For those unaware, Magic: the Gathering recently banned several expensive cards ($100 and $2-300) from the game’s most popular way to play (Commander a.k.a. Elder Dragon Highlander). This is after one of those cards was put in a recent set that was a selling point for lots of people. Wizards of the Coast knew about this ban from an independent group of organizers almost a year ago, but went ahead with the printings anyway.
So now some people have cards they bought for over $100 plummet to prices below $50 (and continuing to drop) since this one type of play is the only place these cards were used. Foil versions were once going as high as $800 to $1,000 but are now dropping to $200.
The thing is, these cards were never on Magic’s “reserve list,” cards Wizards has promised to never print tournament-legal versions of. The last cards added to the list were in 1999/2000. Cards after that can be printed into the ground. Anyone who pays attention to Magic prices knows cards not on that list can have their prices gutted overnight. You shouldn’t be investing in collectables, anyway. But especially Magic cards and especially not ones that can be reprinted.
We now have this situation where capitalists do what they do and a bunch of people, including Tim Pool, are flipping the fuck out after getting scammed by Wizards of the Coast and their owner, Hasbro. Older players warn people about this all the time that WotC will print cards they know they’re going to ban, then wait until those cards have been sold off before pulling the trigger. They win either way. Whales who must always buy new thing before getting hyped to buy the next new thing fork over their money trying to get ahead of everyone else. Players wanting a balanced and fair game are happy because the problem cards are gone (and thus not quitting).
“”“”“Investors”“”“” have been a blight on TCGs from the get-go. A lot of Magic’s recent problems have been from the feedback loop created by Commander/EDH (a whole other can of worms I’m not getting into in this post). So it’s doubly hilarious when the overlap of EDH players who treat their decks like an investment get burnt. Especially since their format isn’t a tournament-oriented one so you can just use proxy/fake versions of cards and anyone who cares is someone you can ignore.
Vintage and Cube players continue to win bigly since we own these cards because we actually play with them, so their value is irrelevant.
Imagine paying $50+ for cardboard to play the worst format of a nerd game, when you can order a $0.40 print with your favorite art instead.
Wizards holds some power over other formats banning proxies, but they have no direct power over EDH since it wasn’t their invention (and every interaction they’ve had with it has made it worse)
I hate the business model of these card games. The gameplay is usually pretty good and the competitive aspect is nice. But the competitive chase cards being at predatory distributions in the product really turned me off to the whole thing.
It affects the game balance too I bet. For example ban worthy cards not getting banned to not torpedo these fools whose life savings are in mtg cards.
It does from time to time. You’ll see “pushed” (ie really good and hard to get) cards come out and enjoy their time and then either they get banned or the synergistic cards that make them format warping get banned.
I don’t even mind that aspect of the product cycle that much. I enjoy they competitive aspect and some strategies can and will be better than others.
But the cards that define the format being inaccessible AND this type of product design that’s endemic to the CCG business model really sucks. And IRL play is so much better than sims, especially if you’re trying to improve at the game too.
Imagine “investing” in cardboard that it’s availability is limited by a private company
Right? There’s been rumors for decades WotC higher ups have personal collections of expensive cards they plan to sell off as a retirement package. And when they do, WotC will finally reprint those cards. They’ll make sure they’re all cashed out and everyone else is holding the bag. It’s a complete black hole. A total void where there’s zero government regulations or rules.
The fact this is even possible should steer anyone away from investing. Even if the above isn’t true, do you really want to risk losing thousands of dollars on a children’s toy when you could buy literally anything else?
The fact that its a commodity that can be mass manufactured at will should steer anyone from engaging in speculation lol, funko pops, sports cards, shoes, etc… Its all insanely stupid.
like do westerners forget these things are made by people? The avg westerner is so distanced from production that its legit concerning how stupid they are
If you’re spending big money on trading cards for a competitive advantage you deserve to suffer
This is why I play MTG on Cockatrice. Can’t sell cards for a 96 kajillion % markup cuz you want to mint precious NFTs if you can just use them online. Like I can tell you, all these NFT cards cost 5c to make. But they sell them at such a high price because they’re turning TCGs into an NFT market.
all these NFT cards cost 5c to make.
Holy fuck you have no idea how bad people are at this. It costs WotC the same amount of money to print basic land cards as it does to print any other card. You’ll have people say dumb shit like “they can’t reprint that because it costs them too much money and will hurt the value an–”
No shut the fuck up you dipshit. It does not matter what the card is. The printing process is the same. TCG companies create artificial scarcity and their decisions are arbitrary. Tons of playing cards from dozens of different games are worth absolutely fuck all because those games are dead. Tons of Magic cards are worth less than $1 when they were worth $20 in their heyday because they’ve been power crept.
I have no idea what goes on in these people’s brains other than would-be scammers getting scammed because the actual scammers know how to prey on people who think they’re infallible.
The internet funny money online store known as “MTGOX” was a MTG thing at first until internet funny money became a more lucrative grift.
I remember years ago when I was getting into the game I found MTGO, and it was the most janky client I’ve ever played on. The way you bought cards was like, topping up an account with credits and then opening a trade with some random bot and trading for the cards. Then a friend was like “you can just play with any cards for free” and showed me Cockatrice lol. Same thing happened when a group of us wanted to play D&D during covid lockdown so we all got tabletop simulator, downloaded the rule book pdfs and played that way.
A friend of mine plays warhammer and just 3D prints all his miniatures because fuck paying hundreds of dollars for what is essentially like 50 unpainted army men.
Hey! That’s how I play Warhammer too! It’s worse when you want to play a xeno and the Tau models are the same price or even more for less models. Like fuck that.
Huh, the broken clock is right once a day I guess. Not for the right reasons anyways; personally the ban just doesn’t make sense. I say this because for the reason they banned Lotus and Crypt; plenty of others make the cut too for the same reasons. It’s the end result of a bunch of investor-ghouls running a third party rules committee that has “plausible” ties to Wizards so when shit like this happens Wizards can just shrug or keep it secret.
The Lotus ban didn’t make sense and as someone said; it’s likely to drive speculation in private interests. Mana Crypt didn’t make sense because there are far, far worse combos in terms of mana-ramping. Their excuse was they “didn’t want explosive turn-2 combos” and banned that when I can get a turn 1 voltaic key, turn 2 Sol Ring and have more mana without possibly losing 2 life from a coin-flip. Or using voltaic/manifold on mana vault and others like Basalt Monolith or Grim Monolith. Even if I don’t draw them first turn, I can just slap Trophy, Trinket, etc mages into the deck and guarantee them at some point.
Or using Krark Ironworks, Nuka Cola Machine and Manufacturer’s Academy for infinite life AND mana before turn 5.
Or banning Thassa’s Oracle. Plenty of cards that could make the cut under the same definitions and I have quite a few in mind. The One Ring is still around, which is broken in 1v1 games lmfao.
At the end of the day, while Vintage and Cube has it’s own fun; there’s a certain satisfaction walking into a LGS with a cheap Malcom, Pirate deck and blowing out 600+ dollar decks with my funny birdman. Collectors have always been a scourge and their massive money-drops don’t exactly help them get much farther if you know what you’re building. That’s why Vintage and Cube has it’s own fun though, you don’t need to be a super-duper deck master that can see every connection in your deck at once. It’s just good fun.
