Chinese fakes

[Arsenal]

Man, why are you focusing on this. I didn't feel like that's how he meant it. And the entry barrier of Legacy is I think a bit exaggerated. I am married, single income household, mediocre salary and yet still building towards Vintage. Legacy takes a couple years and Vintage takes a couple years more if you are not doing too badly or if you're not a student. I think that's one of the nice things about Legacy. When you spend time and effort to get into this format you come to love and appreciate it more, you grow up within the game and become a part of the community. It gives sentimental value to your decks and to the history you had with the format. I think it is quite valuable. /derail

I'm a father of two girls (12 and 9), was married for 7 years and make a respectable income. I own at least a playset of every Legacy staple. As someone making a fair amount of money, it's really easy for me to tell others how to live, but I don't because I understand that not everyone is able to make the same amount of money as me. As a dude that lives with his parents, I don't really understand how he's able to tell people what to do with their finances in order to break into Legacy when his own financial situation isn't realistic for many.

Save more money? Sure thing, as soon as I live nearly rent + utility free, I'll have a ton of disposable income. Buying a $10 burger with your friends on the weekend isn't keeping you from Legacy, it's the $1,000+ in rent + utilities that you need to shell out every month that is. I just don't get how a dude that lives with his mommy and daddy is able to tell people to "save money by not going out to eat". Please.

[TsumiBand]

It's a little bit mind-blowing how people interpret the situation as a whole.

This has been directly compared to a free-market economy (yet no mention of forced scarcity, hunh). It's been pointed out that it is "just a game" (which begs the question, 'so why do you care so much?'). People are advocating higher fiscal responsibility (without having a clue what anyone's actual situation allows for). Others are nothing that this is the natural occurrence for any market where there's a higher demand than supply (and ignoring the fallout or moral implications).

For my part, I do find it to be interesting that there are not really a whole hell of a lot of other games where the playing pieces are so intrinsically tied to your W/L ratio that those who produce the game do not provide ample means of acquiring that product, in the interest of fair play. I'm not talking about, like, sports equipment and shit here, I mean like… 'self-contained' games. Things in the vein of like, Chess/Go/Jenga/Scrabble/etc etc. It clearly isn't enough to say "it's a different kind of game, so deal" for most people, because they are still looking at Magic as precisely that kind of game.

I think that a lot of the tone and timbre of the discussion is inextricably linked to people's view of money, and whether you see it as an enabler or a barrier or just energy in a transient state, or however-the-hell you personally view it. Personally - I'm no economist. I'm not-seriously-convinced that Libertarians just use big words in conjunction with money to scare away young people. I've worked my ass off for years at jobs I was shitty at and jobs I was good at, and I have very little to show for it thanks to family health issues as well as the 2008 recession which put a giant boot in my financial ass that I have yet to fully extract. I hate money. Hate. It. But of course, 'hating it' and 'needing it' are different things, so qu'est ce q'on fait - gotta keep chasing it, because reasons.

So yeah, I personally have a really non-objective opinion. I see myself being priced out of the game over and over and people advocating higher financial responsibility as a means to acquire them staples - and then I see that it's a goddamned game and that someone somewhere got it in their heads that it should be treated like just another economy. The first time I saw Magic card prices on a fucking stock market 'ticker' I wanted to burn down someone's house. It isn't enough, in my mind, to be a so-called "realist" and say, "tough break, that's life for ya, this is how things work. can't change it - how do you deal?" because there's an abstraction layer being applied to the situation here. Someone somewhere made a rule that forces a scarcity; it's entirely nihilistic, it's just "I choose not to supply any more of these, because I choose not to and it's mine so I can do that." Someone else figured out that they could trick everyone into thinking fucking Sea Drake was a $50 card, and people went, "well of COURSE it's a $50 card, it SAYS SO RIGHT THERE." People on this board have non-humblebragged about their ability to uptick the price of a card, by just dropping a suggestion into the online community that some obscure piece of shit from Prophecy is suddenly tech against a Tier 1 deck, and look - there goes the demand, supply starts moving, people want to make money so now that $0.35 terribad card is hovering around $8.00. For no reason! Except that someone said they could do it. Fuck that shit. This really is a game we're talking about here; this ancillary junk about how it is perfectly fine to apply all this highfalutin donkey balls horse shit about futures and speculation and all that is fucking dumb as hell.

In before the "sounds like you need to play something else, sounds like you hate this game". No, I don't hate the game, I just hate the fucking games people have played with this game.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

With all the comments on the "high cost to play legacy," I think it's important to note that the actual cost to play legacy is much lower than the implied cost, which is the cost to play legacy only with netdecks or decks with a high scg open finish on the hopes of winning a tournament. I think the same hypercompetitive nerd-culture that makes buying illegal counterfeit mechandise from a shady online dealer even a consideration is the same that demands an expensive deck to play.


Also, before you say it, yes, I will go enjoy playing a deck with 25 mountains and 35 variations of hill giant at my local tournament.

Well, then lets move this to below casual, shall we? I mean: if the argument in Legacy related discussion is Hill Giant, then I'm speechless.

Yeah, but there are ppl who want to play with the old cards, but can't afford them. WotC were showing them finger for over a decade and now the situation escalated into printhouses forming a belt all over from Culcutta to Beijing daily vomiting millions of fake cards 24/7 in three-shift operation, no Christmas holiday.

That's actually far from true. These guys take hour long naps around lunch time and barely devote a fraction of their operation to magic at the moment. And you bet your ass production on the mtg front slows down when Chinese New Year rolls around the corner.

I know, I was just trying to be dramatic.
Good news, btw.

[Richard Cheese]

Jesus Christ you're all fucking insane.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Jesus Christ you're all fucking insane.

It should be amazing if the thread would get locked right after this post of yours.


[reserved for a moderator]

[Arsenal]

Just an fyi:

I had a chat with that listed vendor on Alibaba (my wife and I speak Chinese) and he's already pulling out of this. He was receiving hundreds (almost thousands) of complaints and foul messages daily and he doesn't even know what this game is. These guys create poker cards and just received an order for MTG on a whim, then decided to give it a whirl. They're not even confident in the quality of their fakes (the pics on ebay may look convincing but the final result isn't once you inspect it). They're not (currently) interested in creating perfect fakes, it was just another item to print run and they really don't even know what this game is.

Take that however you want.

Good to hear. However, it's only a matter of time until a person/entity with more nefarious intentions starts producing high quality fakes. This fire may have been put out, but that doesn't mean the danger is gone.

[PirateKing]

If the fakes get to the point where they're 100% indistinguishable from the real thing, then what? How does one authenticate a non-holostamp card?

If they are 100% identical, then they are the same. Any discussion of origin is academic.

[Manipulato]

I can assure you the printers in China are running strong. If Apple and Prada can't stop China I seriously doubt WotC holds sway. You are talking about distribution which are basically the people who buy bulk from the printers (who only sell in serious bulk) and piece those cards out to buyers. Up until now 99% of this has been going to shady people trying to pass off fakes as real which is a whole different problem but is to be expected from time to time. Now that every little kid is hungry for fake cards and that is a known fact you can expect the momentum to slowly but surely build up until there is somewhat reliable sources to get fake shit out to people who are willing to pay $5 a piece for hackey U Seas. Before we were all working under the impression that regular MTG players were avoiding fake cards but now the wool has been pulled back. When people were trying to pass this shit off as real they had to play careful, you can't sell 50 dual lands a week and not have someone notice which is why the market isn't saturated with this shit already. Now that people know they can just be like, "Yeah shit is fake $6 please." and people will buy it it's going to be a real game changer (literally). Also fuck you for being a part of this.

Fuck you too Mr.! I dont wanted to buy those to sell them or play them in a tournament! I wanted them for private uses as some kind of high quality proxies, and I was very curious if they're are really that good!
Next time you should get infos first about the background before you judge them.

[TsumiBand]

Fuck you too Mr.! I dont wanted to buy those to sell them or play them in a tournament! I wanted them for private uses as some kind of high quality proxies, and I was very curious if they're are really that good!
Next time you should get infos first about the background before you judge them.

This is also fair, actually.

I wasn't kidding when I said I'd buy them for alters. I'd play alters in EDH. That's cool. I wouldn't bring a fake card to a tournament though, that's still a little morally ambiguous to me. That's where the 'plastic Chess set' thing falls apart - you can beat Gary Kasparov in a meaningful way with a $2 Chess set, but you can't three Explores Alex Bertoncini FTW if those Explores are cheap imitations.

[Technics]

RE: I would like to know more about your best mtg cards,best mtg cards for sale,best mtg cards for playing
Dear customer,



I am Sorry, our company was stopped by the police, so we can't do MTG cards business no!



pls don't response here to make the e-mail box full.



Thanks



Delson

[Dan Turner]

I got the email this morning as well.

This was in my inbox:

Dear Customer,

I am Sorry, our company was stopped by the police, so we can't do MTG cards business no!

pls don't response here to make the e-mail box full.

Thanks

Delson

[warai]

I got the email this morning as well.

This was in my inbox:

Dear Customer,

I am Sorry, our company was stopped by the police, so we can't do MTG cards business no!

pls don't response here to make the e-mail box full.

Thanks

Delson

Thank god for this. Lets hope there is no more of this chinese copycats trying to blow years of MTG history.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Notice all the people here who contacted this company just in this forum. As I said before it's not even the counterfeits themselves that bother me, that's been going on for a while, it's the attitude shift I've noticed in the community. It's amazing how many people show their true colors when the opportunity presents itself to push that easy button even when they are doing so at the detriment of everyone else, and that's just the people who have admitted to it (I have the feeling a couple people may have contacted them with no intention of buying cards, but we all know the intention of the majority). This is the reason I see no positive end game for the format and have decided to call it quits not primarily that my cards might lose value.

[Arsenal]

It's amazing how many people show their true colors when the opportunity presents itself to push that easy button even when they are doing so at the detriment of everyone else

Doesn't this sentence also describe collectors? They often times take advantage of opportunities that solely benefit them while being detrimental to everyone else.

You mentioned there are three pillars of Magic; collectors, players and dealers. In my view, Magic would survive just fine if you removed collectors from the equation whereas Magic (as we know it) could not survive without players and dealers.

[Bed Decks Palyer]

Notice all the people here who contacted this company just in this forum. As I said before it's not even the counterfeits themselves that bother me, that's been going on for a while, it's the attitude shift I've noticed in the community. It's amazing how many people show their true colors when the opportunity presents itself to push that easy button even when they are doing so at the detriment of everyone else, and that's just the people who have admitted to it (I have the feeling a couple people may have contacted them with no intention of buying cards, but we all know the intention of the majority). This is the reason I see no positive end game for the format and have decided to call it quits not primarily that my cards might lose value.

Ok, so everyone who wishes to quench his curiosity or just plans to have a fake Ancestral ferdalolz, or to print his Cube or w/e is a dirty bastard showing his true colors? I'd buy twenty thousand USeas just for the fun of swimming in them. Am I immoral?
MWS kills music!

On a sidenote, as I was afk (mental note: need to do it more often) I thought about what Norm or whoever wrote about the needless need for expensive decks in Legacy. I think I'm going to make an experiment and build some crappy decks with a small budget, trying to adress the metagame weaknesses all the while completely giving up the combo matchup pre-board. Soemthing that preys on DRS, Goyfs, FoWs, BS and all the usual crap of "fair" decks with the intention to defeat the "unfair" ones postboard.

[r3dd09]

You agreed with this post (bolded mine):



And then you went on to state how you don't go out and party, you play the same 1-2 video games and that you live at home. The "live at home" part is where I took exception because rent + utilities will take up the lion's share of a person's income. You do not have that financial burden to bear, so you're able to spend that money on stuff like Magic. I don't understand where you get off telling people to get a job, stop going out to eat with friends, etc when you're living at home with mommy and daddy. We could ALL save more money if we lived at home like a child. But we're, you know, adults. Adults shouldn't be sponging off mommy and daddy unless they absolutely have no other choice.

My apologies, let me edit the quote to where I agree with everything he's saying instead a part of it.

don't go out every weekend,
go to less restaurants and save money.

That should be better.

I do agree, I could move out, but that sets me further away from the house I'm working towards.

I didn't feel like that's how he meant it.

Thanks

[TsumiBand]

Doesn't this sentence also describe collectors? They often times take advantage of opportunities that solely benefit them while being detrimental to everyone else.

You mentioned there are three pillars of Magic; collectors, players and dealers. In my view, Magic would survive just fine if you removed collectors from the equation whereas Magic (as we know it) could not survive without players and dealers.

+1

Collectors sitting around collecting isn't going to keep the game going -- and I strongly, strongly suspect that if Magic: The Gathering took its proverbial ball and went home tomorrow, any perceived value in the collection of the vast majority of cards would bottom out. There are lots and lots of CCG/TCG games that stand as testament to the worthlessness of game pieces for a dead game. This is one of those "you need us, we don't need you" situations.

That's probably the most frustrating thing about seeing speculation affecting card prices, especially when it comes out after the fact that someone just wanted to see if they could polish a turd and jack up the price of Deep Spawn. Somehow or another, they manage to wag the dog and get everyone to turn wasted attention to some podunk half-answer to some perceived problem in the metagame, or whatever.

Nothing against Deep Spawn; I won my first game of Magic with Deep Spawn. Me and Deep Spawn, we tight like :fist-claw-bump: and shit.

[Arsenal]

My apologies, let me edit the quote to where I agree with everything he's saying instead a part of it.

But as I've stated before, it isn't the $10 that Joe Blow spends on a burger with his buddies that's keeping him from Legacy, it's the $1,000+ in rent and utilities that he has to shell out every month. How you, someone who does not bear the financial burden of most adults, can tell people to "save money by not eating out" is beyond me.

[Lord Seth]

You know, to a certain degree I can really understand the idea that Legacy should be expensive to keep the "FNM kids" away and have the playerbase be the more experienced players.

But the thing is, there's a huge difference between a format being expensive enough to discourage scrubs and a format requiring you to spend $1,000-$2,000 to make just one deck.

[Arsenal]

You know, to a certain degree I actually agree with the idea that Legacy should be more expensive to keep the more experienced players who are more willing to "buy in" to it the main audience.

But the thing is, there's a huge difference between a format being expensive enough to discourage scrubs, and a format requiring you to spend $1,000-$2,000 to make a good deck in.

That's a rather elitest view of the financial barrier to Legacy. All of us were "scrubs" at some point in time. If new players can't find their way into Legacy, the format cannot grow. Intentionally "discouraging" new players from joining Legacy, even if their skill level is beneath the experienced Legacy grinders, doesn't make much sense. What happens when those grinders stop playing? Where does the format go from there?

If Legacy grew to the point of Standard's popularity, that would be a good thing for us. Yeah, you'd sometimes be playing against "scrubs" at your local FNM Legacy event, but you'd have a FNM LEGACY EVENT. Just think about that.