[Official] Bitching About Prices, Buyouts and Reprints Thread

I bought 8 Cliques back in the NO-Prog days of dominance (3-4 maindeck Clique was the norm) at about $15/ea. $50/ea now? WTF? That card sees LESS play than it did back when NO-Prog decks were the deck to beat.

Modern is what is driving Clique up so high.

Even with Clique in Modern, is it seeing that much play to justify it's cost? No-Pro era Legacy (3-4 maindeck in 2-3 iterations of Prog decks) + no Modern format = $15/20 each. Current Legacy which sees sparing use of Clique (1-of in a couple decks, 1-of in a sideboard here or there) + minor-moderate play in Modern = $50 each. That just doesn't make sense to me. The same number of Cliques are probably being played today as they were a year or two ago, just split between two formats now instead of one. No reason it should be $50 now.

Well to be honest Clique is played everywhere, from Legacy to Vintage to EDH ( broken general) to Modern. In modern UWR midrange (most played deck) plays 3 md. In legacy any UWx Blade deck plays at least 1 in SB or MD.

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Originally Posted by _Fe_

Modern is what is driving Clique up so high.

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Modern is certainly driving the price of cards really high because it's "in season" or something, but Clique had climbed up to $35-40 when everyone was on Miracles or Miracle-Blade, well before Modern had caused new cards to spike again.

LOL @ Thrun, the Last Troll. A fitting card for an obnoxious group of speculators.

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Originally Posted by mini1337s

LOL @ Thrun, the Last Troll. A fitting card for an obnoxious group of speculators.

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So what happened with Thrun? Wasn't he like $3 for the longest time?

-Matt

So, at this point it is pretty evident that MTG has become some kind of evil, bastard child of the financial sector. There are multiple sites dedicated to speculative trading, Forbes has a regular column about it, etc, and more than ever we are seeing wild fluctuations in the prices of cards as a whole.

The question I have is, how long until this actually just kills the entire game? I doubt trading card games will ever be regulated as a commodity, so realistically, how much longer can this go on? Think about it - Standard has an average player lifespan of <3 years. The current retention model employed by WotC then tries to shuttle these players into Modern, and then into Legacy. However, at the rate Eternal singles are inflating, Modern will become just as expensive as Legacy regardless of the limited reprints they have planned so far, unless they just crash the whole market and print everything en masse (and we all know they are not willing to draw the ire of the collectors by doing that). Once that prohibitive price point happens, players will be more likely just to quit altogether once they are finished with Standard, as there will be no realistic way to continue playing, and the rate of decay will far outpace the rate of acquisition.

So, how long do you think we have? Three years? Less? More? Will WotC do something to mitigate the damage, like bringing back a rotating Extended format and shelving Modern as a PTQ format? Discuss.

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Originally Posted by majikal

Discuss.

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We'll first let me put up this image that was posted on another forum:

http://i.imgur.com/ZTtEeLi.jpg


Now onto your points.
I generally agree (or at least used to) with most of the things you said, but the time has proven us wrong so far. People anticipated the end of days when Underground Sea reaches $100 retail, and those days are way gone with no stopping in popularity of either Legacy nor MTG as a whole. What it did happen though is the shift of high value cards from some parts of the world to other more wealthy ones. Prime example is my local community which was priced out of Legacy almost completely in the last 1-2 years. We went from regular weekly tournaments with 14-20 people to no Legacy tournaments whatsoever. That however didn't stop Starcitygames, Bazaar of Moxen or Ovino to continue to post record breaking attendances in the meantime...
I guess my point is that there really seems to be an influx of new people to the game, and that coupled with some of them willing to spend absurd sums of money on a fixed number of copies of cards that are up to 20+ years old... leads to current mtg phenomenon.

One solution I see, atleast for Modern, is that Wizards observes Modern Masters reception and decides to make it a yearly thing with more aggressive print runs. That would fulfill their initial promise of an affordable non-rotational format while leaving Legacy and Vintage in the seas of collectables with an allure of something prestigious and mysterious to new players.
Either way, due to their current system yielding great results I don't see them ever going away with reserve list which means a dream of a Legacy PT/loads of GPs is never going to happen.

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Originally Posted by sdematt

So what happened with Thrun? Wasn't he like $3 for the longest time?

-Matt

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Speculators thought Thrun would be one of the replacements for Bloodbraid Elf in Modern when she got banned. God damn speculators.

When has Thrun been less than $15? A few months after he rotated maybe? I bought him at $14 or so a year ago.

Bought 4 Thrun at $5.99/ea in May 2011. And this was when he was Standard legal and able to combat the UWx decks that dominated that era.

It's still around 4-6 Euros in Europe. Whatever is happening it's not like the Shallow Grave spike.

If poor people can't play eternal format magic than so be it, they shouldn't be spending time on CCGs anyway; they should be learning to fix washing machines or tile floors.

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Originally Posted by nedleeds

If poor people can't play eternal format magic than so be it, they shouldn't be spending time on CCGs anyway; they should be learning to fix washing machines or tile floors.

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That's not at all what I'm talking about. I'm questioning the long-term sustainability of WotC's current player retention model. Sure they've got acquisition down for the moment, but sometime soon the game as a whole will startt hemorraging players due to the prohibitive cost of Modern turning people away faster than they can be recruited.

Right now, the model goes: Standard - Modern - Legacy - other/quit. If things continue as they are, it will go Standard - fuck this game I quit. Nothing can stop this from happening eventually. Modern Masters is a band-aid at best. The law of diminishing returns will eventually take over and no amount of specialized products will save the game from imploding on itself. The question is how long do we a actually have?

http://images.t-nation.com/forum_ima...sful_troll.jpg

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Originally Posted by majikal

The law of diminishing returns will eventually take over and no amount of specialized products will save the game from imploding on itself. The question is how long do we a actually have?

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6 days.

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Originally Posted by Claymore

When has Thrun been less than $15? A few months after he rotated maybe? I bought him at $14 or so a year ago.

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- Dropped from $16 to $12 in June 2012
- $10 in July 2012
- $6 in September 2012
- $4 in November 2012
- $6 in early February 2013

...and now up to $15...

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Originally Posted by Kl'rt

- Dropped from $16 to $12 in June 2012
- $10 in July 2012
- $6 in September 2012
- $4 in November 2012
- $6 in early February 2013

...and now up to $15...

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Thanks to dumb speculators. I've been looking at post-ban Jund lists for Modern and Thrun's slight increase in play most certainly hasn't justified such a dramatic price increase. Huntmaster has been the de facto replacement for BBE, with Thrun seeing scattered play.

Bloodstained Mire $40
Wooded Foothills $40