[Official] Bitching About Prices, Buyouts and Reprints Thread

[god_campbell]

I would love drain to be unbanned, it is perhaps my favorite card and to be able to play control and have it be good would be a god send.

[Justin]

I thought this thread was supposed to be about the rising price of Legacy Magic cards. There is another thread on ban list speculation here:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...ulation/page33

[jamesh]

mana drain is far too powerful for legacy

does anyone know how to make a reasonable estimate of how many cards are 'available' for purchase etc.

recently there has been a lot of talk about Candleabra - the cost being directly related to its availability (and the fact that it appears in a top legacy deck obviously)

apparently there were 31000 printed but many have said (most notably ben bleiweiss) that many fewer are actually available due to card loss and collectors holding on to their cards etc.

i wonder about this, because i remember Candleabra always being a popular card, so i doubt so many were dumped - unlike say Grim Tutor - but i just wondered if there was any real way to get a handle on how many cards were actually available on the market - maybe listings on ebay over a one year period or something?!?

[birds of paradise2]

It's quite funny with people complaining about the prices in this thread. THIS THREAD is a big source to the speculation.

[Klazam]

Using that number (31000), there is 7750 playsets of candleabras. Loss/ destruction/ hoarding, I'm sure cant account for more than half being missing. That leaves us with around 3800 playsets, which is a lot, I think.

I do not believe that there's only 250 playsets left.

[Michael Keller]

It's quite funny with people complaining about the prices in this thread. THIS THREAD is a big source to the speculation.

Actually the concerns are quite valid and most of the opinions spoken in this thread are based off of real-life price fluctuations as they happen.

[death]

That leaves us with around 3800 playsets, which is a lot, I think.

I do not believe that there's only 250 playsets left.

You might be correct sir, but according to the article Ben said around 250 playsets 'in circulation' specifically.

[jamesh]

'in circulation'

what does that mean - currently avail. on ebay + major online stores?

i wonder where he got that figure, i doubt he did any sort of research on how many were actually avail. from these retailers

[death]

What he meant are those which will be available for sale online or for trade from players' binders in the coming months. Not included are those which have been forgotten or hiding away in some basement or vault, owner is a collector or inactive etc.

I tried hoarding the card since January. Did some research, most online stores didn't really have them in stock. I was willing to pay $55 and stopped when the card reached above $60. 250 playsets feels like an overestimation, it might actually be fewer.

[honestabe]

Unban Drain? lol

You think people are bitching about High Tide NOW......

[dahcmai]

250 playsets? I bet it's fewer. Iron Man Ante was pretty devastating to the amount of cards from Chronicles back. That set pissed off a ton of people and made it more popular. I wish I could find out how many Alpha Islands are left. That would be an interesting one to know since it was the most despised card to get out of Alpha due to the fact it replaced your rare a lot of the time. Shred!

[jamesh]

250 playsets? I bet it's fewer.

so you're saying that out of 31000 cards, 30,000 have been lost, destroyed, held by collectors/players or otherwise unavailable for sale
despite the lure of a grand for a playset
i just don't believe this figure - where did it come from, it seems plucked out of the air

the issue of scarcity is very important to value because people believing that their cards are rarer or more unavailable than they actually are tends to lead to situations where they sit on their cards, rather than selling them (waiting for the big payday) it is this behavior that can lead to price spikes

until i see some hard data on how many Candleabras are actually available, i'm inclined to doubt these low figures

[dahcmai]

I think that because of the era and the nature of that card. It was a crap rare, a restricted crap rare during the time of Iron Man Ante. Not only could you not play with it in tournaments, you could only play 1 in vintage where Workshop was restricted also. So it was total junk and tossed out. No one kept them. Do you hang on to your Mayeal's Arias because they will be worth something someday? Nah, you toss them in the trashcan or to the kids. It's unplayable, untradeable crap. That was Candelabra back then.

During Iron Man ante it was fun to play decks full of crap you didn't want from your trade folder. So we would make decks full of junk rares no one cared about and play Iron Man. How ever many life points you could shove the other person past 0, that's how many cards you got to shred from their deck. You got to go into the deck and pick too. I can attest for around a hundred Candelabras shredded just from myself alone. It was a favorite since no one cared about it and it wasn't worth anything.

Poor Candelabras were so hated. Guess people shouldn't have been casting all those Workshops into Juggernauts and Su Chis to get it knocked out of tournaments.

[death]

When I scoured the internet for the card, SCG was out of stock, there were about 2 playsets on ebay available, and 2-3 copies elsewhere. Of course sellers went pouring in, but I would approximate there were only about 5 playsets sold each month. From January to April that's a miniscule 20 playsets. At this rate, it'll take a year or so before 250 gets circulated. I strongly doubt the availability outside of the states, this is where a big chunk of that number is coming from.

As for the big payday, it has come for me and I just sold my extra copies, being not as greedy as SCG.

[jamesh]

I think that because of the era and the nature of that card. It was a crap rare, a restricted crap rare during the time of Iron Man Ante. Not only could you not play with it in tournaments, you could only play 1 in vintage where Workshop was restricted also. So it was total junk and tossed out. No one kept them. Do you hang on to your Mayeal's Arias because they will be worth something someday? Nah, you toss them in the trashcan or to the kids. It's unplayable, untradeable crap. That was Candelabra back then.

that wasn't my experience at all
Candelabra was recognized as a very powerful card - hence the restricting - and within the set it was defo. top five (in no particular order)
factory
workshop
archaeologist
candelabra
coffin
(i'm probably forgetting something - oh strip mine, until reprinting and maybe colossus)
anyway, people weren't throwing their candelabras away, Argothian Pixies yes, candelabra no

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Yeah, Candelabras were never crap rares. They sure weren't $250, but you couldn't pick them up in dollar bins.

[perm]

Mana drain is a niche card, it's just a better counterspell which isn't even played. Do you actually thing it would approach the power level of FoW? it would just be a cool tool to use in certain decks. I think it actually might be what control decks need to help with their issues in legacy, though combo decks would love it as much if not more. Countering a FoW would lead to some nice colorless juice, but what besides that is a card youll expect to counter and give you a ton of mana?

Also I doubt it would come close to the price of tabernacle, which i believe is the most expensive card in legacy (if it isn't I am very curious as to what is)

[Amon Amarth]

Mana drain is a niche card, it's just a better counterspell which isn't even played. Do you actually thing it would approach the power level of FoW? it would just be a cool tool to use in certain decks. I think it actually might be what control decks need to help with their issues in legacy, though combo decks would love it as much if not more. Countering a FoW would lead to some nice colorless juice, but what besides that is a card youll expect to counter and give you a ton of mana?

Also I doubt it would come close to the price of tabernacle, which i believe is the most expensive card in legacy (if it isn't I am very curious as to what is)

You've obviously never played with Mana Drain otherwise you'd never say something so patently absurd. Mana Drain is one of the most brutal tempo swings in the game. The price of Mana Drain would skyrocket if it was unbanned in Legacy. You don't need to counter Fireblasts and Force of Wills to punish your opponent for playing Magic: the Gathering.

[perm]

Mana Drain's ability just pushes it over the edge of being playable, which is more than any other 2cc counter in the entire format can say. If you want to play counterspells in legacy, you need to either have it be 1cc or free. I am not going to lose sleep over people having their ad nauseums or tendrils countered and someone getting 4-5 mana.

[death]

Counter their Ad Naus/Ill-Gotten Gains/Infernal Tutor ASAP, don't wait till they cast Tendrils, it'll kill you.