Just because a slot machine has a guaranteed minimum payout, which in this case is 10 pieces of cardboard with nice pictures on them, doesn't make it not gambling.
This is much older than Wizards of the Coast
I think the scarcity that led to certain cards becoming more valuable was incidental rather than intentional, but I'm not an expert.
[0] https://www.amerlegends.com/the-history-of-marketing-basebal.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card
I doubt it turns anyone into a gambling addict but it could show them how much money you can waste on it with no return.
Of course I have an adult friend that has bragged many times in the past about how much he sold individual MTG cards for but never seems to tally up how much he spent to get them in the first place, so…
$999 for 4 packs of 15 cards in which 2 are rare. Not real magic cards - not valid for tournament play.
With multilands you must mean the Dual Lands and they have a lot of value. https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/6 - even if they are from the revised set and have been played with we speak about at least $200 each and you probably had 20 or so in your deck.
If by original editions you mean Alpha (black border, round corners) and Beta (black border) - they have insane value depending on which cards of course.
Do you remember if the cards had black borders? Would love to see some photos of your deck :)
And yes, mostly Beta (black border), a few Alphas, and a lot of Unlimited, Arabian Nights, and Legends still in sleeves. I stopped collecting after that.
> Would love to see some photos of your deck :)
Would love to be able to find them and take those photos!!
I actually ran a business selling Magic cards back in '95. I'd go buy cases at wholesale and then sell them out of my trunk at retail with my buddy. Instead of taking profit, we'd open one pack for every one we sold, so I got all my money back and a shitload of rare cards. It was my most successful business in my career!
I played first in 1996 but had no money so no valuable cards, but I kept them all. I have now been spending around €2K to buy old cards (mostly revised and 4th edition) to make decks for playing with my son. We play an affordable format for old school, you can see more info here https://7pts-singleton.com/
Last summer we travelled to Madrid to be part of the Championship, me and my son - it was wonderful :)
Even under the least charitable framing imaginable, there's a world of differences between trading card games and slot machines. For starters, slot machines are not random; the payouts are are specifically preprogrammed to manipulate users into the patterns of behavior that maximize playtime and minimize total volume of payouts. When you learn about how they really work, it's actually shocking that slot machines are legal at all, because of the amount of explicit deception that goes on, compared to even roulette, craps, or even blackjack.
Not to mention that trading card games are multifacted; not only is it possible to participate in those games without interfacing with any of the aspects that could be construed as "gambling", but it's a known and actively encouraged set of playstyles. From the perspective of many users (including the most engaged ones), those aspects don't even exist, insofar as they don't interface with them at all.
I mark the difference as to whether you can simply buy the thing you want.
For MTG and its ilk, you can buy a card instead of open packs. In addition, you can sell any card you get. This is a little different from normal gambling in that these card games have an upside that is okay and a downside that is generally capped.
This is different from some of the online "gacha games" where you MUST gamble, and, even then, you are not guaranteed to cough up the card you want. And, even if you get the card, you generally can't sell it to somebody else. These have infinite downside and are flat-out gambling and need to be treated as such.
That's false. The manufacturer (Wizards of the Coast) does not sell individual cards. You have to gamble and buy random packs.
You're describing buying specific cards from people who have done the gambling already by buying packs and opening them.
This is true but glosses over the fact that you bought a thing. And you can buy and sell that thing--as can others.
In addition, most of the "boxes" that were sold for MTG were almost always net positive in terms of money spent. Yeah, make sure you preorder and don't buy from scalpers. However, if you spent $200 on cards you generally got slightly more than $200 in value if you kept them in good shape and then cashed them in later.
Contrast this to something like Genshin Impact where you simply cannot dodge the gacha mechanics in any way, shape or form AND you have zero idea what the probabilities are and whether the game company is being consistent (they almost certainly are not).
Side note: This example is, of course, one of the reasons why WotC is getting hammered for the 30th anniversary box. The MTG community appears to be quite sensitive to getting taken for a ride. So, there's clearly some difference between MTG-like games and pure gambling or gacha mechanics.
MtG cards are things out of physical necessity. If WotC could lock cards to whoever purchase them first, I've no doubt they would. They've been heavily pushing digital versions of the game lately, where they have the ability to control, limit, or eliminate the second hand market.
My understanding was that selling these is a bannable offense and that they are tied to the identity of the phone.
> If WotC could lock cards to whoever purchase them first, I've no doubt they would.
Oh, no doubt. MTGO tried that path and had a bunch of their big players boycott them. WotC got schooled real quick that their top players play this game precisely because they can make money at each level without gambling.
This is why MTGO still allows people to purchase individual cards as well as cash out their digital collections for real, physical cards.
Yes, it's a historical accident that WotC/Hasbro would change. Nevertheless, it is what sets the standard game apart from mere gambling.
(Don't get me started on the gorp that WotC/Hasbro pulls around their more expensive formats--Legacy, particularly. Yeah, that's pretty much back to straight up gambling.)