. Reprint list cards enter circulation again, WotC makes money on Eternal and has a new venue to release Eternal only cards, Eternal players get a new set to draft, kids open virtual $100 bills in packs from time to time and get super stoked, we get foil dual lands/power, people who already have the cards are not punished financially for having a $5000 collection of Vintage cards and instead rewarded, Eternal formats become more popular and more accessible, Standard kids never have to buy a pack of this if they don't want to and miss nothing. I see it as a win-win-win.

Discuss...

[dontbiteitholmes]

I know that's a lot to read, if anyone has any questions on specifics I'd be happy to elaborate. I didn't want to write a book. I'm taking exams this week in school so this was rather brief. This is something I've been kicking around in my head for a while, but I took this semester off from Magic to focus on school and seeing prices on my return has given me the kick start to finally sit down and put this on paper. I'm considering writing this into an article and submitting it to a Magic website as this is an important community issue to Eternal players and there needs to be a groundwork for what we are asking of WotC. It's just a shame if they don't break the reprint policy. I've been playing Magic since I was a kid and I've had a lot of fun with the game and I'd like to see the next generation of future nerds be able to play Legacy as I think it is the most fun format and I've been hooked since the first time I played when it was still 1.5. I plan on going into software design when I graduate and moving into the game design field and I think Magic as a game has had a large influence on how I think about games, both from a design and implementation level. Legacy is such a big part of why I stuck with Magic I'd hate to see the format cease to exist because of a foolish and short sighted policy entered into many many years ago.

[kinda]

Yeah, wizard's isn't breaking the reserved list. They don't profit from those cards anymore and breaking the list would hurt their image...so it's a lose-lose for them. They're just gonna keep printing legacy cards like mental misstep and green sun's zenith and mox opal etc. to try and entice legacy players to buy product and profit that way. What they really want though is for legacy players to start putting together standard decks...that's their best way to profit from legacy.

Edit: Oh completely forgot to address the whole thing about the cards will still decrease in value in your plan. Also, the prices of the cards will either remain high or go low and really annoy collectors. Relics diamond is still $30ish which is close to stronghold diamonds. Which is less than they were before reprints...but still high.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yeah, wizard's isn't breaking the reserved list. They don't profit from those cards anymore and breaking the list would hurt their image...so it's a lose-lose for them. They're just gonna keep printing legacy cards like mental misstep and green sun's zenith and mox opal etc. to try and entice legacy players to buy product and profit that way. What they really want though is for legacy players to start putting together standard decks...that's their best way to profit from legacy.

Just out of curiosity, did you read what I posted? Legacy players aren't buying packs to get Mental Misstep/Zeniths unless they already draft or play T2. There was a good 5 years that I played Legacy and never bought a pack of cards. Why bother? I can spend $30 and get a card or playset of cards I need, or I can open packs and hope I get stuff that I can trade then waste X amount of time trading them. If Wizards never breaks the reserved list they are just screwing themselves out of money since they make roughly $0 every time someone buys a dual land or Mox.

[kinda]

Yes, that is the case for a lot of legacy players...and wizards doesn't like that. And it is working to some extent...I know people who wanted to go to a new phyrexia prerelease to grab mental missteps.

Edit: Wizards would absolutely make money in the short term printing new duals...but they would make a lot more money if they got legacy players into standard.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Yes, that is the case for a lot of legacy players...and wizards doesn't like that. And it is working to some extent...I know people who wanted to go to a new phyrexia prerelease to grab mental missteps.

Edit: Wizards would absolutely make money in the short term printing new duals like candy...but they would make a lot more money if they got legacy players into standard.

Once again I have to ask, did you read what I wrote beyond the title? I kind of address that many times over. 90% of my idea involves WotC making money, breaking the reserved list, and totally not printing dual lands like candy. Legacy players aren't going to move to Standard, at least not all of them. I only play Standard once every 5 blocks average and only when a deck jumps out at me that I like. If there was no Legacy I would have quit Magic a LONNNNGGGG time ago and never looked back. The print dual lands like candy idea or release them as promos is stupid for 100 different reasons which is why I took an hour to write out my thoughts on the matter.

[kinda]

I addressed these issues. Breaking the reserved list hurts wizards' rep...printing a limited number of cards such as with the vault promos doesn't fix the problem and still angers collectors...and wizard's wants to maximize their profit which somtimes means passing on opportunities if they have a high opportunity cost.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I addressed these issues. Breaking the reserved list hurts wizards' rep...printing a limited number of cards such as with the vault promos doesn't fix the problem and still angers collectors...and wizard's wants to maximize their profit which somtimes means passing on opportunities if they have a high opportunity cost.

Okay, so I'll take that as "No, I didn't read past the title." I address all of that and I don't think they should be printed in FTV type promos under any circumstances. Most of what you are saying I agree with, but then you start talking about terrible ideas that I don't endorse as if I do endorse them. The entire reason I made this topic was to put a sensible approach out as a counterargument to the talk about releasing promo reprints, which obviously would be sold out in 5 minutes and make WotC look foolish and fail to properly and evenly distribute the cards to the people who are actually going to play with them. Basically that idea sucks, we both agree, now you should read mine before you reply again.

[GexxX]

Edit: Wizards would absolutely make money in the short term printing new duals...but they would make a lot more money if they got legacy players into standard.

And what if no legacy player wants to play T2? They lose money, cuz no one buys reprints -> it's a loss... no matter if short or long term!

I like the concept mentioned above! I'd still let the exchange of old cards vs. foil ones be with the OLD artwork AND Design. That makes them even more pimp! Think about a foil Mox Pearl. Isn't that sexy? ;)

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I addressed these issues. Breaking the reserved list hurts wizards' rep...

How does a reputation for refusing to reprint an arbitrary list of cards from the early to mid 90's help Wizards in any way?

[dontbiteitholmes]

And what if no legacy player wants to play T2? They lose money, cuz no one buys reprints -> it's a loss... no matter if short or long term!

I like the concept mentioned above! I'd still let the exchange of old cards vs. foil ones be with the OLD artwork AND Design. That makes them even more pimp! Think about a foil Mox Pearl. Isn't that sexy? ;)

Yes, I don't know if it properly conveyed but I meant that the foil replacements would be with the original artwork. At the same time they announce the "trade-in" they also announce that after the trade in is done the old art is retired as far as cards in regular circulation (IE they never print cards to put in packs or sets with old artwork, all new reprints have new artwork and new rarity color). They never distribute foil versions of the high dollar cards again except as prizes for top 8ing high profile events example Eternal GPs or World Champs or maybe as special judge promos for very active HIGH level judges (I mean high as in judges at Worlds for example the point being never ever ever overdo it with printing foil reprints, super extra conservative numbers). As to whether those foils given out as high level prizes are identical to the trade in artwork I don't think it much matters, I could go either way, they would be entering the market at such a super low number it wouldn't make much of a difference either way. Main points being #1 after the initial trade in, super duper low numbers of foil reserved cards enter the pool and only as VERY special prizes to keep value up and #2 original artwork is retired for cards in regular circulation, so every new reprint after they burn through the old trade-in stock has new artwork and an oddly colored rarity symbol.

[kinda]

@don't: I appreciate your 5 year plan, but I just don't see how socializing the reserve list will work out. Could you please clarify your desired end results. What is a reasonable price of a magic card? More plateaus will make them cost less...how low can you go before collectors complain? What are a bunch of standard players going to do with a couple of old cards they can't play? How is this participating in this plan more cost effective than just buying the cards?

@Gexxx: Well getting legacy players to draft by printing new staples is a win-win for wizards so they might as well try it.

[lordofthepit]

How much does it cost Wizards to produce new "redemption" foils? How much would it cost to commission artists to do new artwork? Would they have to reproduce crap cards like Island of Wak-Wak that are on the reserved list?

It's a reasonable start, but there are logistical hurdles.

[Gheizen64]

The important thing to note here is that you don't have to flood the market. What most people assume, is that WotC would flood the market and make people go play legacy because it's more fun. In reality, they'd probably do a "Zendikar" move along the years and keep the prices stable or make them go slightly down, with the difference that more people would buy booster/draft in hope to pull out imba cards, and we'd get a new supply of cards to save the format, or at least slow down considerably his death and avoid going "vintage's way".

[sco0ter]

4: This "Master" set is maybe a little larger then the first set of a block. It has commons, uncommons, rares, and Mythics as well as a new rarity, lets say "Super-Mythic". So every pack has it's common/uncommon/rare like a normal pack, but in the foil slot you have an astronomically low chance of getting a non-foil "Super-Mythic", insert Dual Land/power/reserved reprints here. Super low chance of this, maybe one in four/six boxes average if that. This is the new method of distributing "reserved list" cards. Of course if you were to open a random Super Mythic it wouldn't have the same chance of being say a Moat or Mox Emerald as it would have of being say a Mox Diamond, you carefully ration out the cards to keep supply/demand at reasonable and sustainable levels.

Yet another rarity? Printing the already very rare cards like Moat in the Super Mystic slot, while printing thing like Lightning Bolt in the Common slot is contra-productive in terms of solving the problem of the scarcity and lowering the price of those cards.
Who wants to buy 6 Boxes to get a Moat in the end while having 500 Counterspells?

5: Now, what to do with the reserved list cards already on the market? Easy, announce that for the grace period of one year anyone can send in a reserved list card in any condition to receive a special foil edition of the same card. So say I have a Plateau that has Sunkist spilled on it, or near mint doesn't matter. I send in my Plateau and WotC sends me back a brand new foiled out Plateau. After the grace period of one year, the cards on the reserved list will never be distributed again as foils except as prize support. So WotC exchanges cards, then locks the rest in their vault and only releases them as prizes for high profile tournaments (example top 8 at a Legacy GP get one each foil dual 1st place gets full set, this means after the initial exchange period roughly 4-6 playsets of foil duals are released a year, at the one-two Vintage events a year top 8 draft a foil P9 and winner gets a set (so 2-3 foil sets of power a year), meaning the foils will always be highly valuable, meaning people who have duals/power now are rewarded for trading in as they will have something valuable and extremely rare thus preserving value on existing collections) Of course the people who don't trade in still have value in their cards as new reprints from the master set will ALWAYS be in white border and with new art and symbol (explained below), so beta duals will still be rare and valuable and even revised as the old art will be more pimp then new art and some people dislike playing with foils so there will always be a bigger market for the old versions (also see symbol below as reason the old cards will be worth more than reprints).

So where is my advantage, if I send/trade my original duals for foil version? I'd rather keep my original.
And where is the benefit for WotC? It is easier for them to just spend money prizes instead to collect/trade duals and give them away as prizes.
I believe, this idea is logistically unmangeable (e.g. who pays porto and insurance for shipment?) und uneconomical.

As long as they make enough money off Standard, there is no need to do anything (from a business perspective).

Furthermore they would become implausible, if they NOW break the reserve list, just because they announced last year, they wouldn't reprint any of those cards, not even as promo foil starting in 2011.

[dontbiteitholmes]

@don't: I appreciate your 5 year plan, but I just don't see how socializing the reserve list will work out. Could you please clarify your desired end results. What is a reasonable price of a magic card? More plateaus will make them cost less...how low can you go before collectors complain? What are a bunch of standard players going to do with a couple of old cards they can't play? How is this participating in this plan more cost effective than just buying the cards?

@Gexxx: Well getting legacy players to draft by printing new staples is a win-win for wizards so they might as well try it.

OK, you either still haven't read my first post or you have a chronic misunderstanding of my main point. Are you a native English speaker? People who have Plateaus now would have the option of trading them in for foil Plateaus that would basically never be available again after a year of trade-in. Same with every other reserved list card. So the people who own these cards have locked in the value in that they have something unique, foil reserved list cards. Then the people who keep their cards or open the first couple sets would pull the cards that were traded in with the original artwork similar to Zendikar "treasures". After that no one will ever open duals/power/Moats/Candelabras with the original artwork again. Every new card will have new artwork and an oddly colored symbol for rarity similar to Time Spiral as well as a white border. So the collectors aren't going to complain because they will have the collectible version of either an original dual land or a foil dual land, while everyone else is opening dual lands with new artwork and green (or red or orange whatever as long as it stands out as odd) colored rarity symbols and white border. So similar to how Beta Psionic Blast is worth 20x what Time Spiral Psionic Blast is worth, now imagine if the Time Spiral version was white border and had different artwork...

As Legacy would become more accessible the demand for duals and such would continue to go up, since WotC would be releasing the cards in packs they can monitor the prices and adjust on the fly to prevent saturating the market and be fairly conservative with distribution. Since demand for dual lands and such is going up, demand for "pimp" versions is also going up. So compare it to say, Korean cards. The supply of Korean cards is very low and as such the price is extremely high. The only difference besides price between Korean and any other version is rarity and "pimpness" they all play the same in a game of Magic. Yet people are still willing to pay out the anus for Korean cards just because they are rare and pimp. People will always want the original duals or foils and such because they are iconic and it feels a little lamer to be playing with cards that are obviously not meant to be collectible. I'd estimate a foil dual after a hand full of years under my plan would be worth considerably more then if you just kept it now and WotC did nothing and kept the reserved list. So that's the point, you don't lose for owning the cards you have now, you win. Just as Korean cards are easily worth 3-100x as much as their English counterparts, Foil dual lands and original dual lands would increase in price considerably as people got into the format at a reasonable price then wanted to upgrade to "pimp" their decks not to mention every collector in the world would be chasing a playset of foil duals.

There would not be enough foil duals and original art duals to meet collector demand, and the price would skyrocket. That would be fine though because there would be a new crop of duals waiting in the wings to serve the player who was only interested in playing a normal game of Magic and not paying $1000 for a land base, which is where the format is headed if we keep ignoring this problem. Except people aren't going to play Legacy at that point, they or either going to play another format or quit. There won't be enough players to support events and the format will die on the vine. Everyone not interested in Standard will walk away and WotC will lose potential customers forever. Instead they could embrace the format and take control of their own product and make the money they should already be making selling more packs to the Eternal/EDH/Casual players which they have already recently identified as a goal. Except I think they should be in yearly sets instead of in precon decks, that way they can release reprints of reserved cards, as well as all the good new stuff they want to hit us with that doesn't fir their vision of T2/ext, and reprint non-reserved cards that aren't fit for Standard (Force of Will, Wasteland) in a fair and structured manner. Printing cards like these in precons or promos is crap. With precons you risk the "Rat's Nest" effect where the only precon anyone wants sells out in 5 mins and you can never find it for retail or they overprint and it crashes the value. I mean, we can all imagine what would happen if FTV:ForceOfWill came out tomorrow. If instead FoW came out at Jace rarity in a set that sees a smaller print run then any regular set and Standard kids didn't buy it would be a lot better for everyone involved.

How much does it cost Wizards to produce new "redemption" foils? How much would it cost to commission artists to do new artwork? Would they have to reproduce crap cards like Island of Wak-Wak that are on the reserved list?

It's a reasonable start, but there are logistical hurdles.

Every Magic set has over 150 cards, they produce four sets a year, and every set has roughly 90% new artwork if not more. I don't see art as a problem. They have done hundreds of new artworks on cards that they ended up giving away for free in player rewards and they have commissioned hundreds of pieces of artwork that never appeared on cards. Foils cost pennies, there is one in every pack and they give thousands of foil cards away a year. No one is going to cry if they don't bother with the complete shit cards, but it would be a solid PR move to include the entire reserved list and have people end up with pimped out Island of Wak-Waks. People would be happy with that so that's the route I think they should take if they were to follow my plan but that's really more of a PR move than anything IMO.

I don't see any of that as logistical hurdles. WotC already has a massive distribution network evidenced by "Player Rewards" and mailing out completed sets of MTGO cards. There is nothing in my plan they have not already shown they can completely handle. Not to mention who cares if they are commissioning new artwork if it's going to end up selling thousands of packs a year to casual and eternal players who wouldn't usually buy packs. They end up in the black, that's all that matters.

The important thing to note here is that you don't have to flood the market. What most people assume, is that WotC would flood the market and make people go play legacy because it's more fun. In reality, they'd probably do a "Zendikar" move along the years and keep the prices stable or make them go slightly down, with the difference that more people would buy booster/draft in hope to pull out imba cards, and we'd get a new supply of cards to save the format, or at least slow down considerably his death and avoid going "vintage's way".

*Ding Ding Ding*
We have a winner. The point here is not to completely crash the market and make Legacy dirt cheap so everyone plays it. You steadily release new reserved cards as the market becomes unsustainable. If we do nothing Legacy approaches impossible to play levels of cost and we are left with Vintage. You have to remember that if they never reprint duals and such the supply steadily drops. There are less dual lands in circulation today then there were a month ago and next month there will be even less. They get tore up by little kids, left in hot humid attics till they turn to yellow dust, flooded in basements, accidentally thrown out with old Christmas decorations, lost in the mail never to be seen again... I've lost a Tropical Island and a Savannah that my mother threw away years ago when she cleaned the old closet years after I moved out, they are now in a landfill. Supply is not meeting demand right now and the SCG tournament scene is not going to be able to sustain itself too many more years at this pace. Don't forget that years ago SCG was running Vintage tournaments.

Yet another rarity? Printing the already very rare cards like Moat in the Super Mystic slot, while printing thing like Lightning Bolt in the Common slot is contra-productive in terms of solving the problem of the scarcity and lowering the price of those cards.
Who wants to buy 6 Boxes to get a Moat in the end while having 500 Counterspells?

Ummm, that doesn't make sense. More cards = lower price, the end. It doesn't matter that there's not a bomb ass power rare in every box, that's the little kid approach of standing on top of a skyscraper and throwing free money at everyone until money is worthless. If they only printed one Moat for every 200 boxes and they print 20000 boxes, that's still 100 more Moats in the world. They'd need to be conservative in distributing these but they could steadily do it over a number of years to keep things balanced out.

So where is my advantage, if I send/trade my original duals for foil version? I'd rather keep my original.
And where is the benefit for WotC? It is easier for them to just spend money prizes instead to collect/trade duals and give them away as prizes.
I believe, this idea is logistically unmangeable (e.g. who pays porto and insurance for shipment?) und uneconomical.

As long as they make enough money off Standard, there is no need to do anything (from a business perspective).

Furthermore they would become implausible, if they NOW break the reserve list, just because they announced last year, they wouldn't reprint any of those cards, not even as promo foil starting in 2011.

Your originals would still be worth more then the reprints. The new reprints would be white border and have a off color symbol on them. People would want your original duals and foil duals for the same reason beta duals are worth a lot, they look cooler. WotC should never ever print duals or whatever that look as good as the original for collectible reasons. "It is easier for them to just spend money prizes instead to collect/trade duals and give them away as prizes." I don't understand what this means. Are you trying to say if WotC wants to give out duals as prizes they should buy them off people cash like they currently do because that is easier for them then following my plan or are you saying they should just give out cash prizes? Either way my idea has little to do with prizes, I was just saying IF they do give out foil duals beyond the initial trade-in they should ONLY be as high level prizes.

"As long as they make enough money off Standard, there is no need to do anything (from a business perspective)." - I hope to God you never say this in a business meeting. That's like saying "Hey guys, we make enough money off retail store sales, no need to sell our product on the internet..." Why the hell should WotC be turning down any profit especially if it comes with a chance to cover a hole they were dug in to by a hand full of people who don't even work there anymore.

Who cares what they said a year ago. Look at the results of a recent poll on this site. Over 80% of people said break the reserved list. That might not mean much on other sites, but on here I'm willing to bet if you take out the people who voted who don't have dual lands it would still win by a landslide. The reserve list has changed before on account of the player base speaking up. Commons were taken off the list because people said they wanted to see the commons reprinted. WotC exists to keep the players happy and make money. If they can do both at the same time more power to them. If you don't want foil duals yours would still be valuable since they would never reprint dual lands with original art or without a miscolored rarity symbol. If you decided to cash out the price for duals would be sustained because people would be frantic to trade up for foils before the year was up.

[perm]

I don't understand the concerns about people losing their card values. Since when have people been entitled to keep their card pricetag, which is determined by the secondary market? Prices drop as soon as standard rotates, and this really isn't any different.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I don't understand the concerns about people losing their card values. Since when have people been entitled to keep their card pricetag, which is determined by the secondary market? Prices drop as soon as standard rotates, and this really isn't any different.

It's different in that people were explicitly promised that WotC would retain the value of the cards on the reserved list by not printing them again. I'm taking that one step further and saying that if they retain the value by any means it's the same difference regardless of whether the cards are reprinted or not.

[perm]

It's different in that people were explicitly promised that WotC would retain the value of the cards on the reserved list by not printing them again. I'm taking that one step further and saying that if they retain the value by any means it's the same difference regardless of whether the cards are reprinted or not.

Ok, WotC didn't sign any contract with anyone. It's sorta mean to go back on their word, but they have to make a utilitarian decision. Do they keep their heads bowed to a small group of collectors/sellers that feel the mtg community owes them something? Or do they try to satisfy the much larger group of people trying to play and enjoy the game?

[dontbiteitholmes]

Ok, WotC didn't sign any contract with anyone. It's sorta mean to go back on their word, but they have to make a utilitarian decision. Do they keep their heads bowed to a small group of collectors/sellers that feel the mtg community owes them something? Or do they try to satisfy the much larger group of people trying to play and enjoy the game?

That's why I think my idea is solid. It keeps the people who already had the cards happy by keeping the value and it keeps new players happy by reprinting cards that are prohibitively expensive to play Legacy. MtG is a collectible card game. It's as much collectible as it is a card game and one part doesn't work as well without the other. WotC would be ill advised to invalidate the collections of people who devoted a large part of their budgets to collecting sets of dual lands and power. You have to realize if they just turned around tomorrow and casually said, "Fuck it, Reprint everything, no mercy," some stores and collectors would completely lose their lively hoods. I don't care if you think it's lame that some people tied themselves so tightly to a card game that it might ruin them financially, that's the reality of the situation. Imagine if dual lands and power dropped 20% right now what would happen to SCG's bottom line... That's why any plan that involves breaking the reprint policy has to somehow retain value of existing cards. WotC made a promise to people and people have made financial decisions based on that promise. You can work with that, but you can't just just turn your back and say that's their problem for being nerds or w/e.