First off, I'm a player - not a collector. I'm all for completely abolishing the Reserved List and reprinting the staples - and I got my 40 duals, 40 fetches, Forces, Goyfs, Mox Diamonds, LEDs, etc., etc.Originally Posted by Cabal_chan
Screw the collectors. Wasn't there an argument about how reprints don't necessarily cause a price drop? Wasn't there an argument about how the Reserved List doesn't actually protect your precious 'investments'?
It's a game first and foremost. If no one's there to play your game...have fun with cards no one wants.
PS: These same collectors should be fighting tooth and nail against MTGO and OverExtended. Both can, possibly, draw players away from irl Legacy, which means less demands on their cards, which means a price decrease. Maybe. It's amazing how short sighted some people can be.
That, and I'm going to use 'b-b-but my collection' everytime someone brings up a price issue for MTGO and OverExtended. Because hey, if it works for irl Legacy, it'll work there.
And I'm not entirely sure about that argument of reprints not necessarily dropping value. Sure, we can cite cards like Birds and Wrath of God all day and how they've maintained a roughly constant level of value. But they've also been printing in over a dozen sets. But if you look at Pithing Needle, it was a $20+ rare when it was in Kamigawa only. But following 10th Edition and M10 reprints, it has fallen to a $3 rare. I find it hard to believe that reprinting the original Duals in M11 at current print run sizes would have little or no impact on the valley of Reserved and Unlimited Duals (although Alpha/Beta would still likely retain their high prices due to the level of pimp factor). While I'm certainly not saying value would completely fall through the floor and Revised Duals be able to be had by all for $10 each, I would certainly foresee a drop of 40-50% for cards like Underground Sea (once again, I could care less personally...I'd probably sell my 40 Revised duals and get 40 of the new black border ones, or get 40 in foil).
Also, I think you're misunderstanding what a collector is. A collector doesn't care about any format. And they don't care about MTGO. They care about the physical product and it's value. Most collectors could care less if Legacy died off, aside from the concern on possible devaluation of their cards. All they care about is collecting sets (either 1 copy of each set, or 4 copies).
And as for the dealers...it's understandable for their concern. If a dealer is buying Underground Seas at $60 each and they're reprinted and price drops to $50...they just lost atleast $10 per card between what they paid for it and what they can sell it at now.
Even though I understand the concern being voiced by dealers and collectors, I'm not one of them. I want Wizards to reprint stuff, and I'm among the players who are now discontent over the Reserved List announcement.
Don't Hate the Herd
Forever ago when Lands got popular.
Also, I agree wholeheartedly with everything in the post above.
I'm not going to get into whether the advantages of stimulating Legacy even more through reprints are enough to justify the disadvantages to the secondary market. There's clearly a great variety of opinion on this, and I can appreciate both sides of the argument.
I think the latter argument has a factual basis. The Reserved List doesn't protect reserved cards which saw no play to begin with, and cards not on the reserved list still become incredibly valuable because of a combination of factors: 1) rarity, 2) playability, and 3) the expectation that they are unlikely to be reprinted in massive quantities even without an explicit reserved list. As for point #3, not everyone may endorse such expectations, but many do, which is enough to uphold value.
The former argument you cited is completely untrue though. Reprints will necessarily cause a price drop, and nearly every example that has been cited to the contrary is a result of mitigation of that effect 1) by even greater increase in demand than supply when the card becomes available in Standard again and 2) the fact that collectibles from ultra rare sets like Alpha and Beta are likely to retain high prices anyway. To elaborate on point #2, just because a Beta Wrath of God can fetch over $100 doesn't mean that reprints didn't hurt its value (i.e. they could have fetched more).
What I mean is this: Alpha and Beta cards are less elastic to supply and demand because they are sought after as much for their collectability as for their playability. Consider that an A/B Underground Sea will fetch about as much as an Ancestral Recall or Mox Sapphire from the same set, but that an Unlimited dual will not fetch nearly as much as corresponding Power (in fact, up to five times less). Why is that? It's precisely because the Alpha/Beta dual lands or Power are sought by collectors or players who try to "pimp" their collections, whereas the demand for Unlimited power exists primarily because of playability. But the existence of Revised "reprints" of the duals (but not power) undercuts the value of the Unlimited duals, whereas no such editions of Power exist to decrease the value of Unlimited Power.
This example, along with those of reprints such as Pithing Needle, Berserk, etc., confirm what should be obvious from basic economics: something that increases supply of a product without a corresponding increase in demand for that product will decrease the price.
Now, this only tangentially relates to whether the Reprint policy is a good idea, but that particular argument simply holds no merit.
Reprint policy being what it is though makes any talk of reprints almost a moot point because some of the worst of the legacy offenders are on that list.
I've checked three shops in this area. Each is averaging 4-7 people to show for the legacy tournaments (they are in semi-opposite directions). Each shop has 20+ per standard tournament. The main reason listed after I talked to four players was:
Even if you spend $100 a month towards a Legacy it still takes upwards of 9 months to build most decks.
Sure there are decks that are viable (dredge/goblins) that can be made in a month or so in that budget but realistically can you expect every player to want to play those few select decks for that long? Or to want to play underpowered decks for that long?
Legacy is a story of haves and have nots. Of course each of those is subdivided in to two specific groups. The Haves get the ones who want to see reprints to increase interest in their format and those who never want to see reprints to either preserve the history of the game or the monetary value of their collection. The Have Not's are those who spend time running a budget deck and build up a collection until they can become a Have or those who try the format out and realize what they're getting in to and get out.
Benefits to Haves for reprints:
- Having people to play with in just about every area instead of some areas thriving and other areas unable to field enough for a tournament every week.
Potential to see more Wizards sponsored tournaments as card availability increased and player interest built.
More innovation - more players means more ideas.
Losses for the Haves for reprints:
- Potential loss of hundreds to thousands of dollars.
I'll admit. I don't have the cards. But I can't imagine not wanting to see more players for the format. There's so much to gain. Unfortunately it doesn't work without more staples available. There are a lot more large Legacy tournaments this year drawing in players and look what it is doing to the price of cards.
Making the same mistake twice seems so silly to me. SOMETHING needs to happen or this divide between the two types of Legacy players is only going to continue to get larger.
I remember when you had to really think about trading a Shivan Dragon for a Mox Jet. And usually you thought about that trade for weeks wondering if you should've kept the Shivan.
I just wanted to poke my head in here and state that I am pretty certain that we don't need to worry about Legacy being killed off. The only reason we have to worry about such a thing potentially happening is because of Speculators, Collectors, Players, and Dealers driving up the price of Legacy Staples to the point where they are unobtainable. And that does not have anything to do with WotC as they have no direct hand in the secondary market and never have. I can't even imagine a situation where they would directly influence the secondary market in such a way as to kill off a format.
Either way, this does not speak to whether there is or is not going to be a new format, as I cannot see the future. However, I am highly skeptical on that one as well. As I see no reason for it at the current time.
The horrible part is the first part of your post is happening. At what point is legacy too pricey though? When decks hit $2k? $3k?
Wizards can't kill an eternal format but they can let it die. I think most of us can agree that legacy is an awesome format (the best actually) and player support will keep it alive for a long time but I would rather see it grow in leaps and bounds than see it start down vintages path.
I remember when you had to really think about trading a Shivan Dragon for a Mox Jet. And usually you thought about that trade for weeks wondering if you should've kept the Shivan.
I think a large portion of the Legacy Community is of the mistaken opinion that if the Reserved List did not exist, that suddenly we would see reprints of the Original Dual Lands. This however is not necessarily true. In fact, I doubt that the Original Dual Lands would ever have been reprinted had the Reserved List been abolished.
My opinion in this matter is because one of Wizards policies when designing a Non-Basic Land for a set (at least in recent years) is that said Land cannot be functionally superior to a basic land. Unfortunately each and every single one of the Original Dual Lands was exactly that, Functionally Superior to basic lands. As such they would never have seen a reprinting.
The only reason I could have seen for WotC to abolish the reserved list, was to enable them to reprint some of the lesser items on the reserved list, such as Mox Diamond, Phyrexian Negator, and the other things that are being printed from off of the Reserved List during the course of this year for their last time ever.
Getting rid of the Reserved List should never have been viewed as a means of lowering the Financial Cost of Entry to a format such as Legacy and / or Vintage. Because as soon as you view it as such, you are going to be sorely disapointed when it doesn't come true.
Level 2 Judge
Owner, Tales of Adventure Comics and Games, Coopersburg, PA
It's extremely difficult to take some of the arguments for the abolishment of the reserved list seriously when a large number of them contain baseless finger-pointing and generalised trash like the statement in bold. I collect stuff, I like Legacy. Claiming that the two are in any way mutually exclusive is ridiculous. Collectors often ARE invested in at least one format. Just look at all the decks posted in the "pimp" threads here and on vintage forums. You don't like the new reprint policy, I get that. I don't either. There are, however, better and more cogent ways of getting your argument across in a form that a reader from WOTC would appreciate than reducing it to what is essentially a strawman and throwing all your toys out of the pram.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
I don't think Wizards would ever reprint duals. List or not. Like you said they are functionally superior in every way, shape, and form.
I just read a really interesting article on the rising price of standard as well. As much as I and a lot of others like to blame Wizards it's not entirely their fault.
According to this article greed and the desire to have the best possible deck are what's hurting the game (and will continue to get worse). They cite things like Baneslayer and Jace as culprits. Great cards. Insanely dominating in the format. But does that really make a playset worth a few hundred dollars of a card that was just printed? Demand and willingness to pay are way up and eventually that's going to turn a lot of players away.
I remember when you had to really think about trading a Shivan Dragon for a Mox Jet. And usually you thought about that trade for weeks wondering if you should've kept the Shivan.
yeah a friend of mine used that card as a counterpoint to my statement as well. The problem is that you really can't use a card such as wasteland to counterpoint the argument that Wizards has said they won't be printing any non-basic land that is functionally superior to basic lands. Because by virtue of the fact that a card IS a non-basic land it is vulnerable to wasteland, so the only way to print a card that is NOT vulnerable to wasteland yet is functionally superior to basic lands, would be to have it be what the original dual lands are, AND be printed with shroud or indestructibility on it. And Wizards would NEVER print such a card in the first place due to the fact that such a card would be so over balanced as to overshadow just about every land they have ever printed in the history of the game barring the fetch lands.
As far as I know, the only non-basic land that has ever been printed that IS NOT vulnerable to Wasteland, was Darksteel Citadel and that only produces colorless mana and is not searchable by fetchlands, thus cannot be said to be functionally superior to basic lands in anyway.
This, exactly this. It is not WotC's fault that people are willing to pay hundreds (sometimes Thousands) of Dollars for their decks. If it were, then the game would have died off ages ago as a whole. Yet it still seems to be thriving.
The game (not just Legacy, but the ENTIRE Game) will die off when people can no longer support the hobby. Which I figure is still a long time away from the current period we are in. The problem is actually a great deal more widespread than just our little corner of the world (i.e. the Magic the Gathering Corner). This sort of problem is affecting all sorts of aspects of the economy, not just us.
Dude, do you even know what you just said?
qft, omfg my ears almost exploded. Explaining things shouldn't be that difficult.
I can't contribute anything that hasn't already been said. I can sum up my thoughts by saying that I think it's sad that availability is preventing people from playing a game that I really enjoy. And there isn't very much Legacy where I'm from.
However, I'm really shocked by the pricing phenomenon.
I think that speculating is getting a little out of control and has a tertiary impact on the value of cards that are in proven decks. People start paying $200 Goyfs and then that becomes the accepted norm. Random jank going way up in price? I guarantee that more copies of these "sold out" cards will surface once they see there is a mindless increase in its perceived value.
Seeing the preorder value of some cards like Gideon are jaw dropping to someone like me who remembers Moxes in the store binder for $100. But that's the norm. Use your entire mental capacity to predict which card could be useful and cash in! Keep your eye on all of your "grindstone"s. You never know when another "painter's servant" will be printed.
I have been going in and out of the game for a long time and I recently had to pick up a playset of enlightened tutors and was kind of annoyed. I outright LOLed when I saw the price of Karakas (hello $2 card).
They've seen that the money is there so useful cards are having their prices absolutely skyrocket.
What's odd is the niche cards seem to be rising way faster. If someone is breaking into the format and needs to purchase a playset of force of wills you'd expect to see a major staple like that skyrocket to $100 but it still sits around $50. Yet a card like Karakas which is used far less than FoW imo equals that price now (still can't believe that!).
I'd like to see a grid that breaks down each set and what their print run was and maybe how many rares, uncommon, commons, (doh mythics), total.
It's hard to measure an uncommon like karakas to FoW to cabal therapy to psionic blast (I guess pre-TS before availability was more difficult).
Fun to talk about, but I'm scared as a magic player. All I can say is, invest in the deck you've been drooling over now. Choose an archetype that is versatile so you can tweak it in different directions with a minimal impact on your budget.
Frankly, I don't know how standard players can afford it.
http://www.crystalkeep.com/magic/misc/rarity-info.php
Level 2 Judge
Owner, Tales of Adventure Comics and Games, Coopersburg, PA
I've got this feeling that the bubble prices will pop sometime-soonish.
I don't have any covert info, or stats or what-not, just a feeling.
That said, I think I'm going to sell out most of my collection at GP Columbus. Considering I bought my trops for $20 apiece and can now get like $60+ for them, its time to sell. Not selling cards I can't see myself using anytime soon (My LEDs, Trops, scrublands, loose bayou/taiga/savannah, moat) for what is likely going to be something stupid like $500+ when I only paid like $150 or less seems like idiocy. Stockbrokers would kill for that kind of return.
Also quit arguing about the reserve list, talk about a moot point.
A part of me wants this new format to just destroy the bubble completely, I wonder how many "collectors" would whine then.
Ich bin aueslander und sprechen nicht gut Deutsch
I read the begining pages of this thread right after it started, then just came back to see it's up to 36. Haven't read everthing inbetween so if this is old news, just ignore it.
It has been said repeatedly that Wizards makes no money from the secondary market. Not directly perhaps, but their retailers do. Wizards has a huge vested interest in those who actually distribute their product. They will be very careful not to offend those who actually make ALL Magic products available to consumers. Wizards will be very careful to protect the investment of stores who depend on the secondary market for a significant percentage of their revenue. Those are the people who actually support WotC, the source of their income. They will be most unlikely to offend the store owner with a significant investment in older cards by reprinting them and perhaps drastically devaluing that investment.
The rest of us are addicts who can hardly wait for the next fix. We are easy. Print some cool stuff and we drool down our shirt fronts! Sad but true, and don't tell me otherwise - denial is not a river in Egypt! Takes one to know one. Dunno 'bout you, dude, but I've been one since '95!
You can't kill my Zombies - they're already dead!
Shoes for Industry!
Reality is for people who can't deal with Middle Earth.
Too much is never enough - I'm addicted to MORE!!!
...and in other words, revised Tropical Islands are now NINETY FUCKING DOLLARS. That is all.
EDIT: I just remembered that I used to make fun of my WH40k friends for paying $40-$50 for a tank that was plastic, unpainted, and unassembled. Now I can't do that anymore. In fact, I sort of feel like an ass.
Ich bin aueslander und sprechen nicht gut Deutsch
I am also seeing this is a good time to sell. I've got a little stack of cards, Tarmogoyfs, Underground Seas, Polluted Deltas, Entombs, Thoughtseizes, LEDs, Chrome Moxes, Force of wills, a Jace, a Baneslayer,and an FBB Bayou, that should go for over 1,300$. I'm also selling all of the random pieces that go to those decks, which are now actually worth something on Ebay. I showed my girlfriend, and she was shocked. For someone like me, who doesn't come from alot of money, and doesn't play enough tournament magic to justify keeping these cards, the time is just ripe for selling out. That being said, I'm still keeping two really good decks to play magic with. It's more important to me now to have a computer that can run the best new games, and who can resist that kind of money? The fact that I'm getting back even more than I spent is just awesome.
And as an aside, I have no problem with good decks being hard to assemble. That was always part of the challenge of this game for me, and I really embraced it. I worked hard for the money I invested in my cards. Expecting any less nowadays is unrealistic.
I thought about selling out, too, but then I realized I'd just put all that money back into Magic cards.
Ended up selling my Vintage stuff and some extra FBB duals, though. Even though the power was CE, I still got about $700 for the set!
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