Tabernacle and SCG

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Originally Posted by frogboy

I don't disagree with any of this, but I would like to note that you are merely transferring the cost in dollars to costs in time and that shortages still exist because the original price was set too low.

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Except that isn't how real-world operations...uh, operate. The people running the events I was referring to (mainly concerts and music or film festivals) don't think, "My venue can hold 5000 people, but 20000 want to come, so I'll keep raising the price until only the richest 5000 fans can afford a ticket." They figure out how much they need to charge to cover operating costs plus an acceptable profit, and split that 5000 ways; and thus is the price set.

What's you're missing when you say "merely transferring costs" is that all 20,000 feel they had a fair chance at getting a ticket, and by giving them the opportunity to substitute time for money, you ensure that you get a more-devoted, more fun, and just all-around better audience (a subset of the group that can afford to pay the price, as determined above, of course). It's not "merely" anything, as right off the bat you avoid the kind of resentment you see in this thread re: Magic cards*.

The shortage doesn't exist because the price is set too low, the shortage exists because demand outstrips supply. The question is, what is the best way to allocate scarce resources? Basing this on "ability to pay more" (essentially, a bidding war) is one way to do that, yes, but it's not the only way, and not always the best way for all possible resources.


*As I said before, though, this doesn't apply to Magic cards, for a host of reasons.

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Originally Posted by MattH

The shortage doesn't exist because the price is set too low, the shortage exists because demand outstrips supply.

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At that price, sure.

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Originally Posted by frogboy

At that price, sure.

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The demand exists not because of the price but because of the product. If you want to attend a concert it's not because of the cheap price but because of what you get.

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Originally Posted by Julian23

The demand exists not because of the price but because of the product. If you want to attend a concert it's not because of the cheap price but because of what you get.

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Right. And what you get is worth...?

(hint: not the same for all people)

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Originally Posted by frogboy

Right. And what you get is worth...?

(hint: not the same for all people)

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Agreed. That's why only people that like the music will try to attend the concert. A Dixy Chicks concert is worth nothing to me whereas some Midwest farmer girl would much rather go there I guess.

What's your point? Argueing that the best way to distribute "goods" is too set the price just as high so that the supply will be equal to the amount of people who can afford it? Like, looking at reservation-prices and rising the prices until enough people drop out?

I'm arguing that shortages imply mispricing, and that a very effective way to get goods to people who value them the highest is to price them higher. You can price goods in time, money, or whatever.

Mostly I'm saying that people who speculate in markets are not evildoers.

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Originally Posted by frogboy

I'm arguing that shortages imply mispricing, and that a very effective way to get goods to people who value them the highest is to price them higher. You can price goods in time, money, or whatever.

Mostly I'm saying that people who speculate in markets are not evildoers.

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I'm arguing that the principle of distributing goods to the people who are willing to pay the most for them leads to inbearable injustice. Like MattH said, people who run a concert look at all their costs and the time they spent on organizing it and then determine what's the appropiate price. If this means that there are gonna be more people wanting to buy tickets than there are tickets available it's fine. If you distribute them via first-come-first-serve it's fine. If it's done randoly it's fine. But once third people start sculping the tickets they deny a lot of people even the opportunity to acquire tickets because now they can't afford it.
I don't wanna say the sculptors are bad people, maybe I was a little to harsh on this before. I sometimes even buy cards because I think they will rise in price. What I want to express is that even though you are willing to pay 500 dollars for something doesn't neccessarily mean you are valuing it higher that someone who will only pay 50 dollars.

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If you distribute them via first-come-first-serve it's fine. If it's done randoly it's fine. But once third people start sculping the tickets they deny a lot of people even the opportunity to acquire tickets because now they can't afford it.

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They also give others the opportunity to acquire tickets who were unable to take the time for waiting in line or were not drawn by random lot.

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Originally Posted by Julian23

What I want to express is that even though you are willing to pay 500 dollars for something doesn't neccessarily mean you are valuing it higher that someone who will only pay 50 dollars.

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Elaborate. This statement is contradictory. Obviously the person who is willing to pay a higher price places a higher value on the good.

It appears you feel wealth should not be a factor in determining who gets scarce goods. Do you think it is more fair for those who went to a random drawing on a lark to acquire goods as opposed to those who desperately wanted the goods?

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Originally Posted by IsThisACatInAHat?

That's pretty brilliant to me as an observer, though obnoxious as a consumer. Has this practice (buying on speculation, preorders, selected bidding) really been lucrative for you? I've been trying to break the system for the past 6 months to feed my collector's greed, but found that my equity portfolio just raced MTG (and once I'm more experienced with options, it would be a total wash). If you don't mind answering, is there publicly available information that lets you do this (i.e. something better than the spoilers), or are you working on a macro scale just pre-ordering cases or complete sets and fishing it all out once you get the cards?

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I buy singles only. Packs are a waste of money to me. I pick singles that I figure are being missed or ones that I think will go up. It's a guessing game to be sure. I'm just right a lot. Follow Ben Bleiweis of Starcitygames, he's got a good eye for it also. It makes premium worth it for his articles.

So did you guys buy up some Dream Halls? That ones obviously going to have an impact. I have a few copies sitting aside now. 270 person tournament and wins with a virtually unknown deck. Yeah, that was worth banking on. Conflux is too much of crap outside of the deck, but Dream Halls itself was always borderline broken and it's old. How much do you think it will go up. You know it will. I'm just paying attention. Even if it goes from $5 to $10, I just doubled my money.


I don't know much about stocks, bonds and such to be honest. I guess I should learn though, I might be good at it. If anything, I play with quite a bit on this game. I went through over $175,000 worth of stuff this year. That's a lot of buying/selling.

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

So did you guys buy up some Dream Halls? That ones obviously going to have an impact. I have a few copies sitting aside now. 270 person tournament and wins with a virtually unknown deck. Yeah, that was worth banking on. Conflux is too much of crap outside of the deck, but Dream Halls itself was always borderline broken and it's old. How much do you think it will go up. You know it will. I'm just paying attention. Even if it goes from $5 to $10, I just doubled my money.

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I think Dream Halls has gone up a lot already. Same goes for Show and Tell, both cards are the top sellers at Magiccardgarden right now. Both are sold out at SCG as well. I am glad I still had a playset S&T and also have 7 Dream Halls in my binder, which have been sitting there for quite a few years, noone was interested in them all that time.

I did however buy some Confluxes. At Starcitygames they still had 12 @ $1.99. Seeing that the lowest price on them at MCG is E6.95, I can actually move them at a decent return on investment (I have done worse than a 400% profit). I will keep a playset for my own however.

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

I buy singles only. Packs are a waste of money to me. I pick singles that I figure are being missed or ones that I think will go up. It's a guessing game to be sure. I'm just right a lot. Follow Ben Bleiweis of Starcitygames, he's got a good eye for it also. It makes premium worth it for his articles.

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Thanks, I intend to. What kind of volume are we talking here for that kind of revenue, or does that include sales on other stuff too?

Mind you, MTG speculation is just an inefficient form of equity trading anyway, so you might be better at it than you think. It's just a matter of passion, so it's a lot easier to do it with a game you love than one you hate. The real difficulty is finding out who you'd rather get screwed by: ebay and paypal or the SEC and any bank.

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Originally Posted by frogboy

They also give others the opportunity to acquire tickets who were unable to take the time for waiting in line or were not drawn by random lot.



Elaborate. This statement is contradictory. Obviously the person who is willing to pay a higher price places a higher value on the good.

It appears you feel wealth should not be a factor in determining who gets scarce goods. Do you think it is more fair for those who went to a random drawing on a lark to acquire goods as opposed to those who desperately wanted the goods?

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I don't say everyone should be able to acquire any kind of product. Some people argue you should only pay prices relative to your income, like a car should cost you x% of your annual income. I argue against this. There are things you can't buy if you don't have enough money. But I also argue against depriving one of or significantly lowering the opportunity to acquire things one can afford. Once scultping happens a lot of people who's income actually gives them a shot at buying e.g. the concert ticket now find them in places where they're chances are lowered because of sculpting.

"Desperatly wanting" a good doesn't mean you're gonna outbid every price. I desperatly want good x but I'm not willing to pay more than a certain price for it. Flavio Briatore on the other hand might just be "interested" in good x but will be willing to pay a much larger price than me. Here I do argue that how much you value something is always related to your income. This doesn't mean my bid of 50 dollars should be equal to Flavio's of 500 dollars, he still offers more after all. But once a price is fixed everyone who can afford it should have a shot at it. Sculping is the process of taking away chances from one group of people to the benefit of another group. This is what I call unfair.

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Originally Posted by Julian23

scultping... sculpting... Sculping

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Dude, it's "scalping."

Sculpting is making statues, etc.

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Originally Posted by dahcmai

So did you guys buy up some Dream Halls? That ones obviously going to have an impact. I have a few copies sitting aside now. 270 person tournament and wins with a virtually unknown deck. Yeah, that was worth banking on. Conflux is too much of crap outside of the deck, but Dream Halls itself was always borderline broken and it's old. How much do you think it will go up. You know it will. I'm just paying attention. Even if it goes from $5 to $10, I just doubled my money.

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I couldn't because people like you bought a bunch and have them sitting aside now. Would you sell me for 6 dollars?

You would've doubled your money in the expense of someone's fun, when it should be the opposite. I can't think of any other (legal) service/market where people make money like that, by NOT being helpful or performing a service.

More and more I'm realizing how bad for the game the singles market is, with all those scalping actions.

You are all coming at this issue from different points of view. It would be wise to keep in mind that in a free market, morality means jack-shit.

I'll use this analogy; there are 10 hamburgers and 10 people. One of the people is a fat fucker who happens to be quite wealthy. He doesn't really like hamburgers but he can eat 10 of them. The other 9 people are incredibly poor but also starving. Who do you think will eat all 10 hamburgers in a free market?

It's not about who would enjoy the Magic cards the most as that is purely subjective. When profit is the driving factor, there's always some asshole that see's dollar signs. If we were all true Communists, we would try to make sure that everyone got a Sea Drake but chances are most Magic players would get 0 and the rest would only get 1.

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Originally Posted by android

You are all coming at this issue from different points of view. It would be wise to keep in mind that in a free market, morality means jack-shit.

I'll use this analogy; there are 10 hamburgers and 10 people. One of the people is a fat fucker who happens to be quite wealthy. He doesn't really like hamburgers but he can eat 10 of them. The other 9 people are incredibly poor but also starving. Who do you think will eat all 10 hamburgers in a free market?

It's not about who would enjoy the Magic cards the most as that is purely subjective. When profit is the driving factor, there's always some asshole that see's dollar signs. If we were all true Communists, we would try to make sure that everyone got a Sea Drake but chances are most Magic players would get 0 and the rest would only get 1.

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But what seems to happen is: there are 10 hamburgers, 10 hungry people and 8 of them are able to afford it. Then the hamburger place just holds on to the hamburgers for while, creating a false demand, rising its prices, making even the ones who could afford to eat to starve. After a while, out of the 8 people that could afford to buy one hamburger, now only 4 can. If that continues, only one person will not die of starvation, and this person will find it really boring to swing Goyfs against dead opponents.

Moral of the story: this practice of scalping will not kill the format, but might drive it to a Vintage-like state.

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Originally Posted by caiomarcos

But what seems to happen is: there are 10 hamburgers, 10 hungry people and 8 of them are able to afford it. Then the hamburger place just holds on to the hamburgers for while, creating a false demand, rising its prices, making even the ones who could afford to eat to starve. After a while, out of the 8 people that could afford to buy one hamburger, now only 4 can. If that continues, only one person will not die of starvation, and this person will find it really boring to swing Goyfs against dead opponents.

Moral of the story: this practice of scalping will not kill the format, but might drive it to a Vintage-like state.

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Or they just might just go to the hodogstand that sells hotdogs for a price they can pay.

Legacy is not meant to be forever, every stable of the Reserved list proves that. Every cardstore-owner (read: the person who ensures a place for you to play at) tries to make money of this game by selling singles and making a profit of it. So you can hardly blame them.

The thing is, a single person can hardly impact the market for it to matter. SCG might be able to do it, but they don't want to shy away potential players.

So the guys that could ruin the market and make sure no new players come to Legacy will not do it, since they make a living of this. They would be more happy if they could buy duals at 1$, sell them for 10$ and make more players play Legacy (potentional buyers).

I wouldn't talk about ruining the market too much, its not gonna happen anytime soon.

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Originally Posted by paK0

Legacy is not meant to be forever, every stable of the Reserved list proves that. Every cardstore-owner (read: the person who ensures a place for you to play at) tries to make money of this game by selling singles and making a profit of it. So you can hardly blame them.

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The thing is, the store owner is providing a valuable service: use of their facilities to play in primarily, and other side benefits (such as sanctioning FNM for example). Speculators don't provide anywhere near the same benefit (if anything at all), so it's not unreasonable to begrudge only the latter's profits.

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Originally Posted by android

If we were all true Communists, we would try to make sure that everyone got a Sea Drake but chances are most Magic players would get 0 and the rest would only get 1.

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Well, not exactly. The point of any economic system is to maximize the utility of goods, and the world's supply of Sea Drakes is maximally utilized when 25% of Legacy players have a playset, not when 100% each have a singleton (with some variation to account for EDH and cube etc.).

In this way, the criticisms of speculation and hoarding of Magic cards aren't limited to moral arguments. It is inefficient to have many playsets of cards sitting idle in binders.

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Originally Posted by frogboy

They also give others the opportunity to acquire tickets who were unable to take the time for waiting in line or were not drawn by random lot.

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Obviously this isn't true for random lots, everyone has an equal opportunity to purchase a ticket in such a system. The opportunity isn't 100%, but it's undeniably equal.

Adding to what MattH said: I don't know if this is the case in e.g. the USA but in Germany we have laws putting an additional tax on things bought and sold again on short notice. There's a reason for such taxes: you want to limit price-driving speculation and give certain goods to people who actually need them.
Surely, Magic cards are not nearly as important to do something similar with them. What I want to point out is that there are certain goods you don't wanna people speculate on.

I keep getting the feeling that people are convinced I somehow have enough money to buy all of a certain card if I feel like it. I doubt I got them all. I only picked up 8. Score, if I did though. I'm sure there's more than one Magic site besides the one I got them from.

Look around, I found a few still going for $5 and I didn't search real hard.