Magic: the Gathering is a collectible card game. It may seem like an odd way to start off an article, but I feel like it needs to be said. The idea is that you collect the cards you need in order to play the decks you want. Sometimes you trade for them, sometimes you have to buy them. In the past this wasn’t really something that people thought about that much, but recently the “Magic Economy” has become a topic that has triggered a ton of controversy in the online Magic and Podcasting communities. Why is this happening? What are the problems? How do we fix it?
Let’s rewind a few years to Shards of Alara previews, when Wizards of the Coast announced that a new rarity of card would be included for the first time: Mythic Rare. Wizards had held off on this for a long time, thinking it would bring speculators into the market and would turn the game into more of a collection that you could play with instead of a game that some people chose to collect. This fear was illustrated by the reassurance from Mark Rosewater that Mythics wouldn’t be a collection of tournament staples, but they would be build-arounds. A certain blue emo dude was the first card to invalidate that promise, and Batterskull is on it way to being the next. Or it was, before the Ban Hammer. One could argue that Mythic Conscription did a decent job of blowing the whole thing out of the water too. However, that’s not the point of today’s column.
For a while it seemed like the fears around speculators and collectors were unfounded. The big cards were still topping out around $30 for Standard, which was really the only format affected. But things were bubbling. Jace things.
If you don’t know what I mean by that, kindly remove the sand from your ears and lrn2intarwebz. Done? Awesome. Whether Jace was the start of the problem or whether he was merely the thing that brought it to the forefront is rather a moot point now, but the two did sort of rise to prominence simultaneously. At his peak he was selling for well over $100, the sort of price you only saw on early Legacy staples. Except that, magically, Legacy staples were starting to shoot up too. Dual lands went from $60-80 each to $100 each minimum. Cards like [Card]Force of Will[/Card] went up by a factor of 5. Online they went through the roof. People buying packs and boxes of Worldwake were said to be “playing the Jace lottery,” and the price of those boosters doubled. My local game store still limits customers to 4 Worldwake boosters per day.
A simple case of supply and demand? Maybe, but there’s more to it.
Any marketing person will tell you that while supply is easier to control, demand is more effective to manipulate. When you have a dedicated group of individuals doing the latter by doing the former, you have an unsustainable model that prices many out of the game and enriches those with the time to exploit it. Which is where we find ourselves today.
Let’s look at [Card]Spellskite[/Card] (Spellskiiiiiite…). Calm down Smitty, get your hand out of your pants. Here we have a card that a few people said would be good. The price did not budge. A respected player like Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa mentions how good it is in one article, and the price triples. Overnight. Not only does the price triple, but various speculators start buying up every copy they can find before the advertised buy price on various web sites is increased, just to turn a profit. Now I don’t begrudge anyone the ability to make a profit. We live in a capitalist society (well most of you reading this do) and that’s the basis of the whole thing. It becomes an issue when “profit” becomes “profit at any cost” and things like morals and personal enjoyment are compromised for an extra fifty cents on that [Card]Gatekeeper of Malakir[/Card].
Another example for you. [Card]Candelabra of Tawnos[/Card] was an expensive card for a very long time. It wasn’t widely printed but it also wasn’t widely played in any popular format. The card showed up in one High Tide deck at one Legacy tournament, and won that tournament. Jonathan Medina, whose name you are likely to see a fair bit in the rest of this article, went on a Twitter crusade to snap up every one that he could before the major sites increased the “official” buy price of the card. I won’t pretend I know what was in his head but it seems likely that the intent was to grab them from people who had not yet heard that someone won a tournament with them. Of course when one person backed out of a deal having learned of the price change, Medina invoked the wrath of his Twitter followers and made it seem like a crime on par with arson. And that wasn’t even the first incidence of a card’s value shooting up after it won a tournament. Have you seen how much a set of foil Squadron Hawks (a Core Set COMMON for pity’s sake) was going for at one point? Medina has.
[Card]Hive Mind[/Card] and [Card]Energy Field[/Card] both were included in tournament-winning Legacy decks recently and have been the subject of some speculation. I know of one guy who bought every Hive Mind he could snap up the night that the deck placed second at GP Providence. There are now no less than five columns each week advising readers on the cards they should be looking to pick up PURELY for the purpose of selling them later at a profit. So this is what Wizards was afraid would happen? Well, turns out they were right. As usual. People are now casually speculating to the point that anyone who just wants to buy four of a card for his casual deck is going to have to pay through the nose for them, if they can even find them.
Magic cards are becoming a trading commodity, and that cannot be good for the game. That’s what this is folks, a game. Not a stock market or an investment opportunity. These aren’t hockey cards were talking about. On a similar note, don’t go getting all butt hurt when cards that you splashed $400 on in order to get a playset are banned and you lose half your “investment.”
The out-of-control pricing on cards mentioned by pros and speculators is only part of the problem. Sites like Star City Games quickly set up preorders for any spoiled cards from new sets, before they are even confirmed, in order to secure the business. The prices skyrocket as other, smaller sites either have to follow suit or lose out. Then the Medinas and Kelly Reids swoop in, telling everyone to buy card X at price $Y because it will go up. So the sheep listen, preorder the cards, the price DOES shoot up (self-fulfilling prophecy much?) and the sites benefit. Wait…don’t these speculators write for these same sites? Hmmm…
Before I get into the next section, let me preface it be reaffirming that I have no issue with people trying to make a profit. I have also never traded with one of these speculators, nor am I ever likely to do so. I have purchased from one or more of them because I was in a hurry and knew it would work out. This is not sour grapes, this is an observation and a form of public service announcement for you all.
Let’s say I want [Card]Phyrexian Obliterator[/Card]s, hypothetically. (Note: I totally do want Phyrexian Obliterators) You have 2 of them. We trade. We’ll agree to a value measurement to use, and both sides of the trade will use that measurement. Some people stick rigidly to those values, I am very flexible, but that’s personal choice. Now, let’s say instead that you’re Jonathan Medina. All of a sudden the trade value is buy list value for me, sell list value for you…and that’s only if I’m paying attention. He has on several occasions stated that he has no problem taking advantage of people’s ignorance of the value of their own cards. The scariest part? He’s one of the more scrupulous specu-traders out there in that he won’t rip off children.
Caveat emptor indeed. In part he’s right; it is in fact our responsibility to know what our cards are worth. So consider this a friendly piece of advice: know what you’re carrying. There are sharks everywhere, and they can smell blood from miles away. This Tactical Trade Team nonsense, which to me smacks of the old playground “we have a secret club and you can’t join because you are not cool enough” , serves to extend Medina’s reach and further his self-promotion agenda. Again, nothing wrong with it, if you go in fully aware. The problem is most aren’t.
The bottom line is that speculators and artificial price jumps only affect us if we let them. That $45 preorder tag on the new hot mythic (have you seen what Adolescent Jace is going for?) will soon come crashing down if nobody pays it. If people refuse to do lopsided trades, or are aware of the risks, then specu-traders lose a lot of their lustre. Don’t damage the game by becoming one of them; learn how to deal with them and keep it fair.
None of this is meant as a personal attack on anyone. I have my issues with their business practices which, quite possibly, are not entirely rational. Stores do this sort of thing all the time, and yet these are individuals acting like stores. And of course nobody is FORCING you to trade with them. For some reason it just sits badly with me when two people sit down to trade and instead of trying to help each other out, they instead try to snipe each other so that someone is always getting screwed. Trust me Magic players, I have no interest in getting screwed by most of you.
For more discussion about the subject, involving Mr. Jonathan Medina himself, check out the Horde of Notions Podcast, Episode 12 downloadable at MTGCast.com.
Chris is a deck brewer, podcaster and lover of bacon. He’s recently realised he isn’t completely terrible at this game.