Vintage Buyouts
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@Smmenen this is also meant to reply to R Bartlett too, but I'm on my cell which makes things tedious and difficult at times.
Anyway...
I don't mean to suggest that all magic cards should be cheap. I think that would be detrimental to the game. The profits to be made from MTG are part of what has kept it going so long.
My point about proxies and such is that there ARE folks who aren't interested in Vintage because they can't own All the cards and because they want a format that provides a path to the pro tour.
Personally I do not care about the pro tour, or grand Prix' for that matter. I also love Vintage enough to play it even though I'll likely never own the power nine in paper. I have a kid, and unless I had enough money saved up to pay for his college tuition in full, there's no way I could justify buying power. I wish I could, but I'm not going to be jealous of those who were able to obtain what they want.
I do wish the reserve list would go, but I also don't want people's collections to be worthless. I'd only be happy if a small amount of the vintage card pool was reprinted (in small numbers).Check out my articles on www.MTGGoldfish.com - Follow me on Twitter @josephfiorinijr - Islandswamp on Magic Online - Support more content @ https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4271290
I was a hand grenade that never stopped exploding...
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@Islandswamp This is a tricky question. How many investment is reasonable to have a hobby like paper magic? It seems that MTGO has been accepted as a reasonable investment (how much does it cost? 1 grand? maybe 2 with some extras?). There are a limited amount of cards, but that amount is enough for the players wanting to be in, and allowing some free cards to move between traders so prices don't go mad.
Playing paper magic works pretty differently. There is a limited amount of cards, specially old ones, and the amount is not enough for players wanting to play vintage. Add capitalism in the middle and you have some money-thirsty people who want to make business with other people's hobby. There have been traders for years, but traders were "happy" buying cards at 80%-90% of the value and selling them for the real price. Now we have people that buy cards for 100-120% of the value and want to sell them for 200% or 300%. If they buy all existences of moat, you can only buy moat from them, or from some friend (supposing that friend does not prefer to sell the card for 120% of its old value to that new investor). Otherwise, those people are going to control the market and any new Moat (or similar card) with a reasonable price will disappear again. I don't like this, but the system allows it, so let's hope wizards/big shops do something, or we can be playing the last Vintage era as we know it.
About the "I want to play paper vintage but not buying into paper vintage". Is understandable, but does not have an easy solution. Magic requires cards to play, and if you don't own the cards, it cannot be considered an official tournament. There are other expensive hobbies, I wish vintage was not so expensive (I'm in for reprints although I own the P9), but I'm not sure proxies are the solution. Lots of reprints can raise a great problem with current collectors/owners, and little reprints don't solve prices (as modern masters have shown). I wish there was a good solution but I cannot find any
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@Islandswamp said:
@Smmenen this is also meant to reply to R Bartlett too, but I'm on my cell which makes things tedious and difficult at times.
Anyway...
I don't mean to suggest that all magic cards should be cheap. I think that would be detrimental to the game. The profits to be made from MTG are part of what has kept it going so long.Sure, but as long as print runs and good decks come and go, there will be enough fluctuation in card prices for stores and speculators to do fine. Look at all the standard cards that boom and bust; Jace, Vryn's Prodigy, for example. People made money off that. (And lost it!)
I do agree that having cards that reach the hundreds of dollars is a Bad Thing. I agree that people are being driven to playtest cards, and I understand and respect that that (as long as they're not counterfeits).
But the Reserve List is not the culprit here. It's big, fat, red herring. Wizards could reprint cards that challenge or replace every card on that list tomorrow if they chose to do so. They do not because they are concerned those cards would have a bad effect on the game. Even so, we see them print competition ALL THE TIME.
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Countermagic. Mana Drain and Force of Will have no had a lock on your first 8 counterspell slots for years. Flusterstorm, Mental Mistep, Spell Pierce, etc., are all situationally better.
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Old hate cards keep getting reprinted, often improved. Sphere becomes Golem. Thorn becomes Thalia. Rod becomes Silence. Moat becomes Magus of the Moat (or Peacekeeper).
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They try to reprint "safe" versions of the Power Nine all the darn time. Reprinting some form of Time Twister, Ancestrall Recall, and Time Walk is one of WotC's favorite hobbies. Occasionally the make one that is actually a worthy successor (Treasure Cruise!)
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They print cards that enable new archetypes that compete with the old guard commonly, too. Eye of Ugin and Eldrazi Temple are to Eldrazi what Mishra's Workshop is to artifacts. Cavern of Souls specifically enables tribal strategies. And, each of these are to some level exclusive with each other. As anyone watching the VSL can see, jamming Workshop AND Eldrazi into the same deck causes tension with your mana base forcing you to make decisions or just being greedy and losing because you can't cast your TKS.
There's literally nothing stopping them from printing riffs on the Revised Duals or other Vintage staples that are situationally better or worse -- except power level concerns, I suppose. You could easily print these in a Commander or other eternal-only supplementary set:
Strange Dual Land
Forest Island
When this enters the battlefield, each player Scrys 1.Strange Mox Jet
Artifact
T: Add one black mana to your mana pool.
When this enters the battlefield, each player may draw a card. If he or she does, that player then discards a card.Neither of these offend the Reserve List in any way, and both are genuine competition for the originals depending on the deck. ("But wait, they'll just get played along side the originals!") Well, of course they will. But, how much space do we really have left in our decks as it is? People jam 5 moxen even when some are off-color. Artifact hate makes it risky to make your entire mana base moxen. Those kind of considerations are for Design and Development to hammer out.
The point is, if you want more Vintage cards, just lobby Wizards to print new ones. THERE IS NOTHING SACRED ABOUT THE CARDS ON THE RESERVE LIST.
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Good post and I agree with some of it, but disagree with other parts. I agree that varied print runs with enough time between them will allow enough fluctuation that speculators and players can make their money.
I disagree that having cards reach the hundreds of dollars is a bad thing. Having them reach that price because some schmuck corners the market and artificially manipulates the price is a bad thing. Having them reach that because of natural supply/demand is just a thing - neither good nor bad. It just is the result of reality. I have no problem with that. And I agree that the culprit is not the reserve list. The culprit is the person who does the buy out and artificial price inflation. However he is able to do that in large part, due to the reserve list. With the reserve list these buyouts are calculated risks with a low chance for backfiring as long as the person doing them is smart in their buyout choice. Without the reserve list its a much riskier gamble. Now the person who spends $10k on moats hoping to make $16 back over the course of say 1 to 1 1/2 years has to contend with the next eternal or vintage masters maybe having a moat in it.
And yes, Wizards could reprint cards that challenge the functionality of every card on the reserve list. But that only deals with getting cards to fill decks. There are also collectors out there. Buying a mindbreak trap doesn't mean a thing when you are a Mana Drain short of a complete Legends set. As for the functional reprints, while they do provide a way to replicate the effect and make a deck work, let's face it, which would you rather play: "strange mox jet" or "mox jet"?
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@Khahan said:
I disagree that having cards reach the hundreds of dollars is a bad thing. Having them reach that price because some schmuck corners the market and artificially manipulates the price is a bad thing. Having them reach that because of natural supply/demand is just a thing - neither good nor bad.
That's a very tricky distinction to make, though. When a card spikes, it's not as if some dark cabal of speculators is all agreeing they are going to hold players for ransom and only trickle out a single Moat at a time to ensure their chosen price sticks. Things are not THAT bad. (Yet?) Instead, when a card is bought out and relisted at a bajillion dollars, players are presented with the choice to buy it, or not. If it's too high, the price will steadily decline as retailers try to move inventory and TCG sellers compete with each other (See: Mindslicer, Thought Lash, etc).
In other words, a spike does not make a price high on its own. It's just a way of forcing the market to tell you the maximum price a card could possibly be at this time.
So, when you say that "market forces" are neutral but speculators are bad, you end up in this muddy area. Speculators will say that the market bears the new price, so it's all the market and they're blameless.
@Khahan said:
And yes, Wizards could reprint cards that challenge the functionality of every card on the reserve list. But that only deals with getting cards to fill decks. There are also collectors out there. Buying a mindbreak trap doesn't mean a thing when you are a Mana Drain short of a complete Legends set.
Totally, but I think we would all agree that if collectors want to get old an expensive cards because they are old and expensive, that's fine and good. High prices only become a problem if they interfere with the format's ability to grow and get new players. How often does Vintage fire on FNM? How often do you want it to? That's the point for us players.
@Khahan said:
As for the functional reprints, while they do provide a way to replicate the effect and make a deck work, let's face it, which would you rather play: "strange mox jet" or "mox jet"?
If WotC does their job properly, that question would depend on the deck! Right now, do you want to play Mana Drain, Mental Misstep, Red Elemental Blast, Force of Will, Mindbreak Trap, or Flusterstorm, and in what proportions There's not a clear right answer in a vacuum because the cards are each better or worse in different situations. THATS what WOTC can do, and is doing, to help eternal.
Using the specific "Strange Mox Jet" example, you could make a strong argument that such a card is actually superior to Mox Jet if your deck wants to put a card in the graveyard right away. Hell, Land+Strange Mox+Animate Dead instantly activates Dragon or puts Grislebrand into play. BOOM new competitive archetype.
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@MaximumCDawg If you reprint arguably better versions of all the P9, the format degenerates into garbage. I'm glad WOTC is not foolish enough to do this. Treasure Cruise was a clear mistake for eternal formats, and vintage is worse because of it. Your strange power is much worse than that. 10 moxen and 2 black lotus, some of which have upsides, would not be a format worth playing.
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@diophan Sure, there are balance issues in the example I suggested, but I'm not Wizards R&D. The principal is solid: finding ways to compete with rather than reprint the old cards.
And, it's what WotC is actually doing.
I understand the sentiment that anything you do that truly competes with Power ends up just getting played alongside Power. And, paradoxically, while we all love and respect the Power 9 and their place in Vintage, lots of people seem to think that having MORE of them would be a disaster. (See: Menedian's comments on the Drain and in his first podcast about removing errata from Lotus Vale).
But I don't see how this is an insurmountable problem. Perhaps its easier to find solutions for dual lands or Moat or whatever than the P9. People wouldn't play 8 Underground Seas and no basics as long as Wasteland exists. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to do for every card, power or not.
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Similar to the idea I had posted earlier, how would people feel if Wizards instead tied reprints to the winners or top finishers of the Vintage and Legacy championships? This would be similar to the world championship decks they put out years ago. The cards would be gold bordered. Ideally they would have the same backs as standard cards, but as long as they weren't super drastic as to cause problem with opaque sleeves, they could alter the back slightly to reduce counterfeiting. They could use the new borders and art to stop counterfeiting as well.
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It can put lots of copies of playtest cards out there.
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they would be quality prints so no one can complain about misunderstanding what the sharpie meant on a card
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It would not affect the RL as they are not Wotc tournament legal.
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It would allow for great snapshots of the popular decks each year.
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These decks would give interested players a premade deck for them to try out. You could just hand a person a prebuilt Stax, Gush or Dredge deck to try out. I would buy them just to create a decent gauntlet for testing.
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@Dstinct I'm all for it, but it doesn't actually solve the problem.
We can get good quality playtest cards NOW. This is how paper Vintage limps along in the real world aready! If WotC were to offer them, I'd happily urge people to buy them to keep funding the people who actually make the game.
But, this wouldn't solve the problem of people being priced out sanctioned tournaments.
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@Smmenen said:
http://kotaku.com/infamous-price-gouger-martin-shkreli-wants-to-collect-r-1783278015
Ugh
This, I want more of this. I want all the deplorable behavior that high prices cause to be brought out were the public can see how bad they make Wizards/Hasbro look.
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These are interesting times. I am not sure if we are in a bubble or not, but I remember one thing that dotcom, the real estate market, and Magic all have in common:
When everyone is saying "buy now, you can't lose, the prices always go up," I start to get scared. And collectibles as a whole have had ridiculous rates of growth over the last ten years (comics, Star Wars, magic, toys)
There are two major differences though,
1.) Reserve List Magic is a fixed supply. Though none of us know how rare cards truly are once people stop hoarding them.
2.) Non-players really haven't drifted into the Magic investment scene yet. (I.e., your uncle isn't asking you to invest his money in magic)We've all seen some pretty expensive stuff go up for sale recently. Is the ride over or just beginning?
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@benjamin_berry said:
@Smmenen said:
http://kotaku.com/infamous-price-gouger-martin-shkreli-wants-to-collect-r-1783278015
Ugh
This, I want more of this. I want all the deplorable behavior that high prices cause to be brought out were the public can see how bad they make Wizards/Hasbro look.
It's not going to make wotc change the reserve list.
It's just going to cause more hysteria and encourage more price gouging.
Shkreli is a troll who feeds off attention and everyone gave him exactly what he wanted.
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@benjamin_berry said:
@Smmenen said:
http://kotaku.com/infamous-price-gouger-martin-shkreli-wants-to-collect-r-1783278015
Ugh
This, I want more of this. I want all the deplorable behavior that high prices cause to be brought out were the public can see how bad they make Wizards/Hasbro look.
When people who are not part of the Magic community decide to start putting Real World Money into Magic as a purely investment vehicle... we may be seeing the beginning of the final surge and tipping point that forces something to give.
That thing will not be the Reserve List, though.
It could be better reprints. It could be new policies about buyouts agreed to by WotC and stores. But, it's not gonna be the Reserve List.
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Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli 5h5 hours ago
At 7 black lotus as of tonight. Also have 5x Mox. I enjoy this game!Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli 7h7 hours ago
I will get my celebrity friends, including @kanyewest and @realDonaldTrump into Magic. Mark my words--the next tournament will be special. -
@Islandswamp I echo your sentiments about the Pro Tour and GPs. To this day I have not played in a single GP main event. Like you, I also have a young child (22 months).
I feel fortunate to have started playing paper vintage a long time ago, and hence obtained multiple sets of power for a lot less than they are now. Every now and then I joke, that if my child ends up having an interest in Magic, as they grow up, there is a set of power waiting for them. A six year old playing sanctioned paper vintage...
Every now and then, I ask myself whether I would (or could) get into paper vintage now starting from scratch. My answer, is unfortunately, no. The primary inhibitor would be cost. I would then lump this into the bag of activities that I would like to do, but feel unable to justify the cost
One of the great things about Magic is its multi-faceted nature. A person's Magic experience can be highly tailored: players, formats, collectors, financiers, etc. People are free to interact with it as desired. There are relationships between the experiences, but it is relatively loose.
When I ask myself, "do I want cards to be expense?" My answer is no. "Do I care that they are expensive?" Again no. I cannot see myself lobbying one Magic experience over another.
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@desolutionist said:
Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli 5h5 hours ago
At 7 black lotus as of tonight. Also have 5x Mox. I enjoy this game!Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli 7h7 hours ago
I will get my celebrity friends, including @kanyewest and @realDonaldTrump into Magic. Mark my words--the next tournament will be special.I'm really concerned about "the next tournament," guys. Donald Trump is going to take some time off of his campaign trail to play Magic Cards.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE MARKET
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@MaximumCDawg said:
@desolutionist said:
Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli 5h5 hours ago
At 7 black lotus as of tonight. Also have 5x Mox. I enjoy this game!Martin Shkreli @MartinShkreli 7h7 hours ago
I will get my celebrity friends, including @kanyewest and @realDonaldTrump into Magic. Mark my words--the next tournament will be special.I'm really concerned about "the next tournament," guys. Donald Trump is going to take some time off of his campaign trail to play Magic Cards.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE MARKET
This guys troll game is strong. Its kind of funny to hear him crowing about his alleged 7 lotuses.
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Someone that spends $2m on wu-tang album can probably afford to drop 40k on a few lotuses.
He mentioned he's looking to spend $500k in the reddit thread.
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I feel like if Shkreli is buying all graded power, this really has zero effect on the market. It's not like those cards were getting played with anyway...
