By: Derek Madlem

Did I say Grand Prix? Sorry, that probably should have been “Bland Prix”, or just “Prix”. Indianapolis has a storied history of players just not showing up to Pastimes events and throwing yet another Grand Prix on yet another holiday weekend didn’t seem to alter any timelines. With less than 1100 players participating in the main event for a constructed tournament, we have to ask what’s wrong with this picture and is it significant going forward?

The easiest thing to do is blame Pastimes. The hardest thing to do is narrow down a specific reason to blame Pastimes outside of the $70 entry fee to the main event. I thought long and hard this weekend about why exactly so many players in the Midwest hate Pastimes with an irrational passion and I honestly can’t put my finger on it.

Their judge staff is basically interchangeable with the judge staff of any other event east of the Rocky Mountains…because it’s basically the same core of judges across many of these events. They hardly ever have to manually pair entire tournaments anymore, so that can’t be it. They even spread out prizes in Win-A-Box events to the top four players and there’s more than a box worth of prizes. It’s evident that they’re trying, even if that effort is only to line their own pockets.

$70 Entry Fee & $700 Decks

The most telling thing for me as an Indianapolis Magic player is that so few of the local players even attend home town events. It’s a Friday night and there are a million side events occurring at the Grand Prix and the local player base would rather attend an FNM, the baseline for Magic events. If a company is doing a decent job running Magic events, you’d expect to see local players showing up all weekend long, but you just don’t get that with Pastimes events in Indy.

A non-zero amount of players didn’t play in the Grand Prix simply because it was a holiday weekend, but that’s no reason to see HALF the attendance you would expect for a city that only exists because it is at the nexus of every other major city in the Midwest. Add in a Regional Pro Tour Qualifier on Friday and you’ve got a recipe for what should be a decent turnout.

We might have hit the breaking point for what players are willing to spend to play this game. There is a mile difference between a $50 entry fee and a $70 entry fee for the average player, you can almost justify playing a sub-optimal deck in a $50 tournament…you’re getting a sweet promo and a playmat out of the deal, but you can’t justify skimping on the Gideon, Ally of Zendikars and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigys when you’re shelling out $70 just to sit down. Add in a couple meals from Noodles & Company and parking and you’re at $100 for the weekend for one event when this was traditionally a failed attempt at a Grand Prix and a couple drafts or Win-A-Boxes.

Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to get another US Standard Grand Prix before Oath of the Gatewatch to determine whether it’s card prices or the Tournament Organizer that stifled attendance but Grand Prix attendance will have an effect on card prices if it continues to fall.

Weekend’s Winners

The story of the weekend (according to the top 8 deck lists) seems to be all about Abzan coming out on top, Dark Jeskai not quite living up to it’s “next Caw-Blade” hype, and Dromoka’s Command still being a good card. Beyond that there was another story looming in the wings casting shadows over the rest of the tournament. If you look at the decks that won grinders you’ll see two things:

1. There weren’t very many grinders
2. Big dumb Eldrazi won two out of the four events.

If you had the the misfortune of attending Grand Prix Indy and took a look around at the room’s hot lists you’d also have noticed that there was some very small spreads on Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon.

Ulamog was selling for as low as $12 and appearing on buy lists as high as $9, a small spread like this is typically a sign that a card is getting ready to move. There were similar spreads around the room for Ugin, I found them for sale as low as $25 while appearing on buylists as high as $23.

“But Derek, the deck didn’t even make Top 8”

I’ll be the first to admit that the Eldrazi ramp deck is not optimized. When looking over lists to throw this deck together for my weekly local, I saw that there’s not consistent numbers on many of the cards. Some run Rattleclaw Mystic and others run Map the Wastes, some run four copies of Hedron Archive while others only run two. In the coming weeks we’ll see this archetype optimized and the deck steam lined and a more cohesive 75 presented.

The deck battles extremely well against Dark Jeskai and may have been the foil that kept it out of the top eight. With a paltry four rounds of piloting it under my belt now it’s pretty easy to see that with a couple slots changed around, it can have a pretty decent match against most decks, thanks heavily to the low threat density in many of Standard’s most popular decks.

As this deck continues to pick up steam (and seemingly gain more cards from Oath of the Gatewatch), I expect both Ulamog and Ugin to continue climbing.

Shadows Over Innistrad

If you’re into vague visuals that give you little more than a name, I’ve got just the trailer for you:

It appears that next spring Wizards is going to leverage one of the most popular planes of all time in an attempt to shift some of our excitement from fall to spring. What do we know so far? Nothing beyond a name, some twisty branches and a feather turning to blood: SPOOKY!!!

You can read the set announcement here.

The set is said to contain 297 cards which is up from the 274 that we saw in Battle for Zendikar, this likely means that they’re counting both sides of some flip cards as individual cards…so if you’re into that kind of thing, you’ll have that to look forward to. I wouldn’t place any bets on seeing a reprint of any Magic Origins planeswalkers, so you can throw that idea right out the window now to save discussion.

While it would be cool to think that the shadows cast over Innistrad were from the massive floating squid-being Emrakul, we get another hint from this week’s second announcement:

Duel Deck: Blessed vs. Cursed

For the past few years we’ve seen the spring edition of the duel deck series featuring planeswalkers. Many of us thought we were a lock for seeing Ugin vs. ______, but instead they decided to give us another deck introducing the block we’re about to visit and there’s a good chance that’s what we’re going to see this in duel decks for the foreseeable future as it makes for a more cohesive marketing strategy.

You can read the announcement here. 

Instead of Eldrazi, you can see that it’s just a lot of demons flying around causing a ruckus, a problem caused by Liliana destroying the Helvault the last time we visited Innistrad. Thanks Liliana.

Ugin’s absence is another reason I think the card is a great pick up long term, as there’s no player in Magic that Ugin doesn’t appeal to, from the kitchen table to Commander to Modern to Standard…the card is just sweet. The new block structure makes it even harder to reprint a planeswalker with the Core Set option off the table, so it’s going to be much harder for Wizards to give us a reprint outside of a Modern Masters III.

Commander 2015…

…or 2016, whatever they want to call it, is also in Spoiler Season starting this week. At this point we’re well past these decks being worth any money and while there’s probably one that you’ll be able to crack and make $5 selling off it’s contents, there’s little to get excited about financially other than the prospect that a number of your spec targets get reprinted into oblivion, totally ruining your profits – sorry bro.

There’s still a possibility that these two color decks feature the enemy fetch lands, but Wizards is conscious about how much reprint equity they throw into their products and the fetches will sell a large set on their own, so there’s no reason to waste it on Commander decks.

I’ll go more into depth on the price death spirals these decks initiate in the comings weeks as there’s not really a lot of say other than “hey this card is kinda neat” followed by ignoring it completely for two to three years. Print-on-demand prepackage singles are no longer hot investments.

The Death of Legacy

The Death of Legacy™ has been an ongoing #mtgfinance saga for a couple years now, and the Illuminati are trying their hardest to kill it off completely. SCG announced this week (in the middle of me writing this article) that they were changing the format of their open series to be a $20k tournament followed by two glorified side events on Sunday rather than two $5k events. Now Legacy players will show up to win sweet prize wall tickets that will be redeemable for mis-priced garbage that Legacy players probably don’t want to own.

While this doesn’t outright kill Legacy, it does take much of the wind out of it’s sails and probably stagnates growth on many of these cards in the US for a very long time. Is it time to panic sell? If you feel so inclined, there’s likely to be an above average number of people dumping cards in the coming weeks because this is the “last straw” and their fed up with straws. Here’s the reasons why I’m not selling into the dystopia:

1. Most people were playing Legacy to play Legacy, not for the prizes.
2. There will still be some number of Opens featuring Legacy as the main event
3. Legacy still happens around the world and they never had SCG Opens
4. If a novelty format like 93/94 can take hold, then Legacy still has a future

I’m not going to consider Legacy a great “investment” going forward as there’s better places to park your money, but it is still the best format in the game and almost anyone that’s played it will agree. I’m sure this is a topic we’ll cover in more depth as we see how this shakes out in the coming months, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it here.

Questions

While I generally have little trouble writing about what I want to write about (one of the benefits of being overly opinionated), I don’t always write about what YOU want to read about. So this is my call for questions you want answered or topics you want discussed in future columns. Leave your requests in the comments below and we’ll see what we can cover.

By: Derek Madlem

There seems to be some confusion about vendors. For those of you that have been watching from home, I’ve spent much of this year working with and around various vendors as both a buyer and a seller. One thing I’ve noticed from the other side of the booth is that there are a lot of people that just don’t really get what’s going on. As always, I’m here to help.

I’ll apologize in advance to all the seasoned #mtgfinance veterans out there, this article may be a little basic for you. If you’re looking for something a little more meaty check out this fine read from the archives: So You Want to Sell a Wingmate Roc

The Hot List

This is one of the most common misconceptions new(er) players have when it comes to selling cards. I don’t know how many times I’ve had someone sheepishly ask me, “are those the only cards you guys are buying?”The hot lists that vendors post are not the only cards vendors are buying, they’re simply a “hello”. Think of hot lists as conversation starters. Vendors pick cards that they know they can sell quickly and offer high prices on them just to get you to sit down so that they can make offers on the rest of your cards.

So you should just sell cards to vendors that are on their hot lists right? Sure, if you like wasting time. One vendors “hot” price is another’s every day price. But if you feel that standing in line to sell cards at seven vendors vs going to one or two is a good use of your time, then go for it.

The Buy Mat

Most vendors are going to have a playmat that’s organized in a grid with prices printed on it. These prices will generally range from small change up to $35+ and as you and the buyer agree to prices they’ll place it on the mat in the corresponding square and then total it up at the end.

This process is usually going to involve the buyer pointing at a card and telling you a number with you responding in some audible way. Most buyers don’t just yank cards out without asking first, but if they do just stop them and ask them to check first. Some people prefer to just tell the vendor to pull out everything and put it into piles and they’ll take back what they want to keep; as a buyer I always hated doing it this way but because it felt so impersonal, but some prefer it.

At the end they’ll shoot you a total, at this point if you’re looking at getting cards out of the case ask about any trade bonus they might have, it’s usually going to be around 20%, though some vendors do ridiculous bumps as high as 35% at times.

Trust

A number of people don’t know who to trust when it comes to selling cards to vendors. There’s a lingering misconception that selling cards to a vendor is like that famous line from Rounders:

Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.

The first thing that everyone needs to understand is that the era of vendors trying to shark you is pretty much over. There’s simply too much at stake. In an era when reputation and bad encounters can be amplified via social media and everyone has access to online pricing, there’s too much at stake to try to get one over on somebody for $3.

There was an era when basically any schmuck could show up at your local PTQ and offer garbage prices for your cards because they were your “only out” at the event if you wanted to turn cardboard into currency. That era ended with the death of the old PTQ system. Vendors are now in a situation where they have to feed the beast. They can’t just casually drop a couple hundred dollars on a booth and buy a thousand dollars in cards and call it a successful weekend.

We’re now in a world where the cost to set up a table at an event has become monolithic. Vendors can either shell out the bucks and run a $5K or similar event themselves, or they can buy into Star City Opens or Grand Prix events. A table at an SCG event is going to set them back at least a couple grand, while a table at a Grand Prix can scale all the way up to $10,000…and that’s before you pay for travel, employees, food, etc.

To put it simply, they can’t afford to waste their time trying to gut a couple of fish, they’ve got a business that depends on you selling them cards. For the average person selling binder chaff, you’re probably not going to see a huge difference between many of the vendors at a Grand Prix; it’s going to be a few dollars here and there but you’re not going to see that much of a difference until you start dropping piles of cards onto the buy mats.

Your Local Game Store

So why not just sell to your local game store? Chances are you don’t live in a major metropolitan area and  if you do, half your local game stores are poorly run to begin with…and there’s a good chance they’re not even set up to sell on TCGPlayer. Most local game stores just need some cards to sell, not all of them. They’re often the only game in town so they don’t HAVE TO pay as much as you’re going to see from your average GP vendor simply because they have no real competition.

The Lowball

The idea that vendors are going to try to shoot you lowball numbers on cards to try to screw you isn’t much of a reality these days, but there are still a couple reasons that you’ll get a lowball offer:

1. They don’t know that the price of a card has changed drastically.
2. They really don’t want it.

In the first scenario, it simply comes down to honest mistakes or lack of knowledge. When I was at my busiest working as a buyer, I would work shows many weekends in a row with only a few days in between so I was watching price moves daily and had the buy prices memorized for a number of cards. But when we’d be on an extended break, the last thing I wanted to do was look at charts of card price changes every day, so I would fall behind. If I had to work as a buyer this weekend, I would be way off my game for the first couple hours as I haven’t been following prices that closely for the past few weeks.

In the second scenario, different vendors want different things. Some vendors sell cards on Amazon.com and they want infinite copies of Colossus of Akros, while others do most of their selling at competitive events and only want competitive staples. Some stores just don’t want to carry an SP copy of an obscure EDH foil from event to event but others love having it in stock because they know their regular customers will snatch it up. Other times a vendor has just bought too many of a card and would prefer to spend that money on something else: Tasigur, the Golden Fang is a great card, but you can’t set up a booth that only buys and sells Tasigurs and be successful.

Typically if you get a number that seems low on a card, it’s because the vendor wants you to say no so that they don’t have to deal with the card.

The Negotiation

There’s a myth that you should haggle over the price of any card you’re selling because a vendor is always going to offer low on a card to start with, and that might have been true in the past, but it’s just doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. None of the vendors I’ve worked with wanted me playing games as a buyer. If we didn’t buy $X in cards an hour, we weren’t going to have a good weekend. For the same reasons discussed above, it’s just better for a vendor to lead with a strong offer and get the card than to have it walk away.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t haggle if a price seems way off, the buyer might just be unaware of a price fluctuation or might have a little room to give, but fighting over every single card is not in your best interest. Multiple vendors that I’ve worked with have instructed me that if someone wants to haggle over every single card, just close the binder and say “thanks” to open up the chair for someone that’s not going to be difficult.

The Elephant in the Room

The biggest mistake I see players making at events time and time again is lining up at the big name stores to sell cards while other vendors have no lines at all. This phenomena is especially true at SCG events. Star City Games has one of the most extensive buylists in the industry, but their buy prices are often among the lowest in the room for everything but the hottest of hot cards.

Much of this is likely a trust issue for newer players or just an unfamiliarity with the smaller vendors. Some players are only familiar with SCG because that’s where they get all of their content. As a consumer, you have to look at it from a different perspective – the stakes.

If you’re a vendor paying SCG $2,500 to set up a booth at their show, you have to compete to even have a chance at getting a return on your investment. Even if a vendor would normally pay less for cards and sell them for more (not sure how that’s possible), they have to change because they’re going to set up shop twenty feet away from the biggest name in Magic outside of Wizards of the Coast.

Big names ≠ big bucks. 

The SCGs, Troll and Toads, and Channel Fireballs of the world know that you’ll come to them because you know their name and you’ll do business because you’re already there. It’s in your best interest to start with the smaller guys because it’s often THEIR business and THEIR livelihood on the line, so they’re generally a bit more competitive.

Grand Prix Indy

If you’re going to be at Grand Prix Indianapolis this weekend and want to say hello, trade, ask questions, or even play some EDH, you can hit me up on Twitter @GoingMadlem. It’s my home turf so I’m going to try my hand at competing for a change.

By: Derek Madlem

You placed your bets and now the results are in. Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar has come and gone and while we were robbed of the champion we deserved (Finkel), we did at least find out what we already knew: Jeskai and Abzan are STILL good decks, IMAGINE THAT. Let’s take a look at the big winners and losers in this latest iteration of Standard:

WINNER:

Everyone that had the common sense to buy $2.50 Wingmate Rocs, $1 Crackling Dooms, and $1 Mantis Riders. All of these cards were obviously good and the bulk of us just sat around ignoring them at bulk prices. While we were all excited about the “sure thing” Rattleclaw Mystic, many of us skimmed over proven staples.

This is a great lesson in going with your gut, a good card is a good card…most of the time.

LOSER:

Sorry Sorin, Solemn Visitor, nobody loves you. Sorin is one of my picks for this spring’s Duel Deck and put up disappointing results at the Pro Tour, with only six copies total appearing in all of the decks that went 7-3 or better in constructed, Sorin just isn’t the powerhouse we hoped for; filling much the same role (and casting cost) as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Sorin just couldn’t compete in that same space.

LOSER:

Narset Transcendent appeared as a single copy in a single sideboard of a single deck. If there was any doubt about this “do nothing” planeswalker being hot garbage, that doubt should be squashed now. While most of us had the sense to stay away from this one, I’ve witnessed hopeful speculators ask vendors how many Narsets they had followed by the words, “I’ll take them.” Sorry guys, this one’s not paying off any time soon.

LOSER:

While we’re on the topic of planeswalkers that people went ham on, we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker. This is another card I witnessed people buying by the stack, at the promise of future wealth. As it turns out, Sarkhan did see actually see some play in the Jeskai decks. But the reality of this is that Sarkhan showing up as a one-of is not going to be enough to push this guy up in price enough. There’s already the reality that Sarkhan has less than six months to live looming on the horizon and he showed up in one of the most opened sets of all time.

WINNER:

Ojutai’s Command has been on a steady march to major contender since the printing of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. While Jace was a great reason to run Ojutai’s Command, the real push came in the form of Brian Kibler Outcast. The ability to “flash in” this 1/1 at the end of your opponent’s turn really pushed the envelope on Ojutai’s Command, making it a staple in pretty much every iteration of Jeskai that we saw this past weekend.

There’s a small army of players that bet big on these guys at $1 or less and now they’re looking like prodigies themselves. The lesson we should learn here is that if a spell is one number off from being really good, something is likely going to be printed to make that number work.

LOSER:

Bring to Light was fun, but it’s time to move on. Remember those sweet four color Siege Rhino decks? Yeah, real cute guys. As it turns out, in long tournaments stacked with skilled players, you don’t really want to be stretching your mana base too thin trying to be cute. This card is already in a downward spiral, shedding 20% in the last week. Soon enough we should be seeing this in the “premium bulk” pile on the buy mats of the world.

WINNER:

Zurgo Bellstriker is basically at an all-time high now, surpassing his initial sell price of $4. This is another card that savvy buyers picked up on in the $1-2 range and now get to dump. The lesson we should be taking away from this is that people like dumb red decks and dumb red cards, unless you’re…

LOSER:

Dragon Whisperer is a mythic rare that we’ve all eyed coming into rotation as the heir to the throne of key 2-drop in every red deck, but it’s not. While Dragon Whisperer did show up twice as much as Narset, that number still only totals two. We can all let this one go quietly into the dark at this point, there’s not much hope left.

WINNER:

Abbot of Keral Keep continues to show up in more and more decks. As it turns out, this card is still really awesome (I told you so) and I expect to see it continue to see action across Standard and Modern for the foreseeable future. Abbot has remained relatively stable around $7 for quite some time now, but we’re not going to see too much more Magic Origins being opened / redeemed in the near future so the supply for this guy is probably a lot smaller than most of us realize. This is a great card to pick up as you can as it’s only a matter of time before the price tag starts to quietly tick upwards 1% at a time.

LOSER:

Saito bought all of these! OMG! While some people smell conspiracy or market manipulation, the reality here is that people in Japan were buying these cards at a much higher rate than we were. Saito was in town and saw that he could buy piles of these for what amounted to his buylist price, so he did. This is how the global Magic economy works folks.

As far as the Pro Tour went, there isn’t much to be said about Oblivion Sower other than it did show up as a single copy in a few sideboards and as a four-of in a single big dumb ramp deck. While I’m not completely counting this guy out yet as I still have to unlock the Crumble to Dust / Oblivion Sower achievement, this card was not the cornerstone of a top secret Japanese ramp deck for the Pro Tour.

LOSER:

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger is in pretty much the same boat as Oblivion Sower except he (she? it?) didn’t show up in any sideboards. While this is good news for the people that want to own Ulamogs, it’s not exciting news for anyone that expected this to be a breakout card or a sweet target to put into play on the cheap with…

LOSER:

See the Unwritten is a casual card guys, you’re going to have to accept that. Summoning Trap was only played in it’s heyday because you could cast it for free if your opponent countered your Primeval Titan. There was no feeling greater than getting your Titan countered with three Summoning Traps in your hand and just dropping them onto the table with a twisted grin on your face.

If See the Unwritten had been an instant, we’d be having a different conversation all together, but it’s not. See the Unwritten showed up in approximately 0% of the 7-3 or better constructed decks.

WINNER:

In case you missed the memo, Dromoka’s Command was criminally under priced when it bottomed out at $2. We’ve since learned that event decks and clash packs not enough to keep a good card down. With the exception of Silumgar’s Command, this entire cycle has now seen serious constructed play and the flexibility of these cards warrants their inclusion in pretty much any deck that can support the mana requirements. Dromoka’s Command appeared mostly as four-ofs and is going to be vitally useful going forward in the Abzan and Megamorph decks.

WINNER:

Warden of the First Tree is probably a solid pickup at this point despite being printed in the latest event deck. This small set mythic rare is repping the four-of status and is vital for players looking to apply early pressure. We probably would have seen more of this guy before if Fleecemane Lion didn’t exist, but now that the golden-locked cat is out of the picture, this guy is the premiere badass in the aggressive Abzan builds.

WINNER:

Anafenza, the Foremost is another Abzan all star that put in some work at PTBFZ. Anafenza’s is most powerful against decks featuring Deathmist Raptor or Hangarback Walker because her cursory ability to keep creatures out of your opponents’ graveyards basically shuts off these threats. And if that wasn’t enough, the ability to slow down Dig Through Time and Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is not irrelevant. Combine all of this with a solid body that seems even stronger in a format with weak removal and the ability to pump other creatures on attack and you have yourself a mythic rare powerhouse poised for takeover.

Winner:

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar had a big big weekend. Gideon showed up as a four-of in a variety of archetypes ranging from Jeskai Tokens to Abzan to Esper. Gideon is the man of the hour thanks mostly to the lack of reasonable answers to deal with him, Stasis Snare is not an Oblivion Ring and Ruinous Path is not Hero’s Downfall.

Gideon has carved out a niche as the apex predator of this format and that’s not going to change until we get more cards into the format. If any card is poised to hold it’s price in spite of the massive amounts of downward pressure we’re seeing on BFZ cards, it’s Gideon. We can learn a lot about contextual value from Gideon because it’s likely this card would make a much smaller impact in past formats than it has in this environment, he’s better because so much else is just worse.

LOSER:

My condolences to anyone that’s forced to play with this hideous iteration of Snapcaster Mage. This is the promo you get for attending the RPTQs this year and it reeks of leftover art from another commission.

Some of you have said that you actually like this art, and I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. This art is garbage.

But art is subjective.

No, it’s not. Here’s a little experiment you can try at home. Take any red or blue instant and put this art on the card and see if makes sense. SPOILER ALERT: it does. You know why? Because this is generic card art, it wasn’t commissioned to be a Snapcaster Mage…it was commissioned to be whatever random spell they hadn’t made yet.

By: Derek Madlem

How about a break from Battle for Zendikar? Sound good to you? Yeah, me too. While I love talking about how much I hate stuff and think it’s terrible, we’ve had this record on loop for a few weeks now and it’s time to move on to something else. Don’t worry though, this weekend is Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar, so I’m sure we’ll be back with all kinds of exciting price spikes and buyout targets next week (you know, #mtgfinance stuff).

#MTGFinance

There’s a label that’s loaded with angst and misconceptions these days. Of course, by now we all know that #mtgfinance is the publicly used brand for ripping people off, because that’s what sharks and thieves do – share their methods publicly. #MTGFinance is basically the Lehman Brothers of the Magic world, it’s an evil organization hell bent on leveraging card value credit swaps and killing the game of Magic by making cards too expensive for the average player to afford, thus crushing their dreams of ever being Magic’s middle class.

Or maybe, and this is just a crazy theory I have, #MTGFinance is…wait for it…just a ****ing hashtag used for categorizing information.

Yeah, that’s a crazy thought right? As it turns out, there are a lot of words on Twitter and most of them aren’t pre-filtered into easily read categories so Twitter came up with a system that its users could use to filter down information into easily searchable terms. NEAT-O!

The Revolution Will be Televised

Did you know that right now there are freedom fighters battling for the heart and soul of Magic? It’s true. They’ve posted compelling arguments all over Twitter and various forums about how #mtgfinance has ruined Magic, and you can tune in. Some of these arguments include “it’s a ****ing children’s game!”, and “**** #mtgfinance!”, “**** price gougers!”, and I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Well maybe…

Here’s the thing, #mtgfinance is an all-encompassing term. It covers every financial aspect of Magic from the price of booster packs, to the cost of tournament entry fees, to the value of of cards contained within. A lot of people act like #mtgfinance is some new secretive Illuminati organization that’s manipulating the market, but it’s just a hashtag.

People get angry about things easily these days, and rabble rousers are great at making a system seem like it’s committing criminal acts when in reality, that’s just how things work. You don’t see people clambering all over social media crying out “**** chemistry!” every time someone uses their chemistry knowledge to make a bomb do you?

Tell you what, let’s skim over the economics of Magic (#mtgfinance) so that we all can better understand our enemy.

Retail

I’m sure many of you have worked in retail, and the concept is pretty simple: the retailer (we’ll call him Bob) orders product that they think will sell from the manufacturer and they put it on a shelf, a peg, online, in a catalog, or in wicker baskets to sell. Then someone buys it. Bob then uses the money from that sale to pay for his expenses and orders another widget to sell.

Unfortunately this is not the entirety of Magic retail because you, the consumer, don’t want to just buy packs from Bob until you get every card you want. You want to buy individual cards but Bob can’t order individual cards from the manufacturer so he has to get them from packs or people who have opened packs. Generally this is pretty easy, Bob just opens some packs and sells the cards inside for a little more than he would have made selling the packs. Why more? Because Bob has to pay Steve to open the packs and sort the cards.

This all seems simple enough until you, the consumer, wants a card that comes from a pack that Bob can no longer buy from the manufacturer. Now Bob has to find that card and buy it from a person so that he can sell it to you. Bob offers Greg and Dave $5 for the card, but they don’t want to sell it for $5 so Bob still doesn’t have that card you really want. Bob finds another guy with the card and he offers that guy $8 for the card and hopes that you’ll still want it when he has to charge a little bit more for it.

This is how the majority of cards go up in price. It’s not a global conspiracy, or a coordinated buyout by an army of market manipulators, it’s not price gouging; it’s supply and demand.

The reality of the situation is that you’re only complaining about this because Bob, and thousands like him, put their futures on the line investing in the idea of running a local game store. Magic is built on the backs of retailers and tournament organizers that simply would not exist if “stupid pieces of cardboard” weren’t worth money, end of story.

Jace, the Price Pariah

Usually as a round of rabble rousing occurs, there’s a catalyst and often times it’s our friend Jace. Jace, the Mind Sculptor was realistically the second card to go to an insane price while in Standard, but its the card that’s emblazoned in people’s psyche and for years we’ve been waiting for the fulfillment of “The Next Jace” prophecy that heralds the return of a really expensive card to Standard, preferably a creature or planeswalker (nobody called Bonfire of the Damned “The Next Jace”). With the return of the prophesied “Next Jace” to Standard, we have another round of people losing their damned minds because it’s obviously a conspiracy.

Just look at this guy, he’s wearing a suit. A SUIT! Clearly he’s manipulating the market price of Jace, and if he’s manipulating Jace you can bet he’s manipulating other cards too! He even said numerous times that cards from Magic Origins would be good bets because the set was not exactly a sales dynamo and they sandwiched it between the two biggest releases of the year. Obviously a criminal.

Here’s another one! The nerve of this guy, wearing a suit [blazer -ed.] and getting kissed by a girl. A GIRL! You can tell by the sunglasses that this guy has something to hide. He also said numerous times that Jace was a strong card and a good buy; he’s been saying it for months! Obviously he was behind the price of Jace going up and likely the cause of numerous other buyouts.

Or maybe Magic Origins just wasn’t opened that much in paper and maybe it wasn’t drafted as much online because it’s a boring core set and everyone was busy quitting MTGO because of the new prize structure so there isn’t as big an influx of set redemptions as we’ve seen in the past. Maybe, Jace is just a great example of supply and demand in action.

Maybe there’s a reason that StarCityGames raised their buylist price on Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy above what they were selling the card for at the beginning of the weekend at the first Open in Indianapolis. I’ll give you a hint: Bob spent much of Saturday offering $30 on Jace and every single one of those people said no. Bob tried offering $40 and every single one of those people said no. Then Bob offered $50 for Jace and people reluctantly started to say yes.

Historic Perspective

So the year is 1995 and a slightly smaller version of myself is sitting in a local game store playing Magic: the Gathering. You know what was going to kill the game back then? If you guessed all the insane card prices, you’re correct!

Magic is no different now than it was then, or has ever been. It’s a game that costs money, it has always cost money, and will always cost money. The bulk of in-print Magic cards are cheaper and more accessible than ever, the only thing that’s REALLY changed to bring about this latest backlash is social media. You know how prices for cards changed back in 1995? A new issue of Scrye Magazine came out and you checked the price guide (Inquest if you were a savage).

We didn’t have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Podcasts, or entire websites dedicated to providing content on the matter. It seems worse now for the same reason that crime and natural disasters seem worse than they’ve ever been: there are less barriers to that information reaching us. We have access to and are bombarded by more information than we ever imagined.

Reality Check

There’s this image in the community surrounding #mtgfinance because it’s become associated with a few bad apples. I admit, there was a rough patch there for a while as Medina wrote weekly articles about how to shark the trade tables or convince your partner that their card was worth less than yours, but we’re past that now. The trade tables have never been calmer than they are now, everyone has access to the value of every card ever printed right at their fingertips. We can cite a few a-holes at local game stores ripping off little kids for their Expeditions, but this has been happening as long as Magic cards have been printed and realistically has as much do with forum users as your average child pornographer has to do with Subway restaurants.

This Too Will Pass

While thinking about the recent angry backlash against a non-existent entity I was reminded of another internet boogeyman that was going to ruin Magic: the netdeckers. Those of you that have been around for a few years remember this insult being thrown around within the Magic community.

Players that turned to the internet for knowledge on deckbuilding strategies and trends were filthy netdeckers, and they were ruining “real Magic” for the rest of us with their unoriginal deck choices. Obviously these people were filth because they didn’t play the game the same way the rest of us did and they were always winning and stuff. “I just play to have fun” we said proudly from the 0-3 bracket while we stared covetously at their prize packs and the riches contained within. “The rich get richer” we thought as these privileged douchebags with too much time on their hands trounced us week after week. The nerve of these people.

Looking back, it seems ridiculous that this was ever a realm of thought, and you can still find this behavior to a lesser extent but the bulk of the community has moved on and just acknowledged that these decks are good and people are going to play them. In a couple years the finance aspect of Magic will just be another mainstream category like Limited or Standard.

The financial aspect of Magic is no different than any other aspect of the game. If you want better results, you’re going to have to put more time into it. Whether that time be researching, grinding marginal value in trades, reading Tweets, or just reading the occasional article. You get out of the game what you put in.

Knowledge Gap

Think of an activity, any hobby or pastime your heart desires. It doesn’t matter what you choose. Do you resent someone with more resources (hint: time IS money) to devote to that hobby doing better than you? Do you resent Michael Jordan for spending all that time in the gym to perfect his craft? Do you resent a master gardener because they’re able to grow better tomatoes and more of them than you? Do you resent your friends for buying more expensive golf clubs than you? Name any activity that doesn’t reward your for putting in additional effort and gaining additional knowledge.

Maybe it’s time to put down the pitchforks and rethink what you’re trying to accomplish. Someone else having more resources than you (time, money, knowledge, effort) to devote to something doesn’t mean that they’re ruining it for you. Basketball isn’t worse for the rest of us because Michael Jordan existed, why do we get so mad at other people having better cards than us?

Disclaimer

Before you guys start piling on in the comments section here accusing me of being some kind of industry shill, I’ll go ahead and throw out a disclaimer: I too have been upset, disgusted, or annoyed by the actions of people using the #mtgfinance hashtag, but those individuals are just individuals in a very large and very complex ecosystem. That jackass that has to get value out of every trade at your local store is just a jackass, he’s not indicative of an entire category of knowledge.