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Thread: The Economics of Magic on NPR

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    The Economics of Magic on NPR

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2015/...he-black-lotus

    A Planet Money examination of just why Magic stuck around and Beanie Babies didn't.

    Enjoy, you nerds.

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Not very well reported, but mainstream media outlets rarely even mention the existence of Magic, so points for trying.

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Dubiously historically accurate (I question Skaff's story about printing packs and then checking retailers, that's just not how things have ever worked) much less currently accurate. Speculation becoming hip ("MtG finance") is increasingly poisoning the game.

    If I recall there's a term for seeing a reporter butcher a subject you're knowledgeable about, and then realize that reporters probably treat every subject with the same amount of diligence.

    Fun to see Magic in a real media outlet though.
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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    I dunno, Akki. I thought it was pretty good - I honestly can't imagine what specific complaints we could lodge about a piece on economics anyway. I read the ebook that Titus Chalk published last year, and it had a section on this topic also. According to Titus, they had to do some of this stuff early on (actually seeing what stores were doing) because there was no model to base their decisions on.

    Also, check out the comments on NPR all about Magic.

    Thanks for the link.
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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Quote Originally Posted by Finn View Post
    Also, check out the comments on NPR all about Magic.
    I got through three comments about people complaining that it was still too expensive to play at a high level and they didn't like combo before I gave up. Sigh.

    I am generally a fan of Planet Money but I didn't like what they did here. Sure, they prevented cards from skyrocketing to Lotus levels, but speculation is still a huge part of the game. That's because it is far easier to acquire cards now relative to what it was in the 90s. You used to have to travel from store to store to locate what you wanted. Now you fire up TCGplayer and there you go. Even super-rarities can be located and negotiated on through things like the high-end Magic facebook group.

    I don't think any of those things are necessarily bad, but we still do see big price spikes and either price memory on mediocre cards (Bitterblossom) or crashes on really mediocre cards (Porphyry Nodes). And with cards that have a lot of utility like duals and Tarmogoyf, the spikes never really stop. I'm close to finishing off my set of revised blue duals now, thankfully... I had a canceled sale on Ebay a month ago and the average ask has risen 20% since then. I love playing Legacy, though, so to me it's worth it.

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Yeah this was good enough, I mean -- it's difficult to make a lot of analogies with Magic to other games. They got close with the Poker and "imagine buying 10 Aces" trick, but really you kind of have to roll in ideas like Chess and Risk and it's hard to do that without getting really pedantic.

    I have to kind of take issue with the idea that "Standard solves all the problems" though. People *definitely* still speculate, prices flux a ton based on how potent a card ends up being (Treasure Cruise was a dollar common before the ban, Deathrite Shaman was once around 16 and now middles at 8.25 on tcgplayer, countless other examples), price memory keeping popular pet cards at a higher price than they apparently deserve, etc etc etc.

    I mean the value of Black Lotus is directly related to its power and playability, not its status or availability -- reprinting JtMS and Goyf in MMA sort of proves that indirectly, and there are a lot of factors in play affecting both cards' price. Cross-format playability, arguably some price memory affects Goyf - there are more than a few creatures which affect this guy's actual power level but the price can't seem to drop on him, even if silly shit like ScOoze and DRS and the rash of playable Delve guys should be affecting his overall playability and therefore his price. But no.

    I dunno, I always start/end my price point rants with my "I am not an Econ major" invalidator, so whatever. But it isn't like Standard came along and made everyone happy.
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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Decent piece for the time allotted, although I could have done with a little less Beanie Babies and pack openings, and a little more specifics on the timeline. I've been playing a long time, and I don't remember cards ever being worth thousands of dollars, even before the establishment of type 2. Unless it was somewhere between A/B/U and Revised, then prices immediately tanked. I think I still have some of the original Inquests from '95 and they list Moxes at $100 and Lotus at $3-500 IIRC.
    I think the biggest thing is the deep seeded emotional understanding that the right play is the right play regardless of outcomes. The ability to make a decision 5 straight times, lose 5 times because of it, and still make it the 6th time if it's the right play. - Jon Finkel

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Quote Originally Posted by TsumiBand View Post
    I mean the value of Black Lotus is directly related to its power and playability, not its status or availability -- reprinting JtMS and Goyf in MMA sort of proves that indirectly, and there are a lot of factors in play affecting both cards' price.
    I disagree about Lotus, and I think its economics are mostly incomparable to the economics of JtMs and Goyf.

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Quote Originally Posted by LOLWut View Post
    I disagree about Lotus, and I think its economics are mostly incomparable to the economics of JtMs and Goyf.
    Well I'm an idiot, but do tell.
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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Quote Originally Posted by TsumiBand View Post
    Well I'm an idiot, but do tell.
    Referring to power, playability, status, and availability, in a nutshell, if Lotus were reprinted to absolute oblivion with ugly new borders, old Lotus would still be very expensive. If Goyf and JtMS were reprinted to absolute oblivion like Thoughtseize was (which didn't happen in MM with Goyf), old Goyf and old JtMS would tank. If Lotus was banned in every single format, it would still be massively expensive. If Goyf and JtMS were banned in every single format, their prices would tank.

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Quote Originally Posted by LOLWut View Post
    Referring to power, playability, status, and availability, in a nutshell, if Lotus were reprinted to absolute oblivion with ugly new borders, old Lotus would still be very expensive. If Goyf and JtMS were reprinted to absolute oblivion like Thoughtseize was (which didn't happen in MM with Goyf), old Goyf and old JtMS would tank. If Lotus was banned in every single format, it would still be massively expensive. If Goyf and JtMS were banned in every single format, their prices would tank.
    The reprinted JtMS and Goyf were not priced in this way, though. Retailers treated them as separate units, and there is much precedence for this; preferential treatment for older cards or more desirable artwork (the recent printing of Duress for example; anecdotally most people seem to prefer the Urza's run, though YMMV) means that while their in-game functionality is no different, their "real-life status" as different items allows them to be priced individually and therefore be subject to different sets of demand. So old Lotus never needs to crash, and neither does Future Sight Goyf nor WWK Jace - there will always be those people that "have to have" those originals.

    It's Superman #1 all over again, isn't it? You don't buy an 'actual' Action Comics #1 to read it, you can download a PDF if you really just want to read the story. If you want it for collectors' purposes, you're getting the genuine article and future print runs can't touch that - even though unlike Magic cards, their usability is diminished by being those old collectors' items, as they are less likely to be used*.

    I guess I don't know why the actual impact of MMA doesn't apply here; however flawed the above argument may be, it was the praxis of card stores and it was in fact the argument as laid out to me by an LGS owner -- that's anecdote, I realize, but it seems to have been applied widely enough that however goofy it is, it's just the way things are.

    And even then there's also the old Birds of Paradise experiment, where that card hovered around 10-15 bucks after seeing MAJOR reprints time and again - the price of that bird didn't drop until Noble Hierarch was printed. Its price was never as high as any of the other cards we've discussed but it's an example of a card which has always had high supply AND demand, and never budged until the game obviated it with Hierarch.
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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Well you can judge the "power and playability" of a card based on the cheapest price for a tournament legal copy of a card. SCG lists a MP Unlimited Black Lotus for $3,999.99. For this you could participate in whatever has need of a Black Lotus, same as any other. The "status or availability" of a card is represented by any other printings priced above the "power and playability" amount. SCG lists a NM/M Alpha Black Lotus for $19,999.99. A person isn't spending 500% more for a functionally identical game piece for "power and playability".
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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    I thought the NPR report was fine for what it was: (1) Here's a thing called Magic; and (2) It has dodged the bubble that usually explodes collectibles after a short period of time. I thought Beanie Babies was a good analogy for what they were trying to say -- Wizards made a conscious decision not to cash out the game, but instead invested in its long-term growth.

    Where it faltered was in some historical details. Wizards may have "gone to war" against the speculators, but they lost. They printed Chronicles, jam-packed with all the non-broken goodies they could find. That was not an overwhelming success (although I really loved it personally) and the backlash from collectors and dem evil speculators nearly cratered the game. They had to create the abomination known as the Reserve List to stabilize things. Talking about the Pro League and Type 2 as if Wizards simply cut the Gordian Knot and solved all their problems misses all of the actual dynamics.

  14. #14

    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Context and audience.

    NPR's podcast is not speaking toward Magic players. It's meant for people outside of Magic. The direction and the context are still about economic bubble and what that meant for the company Wizard.

    If you get caught up regarding the card sets, formats, and reserved lists, those are too Magic, the general audience could careless.

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    Re: The Economics of Magic on NPR

    Quote Originally Posted by MaximumC View Post
    Where [the report] faltered was in some historical details. Wizards may have "gone to war" against the speculators, but they lost. They printed Chronicles, jam-packed with all the non-broken goodies they could find. That was not an overwhelming success (although I really loved it personally) and the backlash from collectors and dem evil speculators nearly cratered the game. They had to create the abomination known as the Reserve List to stabilize things. Talking about the Pro League and Type 2 as if Wizards simply cut the Gordian Knot and solved all their problems misses all of the actual dynamics.
    Right. I've always found it interesting how the current state of the game is essentially what I understand to be a forced scarcity -- not that anyone is under any obligation to print X-thousand Beta dual lands per quarter, but there are so many WotC individuals that are more or less on record as calling the RP a mistake, that it feels a safe assumption to say that something like an 'Eternal Masters' set would have been generated by now, if not for outside influences. The article very nearly touched on this with its comparison to Beanie Baby collectors; the insistence of a group of collectors that something be *actually collectable for a change* as opposed to subject to wild speculation and fluctuation like a bunch of kiddie toys is talked about but instead of even referencing the RP they make it sound as though it's all on the Pro Tour and the rotating format concept.

    I mean I get the importance of 'context and audience' but it would have been interesting to hear the host of Planet Money try to explain the Reprint Policy using investor-ese as he did with other aspects of the relationship between cards, players, collectors, and their money.
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