Promissory estoppel is literally parroted every time this issue is brought up by ppl who have no idea what it means. The only reason its brought up is as a bad strategy to defend against the fact that the RL is not in a legally binding contractual form. Estoppel requires consideration (which in no way would wizards be liable for because these cards are bought on the secondary market, not straight from wizards). In addition, the reserved list was a promise made by the previous ownership of wizards. Because the RL does not exist in contract form, there is also 0 grounds to argue that some sort of assignment clause exists as well, so hasbro is not bound by the RL.
Tl;dr promissory estoppel is a terrible, porous argument and needs to stop being parroted by ppl who have 0 understanding of what it actually means.
Promissory estoppel does not require consideration. A contract requires consideration. As for the prior owner making the promise statement, when a company buys out another company, it may take on all of the obligations of the purchased company. Otherwise, every time a company was bought or sold, it could nullify every contract by saying the prior contract was made by a different owner. Furthermore, the promise was made by Wizards of the Coast and MTG is still sold by Wizards of the Coast; there is no promise by a former owner because it is still the same company. Lastly, the RL does not need to exist in contract form to create the basis of an equitable argument. For example, it can be characterized as an inducement to purchase a product. Moreover, the RL was created as a good will gesture to customers. Removing it would harm that good will.
On topic, Iconic Masters sounds like it will be a bridge between Eternal Masters and Modern Masters in that it will include cards from all eras. It will also give them an opportunity to create a better draft environment because it won't have limitations between modern and eternal.
I've always found the collector side of Magic bizarre. People honestly expect that they can sell off their cards for full price, when in reality you are much more likely to get only a 1/3 return on their current market value, probably just going to break even. Which begs the question; Why bother? You collect in the hopes of selling off your cards, of which you'll likely only get back the money you invested or slightly more so? People actually think this is a viable income/resource?
Meanwhile the existence of the RL and inflated market price of cards prevents Jane Doe from actively engaging and playing the game, because all the best cards are in the hands of collectors who have deluded themselves into thinking that they actually own something of more inherit value than what they paid/traded for. It boggles my mind that people do not understand how badly they are being suckered by the fake secondary market of Magic.
*Yes, I am aware the spelling is completely different and means two entirely different things. I was making a pun!
I think you are confusing collectors versus speculators. Collectors collect for a variety of reason which may include value but is more likely completing a set. For example, I have a complete set of revised with all of the dual lands that I do not play with. It is a complete set and I haven't sold any of the cards because I want the complete set. Has it gone up in value? Yes. Will it net me more than it cost me? Yes. It was not bought as an investment but to enhance my collection, but I can still sell it. As for the idea that the secondary market is "fake," I think eBay and stores would disagree with you on that point. There is a strong and vibrant secondary market which allows for collections and individual cards to be bought and sold for an actual (not perceived value). And, if the prices are inflated, then a correction will come at some point.
MSRP though wouldn't rise so much if the print run was higher and at levels not resembling MM1. If these were available at places like Wal-Mart and Target, and at a level of printing that isn't so little the print run couldn't get on a roller coaster, the MSRP wouldn't be an issue. The price has to do with how limited it is combined with what it is inside.
Yes, but if Wizards made this a high print run product they would completely destroy the secondary market. This would have two particularly bad and interrelated effects: first, it would destroy the value of collections--that goes for typical players who have spent thousands of dollars building their collections just as much as it does StarCityGames, and second--as a consequence--it would destroy one of the underpinning tenets of faith that drives this game--your game pieces are investments that are going to retain (and probably gain) value over time. If you're Wizards and you completely destroy or even substantially damage the secondary market, you send the message that you don't care if players' investments are entirely worthless; this disincentivizes players to spend money on the game, and the upshot is that Wizards makes less money. When Wizards makes less money, they can't spend that money developing the game, and the game suffers.
The fact of the matter is that this set has an MSRP that is commensurate with the EV of this set. If you want to possibly open a Karakas (a card that hasn't been printed in a non-promo format in 22 years) or a Mana Crypt (20-21 year), you should expect to have to pay for it.
Such Doom and Gloom! "My collection will be worthless!!!" Only, recent reprints have proven that to be false. Collections take a hit, sure, but the original printings ALWAYS maintain some value, and it seems that they always stay higher in price than the reprints. Almost like they have some value as a collectible. Your game pieces are cardboard. If you bought into them thinking of them as investments, you made a mistake. If you bought into them AFTER the Official Reprint Policy spelled out, in no uncertain terms, that anything not on the Reserve List was fair game for a reprint, and still expect Wizards to act to preserve the value of your cardboard, then you made a mistake and are trying to make other people pay for it instead of admitting it.
You can check my signature for what I think about "investing" in game pieces. And WHY is it so important that "you should expect to have to pay for it?" I don't understand the train of thought that says that it's up to WotC to limit copies of cards for their game so that people who aren't even buying those cards from WotC can maintain value. Wizards should be concerned with selling packs, not making money for SCG, CFB, Lakanna, or Mogg Flunky. Their focus should be on growing the game, not on stifling it so that you and I can claim that we have x thousands of dollars worth of cards. (I don't know about you, but I don't plan on ever selling my collection- so what it's "worth" to me is entirely play value, and that DROPS when I have nobody to play against. Like when people who haven't been playing for 20 years can't afford the buy-in.)
The second part - The comparison is absolutely valid. Yes the distribution of players is different, but I argue that there are more collectors now than there ever were in the game. Now there is history and lore behind the cards. As for the the number of people that would up and leave over an unlimited print run is a pittance? That is pure supposition. I say it will destroy the game. The difference between our two positions? History. It nearly happened once before. Feel free to disagree with me as is your right, but history is on my side and Wizards is not willing to put that big of a risk on the table. I applaud that decision since I want this game to be around another 20 years.
All of the people who left the game because Thoughtseize lost a ton of value, because Shocks fell to a quarter of their value when they were reprinted, because Fetchlands dropped when they were reprinted? That's right: not enough to change the overwhelming approval of those reprints. Compared to how many players, both new and old, were ECSTATIC to be able to get those cards, the people who "left the game" because their high-dollar cards took a nosedive weren't relevant. Why do you believe that any other set of reprints would have a different effect? Chronicles was 20 years ago, was MASSIVELY overprinted (imagine they printed Conspiracy, but with 3x the print run. That's how much they overshot it,) and taught them valuable lessons, which is why they do market research now. Chronicles could only happen now if several people were explicitly doing the exact opposite of their job in predicting what the demand will be, and it's time to stop saying "But Chronicles" when Chronicles isn't even a possibility anymore.
The argument that Magic cards aren't investments is simply not true. By the mere fact that there is a secondary market means that it is an investment. Just because you don't want to call it such doesn't make it any less real. And, the reason that it is an investment is what makes the game strong and allows for stores and tournaments which have grown the game. You cannot compare Magic to regular game pieces because they are not the same. There is no secondary market for Monopoly pieces or Risk pieces and the pieces are the same in every box. Magic is based on a collection of cards and the variety has created a vibrant secondary market. Whining about the costs and stating that they are not investments flies in the face of the evidence. As another example, comics and baseball cards are colored pieces of paper but they have been collectible for a long time. No one argues that Action #1 is a piece of paper and not worth anything because it was produced for short term consumption without any thought of future value. Similarly, if you buy a lotus for $1000, you expect it to be worth something. You have put your money into it and it is an investment. Whether it pays off or not is the risk you take with any investment.
In terms of this set, Wizards does not want to anger anyone (even the people who left due to the reprinting of Thoughseize, which I'm not sure is true) and that is why they took a conservative approach to this set. In my view, the problem is that Wizards did not reprint old cards which have not been foil or reframed and that they relied too much on newer cards. I also believe that Wizards limited the reprints and print run to see what impact it would have on the secondary market. I do not believe they saw MM2 as failure because they did almost the exact same thing with EMA (I do think MM2 was not as good a product as MM1 and that is shown by the availability of the product at MSRP at many stores). In closing, cards cost money and Wizards wanted the value to equate to the higher MSRP, but I do think it will dampen demand for the product and the packs will eventually sell for MSRP.
Yeah... problem is: In EDH you might just wanna play as many tutors as you can, because this is how you get consistency, which lets you win. There are Vampiric, Demonic und Diabolic Tutor and then it's already thin because the pricetag of Imperial Seal is just disgusting given that it is a strictly worse vamp tutor (~500 Euro if you want an english one). The other available tutors are limited in what they find or too expensive to really use.
Oh poor you, you can't afford the 13th tutor effect in your black combo deck. Far be it for me to tell someone how to have fun, but if your deck seriously suffers because, liliana vess, beseech the queen, diabolic revelation, demonic tutor, diabolic tutor, vamp tutor, cruel tutor, dark petition, maralen, demonic collusion, diabolic intent, increasing ambitions and sidisi (and thats just in black) are not enough, then you are not a deck I care to play against.
In fact if your deck requires that much help to be consistent, then your deck is terribly constructed.
Look, taking jabs at others' deckbuilding gets nowhere. Additionally, most of those tutors are simply not considered competitively playable (note: this is where Imperial seal would actually matter)
Imperial Seal could have easily been squeezed in here, along with some other P3K stuff (Imperial Recruiter for the love of god) and still not have effected the EV terribly much. Seal and cards like Recruiter are only expensive because of completely insane scarcity: they have almost 0 demand, even among EDH players, as most (in the case of Seal) would much rather just play Vamp Tutor. The history of P3K reprints shows that they never ever hold close to their original value when reprinted, and the P3K version still generally holds much of its value because those cards are generally held by collectors and not players.
I'm not following your argument. If Imperial Seal had 0 demand, then it wouldn't be hundreds of dollars. It is played in Vintage and apparently EDH, so there is demand. I will concede that much of its cost is built into its scarcity, especially in English. I do not agree that these cards are generally held by collectors rather than players. I haven't seen any data to support that. I can see a lot being held by stores, but that is different from collectors. As for why it wasn't reprinted, I have no idea. I wanted more P3K cards in the set, and I was very disappointed in the lack of them. I suspect that they wanted FoW, Karakas and Wasteland to be the big money cards and they are saving the rest for later printings. I actually wanted Grim Tutor more than Imperial Seal. It is also an expensive card, but not as much as Seal.
My issue with this set is that it's supposed to make older formats more accessible and this really doesn't do that. Instead we have crap like the Hondons at uncommon and the vintage allstar Seismic Stomp. At least some of it like Ghitu Slinger finds its way into cubes, but the only here for draft stuff is really disappointing. With a limited print run set, you don't actually have to craft an immaculate draft format. Just put in good cards and let people slam the OP stuff against each other. At over 30 bucks a draft it's not like your going to play it so much as to ware it out...
I totally agree with you. I wanted to have Erg Raiders and Cuombajj Witches with a little shadow thrown in.
People being disappointed about card exclusions was pretty much guaranteed. It's only 249 cards from across the history of the game, and everyone wants something different.
I'm pretty sure nobody wanted Call the skybreaker, even at common.
Considering that all of this could have gone into a Modern Masters set where it would have been more appropriate, then I am not happy to get Call the Skybreaker, Burning Vengeance or Dream Twist in this set. I would have preferred something that hasn't been in a modern border or had a foil printing. With Eternal Masters, I wanted nostalgia, not retrace or cards that were printed in the last few years.
I'm excited to hopefully get some (hopefully cheap) foils for the cube (Man-o-War, Brainstorm, Worn Powerstone). I'm going to echo the sentiment about the rarity shift, Heritage Druid wouldn't break the format at uncommon. Khans gain life lands were the most boring lands they could have picked. If WOTC really wants to make older formats more accessible they need to not be scared to disrupt the secondary market. Master sets need to reduce the amount of crap rares in it and have much larger print runs (so the packs eventually settle back down to MSRP). I'm not going to pickup a Mana Crypt now that it's $120 instead of $160.
The foils are about the most exciting part of this and just about the only thing with the mythics to go after.
No Careful Study, Cabal Ritual, Cephalid Colisseum, Nether Spirit, Oath of Druids, Chainer's Edict, Aquamoeba, Circular Logic, Astral Slide, Mirage Fetchlands, Pyrostatic Pillar, Gemstone Mine, Reanimate, Contagion, Priest of Titania, Lotus Petal or Goblin Matron.
Their selection of $0.50-2 and $4-10 commons and uncommons could have been much better, their selection of bulk rares could have been much better, they could at least have given us stuff that does not have a Modern border reprint and is played in Commander or Cube, instead we get a *****load of cards from the past 7 years that are readily avaliable in bulk binders and dime bins.
Anyone who buys this set above MSRP should rather use that money to threat their gambling addiction.
At least Konami had the balls to publicly state they went pachinko because gambling pays more than gaming.
Agreed, they could have chosen better bulk - deadbridge shaman, silent departure, glimmerpoint stag, etc. All of those cards could have been replaced with older cards. Overall, this set doesn't feel old-school nostalgic at all. I would have preferred more Portal, Three Kingdoms and pre-modern cards in the set. Boo on a wasted opportunity. Now, I'll just play the pre-release and that is it.
Every set is NOT $10 msrp and limited print run (meaning jacked up prices and Wizards knows it).
There are like 18 rares and mythics that can reasonably get you back the price of the pack (obviously some of these will get you substantially more than the price of the pack). That's pretty bad in what's being billed as a premium set.
If you just look at the preorder prices of the most expensive rares, Wasteland ($75) and Entomb ($55), they basically dictate that there have to be 11 worthless rares (like cents value). If you want rares to be worth at least $4 a piece, it takes 18 such rares at $4.
That's just off the two most expensive rares, ignoring all mythics. How do you expect a median=average value of $10 a pack?
Do people just not want those cards printed? Would we have a happier topic today if they didn't reprint Mana Vault, Karakas, Jace, Force of Will, Wasteland, etc. ?
Premium doesn't mean "more pack are worth their EV". It's premium because the packs are worth more. If you made this a $4 pack, you would have 30 rares and mythics that paid for the pack with many of those paying for well more than one pack, and you would have uncommons that would also pay for the entire pack. That's all but three of the rares/mythics (the other ones haven't been put on MTGGoldfish yet).
~10% of the rares from Shadows over Innistrad pay for the pack.
Entomb is already down to $15.99 on SCG and will continue to fall. Many of the rares will lose a lot of value b/c their price was tied to scarcity rather than playability. Also, a lot of people are not going to jump into Legacy or Vintage b/c of this set which means that a lot of prices will take a long time to recover (if ever). It is not that people want just expensive cards, they want fun and/or nostalgic cards. This set has too many modern reprints (Hondens, for example) that would have been better in a Modern Masters set. Worldly tutor could have been in instead of Green sun's zenith to complete the cycle and save GSZ for the next set. Personally, I would have rather had white/black shadow instead of g/w enchantments (most of the enchantments are lame except for Faith's fetters, rancor and abundant growth). I enjoyed the online Vintage Masters more for the nostalgia than this set. I would have loved to have a foil Erg Raider, Jeweled Bird or Sorceress Queen. It would have been cool to have a blood lust or crumble (instead of nature's claim). So, in my opinion, they made an ok set when they could have made a great set even with the secondary market and expensive card restrictions.
That being said, with the coming of Eternal Masters, you can expect the format to gain in popularity similar to how Modern did after Modern Masters 1 (causing the Zendikar fetches to skyrocket in price), so if you are at all interested in breaking into the format, now is the time to pick up those dual lands.
Or it could be people want to play a part of the game without wanting to spend a house payment to do it, but sure it must be because of their feelings of entitlement.
As if there aren't cards this expensive in modern even after reprints, but I don't hear modern players taking issue with cost of Goyfs or Liliana of the Veil
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That's completely false. Every modern player I know, and large groups of people online have been begging for goyf and lili reprints. Their prices are absolutely god damn ridiculous, pardon my French. There's no reason that a recently printed card should be over 40-60 dollars. I get that some cards have value, and that's cool. I don't mind dropping a grand on a modern deck. After I finished my Grixis Control deck(which took a long damn time, 2 paychecks, and a large amount of my trade binder) I priced it out to check my damage, and found that I was holding a 1700 dollar deck. That's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. There's no reason for a modern deck to cost nearly two thousand dollars. Or over, if you're playing anythnig with goyf and lili at the moment. Bottom line, this is a card game, and cardboard squares shouldn't be worth hundred dollar bills.
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On the one hand, I agree with you that the prices are crazy. I find the costs of standard being crazy enough. However, the longer you play, the greater chance that you will have goyfs and lilis. And, yes, a lot of players want expensive reprints, but most people want them so that they can get the hundred dollar bill or trade it away for standard cards. Plus, Wizards knows that if they printed only money cards then it would ultimately undermine people's confidence in the game's economics.
This really isn't for Legacy/Vintage's sake.
This set's goal is to sell itself, and secondarily, to catch some Commander/Cube players.
People who already play Legacy may pimp their decks with new foils, but I doubt many new people will enter the format because for whatever ****ed up reason people insist on building the most expensive decks (Shardless BUG, Lands) even if they're not even the best (Omnitell, Miracles), and refuse to accept decks without duals like Burn, Affinity, Death & Taxes, Pox, Fish and Landless Dredge as competitive despite them getting into top 8 often.
Hell, Twin shoved itself into a top 8, with shocklands.
If even these low expectations aren't met, WotC is in for hardcore backlash.
I like the list, and I hope at least half of them are in the set. But, I do not think Wizards would reprint all of those. They have learned from MM2015 that they need to save some good/great c/uc for the second set.
I wonder at what price they will end. Pimp Mutavault is worth something like 500$ and is way less played than any of these lands. I know there will be more of these but I personally think that at 200$ right now that arid mesa is undercosted and that top fetchlands will reach the 500$ mark.
That's pretty cool to have a chance to win the lottery like that!
They simply cannot be that expensive; unlike Mutavault, these are being printed to demand in a Standard set (according to MaRo, it's for the duration of the printing, not just the first wave). Thus, the cost of the land is capped by the cost of 6 booster boxes of cards, which should be roughly 600$. The average cost of a land must be equal to the cost of the case (600$) minus the value of every non-Expeditions card in said case (remember that you already get 216 full art basics which also account for a fair bit of value). Thus, it's fairly safe to say the average price of an Expeditions card has to be somewhere around 150$ max.
While your math is on point and nails the supply half of the equation, demand and good old fashioned Phillip J. Fry's may drive the price up beyond supply limitations, and this doesn't even factor in the premium you'll have to pay for not buying the bulk cards yourself. $50 markup on base value seems about right, so I would estimate top end at around $200-$225.
Demand isn't going to be insanely high. A TON of players refuse to use foil cards... me included.
People need to step back and realize there are dozens and dozens of Foil Mythics that go for under $1... they are EXACTLY the same odds/rarity as these lands. Actually previous foil Mythics are probably more rare being this set is going to be printed like crazy for the first few months. OBVIOUSLY I'm not saying these Expeditions are going to be sub $5, but many seem to need some perspective.
There's going to be a handful of eBay sellers pumping out playsets of all the Expeditions multiple times a day (just like they do for other foil mythics) for at least 1-2 months... what happens when demand starts to get filled? Prices drop and it takes a good year or so for them to go back up significantly. Again, these are foil too. Personally, I wish they would have done non-foil promos :(.
Also if these are identical in rarity to foil mythics as stated by Maro and thus slightly more common because there is 25 instead of 15 then the odds for any expedition is ~1:130 (15/25 = .6; 130/216 = .6).
I wish they had done non-foil promos too, but this goes with the previous flavor of hidden treasures. Plus, the massive cracking of packs will push the prices of all the non-foil cards down, so you should be happy about that.
Now, as to your argument about price, yes, there are plenty of cheap mythics. However, a foil regular Scalding Tarn sells for >$175 and it only a rare. Why would an even rarer version sell for less? Look at the foil version of Tarmogoyf. How much is that? Now, compare that to foil Comet Storm. Both in the same set and roughly available in the same number. One is $300 versus $3 for the other one.
Personally, I think these blue fetches will all be >$300 and will only go up (barring a full art foil reprint which I doubt).
I wonder at what price they will end. Pimp Mutavault is worth something like 500$ and is way less played than any of these lands. I know there will be more of these but I personally think that at 200$ right now that arid mesa is undercosted and that top fetchlands will reach the 500$ mark.
That's pretty cool to have a chance to win the lottery like that!
They simply cannot be that expensive; unlike Mutavault, these are being printed to demand in a Standard set (according to MaRo, it's for the duration of the printing, not just the first wave). Thus, the cost of the land is capped by the cost of 6 booster boxes of cards, which should be roughly 600$. The average cost of a land must be equal to the cost of the case (600$) minus the value of every non-Expeditions card in said case (remember that you already get 216 full art basics which also account for a fair bit of value). Thus, it's fairly safe to say the average price of an Expeditions card has to be somewhere around 150$ max.
While your math is on point and nails the supply half of the equation, demand and good old fashioned Phillip J. Fry's may drive the price up beyond supply limitations, and this doesn't even factor in the premium you'll have to pay for not buying the bulk cards yourself. $50 markup on base value seems about right, so I would estimate top end at around $200-$225.
I think the cheapest ones will be around $150, but the higher end ones (Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest) will be >$500. Remember, you are not getting a full set per case, you are getting one of 25; so only one full art foil Scalding Tarn per 25 cases. Plus, people will want a full set. For a 1000 foil Tarns (about how many Alpha rares were printed), you would require 5.4 million (assuming 1 foil per case) packs to be opened. Another way to put it, how many regular foil Scalding Tarns are worth a full art Tarn. I would say about 3. A foil Tarn on ebay is about $175, so 3 would put the price at $525. Even the most optimistic projection would make it 2 regular foils for 1 full art foil, so a floor of $350.
In my baseless speculation thread, I approach the topic of full art basics. I think it would be pretty awesome to close out the last coreset with 2 full arts from each plane.
Can you imagine if there was 2 full arts for each of the following
White - Theros
White - Bant
Blue - Vryn
Blue - Ravnica
Black - Dominara
Black - Innistrad
Red - Kaladesh
Red - Regatha
Green - Zendikar
Green - Lorwyn
It would also be cool if they went retro lands with full art like the APAC and Euro lands, or, even better, the GURU lands.
Promissory estoppel does not require consideration. A contract requires consideration. As for the prior owner making the promise statement, when a company buys out another company, it may take on all of the obligations of the purchased company. Otherwise, every time a company was bought or sold, it could nullify every contract by saying the prior contract was made by a different owner. Furthermore, the promise was made by Wizards of the Coast and MTG is still sold by Wizards of the Coast; there is no promise by a former owner because it is still the same company. Lastly, the RL does not need to exist in contract form to create the basis of an equitable argument. For example, it can be characterized as an inducement to purchase a product. Moreover, the RL was created as a good will gesture to customers. Removing it would harm that good will.
On topic, Iconic Masters sounds like it will be a bridge between Eternal Masters and Modern Masters in that it will include cards from all eras. It will also give them an opportunity to create a better draft environment because it won't have limitations between modern and eternal.
I think you are confusing collectors versus speculators. Collectors collect for a variety of reason which may include value but is more likely completing a set. For example, I have a complete set of revised with all of the dual lands that I do not play with. It is a complete set and I haven't sold any of the cards because I want the complete set. Has it gone up in value? Yes. Will it net me more than it cost me? Yes. It was not bought as an investment but to enhance my collection, but I can still sell it. As for the idea that the secondary market is "fake," I think eBay and stores would disagree with you on that point. There is a strong and vibrant secondary market which allows for collections and individual cards to be bought and sold for an actual (not perceived value). And, if the prices are inflated, then a correction will come at some point.
The argument that Magic cards aren't investments is simply not true. By the mere fact that there is a secondary market means that it is an investment. Just because you don't want to call it such doesn't make it any less real. And, the reason that it is an investment is what makes the game strong and allows for stores and tournaments which have grown the game. You cannot compare Magic to regular game pieces because they are not the same. There is no secondary market for Monopoly pieces or Risk pieces and the pieces are the same in every box. Magic is based on a collection of cards and the variety has created a vibrant secondary market. Whining about the costs and stating that they are not investments flies in the face of the evidence. As another example, comics and baseball cards are colored pieces of paper but they have been collectible for a long time. No one argues that Action #1 is a piece of paper and not worth anything because it was produced for short term consumption without any thought of future value. Similarly, if you buy a lotus for $1000, you expect it to be worth something. You have put your money into it and it is an investment. Whether it pays off or not is the risk you take with any investment.
In terms of this set, Wizards does not want to anger anyone (even the people who left due to the reprinting of Thoughseize, which I'm not sure is true) and that is why they took a conservative approach to this set. In my view, the problem is that Wizards did not reprint old cards which have not been foil or reframed and that they relied too much on newer cards. I also believe that Wizards limited the reprints and print run to see what impact it would have on the secondary market. I do not believe they saw MM2 as failure because they did almost the exact same thing with EMA (I do think MM2 was not as good a product as MM1 and that is shown by the availability of the product at MSRP at many stores). In closing, cards cost money and Wizards wanted the value to equate to the higher MSRP, but I do think it will dampen demand for the product and the packs will eventually sell for MSRP.
I'm not following your argument. If Imperial Seal had 0 demand, then it wouldn't be hundreds of dollars. It is played in Vintage and apparently EDH, so there is demand. I will concede that much of its cost is built into its scarcity, especially in English. I do not agree that these cards are generally held by collectors rather than players. I haven't seen any data to support that. I can see a lot being held by stores, but that is different from collectors. As for why it wasn't reprinted, I have no idea. I wanted more P3K cards in the set, and I was very disappointed in the lack of them. I suspect that they wanted FoW, Karakas and Wasteland to be the big money cards and they are saving the rest for later printings. I actually wanted Grim Tutor more than Imperial Seal. It is also an expensive card, but not as much as Seal.
Considering that all of this could have gone into a Modern Masters set where it would have been more appropriate, then I am not happy to get Call the Skybreaker, Burning Vengeance or Dream Twist in this set. I would have preferred something that hasn't been in a modern border or had a foil printing. With Eternal Masters, I wanted nostalgia, not retrace or cards that were printed in the last few years.
The foils are about the most exciting part of this and just about the only thing with the mythics to go after.
Agreed, they could have chosen better bulk - deadbridge shaman, silent departure, glimmerpoint stag, etc. All of those cards could have been replaced with older cards. Overall, this set doesn't feel old-school nostalgic at all. I would have preferred more Portal, Three Kingdoms and pre-modern cards in the set. Boo on a wasted opportunity. Now, I'll just play the pre-release and that is it.
Entomb is already down to $15.99 on SCG and will continue to fall. Many of the rares will lose a lot of value b/c their price was tied to scarcity rather than playability. Also, a lot of people are not going to jump into Legacy or Vintage b/c of this set which means that a lot of prices will take a long time to recover (if ever). It is not that people want just expensive cards, they want fun and/or nostalgic cards. This set has too many modern reprints (Hondens, for example) that would have been better in a Modern Masters set. Worldly tutor could have been in instead of Green sun's zenith to complete the cycle and save GSZ for the next set. Personally, I would have rather had white/black shadow instead of g/w enchantments (most of the enchantments are lame except for Faith's fetters, rancor and abundant growth). I enjoyed the online Vintage Masters more for the nostalgia than this set. I would have loved to have a foil Erg Raider, Jeweled Bird or Sorceress Queen. It would have been cool to have a blood lust or crumble (instead of nature's claim). So, in my opinion, they made an ok set when they could have made a great set even with the secondary market and expensive card restrictions.
On the one hand, I agree with you that the prices are crazy. I find the costs of standard being crazy enough. However, the longer you play, the greater chance that you will have goyfs and lilis. And, yes, a lot of players want expensive reprints, but most people want them so that they can get the hundred dollar bill or trade it away for standard cards. Plus, Wizards knows that if they printed only money cards then it would ultimately undermine people's confidence in the game's economics.
I like the list, and I hope at least half of them are in the set. But, I do not think Wizards would reprint all of those. They have learned from MM2015 that they need to save some good/great c/uc for the second set.
I wish they had done non-foil promos too, but this goes with the previous flavor of hidden treasures. Plus, the massive cracking of packs will push the prices of all the non-foil cards down, so you should be happy about that.
Now, as to your argument about price, yes, there are plenty of cheap mythics. However, a foil regular Scalding Tarn sells for >$175 and it only a rare. Why would an even rarer version sell for less? Look at the foil version of Tarmogoyf. How much is that? Now, compare that to foil Comet Storm. Both in the same set and roughly available in the same number. One is $300 versus $3 for the other one.
Personally, I think these blue fetches will all be >$300 and will only go up (barring a full art foil reprint which I doubt).
I think the cheapest ones will be around $150, but the higher end ones (Scalding Tarn, Misty Rainforest) will be >$500. Remember, you are not getting a full set per case, you are getting one of 25; so only one full art foil Scalding Tarn per 25 cases. Plus, people will want a full set. For a 1000 foil Tarns (about how many Alpha rares were printed), you would require 5.4 million (assuming 1 foil per case) packs to be opened. Another way to put it, how many regular foil Scalding Tarns are worth a full art Tarn. I would say about 3. A foil Tarn on ebay is about $175, so 3 would put the price at $525. Even the most optimistic projection would make it 2 regular foils for 1 full art foil, so a floor of $350.
It would also be cool if they went retro lands with full art like the APAC and Euro lands, or, even better, the GURU lands.