Would you be upset if WOTC allows proxies for reserve list cards at sanctioned event?

[Ronald Deuce]

So you went from trying it out with proxies to dumping ~$4k or more from the sound of it into legacy? The number of people willing to do this when they could play other much cheaper formats or other games I'm sure is very low.

I won't deny that I have a problem :D

That said, there's no reason to assume it's necessary to go whole hog, anyway: Some of the best-performing decks don't require many (or any) RL cards. Taking a quick look at mtgtop8, it looks like Death and Taxes is cheaper than comparably-performing decks in Modern like Death's Shadow, Burn, and 4C.

People get intimidated by the price tag to build decks like 3-5-color Delver or Lands, but there's plenty of play to decks that don't require that level of investment. Even if we assume my poor financial decisions are a major stretch for newcomers, for about the price you quoted, I picked up the tools to build Storm, pre-Claws TES, Dredge, manaless Dredge, both flavors of Reanimator, Burn, Charbelcher, and POops! All Spells. Hell, I could probably put together Snow if I were to throw down for a couple neo-Forces, though that deck isn't really my style.

Legacy's expensive. I lucked into picking up most of my RL staples before they spiked a few years back (LEDs for $80 a pop). But it's disingenuous to say that people will either play with proxies or not play at all when there's definitely a path for people to get into the format. Recent printings have really helped in that regard, which is one (one) reason I don't support banning a number of cards. I risk opening a can of worms by bringing that up, but it gets tiresome to hear people argue that we need to ban things that make the format accessible. And seriously speaking, even if people don't buy in, who cares? "I had to suffer it so other people should, too," is a bad argument, and it's been used pretty much forever to pass the buck.

Not if people begin to sell their collections to buy cars or houses etc. then begin using proxies.

Is the problem you see there that it would devalue RL cards? Because then, that would just make it easier to buy into Legacy anyway.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't treat my cards as an investment except for armchair purposes. I'm certainly not complaining that my cardboard is worth more than its weight in gold, but I have no illusions that Wizards won't go back on its word (which, frankly, it's done already; they just don't talk about it). The RL is an artificial bubble, and investing in such things is a bad plan unless you have other reasons to spend the money.