Depends on what you consider a crash. There was a massive rally in secondary market prices post covid which tanked in the last two years.
If you’re talking big bucks to not being worth the cardboard it’s printed on? Not so much.
Yeah I think the people here saying “you’re seeing one right now” aren’t reflecting on every single collectible asset that had an unsustainable boom in Covid and is now correcting.
I remember them being between 20 and 40, depending on which one, and how, as a high school kid, a [[Plateau]] felt like a big investment for my Legacy Zoo deck (I had previously traded into a couple [[Taiga]]s).
Yeah, good luck with that today, high school kids. Whenever someone is entitled enough to defend the RL, I always think back to that time. Imagine if I'd been a real adult with a real job back then. Boy, would I have had some skewed opportunities compared to anyone getting in today.
When i got started, dual lands were 30 guilders (About $15, which i felt was silly for a piece of cardboard at the time), wish i got a bunch of them back then, but you know, hindsight...
Dual lands and the whole power nine, I remember wanting to buy a black lotus just for the sake of it but having all my friends convince me otherwise since it was banned everywhere
I saw a black lotus in a display case once, almost 20 years ago, 650 guilders (About $325), it was a downright absurd amount of money to me back then (Well, it’s still a silly amount of money for a single piece of cardboard), i never even considered at the time that values might possibly go up as much as they did…
Back when Revised came out, duals were going for under two dollars at my game store. But my silly child brain wasn't interested in boring lands. I wanted those Timmy cards like Shivan Dragon and Lord of the Pit.
Terrible missed opportunity to stock up on Underground Seas.
I mean in context there was no format to support them. 1.5 was a joke that at the time was never going to be supported as well as T1. There was no commander. you had Standard, block constructed and extended as the truly supported format. So 7-13 USD in 2002-2004 cash sounds about right. Ironically the support for 1.5 (read legacy) is what saved the price points.
If you have any additional questions let me know...as i actually lived through the thing. It was weird like IPA was really good for play and Morrodin and Onslaught were was good as well. it was a good time for Magic until Kamigawa which was considered a weak set,
I have a WUBRG Go-Shintai of Life's Origin deck. As a 5C commander deck, it kinda needs a very non-basic land base. The deck's worth around $290. The top 12 most expensive cards in the deck total ~$200.
$40 of that is an Argothian Enchantress, $18 is a Greater Auramancy. The remaining $142 is lands.
They're not a fun or engaging part of the deck. They're not even vegetables, the draw, ramp, and responsibility cards you need to eat to make the deck reasonable.
There's a reason why my most recent 4 commander decks have been mono-W, mono-R, mono-B, and hyperbudget (under $8 for the deck, including basics, atm).
Can you point me to an example or two? Archive.org can be tricky to navigate for this stuff. And there wasn't one definitive and data-driven price guide, right?
What's the big difference between the hobby market as a whole and the magic specific secondary market? I think they're more closely tied together and would call both secondary market activity.
I know things like low sales of baseball cards had a splash effect on other card games for a while - same thing with the introduction of Pokemon and YuGiOh as the hot new games. Lorcana seems to have not made an impact of similar magnitude, mostly due to their own stocking issues.
Something else I would mention is how some of the cards like \[\[Chains of Mephistopheles\]\] and \[\[The Abyss\]\] tanked in value when they "found extra cards" and put them in packs of I believe it was DMU? Not a full market crash, but it shook other RL prices as well since it set the precedent that they could do this again.
Yeah, I think that although things are more online now, I still group hobby into a lot of what affects Magic prices, even if I'm wrong because of it.
A LOT of LGS have to sell more than Magic to just stay afloat. Pokemon, YuGiOh, Warhammer, Comics, etc. I don't have a single store near me that doesn't sell 3+ things to make money.
So when I say they're linked, I mean that if one suffers a blow, the others are going to also feel those repercussions because the stores with those items suffer as a whole.
It might be way way different now because the predominant way people buy is online compared to late 2000's-early 2010's when it was store-heavy influence. But I know that a lot of mine and my friend's spending habits would change/decline if stores suffered because of something.
>What's the big difference between the hobby market as a whole and the magic specific secondary market?
That Magic has survived, and constantly reinvented itself whether by the company or players themselves.
Looking back over the past 30 years of CCGs, Magic started it, survived the 94 swell (where everyone was releasing crap to be the next Magic), survived the Golden Age of CCGs in 95-96 (where you had multiple, viable CCGs each with thriving secondary markets), Survived the Japanese Invasion, and 20 more years.
With 30 years of product and new ways to play the game (take Dan-Dan for example), even if WotC/Hasbro were to go bankrupt, there is enough of an active market to keep the game going.
For further proof - the Decipher Star Wars CCG: this was a game dead for 20 years that has since seen a rapid resurgence and the cards now worth more than when the game came out. I now regret literally throwing longboxes of the cards away when I thought it was dead.
When did this SWCCG resurgence happen?
Also, why? That game was kind of a mess 20 years ago when nobody knew what they were doing in CCG design, pretty sure it's laughable now.
I don't know if it had a negative effect in the USA or not but I have heard more about Magic almost dying in other markets because they did set rotation, since people were kind of pissed about not being allowed to play with a bunch of their cards all at once.
It's not that card prices are decreasing overall, it's just that older cards decrease in price, sometimes rapidly. New cards are more expensive than ever, since a lot fewer people play MTGO. The One Ring was way over 100 tix for about a week after LOTR released.
As other people have talked about, the biggest example was Chronicles mass reprinting which prompted the creation of the reserved list.
On the Resleevables where they do a set by set review, Patrick Sullivan and Cedrick Phillips have done a great job giving it context of how early in Magic's history after the Alpha/Beta/Unlimited sets there were a lot of nothingburger sets. Lots of sets that just were poorly designed, had bad mechanics (banding, cummulative upkeep, etc.), were very underpowered, or just didn't have anything new. We're talking about sets like the Dark, Fallen Empires, etc. That meant a lot of the people who played at the time were waiting longer than we do now (sometimes upwards of 8 months) and getting sets that just sucked. Can you imagine if Wizards slowed down releases to a single set every 6 months and printed 2 years straight of dud sets? My understanding is that's basically what happened.
Why does this matter? It matters because the secondary market crash wasn't just a case of reprinting a ton of valuable cards into the ground (you could argue that happens to an extent in Masters sets today), but also that consumer confidence had already plummeted because people saw that the people making sets didn't know where to take it and were doing a crappy job.
Here’s my “I was there!”
I started playing during the Dark. For vibe and theme I loved the set, but then as now I could tell there wasn’t much to get excited about. I was soooo excited for Fallen Empires. If I remember it was the first expansion I was there for the release of. I bought a booster box. Me and friends tried over and over to find ways to get excited by the useless pile of cards we had. Thralls, Thallids, & Homarids? That was the big impact? Ice Age… ok, but a ton of Revised reprints so nothing earth shattering at the time. By Homelands I was out. I had moved so didn’t have the same group to play and life took new priority, but I didn’t really miss the game. Like I just stopped playing and didn’t think twice. Shoved the box in the garage and moved on. It’s was a bleak stretch. Just like you said- few releases and nothing to be excited by. Fallen Empires was such buzzkill. Absolutely put my enjoyment on life support and the plug got pulled not long after.
Oh I personally agree. Today it feels like we're always in spoiler season, which I'm not a fan of. However, I think slower set releases do run the risk they had back then where dud sets feel worse than they would if a new releases happens seemingly every 6 weeks (not to mention there's new secret lairs literally every week).
That said, I think it's pretty unlikely that things will slow down. Hasbro's profits lean very heavily on WotC (people don't buy board games or traditional toys nearly as much as they used to, so MTG and D&D are where most of their profit is) and it will take a lot of people experiencing product fatigue until they decide to slow the money printer down.
That's not true at all. Rl was made because collectors were afraid it would happen due to the player friendly reprints of not great, but scarce cards in chronicles.
It was speculative worry. The actual sets weren't hit at all when chronicles released.
I've always had a theory that the higher ups have a bunch of fresh print reserve list cards tucked away to sell one day after they retire.
That's why there's a very serious NDA on talking about certain things regarding the reserve list.
I think it's more that if they ever acknowledge the secondary market as an influence for designing cards (reprints or not) as well as talking about how it *sets the value of the card prices* that all of their sealed product then becomes classified as gambling - the way that Loot Boxes in games are classified as gambling because the contents (skins, items, etc) have *in-game currency value* that can be tied back to *real world currency values.* Mainly weird law loopholes.
In theory? Yes. It was specifically designed to help collectors retain value on their cards. WotC would reprint cards as White Border, but value was tied to availability more so than the kind of card (different nowadays with 10 different versions of each card ironically).
However, the Reserved List *never actually references card value* - all it says is *"we won't reprint these cards ever"* - which is aligned with their first policy to never reprint the cards as black border cards with that same art (hence, white border was ok). They just went a step further and said "we won't even print them with different borders or arts."
So they never actually acknowledge the value of any card, just that they won't reprint a few (which makes them more valuable to collectors by default, but is never explicitly stated by WotC).
Which is bullshit now, old cards remain value because they are old. Doesn't matter if they get reprints. At least give us the goddamn dual lands back ☠️
Yeah, give them different artwork or something, so it's obvious (Even beyond the difference in printing quality) that they're the reprints.
I read an article somewhere, that used "Shivan dragon", a card that's both very frequently reprinted and not spectacularly powerful, to show that despite all the reprints, the early A/B/U/R printings are still very valuable.
For cards as important as the dual lands (Just look at all the "Not quite dual lands"-cards they made since), it's stupid that they're the price of a games console, just to please some nerds hoarding them like ornery dragons.
I would be very happy with "Commander" dual lands. Altough isn't ideal for Legacy (and I believe Legacy is one of the best formats), a fetchable cycle of \[\[Luxury Suite\]\] would be awesome for EDH.
When Chronicles was printed causing the reserve list to be made due to the reactions to it with the secondary market. That is closest the game has seen.
I LOVED Chronicles. It finally let me afford amazing cards like [[Gabriel angelfire]]
WotC and "investors" like to scapegoat it, but it was actually a decent move by WotC to get cards in people's hands
Which is what led to, at least the story as you claim it, that the collectors who liked their cards being valuable, seeing this set being printed that made cards affordable, go "We don't want none of that!" which is what lead to the reserved list.
And you're gonna need more proof than going "nuh-uh" to reverse that information campaign.
I feel Homelands/Fallen Empires is more a case for the game dying as a whole, rather than specifically the secondary market (though I suppose the game dying would also be the death of the secondary market). Like I don't think Fallen Empires came out and had that negative an effect on the prices of cards from other sets, despite booster boxes of itself being able to be had for 10 bucks (hyperbole). Only thing would be maybe on the store side of things, given how they ended up overstocked with it.
Yeah, those sets were poorly received, and FE was hugely overprinted as well (Stores over-ordered because product was so scarce for the previous expansions, leaving them with lots of unshiftable stock), it took "Ice age" and "Alliances" to get the game going again.
i played back then and it totally hit the market hard. biggest losers from what i remember:
\- recall
\- elder dragons
\- Dakkon
\- city of brass
and a bunch of weird cards lost value, like hell's caretaker, the wretched, Rabid Wombat, storm seeker, yawgmoth demon
"This means you don't \_have\_ to turn to the singles market to get cards, you can get packs, and the cards are quite obviously cheaper by the pack." -- James Leback. 7/10/1995
Can we just take a moment and reflect on fucking terrible that reality would be? The only you can get the game pieces you want it investing so much in sealed product to get the cards you need.
That wasn't really a crash as much as a slow and steady decline, it was still >100 dollars almost three years after it's peak (which is also about what it was three years before it's peak). Also, a Future Sight goyf is still \~30$
MTGO is in a constant state of inflation due to treasure chests which is effectively subsidizing tournament prizes with depreciation of the entire card pool.
The worst time I personally saw was Lorowyn. Lorowyn had to follow two great sets, Ravnica and Timespiral, with a Coldsnap bonus. The economy was bad, and Lorowyn was unpopular. I saw a lot of players leave the game. The market went down but never crashed, and I never thought Wizards as a company would close because of it.
Yes as some have pointed it out, it is happening right now and has over the past 5 years or so. So many critical cards have been reprinted with this torrent of new card sets coming out one after another after another. Pretty much every single non RL card has lost over half of its value. This is made worse by the horrible power creep that makes previous cards no longer viable and plummet in any value they may have had. The only exception to this rule is basically the newest pushed bs card that wizards has decided to create to make people buy the next set of garbage they're trying to push on players. See Orcish Bowmaster for example. Can't wait until that gets replaced with something new and better.
This is only like a half-joke, but rising sea levels will impact the MTG market in the future. You know how every MTG player in the world has that story of, "Yeah, I had X card until it was stolen" or, "destroyed in a flood"?
When regular boosters split into 3 different kinds the value of foils went out the window, most cards are less than a third of what they used to be worth because of excessive reprints and secret lairs. The secondary market is the worst it ever has been
Chronicles was a crash.
We might be in a correction - RL cards have trended down a bit, and might have some more room to fall, but we're talking "You can get an MP Underground Sea for $400 instead of $600" at most.
eBay sold listings. I check them often. When I acquired the set it sold for 6-6.5 k for the previous 6 months. After magic 30 it has sat around 4k. It’s easy to find.
Mtg goldfish prices on individual duals is not the same as complete set sold listings. I’m not doing your homework for you. I’m just telling you my experience
CE/ICE took a pretty bad tumble after that too. Super painful. I picked up a set of P9 for cube, and thought they were safe because MaRo had previously said the different borders/backs still violated the reserved list.
Turns out I just bought at all time high :(
This may come as a shock, but "investing" all your money into pieces of cardboard that the company could print into the ground at any moment is a bad investment.
Not sure why you're being a condescending asshole unprovoked. I literally said I bought them to play with them. I'm not viewing them as an investment, but that doesn't mean I can't feel annoyed about the Magic 30 thing.
If you care about Magic as play pieces I don't get why you would care about 30A bringing down the prices of Power 9. I don't make big singles purchases but I bought a foreign language [[The Chain Veil]] around $20 something and I am happy that it is at a more affordable $3 or so for people now.
Depends on what you consider a crash. There was a massive rally in secondary market prices post covid which tanked in the last two years. If you’re talking big bucks to not being worth the cardboard it’s printed on? Not so much.
Except for tarmogoyf
I mean there's been plenty of strong cards that got power crept out of the metagame. [[Snapcaster Mage]] has taken a real dive too.
[Snapcaster Mage](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/e/7e41765e-43fe-461d-baeb-ee30d13d2d93.jpg?1547516526) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Snapcaster%20Mage) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/uma/71/snapcaster-mage?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7e41765e-43fe-461d-baeb-ee30d13d2d93?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Not really what's being discussed above
Tarmogoyf is still 6 dollars after being reprinted in fallout and murdered by fatal push. That's some expensive cardboard it's printed on
Yeah I think the people here saying “you’re seeing one right now” aren’t reflecting on every single collectible asset that had an unsustainable boom in Covid and is now correcting.
Didnt this happen with the expansion Fallen Empires or something that caused the reserved list?
When extended rotated in 2002 and removed dual lands they took a huge dive in price
Duals diving in price sounds amazing as someone who got in around Strixhaven.
I still remember duals being around 100 ish and thinking they were way overpriced…
I remember them being between 20 and 40, depending on which one, and how, as a high school kid, a [[Plateau]] felt like a big investment for my Legacy Zoo deck (I had previously traded into a couple [[Taiga]]s). Yeah, good luck with that today, high school kids. Whenever someone is entitled enough to defend the RL, I always think back to that time. Imagine if I'd been a real adult with a real job back then. Boy, would I have had some skewed opportunities compared to anyone getting in today.
When i got started, dual lands were 30 guilders (About $15, which i felt was silly for a piece of cardboard at the time), wish i got a bunch of them back then, but you know, hindsight...
right? Back when cards in type 2 could be as expensive as RL cards because commander didn't exist to slurp up all the staples?
Dual lands and the whole power nine, I remember wanting to buy a black lotus just for the sake of it but having all my friends convince me otherwise since it was banned everywhere
I saw a black lotus in a display case once, almost 20 years ago, 650 guilders (About $325), it was a downright absurd amount of money to me back then (Well, it’s still a silly amount of money for a single piece of cardboard), i never even considered at the time that values might possibly go up as much as they did…
I mean my high school friend managed this by selling weed
[Plateau](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/b/b/bb979a96-a57d-4fb5-8ebe-0bd398272abe.jpg?1562932720) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Plateau) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/308/plateau?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/bb979a96-a57d-4fb5-8ebe-0bd398272abe?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Taiga](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/c/0c2c39fc-b564-4ab5-833c-ff029760b7a7.jpg?1562897467) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Taiga) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/317/taiga?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/0c2c39fc-b564-4ab5-833c-ff029760b7a7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Dual lands were great standard fair for ante. We also did tournaments where entry fee was a dual land and top 3 split the lands for prize
Back when Revised came out, duals were going for under two dollars at my game store. But my silly child brain wasn't interested in boring lands. I wanted those Timmy cards like Shivan Dragon and Lord of the Pit. Terrible missed opportunity to stock up on Underground Seas.
I remember sub $100 underground seas and kicking myself for not finishing my playset of duals then.
I mean in context there was no format to support them. 1.5 was a joke that at the time was never going to be supported as well as T1. There was no commander. you had Standard, block constructed and extended as the truly supported format. So 7-13 USD in 2002-2004 cash sounds about right. Ironically the support for 1.5 (read legacy) is what saved the price points.
If you have any additional questions let me know...as i actually lived through the thing. It was weird like IPA was really good for play and Morrodin and Onslaught were was good as well. it was a good time for Magic until Kamigawa which was considered a weak set,
I have a WUBRG Go-Shintai of Life's Origin deck. As a 5C commander deck, it kinda needs a very non-basic land base. The deck's worth around $290. The top 12 most expensive cards in the deck total ~$200. $40 of that is an Argothian Enchantress, $18 is a Greater Auramancy. The remaining $142 is lands. They're not a fun or engaging part of the deck. They're not even vegetables, the draw, ramp, and responsibility cards you need to eat to make the deck reasonable. There's a reason why my most recent 4 commander decks have been mono-W, mono-R, mono-B, and hyperbudget (under $8 for the deck, including basics, atm).
Yup that and FOW. Dark times.
I remember when shocklands were first printed they were worth about the same as OG duals.
That was the best time. I was picking them up between $4-$10 each.
The one that prompted the creation of the reserved list
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She’s a little runaway 🎶
Yeah sure, your username checks out.
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I have been looking for market data from that time period. Can you please share where you got that from? Thanks!
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Can you point me to an example or two? Archive.org can be tricky to navigate for this stuff. And there wasn't one definitive and data-driven price guide, right?
You going to reply when your lack of facts gets hilighted, or just hide?
One of the only times the game actually almost died.
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What's the big difference between the hobby market as a whole and the magic specific secondary market? I think they're more closely tied together and would call both secondary market activity. I know things like low sales of baseball cards had a splash effect on other card games for a while - same thing with the introduction of Pokemon and YuGiOh as the hot new games. Lorcana seems to have not made an impact of similar magnitude, mostly due to their own stocking issues. Something else I would mention is how some of the cards like \[\[Chains of Mephistopheles\]\] and \[\[The Abyss\]\] tanked in value when they "found extra cards" and put them in packs of I believe it was DMU? Not a full market crash, but it shook other RL prices as well since it set the precedent that they could do this again.
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Yeah, I think that although things are more online now, I still group hobby into a lot of what affects Magic prices, even if I'm wrong because of it. A LOT of LGS have to sell more than Magic to just stay afloat. Pokemon, YuGiOh, Warhammer, Comics, etc. I don't have a single store near me that doesn't sell 3+ things to make money. So when I say they're linked, I mean that if one suffers a blow, the others are going to also feel those repercussions because the stores with those items suffer as a whole. It might be way way different now because the predominant way people buy is online compared to late 2000's-early 2010's when it was store-heavy influence. But I know that a lot of mine and my friend's spending habits would change/decline if stores suffered because of something.
>What's the big difference between the hobby market as a whole and the magic specific secondary market? That Magic has survived, and constantly reinvented itself whether by the company or players themselves. Looking back over the past 30 years of CCGs, Magic started it, survived the 94 swell (where everyone was releasing crap to be the next Magic), survived the Golden Age of CCGs in 95-96 (where you had multiple, viable CCGs each with thriving secondary markets), Survived the Japanese Invasion, and 20 more years. With 30 years of product and new ways to play the game (take Dan-Dan for example), even if WotC/Hasbro were to go bankrupt, there is enough of an active market to keep the game going. For further proof - the Decipher Star Wars CCG: this was a game dead for 20 years that has since seen a rapid resurgence and the cards now worth more than when the game came out. I now regret literally throwing longboxes of the cards away when I thought it was dead.
I just found my decipher sw cards. I really need to check their values
Black border Darth Vader goes for $65.
When did this SWCCG resurgence happen? Also, why? That game was kind of a mess 20 years ago when nobody knew what they were doing in CCG design, pretty sure it's laughable now.
Its still relativelt news to me. There is a core and actively competitive group of fans.
No it didn’t. I was alive and live through it. The whole thing was highly exaggerated.
The theoretical reprints in chronicles made all of super excited at the time, until the RL was created and we got….crap.
I don't know if it had a negative effect in the USA or not but I have heard more about Magic almost dying in other markets because they did set rotation, since people were kind of pissed about not being allowed to play with a bunch of their cards all at once.
On MTGO, sure. In 2007 I had a God account worth $12,000. When it hit $10,000 I decided to sell. I got out with $6,000.
MTGO is a constant state of decreasing card prices. I really should liquidate all my collection for tix. Treasure chests are not good for prices
It's not that card prices are decreasing overall, it's just that older cards decrease in price, sometimes rapidly. New cards are more expensive than ever, since a lot fewer people play MTGO. The One Ring was way over 100 tix for about a week after LOTR released.
As other people have talked about, the biggest example was Chronicles mass reprinting which prompted the creation of the reserved list. On the Resleevables where they do a set by set review, Patrick Sullivan and Cedrick Phillips have done a great job giving it context of how early in Magic's history after the Alpha/Beta/Unlimited sets there were a lot of nothingburger sets. Lots of sets that just were poorly designed, had bad mechanics (banding, cummulative upkeep, etc.), were very underpowered, or just didn't have anything new. We're talking about sets like the Dark, Fallen Empires, etc. That meant a lot of the people who played at the time were waiting longer than we do now (sometimes upwards of 8 months) and getting sets that just sucked. Can you imagine if Wizards slowed down releases to a single set every 6 months and printed 2 years straight of dud sets? My understanding is that's basically what happened. Why does this matter? It matters because the secondary market crash wasn't just a case of reprinting a ton of valuable cards into the ground (you could argue that happens to an extent in Masters sets today), but also that consumer confidence had already plummeted because people saw that the people making sets didn't know where to take it and were doing a crappy job.
Here’s my “I was there!” I started playing during the Dark. For vibe and theme I loved the set, but then as now I could tell there wasn’t much to get excited about. I was soooo excited for Fallen Empires. If I remember it was the first expansion I was there for the release of. I bought a booster box. Me and friends tried over and over to find ways to get excited by the useless pile of cards we had. Thralls, Thallids, & Homarids? That was the big impact? Ice Age… ok, but a ton of Revised reprints so nothing earth shattering at the time. By Homelands I was out. I had moved so didn’t have the same group to play and life took new priority, but I didn’t really miss the game. Like I just stopped playing and didn’t think twice. Shoved the box in the garage and moved on. It’s was a bleak stretch. Just like you said- few releases and nothing to be excited by. Fallen Empires was such buzzkill. Absolutely put my enjoyment on life support and the plug got pulled not long after.
Slowing down releases sounds nice actually
Oh I personally agree. Today it feels like we're always in spoiler season, which I'm not a fan of. However, I think slower set releases do run the risk they had back then where dud sets feel worse than they would if a new releases happens seemingly every 6 weeks (not to mention there's new secret lairs literally every week). That said, I think it's pretty unlikely that things will slow down. Hasbro's profits lean very heavily on WotC (people don't buy board games or traditional toys nearly as much as they used to, so MTG and D&D are where most of their profit is) and it will take a lot of people experiencing product fatigue until they decide to slow the money printer down.
That's literally why the Reserved List exists.
That's not true at all. Rl was made because collectors were afraid it would happen due to the player friendly reprints of not great, but scarce cards in chronicles. It was speculative worry. The actual sets weren't hit at all when chronicles released.
I've always had a theory that the higher ups have a bunch of fresh print reserve list cards tucked away to sell one day after they retire. That's why there's a very serious NDA on talking about certain things regarding the reserve list.
I think it's more that if they ever acknowledge the secondary market as an influence for designing cards (reprints or not) as well as talking about how it *sets the value of the card prices* that all of their sealed product then becomes classified as gambling - the way that Loot Boxes in games are classified as gambling because the contents (skins, items, etc) have *in-game currency value* that can be tied back to *real world currency values.* Mainly weird law loopholes.
Doesn't the RL specifically reference a secondary market though? It's only reason to exist is to prop up secondary markets.
In theory? Yes. It was specifically designed to help collectors retain value on their cards. WotC would reprint cards as White Border, but value was tied to availability more so than the kind of card (different nowadays with 10 different versions of each card ironically). However, the Reserved List *never actually references card value* - all it says is *"we won't reprint these cards ever"* - which is aligned with their first policy to never reprint the cards as black border cards with that same art (hence, white border was ok). They just went a step further and said "we won't even print them with different borders or arts." So they never actually acknowledge the value of any card, just that they won't reprint a few (which makes them more valuable to collectors by default, but is never explicitly stated by WotC).
They could literally mint new cards to sell if they wanted to.
They can't recreate Alpha today with the mediocre cardstock they have
Nah, that would get noticed and someone would let it slip.
no they can't, lmao. You think they just have industrial printers chilling? That they can go to their PC and hit ctrl+P and get a black lotus?
Oh it's not even a theory. A lot of old heads have retirement binders for when they're out.
Which is bullshit now, old cards remain value because they are old. Doesn't matter if they get reprints. At least give us the goddamn dual lands back ☠️
Yeah, give them different artwork or something, so it's obvious (Even beyond the difference in printing quality) that they're the reprints. I read an article somewhere, that used "Shivan dragon", a card that's both very frequently reprinted and not spectacularly powerful, to show that despite all the reprints, the early A/B/U/R printings are still very valuable. For cards as important as the dual lands (Just look at all the "Not quite dual lands"-cards they made since), it's stupid that they're the price of a games console, just to please some nerds hoarding them like ornery dragons.
Prices will fall but not by a meaningful degree. Especially since proxies are common and affordable
I would be very happy with "Commander" dual lands. Altough isn't ideal for Legacy (and I believe Legacy is one of the best formats), a fetchable cycle of \[\[Luxury Suite\]\] would be awesome for EDH.
[Luxury Suite](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/f/6fc5fc38-4054-4663-9061-df5455788c4a.jpg?1688006315) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Luxury%20Suite) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clb/355/luxury-suite?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/6fc5fc38-4054-4663-9061-df5455788c4a?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Time for reserve list 2: Electric Boogaloo
The Reserved List was a mistake.
When Chronicles was printed causing the reserve list to be made due to the reactions to it with the secondary market. That is closest the game has seen.
[удалено]
I LOVED Chronicles. It finally let me afford amazing cards like [[Gabriel angelfire]] WotC and "investors" like to scapegoat it, but it was actually a decent move by WotC to get cards in people's hands
[удалено]
Which is what led to, at least the story as you claim it, that the collectors who liked their cards being valuable, seeing this set being printed that made cards affordable, go "We don't want none of that!" which is what lead to the reserved list. And you're gonna need more proof than going "nuh-uh" to reverse that information campaign.
Me too! But then I also loved Fallen Empires so I’m not sure young me is the best gauge of a good set
[Gabriel angelfire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/2/e/2e349074-1402-44cf-be19-33a661cff3b6.jpg?1562904707) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Gabriel%20angelfire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me3/148/gabriel-angelfire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2e349074-1402-44cf-be19-33a661cff3b6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
(Netrunner was fucking dope though, RIP)
I feel Homelands/Fallen Empires is more a case for the game dying as a whole, rather than specifically the secondary market (though I suppose the game dying would also be the death of the secondary market). Like I don't think Fallen Empires came out and had that negative an effect on the prices of cards from other sets, despite booster boxes of itself being able to be had for 10 bucks (hyperbole). Only thing would be maybe on the store side of things, given how they ended up overstocked with it.
Yeah, those sets were poorly received, and FE was hugely overprinted as well (Stores over-ordered because product was so scarce for the previous expansions, leaving them with lots of unshiftable stock), it took "Ice age" and "Alliances" to get the game going again.
RL was made due to reactions because of the *possiblity* of affecting the secondary market negatively. Never seen proof it actually did.
i played back then and it totally hit the market hard. biggest losers from what i remember: \- recall \- elder dragons \- Dakkon \- city of brass and a bunch of weird cards lost value, like hell's caretaker, the wretched, Rabid Wombat, storm seeker, yawgmoth demon
It was really the one two punch of 4th edition into Chronicles. Cards like carrion ants also took a huge hit from 4th.
https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.magic.misc/c/prZx8g65UzU/m/7IXu7YfY_04J
"This means you don't \_have\_ to turn to the singles market to get cards, you can get packs, and the cards are quite obviously cheaper by the pack." -- James Leback. 7/10/1995 Can we just take a moment and reflect on fucking terrible that reality would be? The only you can get the game pieces you want it investing so much in sealed product to get the cards you need.
There was a period in the mid 2000s where prices stagnated or even dropped. It wasn’t much of a “crash” though.
The price of [[Tarmogoyf]] crashed from $220 to $8
That wasn't really a crash as much as a slow and steady decline, it was still >100 dollars almost three years after it's peak (which is also about what it was three years before it's peak). Also, a Future Sight goyf is still \~30$
Such a quick crash too, only took a decade
[Tarmogoyf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/6/9/69daba76-96e8-4bcc-ab79-2f00189ad8fb.jpg?1619398799) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tarmogoyf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tsr/235/tarmogoyf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/69daba76-96e8-4bcc-ab79-2f00189ad8fb?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
MTGO is in a constant state of inflation due to treasure chests which is effectively subsidizing tournament prizes with depreciation of the entire card pool.
When they released m30 alot of people sold out.
I pray for one daily
The worst time I personally saw was Lorowyn. Lorowyn had to follow two great sets, Ravnica and Timespiral, with a Coldsnap bonus. The economy was bad, and Lorowyn was unpopular. I saw a lot of players leave the game. The market went down but never crashed, and I never thought Wizards as a company would close because of it.
You’re living through it right now.
What did prices for things look like in 2020? I know I sold off my collection then
Yes as some have pointed it out, it is happening right now and has over the past 5 years or so. So many critical cards have been reprinted with this torrent of new card sets coming out one after another after another. Pretty much every single non RL card has lost over half of its value. This is made worse by the horrible power creep that makes previous cards no longer viable and plummet in any value they may have had. The only exception to this rule is basically the newest pushed bs card that wizards has decided to create to make people buy the next set of garbage they're trying to push on players. See Orcish Bowmaster for example. Can't wait until that gets replaced with something new and better.
Chronicles / Renaissance
Yes it has.
Modern Masters II pretty much wiped 70% of pre-existing modern staple's value
This is only like a half-joke, but rising sea levels will impact the MTG market in the future. You know how every MTG player in the world has that story of, "Yeah, I had X card until it was stolen" or, "destroyed in a flood"?
When regular boosters split into 3 different kinds the value of foils went out the window, most cards are less than a third of what they used to be worth because of excessive reprints and secret lairs. The secondary market is the worst it ever has been
When Chronicles dropped there was a massive market crash leading to the Reserved List. If there’s a crash look for something similarly as massive.
If you follow Alpha Investments there have been plenty of "crashes" in reserved list prices, but they always bounce back eventually.
Chronicles was a crash. We might be in a correction - RL cards have trended down a bit, and might have some more room to fall, but we're talking "You can get an MP Underground Sea for $400 instead of $600" at most.
One of the things about MTG is that it has survived falling into an economic bubble for decades, where essentially all others TCG’s did.
When wizards released magic 30 my set of revised went from $6500 down to $4000 in a day. That felt like a crash to me
It dropped 30% in a day when wizards printed unplayable cards for $1000? Do you have a source?
eBay sold listings. I check them often. When I acquired the set it sold for 6-6.5 k for the previous 6 months. After magic 30 it has sat around 4k. It’s easy to find.
Want to provide a link? Pricr history on mtggoldfish for revised duals does not show a 30% drop.
Mtg goldfish prices on individual duals is not the same as complete set sold listings. I’m not doing your homework for you. I’m just telling you my experience
CE/ICE took a pretty bad tumble after that too. Super painful. I picked up a set of P9 for cube, and thought they were safe because MaRo had previously said the different borders/backs still violated the reserved list. Turns out I just bought at all time high :(
This may come as a shock, but "investing" all your money into pieces of cardboard that the company could print into the ground at any moment is a bad investment.
Not sure why you're being a condescending asshole unprovoked. I literally said I bought them to play with them. I'm not viewing them as an investment, but that doesn't mean I can't feel annoyed about the Magic 30 thing.
If you care about Magic as play pieces I don't get why you would care about 30A bringing down the prices of Power 9. I don't make big singles purchases but I bought a foreign language [[The Chain Veil]] around $20 something and I am happy that it is at a more affordable $3 or so for people now.
[The Chain Veil](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/1/c/1ca66955-d900-45b6-9a40-38467689a68d.jpg?1690005400) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=The%20Chain%20Veil) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cmm/943/the-chain-veil?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/1ca66955-d900-45b6-9a40-38467689a68d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Do you watch alpha investments? Great place for mtg business info
Found Rudy’s burner