But there's only so much hand holding you can do. Sooner or later, little Bobby will have to learn the concept of 'shopping around' and 'buying on the internet.' If a shop's singles are ok, I don't mind buying there. But when they start getting ridiculous ($25 for a Deed/Mage, $24-25 for a Plateau, Taiga, or Intuition...) then I don't shop there and I encourage others to do the same.
I have a hard time picturing a Magic player that has never heard of Ebay, or any online store for that matter. There are a few here, but that's because they have like...non-alligned eyes, 6 finger hands, etc. Shopping around is a pretty basic thing, "This is $45 here. I don't really want to pay that, I should look somewhere else." not, "This is $45. I guess I will never own one."
I just feel like that's saying I should feel sorry for someone who doesn't check for cars when walking into traffic.
Originally Posted by Jack Burton
I have on occassion, when the prices were reasonable. And a lot of our locals do buy whatever the store has, because they're more of a casual group. So they will buy a lot of packs and singles at uber inflated prices for their poorly built decks. All I do is come in, pull out cards I want, and trade away my crap cards for highly tradeable stuff. I don't think I've 'bought' a card from a shop in a very, very long time.
Originally Posted by Jack Burton
I'm under 18 so I don't have the luxury of buying through EBay, however I've saved a lot of money on buying from American card shops on the web instead of in my local card store where any rare costs at least $8 simply because they're rare. But you can make good bargains at card stores, I've just bought 4 Goyf and a Tundra for $55 at a Danish card store. A lot of semi-serious players do buy their cards at stores though it's not the pro way because they don't own a credit card/are underaged/have bad experiences with online trading etc.
This is the only reason I go into the stores around here, because I know I can get great deals. Today I traded 4 Terminates, 2 Land Grants, and an Armageddon for 5 Coalition Relics (around $7 each because of Block) to one of the stores owners. I've picked up $2 Flooded Strands, $1 Temple Gardens, you name it. Sometimes I'll look in their cases to see what they're marking their junk rares at, pick those up for dirt, then take them back there and trade them uber high. There's hardly a reason to even buy singles really if you're trade smart.
There was a guy in my town who took a stack of junk rares and in a years time, turned those into power. Just because he knew how to work the trades, toss in good rares with a stack of bad, ask for toss ins when actually doing trades. After watching him go from store to store clearing them out, armed with only a binder of junk, I began to feel inadequate. He was insane.
But I think this is all beside the point of the thread, which is where the direction of Legacy is heading. A thread about trades, card prices, etc. would need to go somewhere else.
Originally Posted by Jack Burton
This is off topic, and I'd like to see a thread on this, but I do not like your perspective on local shops. They do overprice things, but if you but nothing from them, you will lose the store. My old local store had a weekly Legacy and 2 other magic tourneys a week, and then ebay came along and people bought nothing. They went down, and it took a good six month to get back what we lost(weekly T2, Legacy, and Draft), and it is not the same. Local shops may be expensive, but what good is your Black Lotus if you do not have place to play it? Your 'Buy it on Ebay' altitude will not help local stores, at least small ones. When they go down, hardcore players that spend lots of money on the game are the ones who are going to miss it the most.
Now I own 40+ duals and 30+ fetches with everything that I would want in Legacy, but I still remember how hard my first dual was to get. When you are high schooler or younger, the scarcity and price of some legacy staples can be a huge wall. While I do admit that Pale moon FTW is bit extreme, he has a point. Legacy is not vintage, but legacy has its own barrier and we legacy players have to do something to make the format more accessible.
EDIT: Now I think about it, this has a lot to do with the format's future. The older the games gets and more players we have, the entry barrier will haunt us more.
She said, "You're broken."
"So is your face." replied the Tarmogoyf.
Pretty much the only reason price is an issue is because there are so few major tournaments and no tournaments outside of the two GP that lead to anything. Building a Legacy deck doesn't cost anymore than building a deck for Extended, Standard, or Block, but you can't play in 2-3 Legacy PTQs each year. Though Legacy is in a bit of a Catch-22 in that the cost of the format staples (duals and FOW) are reasonable only really because no one plays the format. If they did have a Legacy PTQ season the cost of those cards would quickly get out of hand due to scarcity. Not that I want a Legacy PTQ season, but more GPs would be awesome.
As for Local stores, supporting them is important but they also have to be responsible and not charge outrageous prices. The ideal store would also sell product on ebay and would charge the market value for cards. Most people would spend a dollar or so more on a card from a local shop because you get it now and you don't pay shipping which is a large cost off of ebay.
I don't really think me not buying singles at inflated prices is going to make my shop close. The store sells tons of other stuff that Magic singles are not its only revenue. They do sports jackets, license plates, glasses, cards, etc. And that's they're major money maker. But local stores shouldn't expect players with common sense to pay ridiculous prices for cards, because they will always lose that battle.
Like Ewokslayer said, if a Deed is going for $9 online ($7 originally and lets say $2 for shipping), I wouldn't mind buying the card at a local store for the same $9-10, being that I can get it NOW and not have to wait or pay shipping. But when the same $9 Deed online is in the case at the local store for $25, then no, don't expect me to pay that. Online ftw in that case; I'm not going to be stupid just to support a store, sorry.
Local stores need to be in touch with the actual card market and not expect players to be ignorant. Supporting your store is very important and healthy to the game, but players shouldn't receive a gouging in return for their support. "Here's a place to play Legacy with store credit as prizes, but my singles are about $15 more than what you'd normally pay." That just disgusts me.
Singles at the shop I play at seem to be priced and then forgotten. Like, maybe a card was worth that at a time, but not anymore and yet the price is still $12 when it should be like $3-4. In summation, respect needs to be exhibited by both the players and the store owners.
Originally Posted by Jack Burton
ok extended i could believe depending on what decks your comparing. but standard doesnt cost anywhere near as much as legacy mainly because the cards are always in print and easier to find.Building a Legacy deck doesn't cost anymore than building a deck for Extended, Standard, or Block
and the fact that you say block is as expensive as legacy is laughable and actually almost gave me a code blue. block is probaly the cheapest PTQ/GP format overall as far as building a deck from scratch goes.
BZK! - Storm Boards
Been there, tried that, still casting Doomsday.
Drawing my deck for 0 mana since 2013.
Wow people, just wow. This is a thread regarding the future of Legacy, not where people buy their cards. For the love of God, gtf back on topic.
The format will, or should be maintained so that it will be slower than vintage at all times. More cards will guarantee faster format, eventually speeding the for mat to the Vintage-ish extent. However, Baned list should be maintained so that the format is reasonably slow.
EDIT: The reason that I think the for mat should be kept slow, is that the legacy was meant to be the format(or so it seems to me) where the power level is kept reasonable enough to allow great diversity. A format where the fundamental turn is 3 or less is not suitable for that, in my opinion.
She said, "You're broken."
"So is your face." replied the Tarmogoyf.
If they don't intervene, it's obviously just going to get faster with time. And I do think they should intervene. This may be arbitrary and subjective, but in my mind, Legacy should be the format where Survival of the Fittest is playable.
SummenSaugen: well, I use Chaos Orb, Animate Artifact, and Dance of Many to make the table we're playing on my chaos orb token
SummenSaugen: then I flip it over and crush my opponent
I'd like to see the format slow down just a tad, but I think players are reaching some innovation by pushing the format's envelope. Combo has gotten a little bit faster and ridiculous (not in a bad sense), and the rest of the format needs to catch back up.
I think they should keep an eye on the format though. Because if it just becomes faster like old Vintage, then why wouldn't players just take the next step and play Vintage and open themselves up to whole other world of broken. I enjoy Legacy like it is, but I think I'd enjoy it either way, unless it just got stupid, then I'd play Vintage.
Originally Posted by Jack Burton
Coming from both formats, the fundamental turn in T1.5 is faster than the fundamental turn in T1 after the restriction of Gifts Ungiven. Unrestricted LED in Belcher and Ichorid give us faster combo decks and our aggro-control-combo decks are just as fast as their aggro-control-combo decks from what I've seen (not that other people bother with aggro-control-combo in this format for whatever reasons).
I think the fact that not all of the deck's in our format have Force of Will means our format is faster as well; Not in terms of the fundamental turn, but in terms of people's willingness to watch the opponent goldfish them and then go to game 2 with delusions of winning a match. I enjoy playing Goblins, Affinity or Zoo as much as the next person, but running aggro and hoping U/g/w Tarmogoyf keeps combo in check is quite a gamble. At least aggro-prison and B/w or B/r can coin flip against the decks that are setting the fundamental turn.
I don't think the speed of our format is a sign of whether or not the format is "broken" tho', that speed comes with a Counter Spell = Mind Twist attached to it for Storm combo and Leyline of the Void is a ball breaker for Ichorid. I'm more afraid of aggro-control-combo owning the entire format because it's fundamentally superior to every other archetype except aggro-prison.
I think this is highly relevant to the future of Legacy, however. Not -where- people buy the cards, but the price itself.
Everyone seems to have a misconception that a few hundred dollars is not cost prohibitive. It is. It keeps out more players than you can possibly imagine. Cost and card availability keeps the city I live in from being able to have regular Legacy tournaments: Most of the time, everyone who plays borrows a deck from one of two people. We're just now getting to the point where most people have a playable Legacy deck.
One problem with merely adding up the total value of decks in various formats and comparing them is that a $30 card is not really 'worth' the same as three $10 cards, or six $5 cards. It is much harder to trade for a $27 Tundra than to trade for three $9 Flagstones of Trokair.
I agree with the 'who gives a damn where you buy your cards' part, but I think that the price of cards is one of the biggest parts of predicting the future of this format.
To most people, I'd venture to say like 95% of people, price is the deciding factor of this game. They aren't going to want to spend over $100 on this hobby at one point. The other 5% of us are those that are borderline obsessed, or are obsessed. I remember when I first played, I couldn't imagine spending more than 20 bucks on singles at once, granted this was before the advent of the crazy amount of internet singles stores running around, but I think the concept holds true for most people.
The price is definatley a lot to swallow for people.
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