Quote Originally Posted by Cire View Post
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.
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.