It sounds like most already have the product.Originally Posted by Patrunkenphat7
The player base is also only going up which means demand keeps going up.
And supply stays at best constant. Problem.
And the minute the demand price gets too high, the value will collapse, as people have more important things to spend their $500 dollars on than four pieces of damaged cardboard. The counterfeiters, for whatever reason, are filling an underserved market. This is exactly the same principle as that behind copyright infringement - if there wasn't a market for it, it would be much less common than it is today (though that's not necessarily a discussion for here).
And to address patrunkenphat's point - the markets are showing signs of considerable stress for the essential cards, such as Useas and Force of Wills. For example, for a damaged USea, you're paying $150. And that's for a Revised version. If you want to pimp your Useas, you're looking at ~$7k for for a NM Beta set, and around $20k for a NM Alpha set. Even for Bayous and Savannahs, you're looking at ~$400 for a playset from a reputable trader. For Fetches, you're looking at an additional $200 for Strands and $350 for a set of Deltas. Brainstorm is still a 2-buck common in every set it's from, though those are much easier to find.
The point is that Wizards and Hasbro could have done something before they turned the Reserved List into the iron-clad thing it is today. They chose not to. Morality doesn't come into this; economics does. So please stop with the fallacious appeals to morality.
I've been writing articles since 2006 to help people avoid counterfeit MTG cards. The new wave of chinese counterfeits means that I can help again the community by providing some insight about the counterfeits and helping people to tell appart all of these fakes. Here is my new article:
How to Distinguish the New Wave of Counterfeits, by César "CHaPuZaS" Fernández
It's published mainly in Spanish, though some tips are provided in English and, of course, all of the images are worldwide useful.
Hope you enjoy, and please... Don't Panic about the counterfeits! They are not as good as people believe them to be!
Enjoy!
Where do you live because here most shop are closed and the vintage scene , and after extended basically everyone stopped playing. Only limited is stil played
That's only part of the problem.
SCG has a quasi monopoly and dictates the upper price ceiling for the cards. If they rise the price, the rest of the market is going to follow suit eventually due to various reasons, including SCG and other big players cornering the market to create artificial scarcity. And then the price memory prevents the cards from going down in price.
The price increases we've seen recently only get worse and worse. C'mon, Wasteland was still 60 bucks in December and now it's already 100$ and "sold out" at SCG, meaning it's probably going to go up even further in price. Same with the 70$ increases on Volcanic Island and Underground Sea. Especially in the light of the new fake card generation and the "poor secondary market traders", those price increases are a slap in the face.
Wizards is at fault, too, due to completely ignoring demand on non-RL staples. Even LED is already 185$ on MODO with no end in sight, despite being able to reprint it there.
Some people argue that the Chinese steal money from Wizards. While they do steal their intellectual property, it's only true that Wizards potentially loses money from the reprints of non-RL staples like Tarmogoyf etc. - and we have no data how exactly fakes would kill the LGS, like many people say, especially considering how easy fakes are to spot in real person. MtG cards are a hobby, not an investment with 100% guaranteed value increase.
If Chinese fakes prevent USea from reaching 500$ at the end of the year, so be it. The secondary market is so fucked up right now that I've stopped caring. Call me when the Chinese fakes actually put a dent into this price insanity.
Technically, WotC isn't losing money from something they vow they'd stop printing.
I am convinced that WotC is "dumbing" the game because of all the stupid posts they come across on MTG-related forums
This would maybe apply if the counterfeiters were only printing Reserved List stuff, but they're printing non-Reserved List stuff like current Standard all-star Sphinx's Revelation, so Wizards would be losing money if Timmy no longer buys a box of Return to Ravnica (hoping to rip a Sphinx's Revelation among other goodies) when he just buys a fake Sphinx's Revelation for $3.
I think this very good article should be stickied for now. It's in Spanish, but all you need is a google translator add on.
Nice page, although some of those tests aren't practical in a real-life setting. The average guy at a tournament won't be walking around with scientific measuring devices to verify authenticity.
Though the good news is that there exists scientific methods to distinguish between fake and real cards - I understand that some of them not on the hands of everybody -, I also explain a pair of cheap ways to tell them appart easily. Check it out!
On what basis do you claim that what I'm arguing is immoral? As I previously explained, law doesn't define morality, and isn't an arbiter of right and wrong; you won't understand the subtlety of this point I'm sure, so think of it this way: just because I break the law, does not mean that what I did was immoral. Conversely, just because I obeyed or upheld the law, doesn't make what I do moral. I'm advocating the utilitarian approach here, which is absolutely moral in that it preserves the format we've all come to love. In this case, it's not even stealing, because Wizards doesn't print half the cards that we need, and take no part in the secondary market. Not to mention, part of being a moral individual means assessing the morality and views of others, and determining what is and isn't acceptable to you as a person. You clearly haven't done that, because you're happy to parrot the same hack arguments that everyone has, without doing any thinking of your own, or understanding the fundamentals at play.
As for your second point, of course prices always reach an equilibrium for any given supply and demand, which is the whole basis of what I'm saying. As I said, once SCG drops legacy, what then? When the entity that has been responsible for essentially driving this format finally pulls the plug, the supply of cards will remain the same, but their playability will collapse as the tournament scene disappears. Since playability is the major driving force behind the demand for most legacy staples (and cards in general), demand will also collapse. At that stage, people will probably try to sell out in order to get their money back, but by then it will be too late. I mean, you're fairly ignorant if you think this is an unrealistic scenario, because -- unlike counterfeits -- there are numerous well documented examples of price bubbles popping and destroying markets, going all the way back to the 1700s. Right now, the value of magic cards has completely detached from the intrinsic value of the item, meaning that what we are experiencing absolutely qualifies as a bubble; the forces driving it matter less than the limit on supply that is forcing prices ever upwards, and capping the population of legacy.
I mean, this shouldn't even be up for debate; Wizards knows this, and they've even said that the player cap is the biggest reason for not supporting legacy as the go-to non-rotating, competitive format. For anyone who wants to parrot the usual supply-demand high school economics view of things, I challenge you to explain how it's possible to have a healthy, growing market in which the supply of the commodity has been artificially and arbitrarily fixed. More to the point, I would love to see examples, because I'm reasonably certain none exist. You need both liquid supply and demand for things to stay healthy in any market, and right now, we just don't have that.
Thanks very much for the article. Some of the tests may not be practical but others are, and this will be very useful for many people.
Legacy: Rituals
Vintage: Drains
The notion that the fakes aren't that good is just bogus. The article is very interesting, and there are some great photos, but honestly, during play, you can't weight, bend, or tear cards. You can't even touch your opponent's cards outside of sleeves. The only clear tell is the corners, but honestly, most players don't know about alpha corners, yet alone pay attention to them, especially if they aren't skeptical, and the cards are sleeved.
So yeah, it's easy for an expert with the right equipment to spot the fakes, but that's not practical. Judges and even stores that buy cards aren't going to start measuring, weighing and bending each card they encounter.
I think that the point is not so much to catch them in a tournament setting as to avoid buying or trading for them.
Oh sure they are. You never heard of zero sum economics? Every dollar the counterfeiters make is necessarily a dollar that WotC didn't. Hell, every dollar that I spend on local beers and bike tires is money that everyone else isn't making.
sent from phone, don't be a dick
The RIAA and MPAA certainly have. Zero sum economics is almost as bad as the hot, salty Reaganomics currently trickling down our faces and into the carpet.
Anyway, there was something else I wanted to raise: purchasing and owning these fakes is not prohibited by US law, and for you to be prosecuted, there would need to be demonstrable evidence of intent to sell. This is covered here in the Criminal Resources Manual, the relevant cause being in the definition of trafficking (emphasis mine):
To be prosecuted for trafficking, there would need to demonstrable evidence that you were doing this for commercial gain, as the scope of the definition of trafficking is specifically limited to commercial activities. Note that I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but it seems pretty clear to me that buying a few counterfeit cards does not constitute a violation of US law, nor is it specifically immoral to do so in any way.Thus it is not a crime under this act for an individual knowingly to purchase goods bearing counterfeit marks, if the purchase is for the individual's personal use.
Unlawful and immoral are two very different ideas, one not necessarily having anything to do with the other. I will agree it's not unlawful. It's highly immoral. The fact that you don't see that but understand the legal applications and wherewithal of all this is highly suspect to me. What kind of printer do you own?
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In your article you wrote about a wave of fakes that hit the european market in spring 2012. I never heard of that. What are the differences between those fakes and real cards? Did you write an article about that, which you could link to us?Though the good news is that there exists scientific methods to distinguish between fake and real cards - I understand that some of them not on the hands of everybody -, I also explain a pair of cheap ways to tell them appart easily. Check it out!
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