LordArgh posted:

I prefer Pre-Malone

Vampire Panties posted:

There's actually a mini-set of them?

Nooner posted:

My Mandela effect thing is every time I see this dude's name come up and find out he is still alive, like I could have sworn he ODed years ago but I guess I'm just remembering every other white face tattoo guy

super sweet best pal posted:

Yeah, they've been doing these limited time themed pre-order sales lately where they offer special card designs for way too much money. There was a Junji Ito one too.

It's not the worst thing they're doing to squeeze money out of the fans. The 30th anniversary event they're running is four 15 card packs of reprints for $999. They've got different card backs so they're not tournament legal, so players are calling them thousand dollar proxy cards.

MrQwerty posted:

yeah Secret Lair stuff is pretty innocuous imo because I don't play Magic anymore but I've definitely thought about shelling out money for 4 cards from artists I like a lot

Das Butterbrot posted:

Bushido (one of, if not the most succesful german language rapper of all time) used to play alot of WoW, not sure if he still does.

An acquaintance of mine used to raid with him.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rystlv4HZK8

super sweet best pal posted:

Worst part is the fear of missing out tactics they're employing. I really like the aesthetic on this space themed one but the sale period is over so it doesn't matter whether I could afford them or not.

Sophy Wackles posted:

This violent rap music has gone too far; there’s a kid in this with a homemade slingshot! What’s next, gambling for baseball cards in games of marbles? Extorting the local soda shop for chocolate malts? Premarital necking??

Vim Fuego posted:

What mana symbol is that? How do you even cast this joker

Vampire Panties posted:

Also I heard that Vin Diesel plays D&D?

super sweet best pal posted:

I've been thinking of buying a few packs of Magic, building a deck to play with.

super sweet best pal posted:

I've been thinking of buying a few packs of Magic, building a deck to play with.

Infidel Castro posted:

They're usually printed to demand, so I don't get that upset about it. The 30th anniversary one though was horse poo poo since they had a limited print ruin, but still let bots buy up 50 at a time so it sold out in minutes with most of them going to scalpers.

Vampire Panties posted:

Also I heard that Vin Diesel plays D&D?

Dragonstoned posted:

Joe Manganiello is so into to D&D some of his characters became official canon

quote:

A Bank of America analyst says Hasbro is “destroying the long-term value” of Magic: The Gathering by overprinting cards. The dire warning was accompanied by a double downgrade of Hasbro stock — from “buy” to “underperform” — as its valuation fell more than 5% before trading began on Monday.

“Hasbro is overproducing Magic cards which has propped up recent results,” wrote research analyst Jason Haas. “Card prices are falling, game stores are losing money, collectors are liquidating and large retailers are cutting orders.”

Hasbro has recently touted the performance of its Wizards of the Coast business unit, which includes Magic as well as the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game. Haas notes that Magic alone accounts for some 15% of Hasbro’s annual revenue and some 35% of its annual earnings. Sales of the collectible card game nearly doubled over the pandemic, and Hasbro has urged that growth onward with additional new releases throughout 2021 and 2022. But Haas believes that the end of that growth curve is looming on the horizon, in part because “Magic has grown primarily by extracting more revenue from each player rather than by growing its player base.”

For individual retailers, the effect can be seen on store shelves.

“The increased supply has crashed secondary market prices which has caused distributors, collectors and local game stores to lose money on Magic,” Haas wrote. “As a result, we expect they’ll order less product in future releases.”

Haas also called out the Magic 30th Anniversary set as particularly egregious. These $999 bundles include just four packs of cards, which are normally priced around $5 each. But these special collector’s packs include reprints of highly sought after cards such as the Black Lotus. While technically unplayable in some of the game’s most competitive formats, their reintroduction still breaks a vow made to fans decades ago.

“Not only is the price excessively high,” Haas wrote, “but the set also includes Reserved List cards which Hasbro had promised to never reprint. This has created panic among collectors and we’re seeing collections being liquidated now that the scarcity value of Magic is in question.”

Haas concludes that Hasbro needs to cut its print runs going forward in order to allow more of its older product to sell through.

“Local game stores already appear to be selling Magic’s latest expansion set, The Brothers’ War, at a loss on TCGplayer,” Haas wrote. “Brothers’ War draft booster boxes are available now on TCGplayer for $107 and set booster boxes for $112, below a break-even price of $115 and $120 (per our math).”

Haas said that this kind of overproduction could ultimately lead to a loss of dedicated fans.

“While Magic has a dedicated and sticky fanbase, we’re concerned that continued overproduction of cards and declining secondary market values could push players and collectors into other trading card games such as Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Flesh and Blood,” Haas concluded.

Happy Landfill posted:

I've heard it said that most pro football players nowadays are huge in to anime, especially DBZ. And, I mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74KhDM9Z1Xk

super sweet best pal posted:

Oh, so this is why everyone's doomsaying.

https://www.polygon.com/23458064/magic-the-gathering-overprinting-hasbro-stock-downgrade

Archer666 posted:

Happy Landfill posted:

I've heard it said that most pro football players nowadays are huge in to anime, especially DBZ. And, I mean

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74KhDM9Z1Xk

Vampire Panties posted:

So alpha black lotus existing somehow props up the stock value of the company? this is the NFT argument

Vampire Panties posted:

My deepest and darkest secret is that I loving love Magic The Gathering but I cannot stand other people who play.

quote:

this duder? this would be rad as hell to have

Colonel Cancer posted:

What happened to wholesome collectable cards of our grandfathers' times when all you had to do was buy cigarettes for it?!

Colonel Cancer posted:

What happened to wholesome collectable cards of our grandfathers' times when all you had to do was buy cigarettes for it?!

Infidel Castro posted:

That's a bit overreaching. The key is to find a decent play group or local game store with a decent crowd. The place I go to every weekend has a good variety of players, and I've learned which people to avoid and which I'm going to enjoy playing with.

Would it be cool to have? Yes!
Am I paying $250 per pack for literal proxies? gently caress no!

And I was actually referring to this:
https://secretlair.wizards.com/us/product/772071/30th-anniversary-countdown-kit

ArbitraryC posted:

Silly though it may sound, effectively yes. A big part of what drives magic sales is speculation. A new set comes out and people are buying a bunch of products to either a: open in hopes of cracking valuable cards or b: sit on in hopes of selling later. When a set has seen some play and prices start to stabilize if it turns out the set was a stinker everyone (including stores you buy the cards from) loses their rear end on the unopened product because it's worth less than what they bought it for. It'd be one thing if this only hurt random people who "invest" a bunch in a random new product in hopes of selling years down the line, but when it hurts the brick and mortar stores that were just trying to stock enough to sell the next set to their local customers it obviously creates a problem.

I think more an issue than novelty collector sets is the overall price of the hobby. Wizards has spent too long cultivating chase rares that drive sales and allow them to price their products higher. People put up with the price not just as an entertainment expense but because it's also an "investment" which creates a perverse relationship between "good" and "bad" sets not just coming down to "were they fun or not" but "did they hold their value or not" which is a big shame imo cause weaker sets tend to be more fun. What this also means is wizards can and likely will end up mostly destroying the game by crashing the market at some point. Though to be fair, that might be a good thing in the long run.