Sure, counterfeits haven't always been somewhat convincing, but I've definitely noticed that over the course of years, more and more people are "fine" with it. The change in opinion is noticeable.
I expect this trend to continue as prices go up on real staples, the quality of fakes improve, and as younger players age and want to play formats they weren't able to buy into before costs exploded.
Plain and simple, there is money to be made and if WotC won't do it, someone else will. WotC should probably pull the trigger and make more aggressive attempts to lower costs before the tipping point where players just say "screw it" and get the cheaper fakes instead of real cards... even after WotC does start to lower costs.
"I made a Redguard that looks like Kimbo Slice. He wrecks peoples' shit. And dragons." - Bignasty197
Moral decay, I say. People are increasingly vocal about the idea that rising card prices somehow make the dishonesty inherent in portraying fake cards as real cards "okay" or "acceptable."Originally Posted by Octopusman
I know I'm repeating myself a bit, but this is a new page, so... if you want to use play test cards (non-real looking cards) and increase the player group for your format, by all means. Vintage does this all the damn time. I'll never squeak if someone has a play test card in EDH, whether it's a sharpied basic land or a full art version of Mana Drain. Game on!
But shrugging off the use of counterfeits at sanctioned events because "Meh I wanna play" is self-destructive, involves dishonesty, and should be frowned on by the community.
It is just market forces in action. Saying it is morally right or wrong is meaningless.
Personally, what I've always felt was awfully dodgy was for Wizards of the Coast to require you to play with the "official" versions of cards in tournaments and yet refuse to actually sell them to you.
Actually, the interesting thing is, the Magic secondary market is the exact opposite of a free market. It's a government-sponsored monopoly! After all, the government says that only Wizards of the Coast can legally make Magic: the Gathering cards.
In an actual free market, the prices would not be what they are because other companies would step in and fill the demand at a lower price by printing their own reproductions. While one can say that's what counterfeiters are already doing, if it were legal you would see companies with much deeper pockets getting into it and thus being able to make significantly more convincing reproductions.
I don't get why WotC cares so much about counterfeit cards that they promised not to reprint again. It's not like they're losing money because there are more Tabernacles than they originally printed.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
They don't care that much, actually, and it shows.
I think the secondary market, players, judges, and TOs care more about counterfeits than WOTC does:
- Stores and dealers risk losing money buying/selling counterfeit cards
- Collectors do not want counterfeits reducing the value of their collections
- Players risk DQs by inadvertantly (or intentionally) playing with counterfeit cards
- Judges need to spend more time educating themselves and the community on how to discern counterfeits
- TOs need to maintain the integrity of their events; both for the players and to maintain their WPN status
They aren't losing money, but they are protecting themselves from the risk of lawsuits from collectors whose cards they vowed to protect. If counterfeits become out of hand and the market on Reserved List staples crashes, I could see a suit against WOTC for negligence.
Counterfeits being legal for tournament usage subverts the whole point of the Reserved List's existence. When WOTC wants to reduce the barrier to entry of paper Eternal formats, they will inevitably have to remove the Reserved List, or at least make some revisions to include tournament staples (perhaps another version of their beloved "prisoner exchange", adding some shitty cards from pre-Modern to throw a bone to pissed-off collectors).
I don't think this is true though. If counterfeiting were legal, the card prices would drop as the supply grew. So only the first company to make convincing reproductions would see any kind of significant profit, and only for the first few months until the community caught on and the value of the cards bottomed out.
How do you figure?
Just because we can understand the market forces behind people making a decision doesn't automatically make the decision immune from moral judgment. For example, all laws in the United States that infringe on the freedom of individuals to contract (labor laws, for example) arise out of a judgment that certain kinds of products of economic forces are bad and should be curtailed.
There's nothing inconsistent in saying that high card prices are making people more and more willing to counterfeit while also contending that counterfeiting is a bad thing.
I'm confused as to how you say "I don't think this is true" and then say something that doesn't contradict my statement at all.
You can say that it is bad, but what does that ultimately accomplish? People that play these counterfeits in sanctioned tournaments are already aware of the moral implications, it isn't something that can be regulated outside of regular deck checks so there is nothing stopping people from doing it but themselves. It's like saying cheating is bad, but people still cheat. That is what I mean by meaningless. You can even take buyers out of the equation, since it is the counterfeiters who make the profit, they could even just distribute it themselves to ignorant buyers if they needed to.
The thing with MTG is that it is almost like printing money. I would assume all counterfeiting operations already have the technology to do so printing other things/ cards, and it was just a matter of discovering the process WOTC uses, so there isn't really much of a startup cost, which leaves the major costs being the paper, ink and labor in making card templates and whatnot. So the cost per card is probably very low, making it profitable unless the most catastrophic of crashes happens. If WOTC sells boxes to distributors at ~66usd, that is about 12c a card.
tl;dr: cards don't cost a lot to print compared to how much they are 'worth' even if the most expensive cards drop to like 20$
1) Counterfeit magic cards are bad for the game. Counterfeit magic cards will eventually destroy magic the gathering, if it gets out of hand. Why even buy booster packs if all the cards will be eventually worthless. The secondary market is what keeps this game thriving.
2) In my opinion the best thing to do is to report any copyright infringement directly to Wizards of the Coast through phone or email. If enough players complain, they will take counterfeiting or chinese fakes more seriously.
3) and yes they should modify the reserved list and print dual lands like the printing of zendikar expeditions every few sets to get more cards in circulation without crashing the secondary market.
I am really glad someone opened this thread.
I get nauseous by the thought of a scenario where counterfeits are so widespread that players at events are either get suspicious of other people playing counterfeits, or paranoid that other people will discover their own ones. It could split the player base in a format that`s already struggling. I hope they get their heads out of their asses and find some workaround to the RL before it`s too late. People want to play with real cards.
I still say there`s no excuse for playing with counterfeit cards. You can`t afford Underground Seas, or don`t want to bind that kind of money up in the game? Ok, you are free to play a deck that doesn`t require them, or maybe even play a more affordable format. You are not entitled to a competitive Legacy deck. You don`t have to have one, it`s not food or water. Same reason I`m not playing 93/94 - I`d be interested, the format looks fun, but not at that price point. You don`t see me complaining about it or playing counterfeits either. But that doesn`t change the fact that Seas should not cost $340. Prices like that for cardboard in a format as attractive as Legacy will cause an influx of counterfeits if left unchecked.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. WotC should do on-demand printing. Send them a list of cards you want, they print them for 10 cents a piece (or a dollar/euro if that's what it takes to cover production costs and a bit of profit, I don't care), send them to your house and that's it. Give these reprints some distinct feature (like a special border) so people don't confuse them with the original product. WotC can have a policy where they don't reprint product less than 5 years old (to keep sales of new product up and keep people investing in Standard). People can pick up whatever card/deck they want for a decent price, everybody gets to play the cool formats. Original alpha/beta/etcetera cards'll keep their value for collectors (who, I suppose, would just be interested in the real deal), everybody wins. Speculators might take a serious loss, but that's the risk a speculator takes anyway.
This even opens up a new market for WotC and creates some jobs in the process.
WotC makes more money, more people get to play now expensive formats, tournament attendance increases, in turn WotC makes even more money. Players are happy b/c they get to play with all the cool stuff, WotC is happy b/c their profits go up, counterfeiters lose their business b/c their services aren't needed anymore. Sounds like a good plan, right?
To be blunt, I don`t even know where to start with this. First of all, this would bypass the game stores, and that wouldn`t be good for the game. They need to let the stores get a piece of the cake, because the stores arrange events, which attract players, which then spend money on the product. Your proposed strategy would also tank every reprintable card in existence over night, which would cause a massive uproar.
You`re saying that speculators might take a serious loss? Every player with a binder would take a more or less serious loss. Not everyone who own $1000+ in cards are evil speculator shadow creatures that deserve to be punished. They have to bring prices down gently to not leave players (players!) feeling profoundly betrayed.
I think their current model with the Masters sets works perfectly well, except that a) the RL and b) they are too stingy with reprints (EMA shows a step in the right direction imho) and too greedy with booster prices and print runs.
@Havrekjex: I know, I'm one of those people. I'd be perfectly fine with taking that hit if that means my hobby just got a lot more affordable to me. I just care about the cards, not about the value they may or may not represent. But that's me.
Heck, what would I really lose in that scenario? It's not as if the cards in my binder suddenly disappear. All that changes is that new cards won't cost me as much as those ones did. And how is that a bad thing?
Think of it this way - if every car in the world would cost a single dollar/euro, would that upset you? I'd be thrilled! I wouldn't care that I spent a lot more on the car I'm driving now! I'd just be happy my next one's going to be a lot cheaper! Collectors'd still pay premium for an original vintage Ferrari, but the average person now doesn't have to worry about having to replace their car at some point in time anymore. It's a future that can't be realised b/c of the production cost of cars in general, but our beloved pieces of cardboard should be cheap enough to produce in this manner. Why shouldn't we be happy if our hobby became a lot more affordable to us? B/c that's basically what you're saying.
Retaining the value of existing (original) cards is one of the reasons why I suggested they'd make sure you'd be able to easily see the difference between ordered reprints and original cards. Regular cars & original Vintage Ferraris. I mean, could you picture sdematt driving around in my 2008 Citroen C1..? That's just not going to happen.
I guess it depends on what kind of situation you are in. I expect to get more for the cards I currently own when I sell them, than I`m going to ever spend on cards from now on going forward. My expenses right now are mostly entry fees. What you`re describing would easily be a net loss for me. Though I guess that means that I`m not the type of player who needs this program the most.@Havrekjex: I know, I'm one of those people
Heck, what would I really lose in that scenario? It's not as if the cards in my binder suddenly disappear. All that changes is that new cards won't cost me as much as those ones did. And how is that a bad thing?
Think of it this way - if every car in the world would cost a single dollar/euro, would that upset you? I'd be thrilled! I wouldn't care that I spent a lot more on the car I'm driving now! I'd just be happy my next one's going to be a lot cheaper! Collectors'd still pay premium for an original vintage Ferrari, but the average person now doesn't have to worry about having to replace their car at some point in time anymore. It's a future that can't be realised b/c of the production cost of cars in general, but our beloved pieces of cardboard should be cheap enough to produce in this manner. Why shouldn't we be happy if our hobby became a lot more affordable to us? B/c that's basically what you're saying.
Retaining value is one of the reasons why I suggested they'd make sure you'd be able to easily see the difference between ordered reprints and original cards. Regular cars & original Vintage Ferraris. I mean, could you picture sdematt driving around in my 2008 Citroen C1..? That's just not going to happen.
Also, what about the part where packs help game stores make money? And what about Wizards` reputation after they pull a move that make each and every one of their customers lose some more or less significant amount of money? We`re talking $1000+ for most users on here, but your 12 year old nephew who saved up enough money for a set of MM15 Dark Confidants for his casual deck is going to be every bit as mad about it.
I did write that WotC could have a policy to not reprint stuff less than 5 years old. That'd mean that those who want to play with cards from new sets still have to buy packs or buy those cards via the secondary market also offered by stores. It works both ways though. More people playing Magic also means more people actually coming to the store to either buy packs or compete in events.
People might take a financial hit, but people might also be motivated to spend more money than ever on MtG. I can't even remember when I last bought a booster pack, but I sure as hell know that I'd spend a lot of money in a heartbeat if WotC ever started a reprint program. When I do spend money on MtG, I buy singles off the secondary market (which makes WotC no money at all). Players like you and me are good for local game stores (and webshops), but rather bad for WotC.
Point in case for the 12 year old nephew in question - he might lose his shit about his Dark Confidants, but he might also be very happy he can get 4 Underground Seas and 4 Polluted Deltas for a single weeks allowance (b/c obviously I'd be the cool uncle to point out those cards are pretty good). And in time he might forget about what ever happened to his Dark Confidants (since that little bastard now switched to ANT/TES as his deck of choice. I never should have pointed out Underground Sea and Polluted Sea to the bugger. Silly uncle Echelon).
I'd happily "lose" (again, it's not as if my cards suddenly disappear) my $1000+ if that means my (non-existent, by the way) nephew (and others' nephews and nieces around the world) can now enjoy MtG the same way I do. It was $1000+ I didn't need anyway (why else would I spend it on pieces of cardboard for a game I get to play like once a month?) so why should I be upset about it, especially when it doesn't visibly affect my bank account? I mean, it's not as if my collection losing value means I suddenly can't pay my rent anymore. It just means that if I ever am to sell my collection, it'd (possibly) fetch me a smaller price then than it would right now. Big whoop. That possibility exists just the same without a reprint program.
Last edited by Echelon; 06-09-2016 at 08:22 AM.
Quite a few people see, as one of the perks of owning a Legacy deck, the ability to sell it off as a rainy day fund in times of emergency. I don't ever plan on selling either of my Legacy decks but it's nice to know that if for some reason I find myself in a pinch and desperately need the cash, I can list most of the RL cards for slightly less than market value and have them sell. Yea, I'll lose maybe a couple hundred that way, but it's better than losing a couple thousand due to reprints.
Not saying you should look at a Legacy deck as that sort of investment, but many who entered the format recently/paid a higher price for their duals definitely kept that in mind when deciding to take the plunge.
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.
You really underestimate WOTC's dependence on the secondary market.
If people don't crack packs, the secondary market blows up. If people stopped opening SOI for a month, Nahiri would be the most expensive planeswalker in Legacy. Everyone who buys a box, plays in a draft, or picks up a couple packs at Walmart increases the supply, which keeps the secondary market prices down. Simple EV calculations tell you this. Whenever the EV of a pack jumps up over $4 (or even $3 or so), people crack more packs to suppress the market price of singles.
That's clearly only relevant for Standard cards, but the secondary market is a crucial part of Wizards' business model for Eternal formats as well. First off, they make several products per year catered at the Eternal crowd, whether it be the Legacy/Vintage/Modern tournament spikes, or the casual/cube/kitchen table crowd. This year there will be a new Duel Deck, a new Commander set, and a Planechase box set released (not to mention EMA and Conspiracy 2). WOTC makes money off of those box sets based on the secondary market too; namely, if the value sucks, the product won't sell. If they're stacked, nobody can keep them in stock.
How about the secondary market in regards to out of print Eternal staples? Sure, WOTC might not get a dime from the dual lands you just bought on ebay, but those duals keep you invested and interested in the product. You want to play Shardless? Yes, you need to find duals from secondary retailers, but those Shardless Agents and Baleful Strixes you need are coming from EMA packs and Planechase Anthologies, so WOTC still has a stake in your deck anyway. If you're building it next year, you'll be getting fresh Goyfs and Lilis from MM3, and so on. As long as they continue a strong reprint policy, they will have a stake, albeit indirectly, in the sales that contribute to players building new decks.
This is completely ignoring the fact that buying decks to enter tournaments supports WPN stores, who need to run a certain number of events to keep their participation in the network, which has a bearing on their promotional support, tournament quality, and product allocation. Also, don't forget that Limited is the most popular way to play Magic and that money goes directly into WOTC's bank too.
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