I'm convinced that MtG players don't understand basic economics.
Seriously guys, the only reason why cards like Fetchlands, Liliana, and Tarmogoyf are so expensive is because you are all willing to pay those prices.
So MtG players: here's how to lower card prices: STOP PAYING RIDICULOUS PRICES!
Okay I'll just hivemind the other thousands of people who play into not buying or selling at high prices.
Reasonable solution OP, we should do that with oil too.
>>45753797
Everything's price is artificial in magic. The problem is thousands of people will pay 75 dollars for a fetch land because wotc hasn't reprinted the Zendikar ones in their reprint sets.
They're also staples of the format, so people will pay more for something of noteworthy value in the game.
>>45753811
People can try to sell at high prices all they want. If people don't buy at those prices, vendors will be forced to lower the prices.
>>45753850
People have proven to buy at the price point given. That's why the price is at what it's at. To impact the price, you'd need a large scale boycott of them everywhere, not just at your game store that can sell them online to someone who, as I said, is happy to pay the price.
>>45753846
Staples being that high is retarded. It's the reason why nearly every decent Modern deck is $1000+. If you aren't willing to spend a grand, have fun playing Bogles or Ad Nauseum and losing to everyone at fucking locals.
>>45753850
It's simple supply and demand. The cards are desirable enough that people want them badly enough that they end up changing hands for these high amounts. It's true of any limited resource. The only way to drive it down would be for the whole community to agree not to go over a certain amount. The moment one person paid over the community agreed amounts the whole thing would collapse.
It's like those GW boycott threads. Yeah, like you can get GW fanboys to agree not to buy plastic crack for six months to make GW reduce prices. All they have to do is make an overpowered release and the custoners all flood back.
>>45753811
>>45753901
Guys, it doesn't matter if the everyone does it or not. The only thing of importance is if its worth it to you.
>>45753922
Yep, it's a problem with magic, but not one wizards cares to solve, nor do players ar tournaments care, because they're focused on winning and likely have a player and more of every staple.
There's cheap modern decks, Stompy Green and Soul Sisters. If you play modern, you pay a big entrance fee, but less upkeep cost.
>>45753973
Playset* or more
>>45753797
The issue is less that and more that there are absolutely no factors to drive price back down once it a up, outside of reprints. There are cards that spiked back in 2014 when they were used in some memedeck that reached top 8 before getting hated to death, and they're still sitting at 20$. People and stores that buy these pieces of paper at 10 dollars would rather sit on them for a decade in hopes that maybe they can be used again than sell them back at a loss.
>>45753932
>the whole thing would collapse.
No. That means one guy payed over the price. If that one data blip somehow impacts prices and make the game more expensive then the rest of the people will simply quit as the value they get out of playing it no longer is greater than or equal to the joy they'd get from spending their money elsewhere.
>>45753922
I do pretty well with a mono green deck that only cost me around 600
>>45753973
>>45753973
Stompy Green is now around $600 because TheManaSource aka TCGPlayer's bitch made a video. As for Soul Sisters, have you looked at the price of Auriok Champion?
>>45753797
I think this may be the dumbest post I have seen related to magic on /tg/ in years, which is fucking impressive considering /tg/ is some sort of unholy shrine to incompentence. No shit, dumbass. The best part is you clearly think you're intelligent for waking up in the middle of your econ 101 lecture, jotting down a few notes, and later shitting them into the reply field.
And for the record, I haven't put down a single cent on this god forsaken cardboard in 3 years. Boy, prices sure have gone down since then, huh?
>>45753991
*coughthroughthebreachcough*
>>45754061
its less than $100 at median prices, you faggot
>>45754147
Dat feel when the Goyf on your opponent's board is worth more than your entire deck
>>45753797
you see, OP, you are no better than those you try to reason with, for one simple reason...
you still agree that paying money for pieces of cardboard is acceptable. you can only say that TCG prices are ok when a bunch of cards costs exactly as much as the cardboard used to make them + dyes used to print them, bought in bulk. anything else is bullshit.
Warning, I'm a noob both at MTG and economy, so this might be a dumb post. Since high paywalls keep people away from this game, shouldn't wizard try to keep the secondary market price decently low? Not too low because at that point people would stop investing in buying boxes, but still low enough to allow people to be competitive with less than 300$. Couldn't they just reprint old sets in periodical limited editions? They could easily sell them at 3x the normal cost and the secondary market would slowly lower its prices with the constant imput of fresh "goods"
>>45754194
The secondary market shrieks like a spoiled child at the slightest sign of WoTC doing anything about inflated prices.
>>45754194
They conceivably could, and have recently begun doing something like this with their "X Masters" series. the issue partly comes from the fact that it's not complete sets that are issues, it's "these 3 cards from this set, plus 2 from this set 4 years later". So they couldn't just reprint old sets, since they'd only be valuable for the handful of cards people like.
The MOST expensive cards, however, are on a list that Wizards made way back when it was young and desperate, and said "We'll never remake these cards" because many of their early fans were furious at the idea of their super rare cards losing their value, ESPECIALLY because, at that time, wizards had done a few sets with some really good cards, and then churned out several that were generally quite bad. So the idea of reprinting the cards would have "ruined" the only good cards there WERE.
>>45754194
Play Yugioh or Pokemon, there, problem solved!
>>45754271
The problem is that those early fans are now the people who run the secondary market today.
>>45753797
lemme guess, economy 101 teacher said some cool stuff in class today at community college timmy?
Cards are expensive because the decks that use them are efficient. People want efficient decks to win boosters(or just nerdcred).
Ergo
people will pay ridiculous prices.
But maybe you're right and we can just boycott expensive meds, oil and housing until the price drops.
>>45754231
And why would they care? Let them cry. Professional sites like TCGplayer would not suffer that much because lower prices would be compensated by a larger market, and what could all the greasy speculator nerds playing stock market from their basement do? Stop playing the game and thus wasting thousands of dollars in investments? They would cry rivers, but still keep on doing what they always did.
>>45754305
Also, the reserved list's prices served as an initial cap. No one KNEW how much these things could be worth, given the unstable nature of the company at that time, so the prices they reached became the general guidleines for higher cost cards.
>>45754194
First,
You obviously understand more about economy than OP.
Second,
Wizards plan on attracting new players with different formats. You have etarnal formats, that work with all cards fro all editions, with some banlists and such. Prices are crazy, but your cards hardly ever lose value. This is a format for grognards and pretty much closed to noobs.
You have modern, which uses newer cards from eighth edition onwards. Your cards can retain value but splinter twin, for instance, was banned and many people lost money this year. This format is more accessible, but it's seen as something newer players eventually graduate into instead of just jumping in.
There's standard, which rotates blocks in and out of legality. This set has lower entry price, but still kinda high. It is a money sink since 90% of your cards will be useless after rotation makes them illegal.
Wizards has been betting on EDH and limited for noobs.
>>45754271
Let them keep their deserved list, the prices that need to go down are mainly the ones of modern. It's more profitable for wizard to push that format instead of eternals, and it attracts far more new players. Jesus I'm goddamn tired of the kitchen table, but I also want to be able to afford a fucking playset of Goblin Guides without renouncing to a week's worth of shopping
Just stop buying cards altogether.
Print your own and sleeve them.
Why doesn't everyone just print their own cards and sleeve them? Making a parallel ranking system to replace DCI is only a weekend's work to make an online prototype. You just need a login system, two levels of normal users (officials and normies) and you implement the Elo algorithm for matches.
It's all so fucking cheap, why are you relying on WotC's infrastructure?
>>45753973
>less upkeep cost
Unless your deck gets banned out of the format
>>45753797
The problem is that tournament players buy the expensive cards at full price because they aren't going to handicap themselves for the sake of people who can't afford them.
FTV Spoilers
>>45753797
That's one reason, yes. But we can't influence demand, no matter how hard we try, because we have no means of making the average pleb consumer a perfectly informed rational agent.
We could ostensibly alter supply, however. There is nothing preventing an influx of supply from WotC to lower the price equilibrium, other than WotC not wishing to do so.
Wizards doesn't WANT people to be able to afford the best cards, because they feel it harms their long-term profits if the secondary market is not mislead into believing they're entitled to a profit because they're "investing" when really they're just fat nerds buying ugly postcards
>>45754011
>only cost around 600
>playing a crappy game with a shitty deck cost you 600 dollars
>Magic community is so retarded they think that's perfectly reasonable
>>45754357
Because Wizards employees aren't there because they're competent, they're there because they're willing to take $70k paycuts to "work with what they love" and all their "friends" would cut them off and despise them if they found out that someone had the audacity to suggest that people should be able to play a game
>>45754187
>implying
Look, MtG prices are retarded, but you are even more retarded.
Prize support for smaller stores, salaries for game designers, judges, packaging, storage, customer relations, artwork, fucking DESIGNING a set, there's a fucking million things that cost money that isn't just production, and which need to be paid for through the purchase of product.
Just shut the fuck up, dude. You can't sit at the big kids' table by pretending to understand what they're arguing about.
>>45754271
You clearly have no idea what the Reserved Policy is about, so why are you trying to teach others history?
Besides, they could just reprint strictly better or slightly different cards of those kinds and ban the old ones if they REALLY regretted the Reserved List.
>>45754505
No prize support, difficulty in establishing it as you'd need enough players to sustain it, no ability to enter GPs or PTs (there already isn't for most people, but people are retarded and have dumbass fantasies. Same reason boosters sell), location is difficult, as the WPN status of any store which hosts such an event, would be revoked, etc.
There really isn't any easy way to set it up
So what? Do you want to found the OPEC of mtg?
>>45753797
It has nothing to do with those cards being objectively superior to anything else you can use. Does that sound retarded? Because that's how I feel about your post.
>>45753797
You are retarded.
>>45756790
But anon, anyone could do any of these jobs. Game design or painting the artworks isn't real work. Nowadays any monkey with photoshop could create the artworks for MtG. Anything /tg/ related should be sold at the material cost price at the highest.
>>45755024
These are 100 accurate, BTW
>>45757038
>But anon, anyone could do any of these jobs.
Anyone can work at McD too, but that doesn't mean they can be expected to do it for free.
Only janitors are THAT worthless.Hot pockets notwithstanding as payment
How real economic works
>Doktor kike says price, dumb goy obeys
How MtG economics works
>Doktor kike says price, dumb goy obeys
