-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Misplayer
This is a ridiculous statement. You're telling me you have as good of a time going 0-5 then when you go 5-0 and top 4/8? Hell, I get pissed when I finish 3-2 at a local event. I'm a competitive person so that contributes, but since when is going winless fun? If that's true, then you wouldn't conceivably ever need ANY of the expensive legacy staples. Is Tarmogoyf more fun than Werebear? Is Force of Will more fun than Counterspell? The reason these cards are desireable is because they make it easier to win. Competing and winning is arguably one of the biggest factors behind the prices of cards on the secondary market. People don't want to play 43Lands and Retainers-Iona because it's fun, they want to win.
/RANT
I'm curious about how much the discussion in this thread alone has contributed to the online blowout of cards like Loyal Retainers. If I didn't regularly read the Survival threads, this card wouldn't even be on my radar screen were it not for threads like this. I'd guess that at least 5 or 6 people scoured the internet and bought up all the copies they could find just because of what they read in this thread, likely for speculative purposes.
so what ? if you don't win you quit? u don't try harder, look for alternative? bouhou. indeed your statement isn't ridiculous.
/i am cool because i "slash"
Let's hard reprint any card so Wizard can sell their booster packs for half of what it is now as everything must be availalbe by anyone, i am sure that is their target!
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ryO!
so what ? if you don't win you quit? u don't try harder, look for alternative? bouhou. indeed your statement isn't ridiculous.
/i am cool because i "slash"
Let's hard reprint any card so Wizard can sell their booster packs for half of what it is now, i am sure that is their target!
... [Snip] - Bardo, grumble ...
You also didn't listen to a thing he just said, but if you don't understand that some people (over half on this site I'd wager) play to win with the exact 75 cards that they believe are necessary, then you probably should try reading any of the Decks to Beat threads. If you want to play to have a good time and you don't spend the money to buy the cards you need to win that's fine, no one blames you (try out Cavius' Casual and Budget forums), but you really need to accept that there are people out there with different objectives in this hobby than you have.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
ryO!
playing is fun no matter if you lose or win damn it, it really seems like a spoil child talk : "if i don't win i quit!" "if i don't have this exact deck i quit" (no offence i mean i rly think that the efficiency matter shouldn't be taken into consideration).
as for the second statement, well don't play DDANT.
Don't forget that as long as it ll remain a non free game, there will ALWAYS have inequalities ... and the solution isn't to systematically reprint every card that goes above 20/30$ ...
You basically stated why Vintage dies:
Can't afford it? Don't play.
Thats just ridiculous, some cards will always be more expensive, but as soon as the investment to get into a format gets too high something is going wrong.
One personal thing: Please come to our local tournaments, its gonna be win/win. We will have byes while we stomp you Grizzlybears with our Goyfs, we win, you have fun playing, sounds like a good deal to me.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Phoenix Ignition
Many people are ignorant, and don't understand what a secondary market does to keep the primary market going. Here, for you and everyone else who agrees with that statement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_market . Wizards makes money off of a strong secondary market backing up the cards prices so that people can justify spending 70$+ on 36 packs of cards. People assume they will be able to get some
value out of this due to a highly liquid secondary market. This thread is becoming stupider than N&D.
Good read, I like being informed. My question is, where does Wizards' earn the bulk of it's revenue from? Second, maybe I'm missing something, because all I know of economics is that article and what I learned in AP Eco about 3 years ago. However, the article itself says,
"As a general rule, the greater the number of investors that participate in a given marketplace, and the greater the centralization of that marketplace, the more liquid the market."
Being highly liquid is apparently a good thing,
"In the secondary market, securities are sold by and transferred from one investor or speculator to another. It is therefore important that the secondary market be highly liquid..."
So the way I see it, the higher the prices of these scarce cards rise, the less people are going to invest in them. As fewer people people invest in these cards (buy them) the market becomes less liquid and therefore shitty. Does that sound right?
I'm not saying wizards starts printing duals on toilet paper, but they should at least try to find a way to reintroduce them into the market so the prices drop enough for them to be available but at the same time don't flood the market. I agree that not everyone should own every single card, but it's getting to a point as more people play they won't be able to enter the format due to scarcity of cards.
EDIT: The price tag shouldn't be the only thing keeping people from playing a format. Most decks these days cost almost a quarter of my tuition. I think that's a little high, even if the cards are accumulated over time.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Magus of the Lolis
a lot of players commenting more based on biased personal opinion here than actual facts. I dont see as many actual hardcore collectors offering their thoughts. Im a player AND a collector. I buy the cards to play with, but I dont want them to go down in value either.
Please let's use accurate terminology: if you're more worried about the value of your cards than about your ability to find opponents to use them against, you're not a collector, you're an investor.
Not all reprints affect cards the same way. Some prices are high because the cards' utility creates a high demand: fetchlands, FoW, Tarmogoyf really are *that* good, to deserve their price tag. But some cards are only high in price because of their rarity: Juzam Djinn is worthless except for the cachet of owning an iconic piece of the game's history.
Only cards in the latter category have to fear a serious price crash from reprints. This was the problem of Chronicles; because they reprinted a bunch of terrible cards, they reprinted cards for which there was little demand (the Palladia-Mors Fan Club meetings had a lot of empty chairs), devastating prices. The outrage over that led directly to the reserve list. When Underworld Dreams was reprinted in 8th edition, the price of Legends edition Dreams fell from $30ish to $13ish, because Underworld Dreams is a bad card whose price was mostly coasting on rarity, not utility.
It can be tricky to figure out how much of a card's value is wrapped up in speculation and nostalgia, and how much of the value represents underlying utility. Offhand, I would guess that reprinting duals and FoW would cause only a minor dip in the value of the originals - maybe 25% at the most - whereas reprinting the Portal goodies would destroy their value (dropping 75% or more). Of course, I'm fine with that, but that would be my guess even if I wasn't.
The issue is further complicated by the fact that Magic prices are non-linear (most goods have nonlinear prices but Magic especially so). That is, a $200 card is not trade-able for two hundred $1 cards, so percentage increases/decreases are higher for more valuable cards. A reprint of Force of Will won't drop the value of the original version much because people believe that it is appropriate and acceptable for the best cards to be worth $30, whereas very few people will agree that any Magic card is so good as to be worth $100+, so even very good cards like Moat have no popular support to keep them from shedding huge percentages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nidd
But the problem I see arising is not that people have to buy the cards for these prices - it's rather that there won't be enough available when the format has grown bigger.
??? Price and card availability are not independent issues.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Nizmox
I would have thought the internet and sites like SCG etc... has made access to single card purchases available to everyone?
Therein lies the problem: once we rely on remote dealers, we diminish card availability, open our pockets up to gotcha gouging, and buy into the speculation trap.
Last check on duals @ SCG (Revised):
Badlands 35
Bayou 40
Plateau 33
Savannah 38
Scrubland 35
Taiga 45 (out of stock)
Tropical 50
Tundra 55
Underground Sea 70
Volcanic Island 45
These first 5 used to be under $15 no more than 4 years ago. With the increased demand, there needs to be increases supply, or prices will continue to shoot up to astronomical values easily shutting out a vast majority of players who would like to play Legacy competitively.
Explain again how putting up a barrier to entry is good for the health of a format? Prime example: Vintage.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Well besides the fact that Vintage in some areas is flourishing (The Mid Atlantic) you are pretty much spot on Rukcus. When they were much less though, people didn't necessarily want them and so this is a case of supply and demand. People want the cards so they cost more, it's as simple as that.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
rukcus
Therein lies the problem: once we rely on remote dealers, we diminish card availability
The internet makes cards more available, not less. I'm pretty sure there are cities or even states where none of the dealers have The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale for sale. And even if they did, if they're not competing with Ebay and MOTL and other places, there's no cap to what they could charge. It means cards cost basically the same no matter where you are, if you're willing to ship.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
MattH
??? Price and card availability are not independent issues.
I know quite a lot of T2 players who could byu BSAs if they wanted to, but they don't feel like shelling out 45-50€ for one.
Price and availability may be related, but they certainly aren't that reliant on each other.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I'm sure it's already been mentioned multiple times, but the fact that there are multiple Legacy GP's as well as the new SCG 5K Legacy tournament series is really increasing the popularity of this format, which is awesome.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GUnit
I'm sure it's already been mentioned multiple times, but the fact that there are multiple Legacy GP's as well as the new SCG 5K Legacy tournament series is really increasing the popularity of this format, which is awesome.
Awesome aside from the fact that the increased demand could end up permanently damaging or destroying the format, absent drastic action by WotC.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cdr
Awesome aside from the fact that the increased demand could end up permanently damaging or destroying the format, absent drastic action by WotC.
I don't think so, Legacy prices are still manageable and not that far off of Standard/Extended still.
If you want to talk fucked up, how about $55 for a Baneslayer Angel? That's in Standard, right now.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Forbiddian
I don't think so, Legacy prices are still manageable and not that far off of Standard/Extended still.
If you want to talk fucked up, how about $55 for a Baneslayer Angel? That's in Standard, right now.
Yeah, but every deck doesn't run 7 or 8 Baneslayers. There's only a few Legacy decks that don't run 7 or 8 $40+ Duals.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Forbiddian
I don't think so, Legacy prices are still manageable and not that far off of Standard/Extended still.
If you want to talk fucked up, how about $55 for a Baneslayer Angel? That's in Standard, right now.
As has been noted, Baneslayer's price is driven almost entirely by the fact that it's standard legal and the fact that it's mythic. I don't see $55 for Baneslayer as unreasonable considering those facts - and in fact I would expect it to go up, considering among other things that WotC is apparently ceasing to print M10 outside of the US.
With M11, it will either be reprinted or rotate out - either way, it should go down a fair amount.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
edgewalker
Good read, I like being informed. My question is, where does Wizards' earn the bulk of it's revenue from? Second, maybe I'm missing something, because all I know of economics is that article and what I learned in AP Eco about 3 years ago. However, the article itself says,
"As a general rule, the greater the number of investors that participate in a given marketplace, and the greater the centralization of that marketplace, the more liquid the market."
Being highly liquid is apparently a good thing,
"In the secondary market, securities are sold by and transferred from one investor or speculator to another. It is therefore important that the secondary market be highly liquid..."
So the way I see it, the higher the prices of these scarce cards rise, the less people are going to invest in them. As fewer people people invest in these cards (buy them) the market becomes less liquid and therefore shitty. Does that sound right?
I'm not saying wizards starts printing duals on toilet paper, but they should at least try to find a way to reintroduce them into the market so the prices drop enough for them to be available but at the same time don't flood the market. I agree that not everyone should own every single card, but it's getting to a point as more people play they won't be able to enter the format due to scarcity of cards.
EDIT: The price tag shouldn't be the only thing keeping people from playing a format. Most decks these days cost almost a quarter of my tuition. I think that's a little high, even if the cards are accumulated over time.
I agree with most of your points here. My personal feelings on this are that they should reprint duals to help more people join in if they want the format, even if it drops all of my cards down in price. The main thing I want to get across though is that Wizards makes tons of money just off of the fact that there is a secondary market for the cards. Of course they only directly make money from sales of boxes, but the demand for these goes up quite a bit when people know they can make money or lose less money selling the individual cards in the box.
Wizards profits quite a bit because people have faith in the value of these cards. I have no problem buying duals if I know I can sell them for give or take the same price. There is an unspoken trust in WotC that they will not go bonkers and reprint every expensive card to the point that every player alive has more than a set. If they did that they would make money fast but many players could leave the game. The bubble would burst as the secondary market collapsed and no one would be able to liquefy their assets. I know this happened in some other card game but I don't recall its name. If they reprinted everything haphazardly they would profit quite a bit, but the game would eventually plummet to the point that every card was worth the same amount.
I would still play the game, but many people would be angry and quit. It would be the equivalent of MWS, where idiots have every good card they want and still are retarded. I think theres some good in having expensive cards, it keeps people from buying decks without thinking them through. There isn't enough thought in deck selection among many people, and I know from personal experience that playtesting the hell out of an expensive card before buying it is definitely good Magic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
AngryTroll
Yeah, but every deck doesn't run 7 or 8 Baneslayers. There's only a few Legacy decks that don't run 7 or 8 $40+ Duals.
You can get by with less though, especially with the new fetches. It's also good to note that the new fetches help players getting into the game a lot with their manabases. My friend and I have been sharing a set of all the duals for a while and splitting 2-2 is really not the worst thing in the world. It only really hurts when you both want to play the same decktype, and even then 3 duals of a type will usually produce no different results in a normal tournament.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
I just want to know how much longer people are going to keep up the imaginary pretense about Illusionary Mask remaining banned for financial reasons. Unlimited Masks are down to $62.95 average on MOTL, with both Moat ($123.82 average) and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale ($222.84 average!!!) now vastly eclipsing Illusionary Mask in price and being in two of the highest profile decks in recent months (thanks to SCG$5Ks).
If Mask is banned for financial reasons (like many believe), then Moat and Tabernacle have to go for the exact same reason (although I don't believe I'll ever see the same crowd saying Mask needs to stay banned because it's "too expensive" say anything about these because we're used to them in Legacy).
Or they can just unban Illusionary Mask, but that is for another discussion.
But seriously though...Moat and Tabernacle are better examples than dual lands for "price creep". Dual lands have been rising steadily in value for years, yet Moat and Tabernacle doubled or tripled in price just over a 6 month period.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Solaran_X
But seriously though...Moat and Tabernacle are better examples than dual lands for "price creep". Dual lands have been rising steadily in value for years, yet Moat and Tabernacle doubled or tripled in price just over a 6 month period.
No, not at all. Price creep is the steady growth in price of a good card over time. Tabernacle and Moat were fringe cards that weren't used almost at all for a long time, and their power was not fully understood. It isn't that the price creep happened to them, it's that people realized they were awesome cards and demand skyrocketed.
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Well, out of curiosity I looked on eBay for Loyal Retainers. I found one, in Japanese, with 11 bids on it going for $60+ already, with six days left. Glad I picked mine up already. :eek:
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Heh called that one. Should I list the next hot tickets?
After payday, I think I will. I need to pick up a few more things first though. There's a couple I don't have my playset of yet.
There's a ton of cards out there that people have just plain forgotten about. I had to laugh when I saw Glacial Crevasses lately and realized it's a hot card for any deck running Crucible or Loam, and some Mountains. Easy enough to change those mountains to Snow Covered ones and you have a built in perma fog. Spore Frog has taught us that it doesn't need to be a good card to have a good use. Granted, not many decks need a perma-fog especially the red ones, but that's a nice option to keep in mind. I thought of a couple of decks that could use it though. What do you Imperial Painter players think?
-
Re: Raise, raise, raise. The price of cardboard
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cdr
As has been noted, Baneslayer's price is driven almost entirely by the fact that it's standard legal and the fact that it's mythic. I don't see $55 for Baneslayer as unreasonable considering those facts - and in fact I would expect it to go up, considering among other things that WotC is apparently ceasing to print M10 outside of the US.
With M11, it will either be reprinted or rotate out - either way, it should go down a fair amount.
Also that while M10 was a hot seller, there still wasn't THAT much opened, especially compared to block sets (and WAY especially compared to large sets like Shards that were drafted for a full year).
