MTG Salvation

i think "and applications exist in standard" is the key part. right now i dont see how that is possible. the initial price will probably be pretty high as people scramble to get their copies, but i cant see it staying that way unless the card starts seeing play in standard decks.

Quote from idSurge »

If rare, and applications exist in Standard, considering the other formats hyping it I don't see how it stays under 10. Remember how everyone said Push would be 2 bucks.

Since Grafdigger's Cage cannot get a price tag above $10 during the Standard period, I hardly believe Damping Sphere can achieve this price tag

Regarding Push, people wanna buy it with $2 is just a joke to me. I pre-order two playsets with $4 each. And I have never seen the price drops below $4.

Quote from idSurge »

As long as people keep showing up (and they do to Modern) there is no issue in Wizards eyes. These cards have all spiked because people are buying them to play the decks.

Right, the cards spiked because people need them for decks and wizards hasn't reprinted them. They are showing that they are very worried about their own future right now and are playing it super conservative on reprints. To them, these expensive tarmogoyfs and possibly 100 dollar snapcasters are what will keep them alive. This is also the first time where I've seen wizards intentionally pack in a lot of value into a preconstructed standard product and engineered the product to make sure people still have to buy cards from the latest sets. Some of which are 30 dollars and up. Masters products and the challenger decks are very cheap to make compared to other sets and while the company has an interest in making as much money as possible, this usually has been more about releasing things like Conspiracy during the summer and the hit and miss duel decks in between.

I guess you could say I'm scrounging around wizards various communications lanes to see if I can figure out more on what is going on specifically at wizards of the coast with some of these sets. This article hasn't helped my nerves much...
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/play-design/designing-masters-25-2018-03-16

is your opinion on what is going on based on financial reports? id be genuinely interested to see what the breakdown is of their revenue sources. id assume their main source would be new sets because thats where they spend the bulk of their resources for development and production. but maybe these masters sets are the only thing keeping them alive.

the whole reprint equity idea is definitely plausible. its also plausible that they are trying to strangle the modern format so people move back to standard. equally likely is that the wizards higher ups are demons that feed off the sadness of modern players.

What, explicitly, is your concern with the article?

It's exactly what I would expect.

Draft focus? Check.
Reprints for multiple formats? Check.
The feels? Check.

This is no different from MM17 just it's diluted by cards for inferior formats, that will NEVER be accessible because of the reserve list.

Modern is the GP this weekend, I would put money down against the idea of Modern being 'strangled'...

Quote from tronix »

is your opinion on what is going on based on financial reports? id be genuinely interested to see what the breakdown is of their revenue sources. id assume their main source would be new sets because thats where they spend the bulk of their resources for development and production. but maybe these masters sets are the only thing keeping them alive.

the whole reprint equity idea is definitely plausible. its also plausible that they are trying to strangle the modern format so people move back to standard. equally likely is that the wizards higher ups are demons that feed off the sadness of modern players.

I've not been following anything specifically for Wizards of the Coast, but I have been following Hasbro and their struggle over the last year. The trouble I'm having with this entire thing, is that it really looks like Hasbro is pushing wizards of the coast to do things as part of a greater effort to keep their shareholders satisfied. The fact that Iconic Masters did so horribly in the midst of one of the worst standard seasons in ages was bad enough. The fact the print run got cut short a year early for HOU and the challenger decks appeared...

https://www.thestreet.com/story/14523678/1/hasbro-is-now-in-a-downtrend.html.

Is Hasbro going to fold under this? No, the toy manufacturers are a proven winner in the long run and will continue to be in the future. The bigger question is what the company is going to do to bounce back. With Toys R'Us going under and the market looking like it is going increasingly towards an online retailer business, that puts WoTC and their paper card game as a not so desirable asset, which is why they are probably pushing like a bat out of hell for Magic Arena. Also the internal work environment sounds very much like Konami, which makes it hard to really have positive change internally and to resolve a lot of the issues they are having.

Finally, without going completely sensationalist again, the masters 25 article I mentioned is showing a strong disconnect between the advertising and marketing vs the actual set design. This could be a lot of things from poor communication to bad political climate getting in the way of crafting the right product for the right audience.

I mean, we're in a temporary price spike for modern and it's going to settle down in a couple of months, but the kinds of stuff going elsewhere has an impact on the format prices that goes beyond that typical pattern.

fair enough. i think its completely acceptable to be worried about the future of MtG. wizards has been trying to sustain themselves in an industry that has all but disappeared, and is now getting more competition from substitute products. add to this that their flagship product has been under heavy criticism, and ill agree that things look a little grim.

ultimately i fear that wizards attempts to carve their own space on the digital front with Arena will be fruitless. even with building a new development team from the ground up they simply dont have the background to trade punches with industry monsters like blizzard/hearthstone.

but like i said, im willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. they are doing some course correcting, but if we start labeling everything we perceive to be a mistake as the death knell of the game then we do nothing but further erode customer confidence.

At some point, you have to concede your time has passed, and rather than trying to convert the world, you consolidate and aim for retention.

You aim for headlines in 20 years like 'How A Physical Game Survived In A Digital Age'.

You do it with MM17, not IMA and A25.

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from javert »

I felt like trying some Scapeshift and then looked at the card price I traded those back in the day when Valakut was banned and partly because it seemed way too slow for the format. Too bad, winning games on the spot was the nuts and the floating fish art is godlike.

A Masters series reprint for the card looks quite likely but if it's mythic then the price is likely to stay.

I'm genuinely concerned about the future of the game right now as it stands. The problem I keep seeing year after year is that the company actively promotes modern, but just wants to use it for cash flow now and not really reprint the cards to get people playing the format. The fact they are switching to themes in masters sets suggests (to me at least) that they want to stop supporting modern as a format and just reprint high value cards where-ever they show up, regardless of the market demands.

Oy vey, cut it out with the theatrics and doom & gloom garbage. How the **** would that benefit WotC in the long-term? It literally makes no difference one way or the other from a manufacturing standpoint; a $200 piece of cardboard costs the same to produce as a $0.25 piece of cardboard and the idea of intentionally withdrawing support for Modern in order to reprint "high value cards" is utter nonsense. From a business standpoint, it's an even worse idea; those "high value reprints" won't be worth much if there's no format in which to play them. If you just now realized that Hasbro makes decisions based in some part on what's best for their shareholders, then I have some big news for you in regards to the vast majority of publicly traded companies in the U.S. Did you think it was Maro who just sitting around the office one day and thought, "Wow, we should really re-consider the way we distribute premium products and start selling the ***** at Walmart"? While hilarious to imagine, it's not the case. Hasbro doesn't know a Bogle from an elbow, but they sure as ***** know their target goals for the 2018 fiscal year. Players like Modern. The format is profitable. However they decide to do it, WotC will reprint cards in order to keep those two statements true.

Getting back on topic, how much do y'all think the filter lands drop before bottoming out and stabilizing? Picked up my pre-order earlier in the day and hung out for a bit while players were cracking packs and trading in cards; my LGS apparently wants nothing to do with filters for at least another week or so. I can see why considering the set came out just yesterday, but I'd be surprised if any of them dipped down below ~$7. I'm eager to see if/how it affects the price of their expedition counterparts; they were already pretty reasonably priced prior to the cycle being spoiled.

Top end Masterpieces are taking off. The time to buy is almost over, I think.

Quote from Joban8 »

Quote from Colt47 »

Quote from javert »

I felt like trying some Scapeshift and then looked at the card price I traded those back in the day when Valakut was banned and partly because it seemed way too slow for the format. Too bad, winning games on the spot was the nuts and the floating fish art is godlike.

A Masters series reprint for the card looks quite likely but if it's mythic then the price is likely to stay.

I'm genuinely concerned about the future of the game right now as it stands. The problem I keep seeing year after year is that the company actively promotes modern, but just wants to use it for cash flow now and not really reprint the cards to get people playing the format. The fact they are switching to themes in masters sets suggests (to me at least) that they want to stop supporting modern as a format and just reprint high value cards where-ever they show up, regardless of the market demands.

Oy vey, cut it out with the theatrics and doom & gloom garbage. How the **** would that benefit WotC in the long-term? It literally makes no difference one way or the other from a manufacturing standpoint; a $200 piece of cardboard costs the same to produce as a $0.25 piece of cardboard and the idea of intentionally withdrawing support for Modern in order to reprint "high value cards" is utter nonsense. From a business standpoint, it's an even worse idea; those "high value reprints" won't be worth much if there's no format in which to play them. If you just now realized that Hasbro makes decisions based in some part on what's best for their shareholders, then I have some big news for you in regards to the vast majority of publicly traded companies in the U.S. Did you think it was Maro who just sitting around the office one day and thought, "Wow, we should really re-consider the way we distribute premium products and start selling the ***** at Walmart"? While hilarious to imagine, it's not the case. Hasbro doesn't know a Bogle from an elbow, but they sure as ***** know their target goals for the 2018 fiscal year. Players like Modern. The format is profitable. However they decide to do it, WotC will reprint cards in order to keep those two statements true.

Getting back on topic, how much do y'all think the filter lands drop before bottoming out and stabilizing? Picked up my pre-order earlier in the day and hung out for a bit while players were cracking packs and trading in cards; my LGS apparently wants nothing to do with filters for at least another week or so. I can see why considering the set came out just yesterday, but I'd be surprised if any of them dipped down below ~$7. I'm eager to see if/how it affects the price of their expedition counterparts; they were already pretty reasonably priced prior to the cycle being spoiled.

Joban, I'm not really sure why you think MaRo is a factor in this at all? What position do you think MaRo has at the company? What do you think Head Designer does? Maybe you want to talk about this in PM? Your post sounds really off base.

Actually, I think an organizational chart would be massively helpful, showing everyone's relationship to everyone else, who reports to who, and who does what, exactly. Where does Forsythe sit in relation to Maro, Hagon, Duke, Stoddard and so on.

Anyone have one?

Quote from Daeyel »

Actually, i think an organizational chart would be massively helpful, showing everyone's relationship to everyone else, who reports to who, and who does what, exactly. Where does Forsythe sit in relation to Maro, Hagon, Duke, Stoddard and so on.

Anyone have one?

At this point I'm starting to feel like I want to make one.

Oh, and their is a bright side to Toys R Us going bottoms up: It does force Hasbro to have to reconsider where they sell their toy line up. I'm hoping that enterprising Local Game Stores take advantage of this situation. Also, I do sort of hope for a more direct line of supply between wizards and small stores so they can offer better prices on boxes to customers. They could easily drop the cost of magic both on the singles and the sealed product across the board, as well as help keep the stores alive, if they made better use of the WPN and sold directly to established gaming locations.

On another note, one of the things I'd like to do someday is make a chart showing the most important cards of modern so that new players can buy into the format more effectively. There's no escaping the paywall, but if someone wants to play the game and only make one purchase at this point without trickle spending like an MMO subscription, I think budgeting out about 1.5k to 2k dollars is the right choice and then just biting the bullet and picking up the key cards. My own cost basis has been low because I personally play mostly with artifacts and modded strategies from standard like spirits, which makes use of kahns fetchlands over the zendikar ones. Unfortunately, there's still been the vexing issue of not being able to play UR or BG.

The key problem with modern is that the core cards are expensive for a reason and while new cards can enter the format, they are almost always supplementary at this point. Wizards also tends to reprint a lot of things people don't actively play a lot or aren't important to the meta at the time of printing, so it can cause over all costs to appear to drop. A good example of this is looking at moderns decline in price across all staples going from 2011 to now. Modern was at it's peak across the board during Oath of the Gatewatch, and then went through just a constant decline since then because wizards reprinted everything at the lower rarities and under-printed the big dollar cards like Liliana of the Veil.

This is why I keep saying they need a vingolf style box set of just the high dollar cards instead of a masters draft set. They are going to print the supplementary uncommons and commons to oblivion and not print enough of the cards that see the lions share of play.

Quote from Daeyel »

Top end Masterpieces are taking off. The time to buy is almost over, I think.

It'd be really nice to be able to open this thread and read stuff like this rather than these exceptionally sensationalized books about the fall of Magic

I'm working on assembling the Masterpiece set. I've had to bite the bullet in the last 36 hours and buy a Polluted Delta and Sol Ring, despite not being ready yet. I'm going to have to wait and see if Mox Opal comes down. If not, Ouch.

I also picked up an Ancient Tomb, I think that's going to be the next one to break $225. I already own Scalding Tarn - not sure why that has not taken off yet. It's a set that has huge potential - potential being met far soon then I had anticipated.

How much potential? I think this set could very easily double in price over the next year. While I have not looked at every card, and need to, supply is rapidly drying up, and a lot of these have less than 10 - 20 copies available on TCGplayer. A couple hundred dollar and you can reset the price point at triple the current price. It is ripe for manipulation, and I think someone or someones are doing just that.

I think some of it is the fact that a lot of modern cards didn't get reprinted, so the prices are adjusting on all the cards at the moment including the foils. If a price of a non-foil gets too close to a foil copy, even an expedition or invention, those expeditions and inventions will increase in cost.

I also think it was correctly identified that if you are looking for 'collector value' those Masterpieces are it. Even if the reprints hit them, those cards will remain desirable.

Looking at TCGPlayer, I noticed that foil A25 Jaces are more expensive than Eternal Masters. I would think that the prices would be lowered on reprints. Is there a reason for this?

Also, I was thinking about picking up a playset of foil Bloodbraids. Do you think they will keep a stable price or will they end up like Snapcasters in the future?

Quote from Darkdeathscythe »

Also, I was thinking about picking up a playset of foil Bloodbraids. Do you think they will keep a stable price or will they end up like Snapcasters in the future?

BBE is an uncommon that has been printed like 6 times, I doubt its price is going to explode. There are a lot of them out there. Very different than a moderate supply Rare only being reprinted at Mythic in a limited set.

I'm starting a database to track Masterpieces. The numbers are alarming. I may need to secure a number of my missing pieces, it looks like quite a few are set to spike Sol Ring/Mox Opal/Polluted Delta style. Got to get in front of that.

yeah the only place i see masterpieces going is up. quite the knockout idea from wotcs part if you ask me. give the hardcore collectors something to sink their teeth into, with limited impact outside of that.

tbh though i think the expeditions and invocations are god awful lookin.

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from Darkdeathscythe »

Also, I was thinking about picking up a playset of foil Bloodbraids. Do you think they will keep a stable price or will they end up like Snapcasters in the future?

BBE is an uncommon that has been printed like 6 times, I doubt its price is going to explode. There are a lot of them out there. Very different than a moderate supply Rare only being reprinted at Mythic in a limited set.

That's much less true with the foils Darkdeathscythe is asking about, though. Especially if we're talking about original printing foils. I'd move on those sooner rather than later personally.

Quote from rogue_LOVE »

Quote from cfusionpm »

Quote from Darkdeathscythe »

Also, I was thinking about picking up a playset of foil Bloodbraids. Do you think they will keep a stable price or will they end up like Snapcasters in the future?

BBE is an uncommon that has been printed like 6 times, I doubt its price is going to explode. There are a lot of them out there. Very different than a moderate supply Rare only being reprinted at Mythic in a limited set.

That's much less true with the foils Darkdeathscythe is asking about, though. Especially if we're talking about original printing foils. I'd move on those sooner rather than later personally.

I don't know about that... Possibly true of the FNM Promo ones, but Alara Reborn foils are fairly plentiful thanks to all-foil packs. And the EMA copies come from a set with a foil in every pack.

I mean, they could always go up... but they could also always be reprinted. I always stand by the idea of if I want them to play, I buy today.

Quote from Colt47 »

[quote from="Joban8 »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/554992-modern-prices-discussion?comment=12972"][quote from="Colt47 »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/554992-modern-prices-discussion?comment=12953"][quote from="javert »" url="/forums/the-game/modern/554992-modern-prices-discussion?comment=12951"]

Joban, I'm not really sure why you think MaRo is a factor in this at all? What position do you think MaRo has at the company? What do you think Head Designer does? Maybe you want to talk about this in PM? Your post sounds really off base.

I don't think MaRo is a factor at all whatsoever when it comes to logistics/top-down decisions; I sarcastically proposed an absurd rhetorical question which was meant to illustrate just that. You said that you're troubled because you think Hasbro is pushing WotC to make decisions that serve the needs of Hasbro shareholders...that's not breaking news or some grand scheme; it's typical of almost any subsidiary operating under the umbrella of a parent company. That's why I've always been reluctant to crucify WotC for many of these unpopular business decisions which are most likely out of their control.

Quote from Darkdeathscythe »

Looking at TCGPlayer, I noticed that foil A25 Jaces are more expensive than Eternal Masters. I would think that the prices would be lowered on reprints. Is there a reason for this?

Also, I was thinking about picking up a playset of foil Bloodbraids. Do you think they will keep a stable price or will they end up like Snapcasters in the future?

In regards to foil JtMS, the only real reason that I can think of for the price discrepancy is card quality. Eternal Masters was the first set where I noticed the notorious curling of the ***** card stock on which the set was printed. All of my bulk is sorted by set and stored the same way yet the only curling I've seen is in sets from EMA onward. I didn't open much IMA, but I haven't noticed the same degree of curling based on the singles and what little bulk I have from the set. The first thing I noticed when cracking open M25 was the smell of the ink, which sounds weird as *****, but leads me to believe that (hopefully) they've fixed the card stock situation. This is all anecdotal of course, but if others have noticed the same thing, then that may account for why M25 foils are more expensive than EMA foils.

Joban, I may talk about MtG strictly here because this is an MTG forum, but the entire TCG industry as a whole is in trouble. Everyone is cutting down their print runs at best, or at worst struggling to even stay alive. The horrible dips in quality on the print runs plus the card equity scheme and draft set favoritism is eating Wizards alive right now, and their inability to take risks is putting them in far more danger than they want to admit. When the most risk they are willing to take in the game is to sell a challenger deck with waning, quickly rotating standard staples to try and jump start the game and release a set like masters 25 where they just did so many cuts for the sake of draft that it made the set almost feel like an insult, they have problems. Plus they are trying to reprint cards that are selling for 75+ dollars on the secondary market using the same kind of process for the cards from Amonket -> Hour of Devastation. The fact I have to leave books on top of these things to get them strait and then have to make sure to do that for my casual standard deck even when the cards are double sleeved is bad.

Might I add, the marsh flats I bought from MM2017, I can actually feel where they are in the deck when shuffling. Doesn't that mean they count as a marked card by competitive play standards? I could cut my deck strait to where a fetchland is because the Marsh Flats I purchased feel different even when they are flat and double sleeved in KMCs. I don't know how to explain it and even if I screen shot it I don't think anyone would notice it. It's more like you just notice the difference in feel. I already took them into my LGS to see if they were counterfit, but they are legitimate cards. I even checked the sleeves to make sure they were the same and from the same pack. Unsleeved the entire deck and tried it, and I could still find my way to the cards.

Do I think MtG is going to die? No, I think it's going to keep living on, but what I'm questioning going forward is what really is the value of a card if the quality is at a point that in certain cases, a very expensive card could be considered marked. Yeah, I think sellers will still try to sell it for whatever price the older version was selling at, but I don't feel comfortable buying anything MM2017 and up right now.