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BattleMaster posted:I realize they added mythic rares a long time ago but I stopped playing a long time ago because that kind of poo poo made Standard even more of a treadmill. I have a lot of respect for how well Magic was and is designed but every time I maybe think of playing it again I see previews of new mythic rares from an upcoming set and it reminds me of how I don't actually want to spend that much to play it. Play pauper. Its a blast and costs like 95¢ to get a deck going. Edit: Thats one really great thing about MTG: since it's such a massive and popular game, weird formats and wacky game styles can pop up that other card games can't support. Fashionable Jorts fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Dec 25, 2019 |
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Dec 25, 2019 20:32
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Pauper is god's own MtG format. You can build some horrific jank for pennies and inflict it on everyone else.
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Dec 25, 2019 20:54
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LingcodKilla posted:I was rather surprised that both Walmart and Kroegers no longer carry MtG. The Wal-Mart near my house still has a huge Magic section, but it's because it isn't selling; they're drowning in 6-12 month old product. There's four or five Azorius guild kits, for example. I'm a seasonal cashier at Target, and they also carry MtG stuff, but nobody's really buying it there either, apart from the couple of Brawl decks and Eldraine bundles I bought myself for a song by combining the employee discount, price matching, and a coupon. We sell a ton of Pokemon, mostly to parents, which makes sense; they're less likely than twentysomething Magic players to realize that big box stores are always more expensive than going online or to an LGS. Who the gently caress wants to pay $4.29 for boosters that have a higher-than-normal chance of having been tampered with?
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Dec 25, 2019 21:27
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Having been out of Magic since... Kaladesh? I was legit confused when the new style of themed boosters started showing up on LGS shelves. From my understanding, it's hard enough to get all but the most casual of Magic fans to buy boosters, why try and sell them even more expensive boosters?
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Dec 25, 2019 22:32
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Fashionable Jorts posted:Could be that they took them down and are hiding them behind a counter to prevent theft- thats what one of the other walmarts in my city does. Not that I buy from them in the first place, their prices are horrendous. I asked. No longer stocked. Also nobody sells the M20 white deck for list price except big brand stores.
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Dec 25, 2019 23:30
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SteelMentor posted:Having been out of Magic since... Kaladesh? I was legit confused when the new style of themed boosters started showing up on LGS shelves. From my understanding, it's hard enough to get all but the most casual of Magic fans to buy boosters, why try and sell them even more expensive boosters? It's kind of a "well i really want to play red" for some sort of casual sealed format I guess.
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Dec 25, 2019 23:31
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Theme boosters would be a win-win if the expected value of one was at least as good or better than a regular booster, which is fair given that they cost more, but it uh... isn't. The whole "you might open a theme booster with an internal theme, like knights!" is the kind of thing I'm insanely suspicious of, because in all likelihood I bet it means (for example) that you're less likely to pull a card like Questing Beast in a green theme booster than you are in a normal one. It'd be interesting to see some whale weirdo crack a thousand of them and report the contents.
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Dec 25, 2019 23:54
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LingcodKilla posted:It's kind of a "well i really want to play red" for some sort of casual sealed format I guess. The vast majority of players are casual kitchen table players where "I want to buy cards to add to my red deck" is an appealing product. The themed/color boosters are made with them in mind primarily.
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Dec 26, 2019 00:07
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At big box stores in my area, trading and gaming cards at big box stores in are stocked by a third-party vendor who leases shelf-space on an aisle. It's similar to how potato chips and milk are sold at gas stations. There's a cards-person who comes in and handles everything, just like there's a bread or dairy vendor. So the decision not to carry Magic was likely made by the Walmart's cards-vendor, not Walmart's. They have other clients to supply, and probably de-prioritized Walmart. I wouldn't read too much into it. Because there's so many moving parts, a problem with ang one of them could be the reason you don't see MtG at Walmart.
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Dec 26, 2019 00:20
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No. 1 Apartheid Fan posted:Theme boosters would be a win-win if the expected value of one was at least as good or better than a regular booster, which is fair given that they cost more, but it uh... isn't. The whole "you might open a theme booster with an internal theme, like knights!" is the kind of thing I'm insanely suspicious of, because in all likelihood I bet it means (for example) that you're less likely to pull a card like Questing Beast in a green theme booster than you are in a normal one. I got one for my kids, red, and it had a Chandra the super rare, Chandra's regulator and uncommon Chandra also about 3 other spells with Chandras name in them. He was pretty stoked.
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Dec 26, 2019 01:23
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LingcodKilla posted:I got one for my kids, red, and it had a Chandra the super rare, Chandra's regulator and uncommon Chandra also about 3 other spells with Chandras name in them. He was pretty stoked. That's cool, actually, and I'm glad some of the "themes" seem to include cards people at whatever skill level actually want to collect or play with.
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Dec 26, 2019 02:09
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I imagine the themed boosters are pretty good at grabbing dollars from people who are mostly familiar with MTG:Arena. A person builds a deck in the game, and wants to build a similar one in real life, but they don't really know about the third-party market and buying individual cards. So, a booster pack thats more likely to have that specific card is suddenly very appealing for newcomers.
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Dec 26, 2019 02:40
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Does the secondary market for Magic even help the LGS anyway? Don't most of the guys who buy singles get them from ChannelFireball or TCGPlayer or Card Kingdom? And most of those guys also don't buy sealed product, or at least not at retail price, I'd imagine. I've played Magic off and on since literally Unlimited, but the most recent effort to play even casual kitchen table Magic with some buddies was killed by some of them turning into netdecking singles buyers. After that it wasn't fun to play against them with my lovely decks I'd cobbled together with booster packs, and I'm never going to pay more than $2.99 divided by 15 (20 cents?) for any one piece of special paper for my wizard poker. Imagined fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Dec 26, 2019 |
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Dec 26, 2019 03:14
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Imagined posted:Does the secondary market for Magic even help the LGS anyway? Don't most of the guys who buy singles get them from ChannelFireball or TCGPlayer or Card Kingdom? And most of those guys also don't buy sealed product, or at least not at retail price, I'd imagine. Card kingdom is my LGS so yes.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:21
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Imagined posted:Does the secondary market for Magic even help the LGS anyway? Don't most of the guys who buy singles get them from ChannelFireball or TCGPlayer or Card Kingdom? And most of those guys also don't buy sealed product, or at least not at retail price, I'd imagine. I wouldn't say they're a huge chunk of the LGSs income, but they definitely help. Some stores will even take a loss (or tiny profit) on the cards they have on display to encourage people to come in the store and hopefully buy the money-making items.
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Dec 26, 2019 03:49
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Imagined posted:Does the secondary market for Magic even help the LGS anyway? A lot of shops will have a small case that helps out, but yeah I think a lot of what’s gnawed away at the FLGSes margins this year is a combination of a lot of thrash in the tournament scene that has substantially depressed event attendance and WotC going straight for players wallets between Arena and the web exclusives.
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Dec 26, 2019 04:22
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With the proliferation of playing card printing services wouldn't it be really easy just to get your own counterfeit copies made if you were sufficiently desperate? The card art is all online and once in a shield it won't be noticeable on casual inspection.
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Dec 26, 2019 12:47
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Z the IVth posted:With the proliferation of playing card printing services wouldn't it be really easy just to get your own counterfeit copies made if you were sufficiently desperate? The card art is all online and once in a shield it won't be noticeable on casual inspection. This would be pretty easy, although probably still to much of a hassle to anyone to really bother with for the most part. At the end of the day, Magic is a fun game but there are lots of fun games. I know that playing with counterfeit copies of the power nine cards is fine as long as you prove you actually own one. Don't want to shuffle something worth 10s of thousands of dollars after all. Magic survives by being like a cult. People want to play the fun looking game that is seen everywhere and once you are conditioned that spending 20 dollars on a few packs of cards chasing some 40 dollar rare you need 4 copies for your deck, there is no escape. The reality is that without magic most game stores would fold. I have never seen a group of 30 Warhammer players that come in and drop 40 a week consistently every week year after year, but in magic it is extremely common. Magic players are happy to buy a few packs when they swing in to play on your flgs tables, while Warhammer guys will throw a fit when you suggest that that they have not bought a new model since 4th edition. I don't miss running a game store.
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Dec 26, 2019 13:13
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Z the IVth posted:With the proliferation of playing card printing services wouldn't it be really easy just to get your own counterfeit copies made if you were sufficiently desperate? The card art is all online and once in a shield it won't be noticeable on casual inspection. This is currently a huge problem on eBay. WotC has a number of anti forgery measures on their cards but those have only really ramped up in the past few years so there’s a lot of Magic’s history that’s pretty easily forged. I’m sure if you spent a day poking around in various buy/sell/trade groups, card store online shops and ebay listings you could find more Black Lotuses available to purchase right now than were originally printed in 1993.
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Dec 26, 2019 15:42
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I'm 90% sure I have a black lotus in the loft. Often wonder if selling a bunch of 90s cards is worth it.
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Dec 26, 2019 19:16
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Grey Hunter posted:I'm 90% sure I have a black lotus in the loft. Often wonder if selling a bunch of 90s cards is worth it. ill make it really easy for you. sell them all to me for $20
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Dec 26, 2019 19:21
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If I was 90% sure I had between 6 and 20+ grand laying around somewhere I'd tear my apartment apart to find it.
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Dec 26, 2019 19:47
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Grey Hunter posted:I'm 90% sure I have a black lotus in the loft. Often wonder if selling a bunch of 90s cards is worth it. If you actually have the cards it will likely be worth a solid 5 figures for your time and potentially 6 figures if they’re all pristine.
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Dec 26, 2019 20:03
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i stand by my offer of $20
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Dec 26, 2019 20:21
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It's probably just a Unlimited Edition reprint, I'll give you $21.
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Dec 26, 2019 20:31
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Grey Hunter posted:I'm 90% sure I have a black lotus in the loft. Often wonder if selling a bunch of 90s cards is worth it. I sold my lotus in roughly 10 minutes for 2 thousand almost 10 years ago now. The store was a broker for power 9 and only took 1 percent cut because they had some whale snapping them all up in cold cash. I at least still have the rifle I bought with the funds though it's only worth a 1k now. I am bad at speculative investing.
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Dec 26, 2019 20:52
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If you'd asked me any year of the last 25 years "Is Magic going to keep getting bigger next year?", I'd have said "Probably not" and been wrong every time until maybe this year, so I can't blame you there.
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Dec 26, 2019 21:04
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Imagined posted:If you'd asked me any year of the last 25 years "Is Magic going to keep getting bigger next year?", I'd have said "Probably not" and been wrong every time until maybe this year, so I can't blame you there. I sold my 90's collection including a ton of duals and power in TYOOL 2000 at basically buylist prices to pay for my first wedding.  I specifically remember among other non-power/dual things, Force of Will being my favorite card and I'd collected a binder page (9) of them.
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Dec 26, 2019 21:08
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Winning strategy: buy a couple of starting packs of every trading card game that comes out, keep them hermetically sealed, wait a decade, open and sell for a down payment on a new house
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Dec 26, 2019 21:15
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IIRC a long time ago Magic issued some decks that were duplicates of winning tournament decks, but with different backs and borders so you could tell they weren't the "real" cards. I wish they would issue reprints of the old cards like that in retail priced booster packs that would make the kitchen table players like me happy but not be tournament legal and ruin the secondary market. Basically official proxies.
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Dec 26, 2019 21:22
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That would be pretty nice, since I refuse to play against people I don't know and don't wanna spend $20+ on fun cards for my terrible decks.
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Dec 26, 2019 22:36
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Yah like 
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Dec 26, 2019 22:49
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Owlbear Camus posted:If I was 90% sure I had between 6 and 20+ grand laying around somewhere I'd tear my apartment apart to find it. How much of that price is a self-fulfilling prophecy of speculative trading, where people looking to make a buck buy BLs to sell later, and how much of it is people who actually want to use it in a game of Magic? Because the only format where it (and the rest of the power 9) are legal is in Vintage. Are there really enough people playing Vintage to drive the price for these old cards so high? The cost of entry into vintage seems to be about the price of a high-end luxury car. Who are these people playing Vintage? Gen Xers who started playing MTG when it came out in the early 90s and never stopped, and so built their collection organically? so confused about MTG vintage
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Dec 26, 2019 23:00
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Geisladisk posted:How much of that price is a self-fulfilling prophecy of speculative trading, where people looking to make a buck buy BLs to sell later, and how much of it is people who actually want to use it in a game of Magic? Because the only format where it (and the rest of the power 9) are legal is in Vintage. Are there really enough people playing Vintage to drive the price for these old cards so high? I knew a guy who earns a lot of money, and is obsessed with winning. Last I played against him was 10 years ago (we were in our early 20s at the time), and he had spent thousands of dollars per deck on bullshit that wins in 2-4 turns. There is no demographic that exists that's worse with money than nerds.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:05
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Geisladisk posted:How much of that price is a self-fulfilling prophecy of speculative trading, where people looking to make a buck buy BLs to sell later, and how much of it is people who actually want to use it in a game of Magic? Because the only format where it (and the rest of the power 9) are legal is in Vintage. Are there really enough people playing Vintage to drive the price for these old cards so high? A huge portion of it is speculative. People certainly buy the cards to play with but one of the “fun” things about the mtg economy in the past couple-5 years is the rise of people buying out every possible copy of reserve list cards to generate scarcity.
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Dec 26, 2019 23:29
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Fashionable Jorts posted:I knew a guy who earns a lot of money, and is obsessed with winning. Last I played against him was 10 years ago (we were in our early 20s at the time), and he had spent thousands of dollars per deck on bullshit that wins in 2-4 turns. What is the appeal of Vintage for this guy? He can spend a tiny fraction of the money to get a top-end Standard deck and get basically the same experience except he can buy all the decks he wants for the price of one card in a Vintage deck, and he has a much larger base of players to play. Speaking of, how much is Vintage even played? I've only played MTG through Arena, but I know a lot of people who play and I've been in and out of nerd stores for the past twenty years, and I've never even heard of anyone playing Vintage. Then again, if you can afford to spend 30 thousand plus dollars on a deck of cardboard cards, you can afford to travel to tournaments and poo poo to play other cardboard lords.
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Dec 27, 2019 00:28
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Geisladisk posted:What is the appeal of Vintage for this guy? He can spend a tiny fraction of the money to get a top-end Standard deck and get basically the same experience except he can buy all the decks he wants for the price of one card in a Vintage deck, and he has a much larger base of players to play. Why do people buy a Mercedes-Benz? Its all about status - he has a lot of money to spend on the game and wants you to know it. He also made sure one of his decks was entirely foils, meaning that cards that were otherwise essentially free were now costing him $10 a pop.
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Dec 27, 2019 01:01
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When I was playing a deck worth $5k or so back in 2010 I usually never ran into people with power9. Was just fun to show off a little. Granted I got my cards when a lotus was only $50 and it was my second one. I don’t miss it because now I don’t feel I got to collect them all.
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Dec 27, 2019 02:47
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Dump all those expensive cards and invest the money in something sensible like an solid retirement fund. The cash from selling those things is way more useful than cards rotting in a box. Being one leaky roof away from huge financial losses is certainly a choice, though.
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Dec 27, 2019 14:45
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I really should go through my collection and see what I could get out of it. I’ve been playing off and on since Ice Age and I’m sure I’ve got a decent amount that could go to something more useful. It is fun to booster draft every once and a while with friends, but I can’t imagine paying into a game nowadays with such a quick competitive turnover. This is coming from a 40k player so that’s saying something.
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Dec 27, 2019 14:57
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