Quote Originally Posted by edgewalker View Post
Is it me, or is the extent to which wizards/hasbro/whoever is protecting collectors is, at the root, arbitrary? I remember a time when I could buy a birds of paradise and a taiga for the same price. (actually, the taiga was 2 dollars cheaper) That doesn't seem to be the case anymore since Birds have been reprinted into oblivion and taiga was put on the no reprint list. Why? Again the distinction they draw between which cards deserve to maintain their scarcity (and therefore their value) are, to me at least, not so obvious. Likewise, what makes the Legacy investor/collector any more important than the T2/Extended collector/investor. There seems to be a lot of concern about the Legacy collectors cards, but what about the other two? Is it because the t2/extended cards rotate? What about survival of the fittest? Clearly the powers at be don't care too much about the collectors. The argument in favor of collectors seems very nonsensical because there is no clear distinction between what cards deserve scarcity preservation and what cards don't.
Back in the very early days of the game, there was a very strong backlash the first time cards were reprinted outside of the few that were in the core set - this was Chronicles. In response, Wizards promised to never reprint rares or uncommons outside of the core set again.

They eventually realized that this policy wasn't necessary (or at least, was not necessary anymore), but they're sticking more or less to the promise that was made from Arabian Nights - Urza's.

Birds gets reprinted because it was in (and originally came from) the core set.

A bunch of more or less reasonable decisions over a long period of time can end up looking pretty arbitrary.