These products have the effect that foils get cheaper.
So to prevent that, they increase the price tag so much, that even with the extra supply, the value doesnt crash completely.
---
But in the end it does increase supply no matter what, so these foils will never keep a proper value, as you simply get too many of them.
What you see of the collectors products in general is that they push a lot more foils and rares/mythics into the system, which devalues anything else.
At this point a lot of alternate art cards that are supposed to be more rare cost the same as the regular version, as you get too many of them.
Full art foils are the actual "rare" in the collectors packs, so they have some value and a complete set of full arts is pretty expensive.
----
Anyway the product is so made-up expensive that the people that actually buy these products are the kind of whales that would buy anything as long as its the most expensive version no matter what.
For my taste it would be tremendously better to have these alternate art cards (including the Drops) in regular booster packs, just rare.
So if someone wants them, they have to crack a lot of product and the value of all of these alternate art cards spreads over to all booster packs.
Also in that case theres only 1 product, normal booster packs, instead of thousands of product that nobody has any view over, and nobody really knows what you get from what product (and for some special cards like Commander products if they are even legal in standard or what format exactly, as the "date" of the card is not enough to know that).
----
This mess can be cleaned up, but WotC has absolutely no interest in doing this cleaning.
They are totally fine with the dirty mess as long as people pay to see the show.
If the packs are more than $15/pack I don't see this set selling too many boxes or packs any time soon. We are in a global recession but Wizards are ramping up the products this year instead of scaling down, between Core 21, Secret Lair drops, Double Masters and we just had Ikoria come out that's about 4 new sets of cards in just 3 months, let's not forget Jumpstart, whenever that will come out.
A lot of people make a lot of money in stock market right now.
So it all depends on what you get your money from.
For a lot of working people this is a terrible bad time with no income, for others its a free check of 100.000$ just by investing in stocks that tanked so badly that they jump right back up.
In Magic you see the same. People without money sell all their cards, while others use the time and buy up all the stuff (extremely visible in cEDH cards that ramp up in price like crazy).
It's this Inside Trading that we've seen with Pioneer and now Double Masters that has me wondering why the U.S. Government hasn't called the FBI to investigate Wizards of the Coast on this. Inside Trading technically isn't illegal or considered a financial crime in the United States like Tax Evasion unless it involves the Stock Market and Wall Street. What I don't get is why Paper Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games like Magic: the Gathering get away with selling loot crates to customers when it's video games like Fortnite and Overwatch that politicians go after the most. If you're a company like Wizards of the Coast then you're basically publicly acknowledging the Secondary Market just by making decisions on what to deny your customers and what to overcharge them for.
Inside trading for something like stocks is a problem, but here its just "cards" and the value is artificial anyway.
As of right now cEDH cards drive the price of cards a lot.
The amount of cards that matter in constructed formats outside of commander are fairly selective and small, they have a hard time filling sets with these cards over and over again, so every set will kinda look like a "Commanders Masters" as its much easier to fill a set with these cards (and its also the crowd thats most easily interested in alternate arts, the players for constructed really dont give a dime about alt arts).
----
The big money card in these sets is basically always Mana Crypt, and the only format that card sees any play (outside of fringe Vintage of course) is cEDH.
Biggest question is at what point the market is saturated for Mana Crypt (nobody really needs more than 1 and they put out the same ugly art every time, so the alt-art one helps in that regard).
If a card has no reprint at all, its expensive simply for being actually rare.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
So to prevent that, they increase the price tag so much, that even with the extra supply, the value doesnt crash completely.
---
But in the end it does increase supply no matter what, so these foils will never keep a proper value, as you simply get too many of them.
What you see of the collectors products in general is that they push a lot more foils and rares/mythics into the system, which devalues anything else.
At this point a lot of alternate art cards that are supposed to be more rare cost the same as the regular version, as you get too many of them.
Full art foils are the actual "rare" in the collectors packs, so they have some value and a complete set of full arts is pretty expensive.
----
Anyway the product is so made-up expensive that the people that actually buy these products are the kind of whales that would buy anything as long as its the most expensive version no matter what.
For my taste it would be tremendously better to have these alternate art cards (including the Drops) in regular booster packs, just rare.
So if someone wants them, they have to crack a lot of product and the value of all of these alternate art cards spreads over to all booster packs.
Also in that case theres only 1 product, normal booster packs, instead of thousands of product that nobody has any view over, and nobody really knows what you get from what product (and for some special cards like Commander products if they are even legal in standard or what format exactly, as the "date" of the card is not enough to know that).
----
This mess can be cleaned up, but WotC has absolutely no interest in doing this cleaning.
They are totally fine with the dirty mess as long as people pay to see the show.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
A lot of people make a lot of money in stock market right now.
So it all depends on what you get your money from.
For a lot of working people this is a terrible bad time with no income, for others its a free check of 100.000$ just by investing in stocks that tanked so badly that they jump right back up.
In Magic you see the same. People without money sell all their cards, while others use the time and buy up all the stuff (extremely visible in cEDH cards that ramp up in price like crazy).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Inside trading for something like stocks is a problem, but here its just "cards" and the value is artificial anyway.
Its funny how they keep reprinting the expensive cards in expensive product and repeat year after year.
Would be a lot more interesting if every reprint set would have reprints we did not have before.
But as it is, they keep reprinting the same money cards over and over again and just call it a new set ...
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
The amount of cards that matter in constructed formats outside of commander are fairly selective and small, they have a hard time filling sets with these cards over and over again, so every set will kinda look like a "Commanders Masters" as its much easier to fill a set with these cards (and its also the crowd thats most easily interested in alternate arts, the players for constructed really dont give a dime about alt arts).
----
The big money card in these sets is basically always Mana Crypt, and the only format that card sees any play (outside of fringe Vintage of course) is cEDH.
Biggest question is at what point the market is saturated for Mana Crypt (nobody really needs more than 1 and they put out the same ugly art every time, so the alt-art one helps in that regard).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
----
For my taste 3 booster packs should combine to 10$, thats a reasonable cost that everyone can pay for a game to have fun for a night.
Anything more expensive is just getting into the territory of leeching your whales.
I wonder when the time comes that even the whales dont buy into these products anymore ...
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮