How to save Legacy

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Originally Posted by Cire

If the fakes are as good as real unless you take out your personal electron microscope and vials of aqua regia to test them, then why is it a problem? Just play the game and stop worrying about your opponent's poverty.

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Once even a loupe cannot reveal counterfeit dual lands, it becomes a problem since people will still try to buy and sell dual lands at $400 assuming it has value due to scarcity, when in fact anyone would be able to order a set of them as well as the entire reserve list for $20. It would be a joke to price dual lands on the assumption that there only exists 300,000 copies of each in the world, when in fact there could easily be millions. At that point the Reserve List does nothing except enable counterfeiters to exploit the ignorance of the community, and it would be moronic for WotC to not revoke the reserve list and print and distribute new copies of the reserve list cards themselves with better counterfeit protection.

The thing is that although WotC's policy is that they do not regulate the secondary market, the value of singles is vital to the health of the game. I don't think I need to explain this. This is still as true today as it was when the Reserve List was created.

Millions of counterfeit dual lands might seem like it would benefit Legacy, but it wouldn't. Many players, even if they could get fake cards, wouldn't out of disgust. Others would quit since their collections ceased to have any monetary vaue. Both WotC as well as the community have a vested interest in maintaining the value of our collectons. We take Magic seriously, but a large part of why we take Magic more seriously than say Scrabble is because our cards have real value.

Legacy would die immediately, Vintage would probably still be ok but would probably lose a large part of its player base. A small handful of counterfeiters would profit greatly financially and many others would be hurt greatly. But I doubt the counterfeiters would stop at old cards. Rare holograms mean nothing even now, and if counterfeiters are making fake foils then the paper ccg business model is essential over.

I hope you realize that you are playing with $400 cards that used to be worth $15 and $50 cards that used to be worth 50 cents.

If you consider all this, you really can't blame WotC for trying to squeeze as much money out of the game as possible while they still can. The end seems inevitable.

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

the value of singles is vital to the health of the game. I don't think I need to explain this. This is still as true today as it was when the Reserve List was created.

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Please enlighten me. I keep hearing of these mysterious people who purchase into the game as if the game was an investment vehicle. Most others cringe at the prices and take the plunge because they want to play the game. If they were suddenly devalued, well sucks for them. Sucks for me.

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

Many players, even if they could get fake cards, wouldn't out of disgust.

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I doubt it. If my friends who keep proxying up legacy cards so they can play legacy with me can get cheap legacy cards they would. Hell some are playing with sticky notes at the moment so if they can play with cards that feel and look like real cards they gladly would.

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

Others would quit since their collections ceased to have any monetary vaue.

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My collection's value was a trap - it was the idea that "its totally fine to spend thousands on this stupid hobby because when I no longer want to play it anymore I can cash out" - but the problem with that is . . . I still want to play it. There is never going to be a reason for me to "cash out" unless I have a medical emergency, need extra cash for collateral on a loan or I've assumed a certain value to it when I leave it as an inheritance. Why would I quit if they cards become worthless . . . the only reason I have them in the first place is so that I can play the game.

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

We take Magic seriously, but a large part of why we take Magic more seriously than say Scrabble is because our cards have real value.

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We take Magic seriously because we take Magic seriously. I have friends who are into scrabble. They are way more into scrabble then I am into magic. They memorize thousands and thousands of word combinations. They have so many flash cards. People take their own hobbies seriously.

The only reason I feel people care about the monetary value of the cards is the sunk cost fallacy. If they are suddenly worthless are you going to stop playing with your friends? Is the free time you spend to drive to a store or apartment or house to play suddenly not how you want to spend your free time? Nah.

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Originally Posted by Cire

If the fakes are as good as real unless you take out your personal electron microscope and vials of aqua regia to test them, then why is it a problem? Just play the game and stop worrying about your opponent's poverty.

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Exscuse me, sir! But I spent FULL PRICE for my duals in 2004 when they were 40 bucks a piece and now some huckster thinks he can just waltz into my legacy sandbox by trying to buy in with mildly discounted duals off ebay? Personally I believe he got exactly what he paid for.

*monocle pops*

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Originally Posted by Cire

Please enlighten me. I keep hearing of these mysterious people who purchase into the game as if the game was an investment vehicle. Most others cringe at the prices and take the plunge because they want to play the game. If they were suddenly devalued, well sucks for them. Sucks for me.



I doubt it. If my friends who keep proxying up legacy cards so they can play legacy with me can get cheap legacy cards they would. Hell some are playing with sticky notes at the moment so if they can play with cards that feel and look like real cards they gladly would.



My collection's value was a trap - it was the idea that "its totally fine to spend thousands on this stupid hobby because when I no longer want to play it anymore I can cash out" - but the problem with that is . . . I still want to play it. There is never going to be a reason for me to "cash out" unless I have a medical emergency, need extra cash for collateral on a loan or I've assumed a certain value to it when I leave it as an inheritance. Why would I quit if they cards become worthless . . . the only reason I have them in the first place is so that I can play the game.



We take Magic seriously because we take Magic seriously. I have friends who are into scrabble. They are way more into scrabble then I am into magic. They memorize thousands and thousands of word combinations. They have so many flash cards. People take their own hobbies seriously.

The only reason I feel people care about the monetary value of the cards is the sunk cost fallacy. If they are suddenly worthless are you going to stop playing with your friends? Is the free time you spend to drive to a store or apartment or house to play suddenly not how you want to spend your free time? Nah.

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Poker without a monetary bet aint poker
Vintage without crazy expensive nostalgic cardboard aint vintage

A collectible game without colllectibility is just a game

Many people enjoy collecting, speculating and trading as fun or more as deck building or playing. In fact, playing is my least enjoyed form of magic consumption

A slight hit for the growth of the game? Sure.
Absolute destruction of all monetary value associated with mtg cards? Never

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

I have not gotten my set of counterfeit dual lands yet but let me show you a fake Meditate that I picked up last month from one of the most reputable stores in China.

https://i.ibb.co/G34QXh1/IMG-20200115-220303.jpg

One of these two Mediates is real and the other is a counterfeit. They both pass the light test and they both feel like Magic cards. Unless you know exactly what to look for, the only visual difference is a slight difference in color between the two cards. You cannot see the details that reveal the counterfeit without a loupe. Can you tell which one is the fake?

Look at the pale blue trim on the right edge of the card. On the counterfeit, a sliver of the pale blue bleeds across the black line into the main frame.

Look at the black border around the text book. On the counterfeit, this line is weak and fuzzy, while on the real card it is stark and solid.


This is really difficult to see in the picture but if you look at Susan Van Camp's name, on the counterfeit you can see a slight space between the white lettering and the shadow.

Finally look at the Tempest expansion symbol. On the real card, the white around the storm symbol is pure white, whereas in the counterfeit there is a little reddish bleed that discolors the white.

Those are the only differences that differentiate the real card and the counterfeit that can be discovered with a loupe.

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Again, how do you know this is because they're counterfeit and not because of errors in the printing process? Age? Ect.
Also, how do you know the baseline ones are real?

I started playing Magic when I was 13. I'm now 39. I'm thinking about retirement- many of my classmates from high school have already been retired for a few years now. When I want to have fun, there are many things I can do that are more fun than playing Magic. There are many, many great board games that I enjoy far more than Magic. There are many other card games designed by Richard Garfield that are far more fun than Magic, including VtES and Netrunner. So while playing Magic was really fun when I was 13, it's not really that entertaining when you are 39 and about to retire.

What I enjoy about Magic, that I do not have with boardgames or VtES or Netrunner, is collecting cards, especially old cards that are difficult to find or that I wanted when I was younger. I enjoy travelling to different cities and shops, meeting players and storeowners, talking to them about Magic's past and present, purusing old collections looking for old cards or bargains. I care for this game (although not as much as I care for VtES or Netrunner). So I enjoy collecting Magic cards - not just getting cards but the entire process. I would certainly never spend $400 to buy a white-bordered, Revised dual land. Nor do I care to spend $80 to buy silly cards like Tarmogoyfs or Jace, the Mind Sculptors. I recently bought a set of foil Once Upon a Times for $45 since I think it's a very nice card, and I bought a set of foil Emrys for $35 since I think she's a nice card too. If I didn't think they could keep their value long term I probably wouldn't have bought them, since I don't use them in any of my Legacy decks or any of my Vintage decks. I think Phyrexian Dreadnought is also a silly card but I bought one for $35 because it was a pretty good bargain for a Reserve List card, and I think Dreadstill is a really cool, very fun deck.

The three decks I have for Legacy are Enchantress, Solidarity and now Dreadstill. Like I said earlier, my first impression of Legacy was that it seemed like a terrible format. I watched someone spend 3 minutes deciding whether or not to FoW a Brainstorm. I watched a LOT of shuffling happening. It didn't seem fun to me. Although I couldn't really hate Legacy then, since suddenly my cards had become really valuable because of it. In 2002 I had bought about 50 Wastelands for 50 cents each from a dealer at DragonCon, since at the time they were worth about $2, and I figured that would cover the cost of the Con. So it was pure gas to sell or trade them to Legacy players at $70 value a few years later. So you might not care about making money from your collection, but you actually do long-term and it's pretty cool. But I agree with you. I don't care for the investors that treat Magic cards like stocks and order 500 copies of this card or that card and try to make money off short-term value. There's better uses for one's time and capital, and life isn't about making money and neither is a card game.

I didn't start playing Legacy until Solidarity. It was the first Legacy deck that really impressed me. My Enchantress deck I had actually built for Vintage at the time. Once Enchantress's Presence was printed in Onslaught, it didn't take much to put it together with Sterling Grove from Invasion and have a pretty sweet deck. Ironically I had played against a Solidarity deck with my Enchantress deck a long time before. I didn't know what his deck was trying to do, but suddenly he milled my whole deck with Brain Freeze. But he couldn't kill me since I had an Elfhame Sanctuary in play so I could skip my draw step. So I didn't really think about his weird deck until years later I realized he was playing a Solidarity legacy deck.

I don't know if I would call Solidarity a fun deck to play. Enchantress is sometimes fun, and sometimes it isn't fun. Solidarity is often not that fun to play, and it probably isn't that fun to play against. So for me Legacy is... not quite fun. Even a few months ago, I watched the NA Eternal Weekend matches, the Vintage Championship matches seemed super fun, while the Legacy matches really did not. So for me Legacy is something I enjoy playing once in a while for the challenge of winning with Solidarity or Enchantress, but my opinion of it hasn't changed much over the years. Legacy is ok but it's not a great casual format and it isn't a great competitive format either.

You know that you can order fake cards that actually look and feel like real cards now. That's why we're talking about counterfeit cards so much, is because they've been easily available for the past 2 or 3 years.

I've never cashed out, but most people who started in 1993 or 1994 has made a ton of money off the value of their old cards.

Like I said, without the secondary market, the game stores would disappear and it would pretty much be the end of paper Magic and likely competitive Magic as well. WotC could continue selling products like a LCG or commander but it's pretty silly to hold a tournament or play most games competitively. I can see Vintage surviving like the way VtES and Netrunner still have competitive tournaments every year, but definitely not Legacy.

Collecting and the secondary market are an integral part of the Magic experience. Without it, I would also be more serious about Scrabble. I love Scrabble.

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

I started playing Magic when I was 13. I'm now 39. I'm thinking about retirement- many of my classmates from high school have already been retired for a few years now.

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Oh fuck you.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Again, how do you know this is because they're counterfeit and not because of errors in the printing process? Age? Ect.
Also, how do you know the baseline ones are real?

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You know baseline cards are real because you ripped them out of booster packs yourself back in the 90's.

There is expertise in detecting counterfeit cards. There's experts who do this, some of them have written guides that you can find if you search. You also learn what to look for by examining a lot of cards from each set and comparing them. Finally there's available knowledge about Carta Mundi's printing process so we know some things are not Carta Mundi printing errors.

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Originally Posted by jiazhouhuaqiao

You know baseline cards are real because you ripped them out of booster packs yourself back in the 90's.

There is expertise in detecting counterfeit cards. There's experts who do this, some of them have written guides that you can find if you search. You also learn what to look for by examining a lot of cards from each set and comparing them. Finally there's available knowledge about Carta Mundi's printing process so we know some things are not Carta Mundi printing errors.

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Amazing how despite all the power at these counterfitter's disposal and they can't repeat a twenty year old method to print out literal five-hundred dollar bills.

If you and your friends are retiring before 40 then we are living such completely different lives.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Amazing how despite all the power at these counterfitter's disposal and they can't repeat a twenty year old method to print out literal five-hundred dollar bills.

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is this sarcasm

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Amazing how despite all the power at these counterfitter's disposal and they can't repeat a twenty year old method to print out literal five-hundred dollar bills.

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you wouldnt be able to tell if they already succeeded, that's the whole goal of counterfeiting

So if counterfeits become indistinguishable from real cards won't the market adjust accordingly and make Legacy affordable for everyone, as per the Communist Manifesto?

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Originally Posted by Cire

I doubt it. If my friends who keep proxying up legacy cards so they can play legacy with me can get cheap legacy cards they would. Hell some are playing with sticky notes at the moment so if they can play with cards that feel and look like real cards they gladly would.

My collection's value was a trap - it was the idea that "its totally fine to spend thousands on this stupid hobby because when I no longer want to play it anymore I can cash out" - but the problem with that is . . . I still want to play it. There is never going to be a reason for me to "cash out" unless I have a medical emergency, need extra cash for collateral on a loan or I've assumed a certain value to it when I leave it as an inheritance. Why would I quit if they cards become worthless . . . the only reason I have them in the first place is so that I can play the game.

We take Magic seriously because we take Magic seriously.

The only reason I feel people care about the monetary value of the cards is the sunk cost fallacy. If they are suddenly worthless are you going to stop playing with your friends? Is the free time you spend to drive to a store or apartment or house to play suddenly not how you want to spend your free time? Nah.

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Just checking in to co-sign this.
But we have to acknowledge that people are into magic for different reasons.
I guess most people are into it because they simply like the game. But there also might be a good portion of people who simply use it as a vehicle to profile themselves over "Uh I got 40k of cards" or " Uh I know 3 cards more than you, so you don't even know the game".

Just like with fine watches. Some people simply adore the craftmanship and technical aspect of a fine timepiece. They are into the history of, let's say the company rolex.
So they would wear a rolex even if it was 15 dollars.
And then there are people who simply want to wear 15k at their wrist, only for the reason of wearing 15k at their wrist. No matter the company or if it even was a good watch.

As much as it would suck if my expensive cards got devalued, I think I would be much more glad to have 30+ people to play my favorite game in my hometown, than having a stack of valuable paper, that I cannot do anything with, other than look at it.
I was actually playing with the idea of cashing out and getting myself some nice proxies as I can't find many people to play legacy anyways and dislike the idea of walking around the town with 10k of cardboard in my backpack when I simply want to visit my best friend for 3 or 4 casual rounds of magic and a beer!

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Originally Posted by bruizar

you wouldnt be able to tell if they already succeeded, that's the whole goal of counterfeiting

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Yes but don't you see this card has a smuge on it therefore

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Originally Posted by Seymour_Asses

So if counterfeits become indistinguishable from real cards won't the market adjust accordingly and make Legacy affordable for everyone, as per the Communist Manifesto?

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All of the recorded the meta is a history of two groups the winners, and the losers.

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Oh fuck you.

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If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, quite the contrary, but I think TheSource is now moderator-less.

https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.v...A&pid=Api&rs=1

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, quite the contrary, but I think TheSource is now moderator-less.

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We've been moderator-less for years now. The last really active people were Dice_Box and Julian as Admins, but Julian has been well and gone for years and Dice_Box barely checks in from time to time (but seemingly not recently).

As for this topic, well, it's entire premise is a boardline troll-job, so it's hardly a surprise to see how it's been going.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Safety

If there ever was a signal that mods are no longer managing this site, this is it. I'm not disagreeing with the sentiment, quite the contrary, but I think TheSource is now moderator-less.

https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.v...A&pid=Api&rs=1

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Was there some rule my post broke or....

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Originally Posted by FourDogsinaHorseSuit

Was there some rule my post broke or....

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In reality, several most probably:

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Presenting your thoughts clearly and coherently encourages others to take you seriously and to listen to what you have to say. The best way to do this is to use proper grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure. Also, spell your words correctly.

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Simply, be respectful of other forum users. If you can't control the urge, go somewhere else.

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3.0 Lack of Content (No Spam)
One-liners or even one-word posts. There's a fine line between wit and spam.

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4.2: Criticize faulty lines of logic or incomplete reasoning, but don't personally attack a person making an argument.

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On your end of things, if you make a concentrated effort to post well thought-out, intelligent, relevant posts (aside from the Mish-Mash Forum, of course), it will go a long way toward receiving the kind of feedback you are looking for.

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However, I'm sure you'll find a way to excuse yourself on all those counts.