[Official] Bitching About Prices, Buyouts and Reprints Thread

[MattH]

Why is everyone in this thread so angry that people can spend and make money off of buying or selling cards?

Try reading the thread, maybe you'll find out why this question is so ineffably stupid.

[Phoenix Ignition]

@ Nihil: Touche, but half of those examples are on shitty creatures that see marginal if any sideboard use.

I'm more referring to the fact that white creatures are not reanimators unless they cost a karmic guide or more to play, and I'd bet good money that nothing will ever come out as cheaper than a 3 drop with a similar ability to LR.

@MattH: If you read the thread you'll notice I posted on most of the pages, so obviously read it.

How do you people not understand that the only reason you can buy singles is because dealers make enough money to keep their stores open. Obviously they price gouge, obviously people will play the market as much as possible. Unless you're one of the people who buys a case of cards to try to get all of the new ones when a set comes out, you probably got your entire collection at a price higher than the dealer paid for it.

But I understand, this is another generic bitch and moan thread of which logic is not understood. Carry on.

[Koby]

Obviously they price gouge

That's exactly why no one is happy with speculators.

[Julian23]

*sigh* talking to PI feels like banging your head against a walll...

"Your logic is flawed!"
- "No, YOUR logic is flawed!"
"No, your logic is flawed!"
- "No YOUR logic is flawed!"

yadayada

Despite claiming you read all of the talk that has been going on you keep missadressing the points MattH, me and others make. This leads me to believe that you're either just being sophistic because you take pleasure in it (aka trolling) or you're really missing what's going on. Nobody considers the practice of opening boxes/cases in order to resell them bad. In fact the more boxes are opened the cheaper those cards get. We both agree on this. "So what's the point?" you might be asking yourself. The point is, once people start gathering singles simply for speculative reasons the prices rises. You can "tackle" this phenomenom in two ways: the first would be to just dedicate yourself to neoliberal pure supply/demand/markt reasoning and argue that whatever the price of something is it doesn't matter given there are no trade restrictions. Or you can argue that prices rising more than the general inflation leads to an unhealthy enviorment. If Wizards sticks to their reprint policy the good "Legacy staples" will not be reproduced while demand keeps rising. This leads to the problem that at a certain point a LOT of people will be excluded from the format. Let me descend to your level or polemic and just state that this is bad for the format.

[pippo84]

I didn't read the whole thread, just a few pages, but I have to say prices vary from country to country. No way I will pay 200$ for a Tabernacle, I can find it for 50€! in the USA this card is much more expensive, the same goes for FBB duals. Other cards are cheaper in Europe..
Anyways some cards are actually raising prices everywhere.

[Mr.C]

I didn't read the whole thread, just a few pages, but I have to say prices vary from country to country. No way I will pay 200$ for a Tabernacle, I can find it for 50€! in the USA this card is much more expensive, the same goes for FBB duals. Other cards are cheaper in Europe..
Anyways some cards are actually raising prices everywhere.

I'd pay 50 euros even for a beat italian one.

The Retainers are up past 100, but the bid history looks fishy.

[dahcmai]

Would someone like to chime in on where you can buy these cards at these prices? I can speak several languages and would love to buy a few at much less. If I can't speak it, I bet my wife can. She's a translator for several more than I don't know.

I'd love to not pay $100+ US for some FBB Underground Seas. I have one beta and 3 unlimiteds and they just look horrid next to that beta. I bet there's a few others that would love to know this info. Hook us up Euro peoples.



By the way, here's another one. Seen the price of a Foil Daze lately? I was surprised and then again not.

[Radiant]

By the way, here's another one. Seen the price of a Foil Daze lately? I was surprised and then again not.

20-30 Euros each. Isn't that normal for widely used cards, as Daze surely is?

[MMogg]

20-30 Euros each. Isn't that normal for widely used cards, as Daze surely is?

But it was only around $10 a couple weeks ago. I almost traded my playset away at $10 each trade value... luckily, I didn't. Anyway, I'm open to offers.

I'm a bit worried they'll reprint it or put out a promo and the value will tank.

[pippo84]

Foil Daze was approx 10€ a couple of months ago, not sure of how much it's now.
Underground Sea prices are rising a lot lately!

[majikal]

Underground Sea prices are rising a lot lately!

SCG was gouging Revised ones at $79.99 a few weeks ago, but it looks like they dropped them back down to $69.99. I actually think with Vintage becoming less popular and most of the popular legacy decks being Green-based, USeas might see even more of a decline over time.

[pippo84]

SCG was gouging Revised ones at $79.99 a few weeks ago, but it looks like they dropped them back down to $69.99. I actually think with Vintage becoming less popular and most of the popular legacy decks being Green-based, USeas might see even more of a decline over time.

In my area Underground Seas are rising because Dark Depths is becoming very popular and it's mostly a UB list.. And Dark depths is around 20€ now..

[MattH]

@MattH: If you read the thread you'll notice I posted on most of the pages, so obviously read it.

How do you people not understand that the only reason you can buy singles is because dealers make enough money to keep their stores open. Obviously they price gouge, obviously people will play the market as much as possible. Unless you're one of the people who buys a case of cards to try to get all of the new ones when a set comes out, you probably got your entire collection at a price higher than the dealer paid for it.

I guess I should apologize, I knew I had addressed this very silly 'point' but I did it in another thread, not this one. So I'll repeat it here:

The thing is, the store owner is providing a valuable service: use of their facilities to play in primarily, and other side benefits (such as sanctioning FNM for example). Speculators don't provide anywhere near the same benefit (if anything at all), so it's not unreasonable to begrudge only the latter's profits.

Bolded for emphasis. No one is upset that dealers such as Starcity or ChannelFireball exist, and make a profit. If you don't understand that, then you haven't been paying attention.

[HAVE HEART]

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=508510

This seems like a pretty big barrier into Standard.

Quite a bit more than a Legacy deck to beat: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=513163 . That person can also tack on this if they wish: http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=513172 . Still comes out to less than the Standard deck.

A monetary barrier to entry is not Legacy's problem. It is the fact that it is not a competitive format; i.e. a person cannot "Play the game, See the world" playing Legacy. Notice the popularity Legacy gained when StarCityGames started the Legacy $5K's.

[Forbiddian]

Holy shit. http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=513169. Had no idea it was half that expensive.

Looks like most good decks cost about $600 for the budget decks and about $1200 for the most expensive decks (according to these inflated prices -- probably more like 300-600 in real dollars if you buy smart).

And then standard decks are 200-800 at these inflated prices (although usually dealers run slimmer profit margins against Standard than Legacy).

So legacy is like 50% more to double as expensive as Standard, but you get more resale, etc. I don't generally put too much work into reselling crap and don't want to work that hard to move my cards out before a rotation.

[MattH]

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=508510

This seems like a pretty big barrier into Standard.

Way to cherry-pick the most expensive deck in the entire standard format, running 4x of Pulse, Baneslayer, and a couple Elspeths thrown in for good measure, plus other stuff like Lotus Cobra. That's not even a particularly good deck, seeing as it managed to T8 a thirty-three player tournament. :////

Here's a check on a basic Jund build, $252
or UWR control, $391
or Barely Boros, $381
or Vampires, $170
or Valakut Ramp, $54 (!!!)
or Grixis Control, $154

all from the T8 of the Starcity 5k, with 332 players, so you can be assured that these represent 'real' Standard decks.

UWR is the most expensive, at (using 'low' prices) $391, but note that almost $200 of that is the Baneslayers in the board (a similar concentration of value is in the Boros deck's three sided angels). For the cost of one good legacy deck, you could more or less build the entire T8 of that tournament!

[MattH]

In fact, since I was bored, I went back and added up all the prices of the cards needed to build every deck in that top eight. To save time, I dicounted all the commons and uncommons that people regularly leave behind after drafts (I still included the more valuable ones like Bloodbraid Elf and Lightning Bolt) and I also excluded basic lands.

Total minus these reasonable exceptions was $1005.61, using "low" prices throughout.

By comparison, the top eight legacy decks for the other part of the same 5k tournament have prices:

$777 (zoo)
$1116 (lands)
$905 (UG fish)
$979 (painter)
$496 (fish)
$696 (UW nogoyf)
$939 (tempo thresh)
$485 (fish)

So yeah. Besides Fish, a single legacy deck costs only a little less than Standard: The Format.

[Nessaja]

For how long has Aether Vial been 10$? I mean.. it's not like the card isn't worth that considering how important it is for 2 top decks, but still.. seems like a lot for a not-that-old uncommon.

[HAVE HEART]

In fact, since I was bored, I went back and added up all the prices of the cards needed to build every deck in that top eight. To save time, I dicounted all the commons and uncommons that people regularly leave behind after drafts (I still included the more valuable ones like Bloodbraid Elf and Lightning Bolt) and I also excluded basic lands.

Total minus these reasonable exceptions was $1005.61, using "low" prices throughout.

By comparison, the top eight legacy decks for the other part of the same 5k tournament have prices:

$777 (zoo)
$1116 (lands)
$905 (UG fish)
$979 (painter)
$496 (fish)
$696 (UW nogoyf)
$939 (tempo thresh)
$485 (fish)

So yeah. Besides Fish, a single legacy deck costs only a little less than Standard: The Format.

That is fucking ridiculous. Those commons and uncommons are usually bought for $.25 and $.50 each (respectively) if one does not have access to those, which does add up quickly.

Also, you are being results-oriented with the evaluation of the Junk deck, which is disgusting. That means this: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=9817 must be a good deck because it top-eighted a PTQ with over 100 players? WRONG, he built it like thirty minutes before the PTQ (I actually know him; he top 50'd Worlds 2002 in Sydney). Although Junk is not the best deck in the format, it has been doing fairly well online in Daily and Premier Events. Obviously it is overpriced for its expected value, but that is irrelevant.

Pretty much any deck without duals is going to be relatively low cost. Dredge, Belcher, Storm combo without duals, Merfolk, Mono-colored Goblins. It is hard to think of a deck that reaches the $1,000 level without the help of duals. A difference between Legacy and Standard is that the expensive Standard decks are the ones that usually win (Vampires is probably the cheapest, non-loose deck, but still gets smashed by Jund), but in Legacy the aforementioned decks also have a very good chance of winning even though they are less expensive.

Legacy has a big enough card pool to be able to play with a successful mono-colored strategy, meaning duals are unnecessary to be able to play and have fun in Legacy. I own 34 duals, but I still have more fun playing decks that do not use them. If someone has to have duals to play Legacy, then I guess they have to take the monetary hit, otherwise Legacy and Standard are pretty competitively-priced.

[majikal]

You also have to take into account that the average Standard player has to "buy in" to that format every season, whereas with Legacy you pick up the staples once and then just grab whatever looks interesting from the new sets. This ends up being far, far cheaper in the long run.