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Comment by gymbeaux | Hacker News Reader

My theory is that all cards will eventually be under $10, because cards like Mana Crypt are opportunities for WoTC to make money via reprints. I’ve only been playing/buying since March, but I’ve seen so many cards dropping dramatically in price, much more often than seeing a card shoot up in price. Reprints help drive sales and justify the higher prices for booster packs.

Cutting staff implies that, perhaps, they anticipate more Universes Beyond and reprints, and fewer original sets with original mechanics. Universes Beyond is great for Wizards because they don’t have to really invent cards, and fans will pay whatever they ask for cards from their favorite shows and movies and games.

This month people are losing their minds over the Princess Bride and Dr. Malcolm Secret Lair sets.

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They're in a tough spot because they have to keep several audiences happy: collectors and players. Players generally want the cheapest set pieces while collectors want the value of their collection to grow. I think WotC has done a decent job trying to satisfy both groups and are at least trying different things. As an investor, you should be happy about that. Whether or not this sea change of releases over the pandemic helps or hurts the long-term health of the game is a worry of mine.

I wish playing with third-party "proxy" cards were more accepted (like https://mtg-print.com/set/fallout or https://proxyking.biz/), where you can get any card custom-printed for a dollar or so. Maybe I just have to find a group where nobody cares about collecting.

If WotC did that first-party, I'd buy a shit ton from them even if they had zero resale value. But I guess that would eat into their collectibles and gacha pack market.

At least in commander casual it seems pretty well accepted.

And with how extensive some alters are, their proxy nature may not be distinguishable (although I don’t think you should mislead people, just be upfront and if you don’t mind bring fallback decks).

It might actually be more accepted in competitive EDH (and pretty much required) as most people can't be expected mortgage their homes to buy a deck full of expensive reserve list cards[1] :D. It helps that cEDH is not a sanctioned format.

[1] cEDH is sometimes called singleton multiplayer vintage for a reason.

I would not be shocked, but I know nothing about cEDH while I have at least some acquaintance with EDH.

Also talking about singleton vintage is a bit funny when vintage is the only format with a restricted list (and thus in a way the original format with singleton restriction).

yes, arguably vintage is singleton vintage :D

He is somewhat exaggerating, as most of the MOST espensive cEDH decks peak at around 10k, which is frankly a TON of money but comes from 2 or 3 cards. Take Urza for example: the best Urza Poly Kraken deck (uninterruptable combo deck reliably wins turn 3) is like 9k because it has timetwister, tabernacle, and mox diamond, among other $200+ pieces. This deck is a solid 7 cEDH deck, which places it among the best decks ever. However, drop it to a cEDH 5 and the price drops to 2k because you can cut those crazy cards and make other subs. Drop it to a solid budget cEDH deck and you can get it to $500. Each extra insane piece adds only a nominal amount of power.

The monopoly profit maximizing price for a card is going to depend on the precise shape of the demand curve for each individual card; It may be $10 it may be $50; the fact that they could crash the price whenever they want does not mean it is in their interests to do so.

So my thinking is that if they control supply (they do of course), they control demand, and that there is no “per-card” demand curve. If a card is reprinted and drops from $100 to $50, they can reprint until it’s $10

I think you do not understand what a demand curve is and should look up some econ 101.

The demand curve is how many of a given card customers (in aggregate) would buy at a given price.

Wizards could reprint any card into the ground if they wanted to (which would be far below $10), but that would likely not be the strategy that generated them the most profit, and there's no actual reason to think $10 is the price point that would do so either.

Asking someone to look up Econ 101 isn't necessary to make your point.. You probably knew what I meant. You probably knew that my point is they control the supply, so they control the price- the equilibrium price if you like.

> This month people are losing their minds over the Princess Bride and Dr. Malcolm Secret Lair sets.

Wonderful art on the Princess Bride set.

I can't help but notice that if Inigo Montoya gets into combat with the Man in Black... he'll win.

Purely a consequence of using existing creatures as templates I’m sure

I dropped $200 on Dr Malcolm and some others for the Locust God promo. I'm very happy with it all, and now get to build an Egglord deck with Jeff Goldblum's face on it.

And, if you've only experienced a few set releases, price swings will seem weird. Keep in mind that more boxes will be opened for a while, thus making more copies of coveted things available. It's a different story when a set goes out of print.

I haven’t been around long, but based on what I see at local game stores, it seems like they’re still printing sets going back to 2021… so they print a set for 2-3 years typically?

I’m building a Dr. Malcolm deck as well! He’d be a great Dino commander if he were more colors.

Tasha’s Hideous Laughter as him laughing in the helicopter is chef’s kiss

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