[Official] Bitching About Prices, Buyouts and Reprints Thread

[HAVE HEART]

What bothers me is moat at $140 and goyf at $60+. Back in September people were having a hard time moving goyfs at $30 and now everyone is willing to pay $60 for them. Its not like goyf was a bad card back then.

Alpha and beta duals have also skyrocketed. I remember seeing a number of alpha tundra's in nm- condition selling for $170-$230 a few months ago. Now a nm- tundra will easily break $300. Or the volcanics that are breaking $500 when they weren't even hitting $300 before. Absolutely ridiculous even for something as rare as alpha/beta duals. Why did people suddenly decide they wanted to spend twice as much on the same cards?

Tarmogoyf is actually $70 on the "cheap," and up to $100 on certain websites. I have the same problem you do, in that Tarmogoyf has not changed at all over the past year, but its price has more than doubled; same with the Alpha/Beta duals (price has not doubled, but increased significantly). There have been no cards printed that have made Tarmogoyf or duals better, so it is astounding to see their prices increase so dramatically. Though, it seems to me that if a person wanted Tarmogoyf, they would have gotten it when it was $25 after rotation, so why would people be buying them now if they did not want them then? All I know is that if Tarmogoyf gets to a steady $100, then I will be Goyf'less. My friend and I were joking that at $100 each, a playset of Tarmogoyf will buy three months-worth of burritos.

[Nizmox]

I think that you've missed something.
"Something like a pack of cards carefully sorted white bodered and whithout foil, just like the old chronicles."
what i meant by chronicles is WB + no foil nothing else.
Then what i meant by carefully sorted is all those cards that have increased way to much (SnT, DH, Entomb, tarmo, Scroll rack ... whatever that is the hardest & most sensitive part anyway) so legacy start to turn into vintage2.0
By doing this you allow new comers to buy old cards that have gone too high for decent prices as they won't be foil, nor really hard to find and white bordered. It won't be playable in T2 so that won't interfere with this format. finally, the orginal edition of the card will more or less keep its price.
So "theorically" (i ll give you that) it will be a win for everyone or at least no big loss (Hasbro, New comers, Collectors).

What he said...

I actually believe this is the best solution.
Make a new set named Collectors Edition or Chronicles 2 contaning reprints of popular legacy black bordered cards. Make all the reprints white bordered and with no foils. This keeps collectors happy as the original version of the card they own is still the 'best bersion' and while the price may drop a little due to increased demand, black bordered is still going to be the most sought after. The set can be made to be not standard legal (unless the cards legal in standard through another set) and new players will now have a means to access the cards.
This should solve most of legacys supply problems. I'm not sure how you could do white bordered reprints though (I.e. Duals). You need to do it in such a way that the new card is not more sought after than the old version. Perhaps all cards in this set could be printed with a new colour border (not white, black or gold) that differentiates them from the original duals and also highlights they are not standard legal.

I'm not someone who is in magic to make money I'm in magic to play the game. I don't care if they reprint my costly cards on the condition they don't print a version that's 'cooler' than the original I have.

[dahcmai]

Jesus christ.

The absolute best way to get Wizards to reject an idea is to say it will be "just like Chronicles".

Matt said it best. You guys must not have been playing when Chronicles came out or something. Chronicles just about rolled Wizards into a failing company. It was the worst mistake they ever made and that includes printing Tolarian Academy and shit like that.

When Chronicles came out it caused an uproar like no one expected. People went frigging nuts over it whining and bitching to no end. It caused the prices of cards to fall through the floor and people got pissed and quit the game like never before. Elder Dragon Legends were worth quite a bit back then and reprinting them turned them from the card that was worth $20 because it was cool (ie hard as hell to pack) into the card that was worth 10 cents because it wasn't all that cool anymore and it wasn't playable either.

The Reserve list is a direct answer of Chronicles. They decided to draw people back in they needed to declare what they would make "collectible" and not reprint. It's the whole reason the list exists at all.

I'm sure there's plenty of people out there still who would go fucking nuts if they did anything remotely close to Chronicles again. Wizards will steer away from that embarrassment again by a mile. I'm actually amazed they are going as close to it by printing that Negator shown in another thread. I kind of figured they would leave it to the realm of Judge Promos to reprint anything from that list.

[luckme10]

Excuse me for saying the obvious, but can't they just start allowing proxies at DCI sanctioned tournaments? I'm sure if they do, it'll become more casually accepted as well. Also, Tarmogoyf is currently listed at 52.00 at motl trading prices, albeit there's been a 52 cent increase for this week.

[workingdude]

Excuse me for saying the obvious, but can't they just start allowing proxies at DCI sanctioned tournaments? I'm sure if they do, it'll become more casually accepted as well. Also, Tarmogoyf is currently listed at 52.00 at motl trading prices, albeit there's been a 52 cent increase for this week.

Wizards wont allow DCI sanctioned tournaments with proxies because who would buy cards when you can just print them yourself?

Also, MOTL price guides are either based on monthly or weekly data. Changes in recent days are not fully reflected in these guides.

[MattH]

Channelfireball has 28 Tarmogoyfs at $99 (and one foil at $199, lol). Check that number as days go by to see if any are actually selling at that price.

Alternately, check the ebay completed listings. The completed auctions from today and yesterday were:

4x for $320
4x for $250
3x for $190
4x for $265
a poorly painted one for $37 that is possibly not tournament legal
3x for $147
4x for $280
3x for $212

Discounting the painted one, that gives an mean of $66.56 and a median of around $70. ebay prices are naturally the lowest, and Starcity's are always among the highest. So the 'real' price of goyf is probably right now around $75-80.

[yawg07]

Hahaha that painted one was on my gf's account. I picked that thing up for free pretty much.
It was SO terrible, I'd say local tourneys it is okay, definitely not GP. What the hell man, people are crazy.

[luckme10]

This is the real tragedy.

[Rune]

Just out of curiousity, why would this not be tournament legal?

[MattH]

If the paint makes it thick enough that someone can pick it out blind with better than random chance, then it's not legal.

[yawg07]

Also the card is warped a bit and the back is messed up in spots. You can feel it on the front in a sleeve, and if you press real hard, the back.
It is REALLY REALLY bad, that idiot who painted it had no idea what he was doing.
In a local tourney it would be okay, but you take it to anything larger and you'll get fucked.

The joke going around was that it is a REALISTIC Tarmogoyf, because it FEELS like a real one would feel XD

He did the trops I had to fix, but he didn't warp or destroy those, so I was able to fix them with some sandpaper and a sharp edge.

[Tha Gunslinga]

Yeah, I saw the cheap BIN on that guy, and almost got it, but figured it was better not to waste my time.

[majikal]

This is the real tragedy.

OH MY GOD THE LAUGHTER HURTS! xD

[Shugyosha]

I guess this didn't come up so far. While searching for a completely different article on SCG I stumbled over this passage from the article: "Force of Will: Nervous Yet? A Reply To Peter Jahn" by Will Rieffer 2002

Take note that Legacy didn't even exist then.

Peter says...

"There is another reason that Wizards rotated the sets as they did, and it is the same reason that T1 cannot be a PTQ/Grand Prix format. There simply are not enough cards. Stephen D'Angelo has some interesting statistics on his site. What they show is that the number of cards in existence is not large enough to support all the PTQ players - if they were trying to play T1, where having the Power Nine is a huge advantage. Here are the approximate numbers of each card ever printed:

Each Power Nine card: 23,000
Each dual land: 312,000
Each Legends rare: 19,500
Each Ice Ages rare: 202,000"

In most cases if one even played a two-color deck the optimum would be four of the proper dual land. Divide 312,000 by four and you get 78,000. There are thus 78,000"sets" of dual lands, as opposed to 23,000 sets of the Power Nine. This leads to a question that I think that few players would be hard-pressed to answer accurately - namely, at what point do the numbers of a"staple" card fail to support a format in relation to the number of participants?

Source

So there are ~78.000 playsets of duals out there and DCI has listed ~34300 players with eternal rating worldwide. Both numbers have to be reduced by destroyed cards or players who quit etc. but technically there should be more than enough duals if everyone who needs them only has a playset or less but not more.

Which brings me straight to my second point. With the numbers low everyone who owns more than a playset of duals (and other old staples I guess) actially hurts the format as the prices keep raising and less people can afford it. When I read posts where people tell they have 20 Force of Wills and 12 Underground Seas I really see why the prices are high.

[dahcmai]

That is really interesting that it is actually that low, especially the Legends Rares number.


Well, I played during the pre-Revised era and I can tell you for a fact that I know of at least several hundred went down the tubes during the "Iron Man" magic days of playing for Ante at least at our store. When you won, you got to destroy as many cards in the opponents deck as you shoved them below zero life. So if you knocked them down to -9 life, you tore up 9 cards of your choice and duals were a favorite to mutilate.

They weren't expensive really back then so it wasn't a big deal and I even saw a few Moxes go in the trash like that. No one ever did that to a Lotus (that one was still expensive), but tons of cards went to the can in those duels.

It was kind of like tearing up a Shadowmoor filter land now, not exactly a tear jerking moment so try to understand that. Alpha Lands were really rare around here since you couldn't play them back then at all. Basics galore went in the trash. I can't count how many of those turned into paper airplanes and such to fly around the store. I know that practice wasn't limited to us either. It was a pretty popular thing back then.

It does make you wonder how many exactly are destroyed now. It seems like there are so much more than that number.

[MMogg]

About the whole Scroll Rack thing, I'm quite sure now that it was indeed SCG piling up on some more.
Ben wrote today in his article about how he believes Scroll Rack will be the new Natural Order, Grindstone or Undiscovered Paradise due to the printing of Treasure Hunt.

EDIT: RUN!!! SCROLL RACK TIME!!!

Meh. Prognosticating values is rarely accurate. Here is a best of Ben's take of M10 Mythics:

**Ajani Goldmane
Starting Price:$15
Future Price: $20

Baneslayer Ange\
Starting Price: $9.99
Future Price: $14.99

Darksteel Colossus
Starting Price: $12.49
Future Price: $12.49

Vampire Nocturnus
Starting Price: $2.49
Future Price: $3.99

All of those values are pretty far off the mark. I'd just be weary to take purchasing advice from others. Guessing values and basing values on presumptive performance is always a bad thing. Countless times cards/card interactions look sweet on paper, but never fulfill their promise in the real world of tournament Magic.

[Tacosnape]

It isn't just even Tarmogoyfs. All the prices of everything are skyrocketing. Wastelands are at 20. Forces are at 30-35. Entomb's at 27.50. Seas are 60-80.

It's tragic that the entry price into this format has become so absurdly steep. Previously one of the best selling points of Legacy was that it was affordable when you compared it to the cost of maintaining a Standard deck over a year. And while this may be true with some of the new crap rares ranging 30-60 in the new set, still.

[android]

Face it, the first time you saw this game (if you're now in your 30's), you probably laughed and were mildly embarrassed to purchase that first booster. Then you played the game and realized that maybe there was something to it. Something MAGICAL. Still, you never knew Force of Nature would fall so far from glory. You never knew that discarding a card and paying 1 life wouldn't outright lose the game for you. Who knew, seriously?

Back to my prediction (made somewhere-sometime last year). Underground Sea (Revised, pretty much any condition) will see a tag in excess of $100 this summer. Stabilizing. I thought maybe it was a slight stretch calling it last year but now it just seems obvious.

[umbowta]

Face it, the first time you saw this game (if you're now in your 30's), you probably laughed and were mildly embarrassed to purchase that first booster. Then you played the game and realized that maybe there was something to it. Something MAGICAL. Still, you never knew Force of Nature would fall so far from glory. You never knew that discarding a card and paying 1 life wouldn't outright lose the game for you. Who knew, seriously?

Back to my prediction (made somewhere-sometime last year). Underground Sea (Revised, pretty much any condition) will see a tag in excess of $100 this summer. Stabilizing. I thought maybe it was a slight stretch calling it last year but now it just seems obvious.

I own 9 Underground Seas and I still hope you're wrong. $100 a piece is just too much. They should be somewhere around $20-30 for the sake of the game while maintaining collectibility. I don't want to sell any of mine, even though I could make a killing, because it's really all about the game. I like having extras so that I can have two or three decks built simultaneously without proxies.

There will come a point though, when even I will be driven from the game by the stupid high prices. Even now I'm pissed because I would like to own a playset of Abyssal Persecutors, however, at $20 a pop, I'm not willing to buy any. Combine that with the fact that the rest of the set is garbage with few exceptions, and I'm not going to rip open packs either. Stupid effin Mythic rares.

[MattH]

I own 9 Underground Seas and I still hope you're wrong. $100 a piece is just too much. They should be somewhere around $20-30 for the sake of the game while maintaining collectibility. I don't want to sell any of mine, even though I could make a killing, because it's really all about the game. I like having extras so that I can have two or three decks built simultaneously without proxies.

There will come a point though, when even I will be driven from the game by the stupid high prices. Even now I'm pissed because I would like to own a playset of Abyssal Persecutors, however, at $20 a pop, I'm not willing to buy any. Combine that with the fact that the rest of the set is garbage with few exceptions, and I'm not going to rip open packs either. Stupid effin Mythic rares.

Except that A.P. will likely come down in price, as there are few expectations of it being awesome in standard, and supply will be going up. It won't be a $5 card but it will likely settle in around $12-14.

Can't say either of those about duals.