In 2014, predictions of a Chinese counterfeit apocalypse were all the rage. Tabernacle had spiked to $700, Sea to $300, Volc to $250, Cradle to $150, LED to $90, City of Traitors to $75. People posted knowledge of Chinese counterfeiters who were ready to go nuts, and surely they would start to print money, once the price got even higher, flooding the market and making shockwaves.
Since those shocking highs, Tabernacle has gone from $700 to $3000, Sea from $300 to $800, Volc from $250 to $550, Cradle from $150 to $350, LED from $90 to $250, City of Traitors from $75 to $275. Are they not cashing in and printing those $100K Tabernacle sheets? Then what did the predictions get wrong?
Oh, it is happening. The market integrity is already compromised. This will be a gradual erosion.
As others have said, most people that get them play with them. They aren't 100% perfect so anyone spending that money on RL cards would be doing research or buying from someone that does that will spot it, but rarely will people spot them out when they are played across the table in sleeves. I would speculate that it is the smaller priced, sub-100$ modern cards that are less likely to be caught, both because they aren't mimicking old stock/ ink/ print and reduced vigilance for looking for fakes.
It may well be the case that counterfeits are here, but part of the prediction was about the scale, that there would be so many that card availability would ramp up, prices would drop, and there would be great uncertainty about purchases. That obviously hasn't happened. Maybe it just hasn't fully happened yet. Another thought is that many more cards could enter the supply, but that prices will continue to rise anyway because authentic cards would be the ones being examined and sold, while the new counterfeits would just be played with. I don't think that explains the current situation, though, as I don't get the impression that there are more people playing with Legacy cards than before.
Last edited by LOLWut; 07-24-2018 at 03:01 AM.
Explanation is that all these claims are conspiracy bullshit. My guess is the intention was to bring the prices down by spreading fear or having an excuse why you are not taking part in the rally.
The first rule of Fake Magic Club is that you don't talk about the Fake Magic Club.
The second rule of...
Andrew Jessup got a game loss for playing with fake Cavern of Souls and Canopies this weekend.
https://twitter.com/Gfabs5/status/1031204560470196226
https://twitter.com/TheBetterJessup/...38611524186112
There should also be a Goldfish article coming up soon with the current state of fakes.
I don't think the "apocalypse" has even started yet. It takes a while to erode consumer confidence.
I wonder if this problem would be lessened had Wizards of the Coast abolished the Reserved List and printed the high-value cards.
Sure, more recent non-Reserved cards are being counterfeited also. But I wonder if there'd be as much effort if the older, Reserved List cards weren't already so valuable.
It's less about the reserved list and more about wizards mindset toward the secondary market in general
There are so many $20+ Modern staples that could easily be reprinted to sell masters sets
EE
K Command
Colonnade
Runed Halo
Maelstrom Pulse
etc
WotC is just way too afraid of reprints causing prices to dip -> They don't reprint anything -> Prices go up -> WotC afraid of crashing prices and it just goes in a circle forever
But really when people are printing fakes of standard mythics you have to be honest and admit that there really isn't anything WotC can do to stop people attempting to fake their cards (unless they do something absurdly drastic like change the RRP of a box to $20 or something)
Last edited by Barook; 08-21-2018 at 05:06 PM.
For reference:
* A magic card is slightly less than 1.8 grams (source)
* At this moment, the price of gold is $1,194.23/ounce ($38.40/gram).
A Magic card is worth more than its weight in gold at $69.12 .
For historic reference, the record price of gold was $1,895.00 per ounce (60.93/gram)in September 2011. A Magic card is worth more than its weight in gold at gold's highet historical price at $109.67
That might be true in the present, but I'm talking about beforehand. Sure, Standard-legal cards aren't on the Reserved List and are actively being printed. But would people have turned to them if it wasn't already lucrative to start counterfeiting the older cards that, due to the lack of reprints (either due to being on the Reserved List or just WOTC being annoying), would they have ever really turned to Standard?
Yes I do think this could have been avoided.
There are two costs; start up costs that are significant and operating costs that are not significant. By allowing card prices to rise to the point that it became viable to invest in the startup expenses, they allowed the illegal market to become a thing. Had the priced never gotten that high they would have never started.
Now that we're here though, the only way to stop is to make the card prices drop below operating costs. Either by making cards more difficult to produce with holo-stamps and proprietary fonts, or the game tanks to Star Trek TCG levels. So far nothing has been beyond the capabilities of counterfeiter's to replicate it would seem. Seems this will just be the new normal until the game dies.
I'm pretty sure the dot matrix hasn't been replicated so far. Same goes for actual card texture.
My prediction is consumer confidence is slowly going to erode over the years until fakes pass all tests (because it seems that the amount of tests a fake can pass vary from counterfeit to counterfeit). That's where the real shitshow begins.
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