Many of you may be aware but SCG has just updated its buy list and prices on most of its staples. What Impact do you see these prices on the format as a whole? When long time eternal staples such as wasteland go for $50 it makes a much harder entry into the format. Are we heading into vintage 2.0 in a few years?
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Current Legacy Decks
0USpiral Tide0U
UWU/W 'Miracle Top' Control UW
012 Post 0
Random Opponent: Playing against 12 Post Feels like trying to win in Yugioh with no super secret rares.
I think this sets a dangerous precedent and allows SCG to price other vendors and small sellers out if the trend they're attempting to set takes off.
At the same time, it potentially hyperinflates the cost of some format staples past the point of viability and generally takes advantage of the buyer, since it's a zero-loss game to SCG, as they can easily get those prices (or greater) on-site at their $5k events.
I don't like what this could potentially do to the game overall, but it would have to stick and become widely accepted as the new status quo for values on these staple cards.
That said, there are many of these cards circulating through other vendors and on eBay. If that pool stays healthy, the market stays healthy, and "the big bad stores" don't "price us all out" and win.
It seems like a massive weight for players at absolutely no expense to SCG and other retailers (who can afford holding stock of these cards purchased at the higher prices) who attempt to ride this gouging trend.
Yeah when I saw the buy list they released for legacy/vintage staples, granted they are prices for NM cards, many of those prices are within $5 of what you can BIN on eBay for a lot of those cards. As someone who loves legacy, but still lacks many things like FoW, it's a little disheartening to see that i'll have to pay out more for certain cards if I want them in the near future.
I also thing this is a move with GP Providence coming up in just over 2 months. People are going to be gobbling up good cards for that event, such as FoWs etc, and hopefully the market will settle back down afterwards. Although if Euro and Japan (although I'm greatly discounting Japan right now given recent events, they have other things to worry about other than a card game at this point) markets are exploding for legacy, duals are going to just keep rising. FoW has the potential to be brought back down, and if WotC really tries to push Legacy via GPs etc, it would not surprise me to see them throw FoW out as a promo somewhere, deflating the price.
Ok that went a little OT, and I'm sorry. The original point was made though. Sucks now for the buyer short term, and hopefully this is just a lead in for the legacy GPs.
I think the SCG new buylist prices are a dangerous thing.
Never, ever before has there been a store where you could cash out your staples for effectively, the lower end of the acceptable value range. Usually, you'd have to take a 30-50% Value hit in order to convert to $.
And the fact that it's SCG means that everyone is going to see these values, and use them as a floor for bargaining, meaning the value of some of these staples is only going to go higher.
If the winning deck at GenCon runs four Drop of Honey and four The Abyss main deck, how in hell can most people hope to build that deck afterward? The print run of Arabian Nights was 5 million and Legends was only 35 million versus, for example, 400 million for Tempest. In fact, Legends packs were not even available when they were in print! Stores sold out of them within hours after the shipments arrived at the door. This does not even consider how many Acid Rains and Juzam Djinns have crumpled in shoeboxes over the past 10 years. There just aren't that many of them out there. The only reason cards like this are not totally unavailable right now is a relative lack of demand. We may end up with a format in which the very best decks are simply impossible for most players to build. That would be disastrous, as tournaments would be dominated by the chaps with the most cash (or for pros, the best connections) to acquire the cards. If that happens, all we can hope for are aggressive bannings. We would either have to hope that Wizards begins banning cards based on availablilty, or hope that we get lucky and the unattainable super-rares from old sets prove to be just broken enough to warrant bannings - for each individual case. But is either of these the solution we want? Is our little format in danger of being further marginalized by its own increased popularity?
Quote from Finn »
And the really scary news is that if Legacy is, in fact, largely abandoned by Wizards after a few years (as BDM mentioned it may be), a few super broken decks may have been unearthed by all the players digging around old sets. And when the attention finally dies down, and the dust settles, we are left with a format played by only a few people (perhaps like now), but dominated by a few uberdecks fielding ridiculously expensive and unavailable cards. And it isn't like the damage will have been temporary like Combo Winter * or something. This is Legacy, the eternal format. Diamond Valley and Moat will never rotate out. Once the format is broken, it cannot be completely fixed. Boy, that sounds like... uhh... Vintage.
Seems eerily familiar, considering Finn wrote this article five and a half years go.
SCG's is a great company. They are very consistent in almost everything they do and they have brought legacy back from the dead. They are brilliant at creating demand on a product that they sell and who can fault them for that? More power to them I say.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
PureMTGO MTGOTraders - Coupon mtgsallypaypal for 8% off orders paid for with paypal. MTGO Hotlist! - Pays more than bots for singles. CapeFearGames - Coupon mtgsally for 5% off entire order. Orders ship same day if order placed before 3pm EST M-F. Do not stack with other coupons please.
Paying extra 20% on paper cards for MTGOTraders credits.
SCG's is a great company. They are very consistent in almost everything they do and they have brought legacy back from the dead. They are brilliant at creating demand on a product that they sell and who can fault them for that? More power to them I say.
This isn't even specifically aimed at SCG, but cards like Force of Will and Wasteland are generally considered the "hurdle" cards a new Legacy player needs to cross before they start playing Legacy competitively. By raising that hurdle $20+ across the board (the price of a NM Underground Sea is effectively tacked on; two if you're trying to nab both cards), it can effectively price many new (and even old) players out of the format, which may very well do more damage to Legacy in the long term than the short-term financial gain it causes. It also reduces competition in the marketplace because now the grand mean of buy prices are currently set at what the average person gets through eBay for a single copy of a card, which means the restock cost for smaller vendors is now much much higher if that trend sticks across the board on these cards.
A less-competitive market and less open market is bad for sellers, bad for players, and bad for the game. I don't think this price jump will kill Legacy or any kind of doomsaying of the sort, but I don't think this kind of paradigm is healthy for it.
Edit for clarity: I get why SCG does this, given that they run the events they then have to supply cards for and that it creates an astronomical, if not insular, demand curve for them. The broader application of this curve and its effects on the rest of the Legacy economy does not seem good, long-term.
This isn't even specifically aimed at SCG, but cards like Force of Will and Wasteland are generally considered the "hurdle" cards a new Legacy player needs to cross before they start playing Legacy competitively. By raising that hurdle $20+ across the board (the price of a NM Underground Sea is effectively tacked on; two if you're trying to nab both cards), it can effectively price many new (and even old) players out of the format, which may very well do more damage to Legacy in the long term than the short-term financial gain it causes. It also reduces competition in the marketplace because now the grand mean of buy prices are currently set at what the average person gets through eBay for a single copy of a card, which means the restock cost for smaller vendors is now much much higher if that trend sticks across the board on these cards.
A less-competitive market and less open market is bad for sellers, bad for players, and bad for the game. I don't think this price jump will kill Legacy or any kind of doomsaying of the sort, but I don't think this kind of paradigm is healthy for it.
Edit for clarity: I get why SCG does this, given that they run the events they then have to supply cards for and that it creates an astronomical, if not insular, demand curve for them. The broader application of this curve and its effects on the rest of the Legacy economy does not seem good, long-term.
If the higher buy prices are not followed up by actual demand then there will be a huge problem. If there is true higher demand for them that means more people are playing the format hence the demand. I see what your saying but at the same time there are a ton of different aspects to look at this from. I think we will see more legacy cards trading places from just a collectible in a trade binder to seeing play at a tournament which I think is a great thing.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
PureMTGO MTGOTraders - Coupon mtgsallypaypal for 8% off orders paid for with paypal. MTGO Hotlist! - Pays more than bots for singles. CapeFearGames - Coupon mtgsally for 5% off entire order. Orders ship same day if order placed before 3pm EST M-F. Do not stack with other coupons please.
Paying extra 20% on paper cards for MTGOTraders credits.
Customers have a choice, online stores, LGS, ebay, peir to peir, trading, etc.
A business runs over head costs, and that will be reflected in their product and cost. But you get what you pay for. Ebay will always have a cheaper option if you look and hunt for it. But what is your time worth? How fast do you need said card(s), what is the risk of the ebay or trader, purchase from another player being a fake verus paying a higher cost from a online or LSG store?
No matter what, if the demand isnt there, the price will drop. If inventory swells, the price will drop. customers will correct the market. Retailers will have to adjust or bring in less revenue. Also when your dealing with the secondary market you never know when you invest in a purchase if youll make your money back much less a profit. Think of inventory as money not in your bank account, and maybe not making an interest, maybe taking a loss the longer it takes to sell. Dealers may try to control the prices or keep their prices in check with each other, but again if customers hold out and refuse to purchase it will correct the market. The problem is, how many will hold out. We arent talking about cards still in print. Each purchase takes the supply even lower.
Sure sitting on some cards could give huge returns years from now, but I doubt there are many stores really sitting on huge stock piles of uncommons thinking it will be worth something like FOW ten years from now.
This isn't even specifically aimed at SCG, but cards like Force of Will and Wasteland are generally considered the "hurdle" cards a new Legacy player needs to cross before they start playing Legacy competitively. By raising that hurdle $20+ across the board (the price of a NM Underground Sea is effectively tacked on; two if you're trying to nab both cards), it can effectively price many new (and even old) players out of the format, which may very well do more damage to Legacy in the long term than the short-term financial gain it causes. It also reduces competition in the marketplace because now the grand mean of buy prices are currently set at what the average person gets through eBay for a single copy of a card, which means the restock cost for smaller vendors is now much much higher if that trend sticks across the board on these cards.
A less-competitive market and less open market is bad for sellers, bad for players, and bad for the game. I don't think this price jump will kill Legacy or any kind of doomsaying of the sort, but I don't think this kind of paradigm is healthy for it.
Edit for clarity: I get why SCG does this, given that they run the events they then have to supply cards for and that it creates an astronomical, if not insular, demand curve for them. The broader application of this curve and its effects on the rest of the Legacy economy does not seem good, long-term.
This depends on how you're getting into legacy though.
If you play competitive standard but want to start playing legacy, it's very wise to sell your jaces now at $85-90 a piece via ebay (maybe more now? i haven't checked in well over a month, but did see some hit $95 even then). Even at the low end that's $340 and at the high end it's $380
Force of Will x4 $200-220
Wasteland x4 $120-160
So effectively you can sell your jaces and cash in on those cards before they rise too high. If you have the rest of the standard junk like stoneforge mystics ($18-20 through stores, i'm sure $16-18 easily can be made on ebay) primeval titans ($30?), tezz (hot and $40 seems plausible), swords (Body $10 and Feast $20), Gideon ($25+) etc i'm sure you can get on your way towards the rest of the first legacy deck and getting playsets of some other old staples before they rise further or things like onslaught fetches.
Even the mid/low end things like Jace Beleran, etc add up eventually if you sell them, and some stuff can be traded outright vs legacy stuff. I did a trade recently involving a maelstrom pulse up to a stifle, and another trade that was stuff like Kalastria Highborn, Jace Beleran, Creeping Tar Pit, and one of the SOM duals for a polluted delta. I did a trade of 3 zendikar fetches (2 rainforest, 1 catacombs) for 2 foreign windswept heath. It depends on your market. Standard PTQs are coming, and a lot of stuff will rise for the season until we get close to rotation. I can't play standard for now, so its easier to get rid of everything and convert it to legacy while it's hot. Standard will drop but legacy won't.
Ben Bleiweiss is a Market Street regular, maybe he can weigh in on this new decision by his company.
I think people are reading way too much into this. For the most part, our sell prices stayed the same on almost every card on our "hot" buys list, it was only the buy prices we changed. For instance, Force of Will has been $60 on our website for a while now. Notable exceptions right now are Rishadan Port, Candelabra of Tawnos, and Wasteland.
We travel to a lot of shows (our Open series, GPs, PTs, PTQs, REgionals, etc), and this list was based on cards that we just are having trouble buying. Let's take Wasteland for example.
In January, we were advertising a $15 buy price and $25 sell price on Wasteland. Couldn't keep them in stock.
Around GP Atlanta, we raised the buy price to $20 and the sell price to $30. Still couldn't keep them in stock.
In mid-February, we raised the buy price to $25 and the sell price to $35. STILL weren't getting even close to enough Wastelands to meet demand.
So on a straight supply/demand curve, I have a card that we can't get in stock at $25. My options are:
1) Continue not to stock the card, at the $25 buy price,
or
2) Raise our buy price to $30, and hope that we finally can get a sufficient supply of Wastelands.
Other cards (such as Goblin Lackey/Aether Vial/Sensei's Divining Top) were at $15 sell / $8 buy for a while, and were bumped mostly to $15 sell / $10 buy (though a couple were bumped a couple of dollars on the sell price as well). Again - if we aren't getting these cards in the quantities we need to keep up with demand at $8, the logical thing is to raise our buy price to $10, to try to get a sufficient supply.
With the exception of Bloodstained Mire (which I included because it felt weird to exclude one of the five old Fetchlands), all of these cards are ones that we have just not been able to stock well for a few months now.
Anyone can check our website on all of these cards and see that we're just out of stock on the majority of the cards on this Hot List. You can draw two conclusions:
1) We are out of stock on these cards, and so we raised our buy prices on these cards, so we can stock them, and sell them, or
2) We are hoarding these cards to try to manipulate the entire Legacy Magic economy
Let's look at the arguments for each:
Scenario #1: We run 30 SCG LEgacy Opens a year (which have been getting 150-300 players each so far this year). We also have two SCG Invitationals that use LEgacy as a format, and we are attending GP: Providence (Which is Legacy). We also service a worldwide Legacy audience through our online shop. We have a huge demand on these cards, and are pricing our buy prices accordingly,
or
Scenario #2: We like paying tens of thousands of dollars for cards and then not selling them to the player base, listed in Scenario #1.
Considering how vocal I've been (and SCG has been as a company) about abolishing the Reserve List so that a lot of these Legacy Staples can be reprinted (and make Legacy more affordable), I'd like to think that I get the benefit of the doubt here - ie, that we're trying to keep up with demand, and not that we're doing some widespread market manipulation for the sake of driving up prices.
Point blank - if Legacy gets so expensive that people are priced out of being able to get into the format at all, I don't think there's any other company in the world that stands to lose more than StarCityGames.com!
- Ben Bleiweiss
- Director of Sales, StarCityGames.com
Ben, could you possible comment on how much of the legacy stuff has been going out of the country as of late? We've heard that Japan and Europe have exploding Legacy scenes. Is there any comment you can share with us on that?
And thanks for the lengthy explanation. It's great that you frequent this board.
Ben, could you possible comment on how much of the legacy stuff has been going out of the country as of late? We've heard that Japan and Europe have exploding Legacy scenes. Is there any comment you can share with us on that?
And thanks for the lengthy explanation. It's great that you frequent this board.
The only comment I can share beyond what I've written in that article is that given the tragedy that's unfolding in Japan as we speak, I don't think that the Japan will be a strong market for Legacy (or Magic in general) for the short-to-medium term. Just my gut check there.
Thanks for giving us such good reasoning Ben. It does make a lot of sense that if you are running these events and do not have enough staples to supply it, then you really need to get the staples or risk a peak in the format and a loss of revenue. It seems that the popularity of Legacy is directly affecting the supply of cards which in turn affects the price.
On a side note. I wonder how much of the supply problem is people that have quit and just kept their collections versus the speculation buys.
Thank you Ben, for that very well said and thorough explanation. I deal with this sort of thing all the time, allbeit at a much much smaller scale. I have legacy players coming in all the time looking for staples like FoW, Wasteland, the old fetches, Old Duals, etc. As time goes on my stock gets run down and I get run out of certain things at the pricing levels I have them at. Even trying to offer more in trade/cash for the cards often doesnt work because those are the types of cards people dont want to get rid of/want full value for if they are going to trade them. Inevitably one has to raise the price and thus the offer price in order to try and find some sort of safe middleground in an attempt to be able to keep them stocked for the players that want them while not pricing them too high, to where they wont want to pay said price to buy them.
Heck, I even do this on standard cards sometimes when they are selling quickly, sometimes offering another $1 or $2 or something can make the difference between someone being willing to sell/trade a hot card, or not. It is the way the business works for those businesses that want to keep the cards people want in stock.
Thanks again.
From a trading perspective, it's always hard to get these cards, even with high end staples in other formats. People want legacy/vintage for legacy/vintage more often than not. Also most people don't want to trade these cards, much less sell them as they're trying to complete and maintain playsets, it's also equally harder to have more than playsets of many of these cards.
From a store perspective like SCG who hosts legacy events its harder to tap into communities who want to get rid of them vs how many people are probably trying to build their cards through online stores. I know one thing i try to get at my local store are these staples with my credit or to buy, but for the most part, the owner has a very hard time keeping them in stock as most other players want them too.
Supply and demand means that the stores have a harder time getting them in, which means higher prices over all until they get a high enough stock bought in and are able to sell at a fair pace.
Basic economics really, something you learn in any 100 level Econ course. I think (and perhaps someone who has already posted has their Ph.D. in Economics and will put my foot in my mouth for me) that most of the people who are accusing SCG (or anyone really) of price-fixing really doesn't have a good grasp on how an economy works. If SCG ever prices things too high, people stop buying the cards. That hasn't happened yet. They sold out of Candelabras. Those things were priced 250 for NM and they had probably close to 10 in stock across various conditions. All gone. I really doubt that SCG pulled the stock on those after increasing the price. Once the prices get to high, people stop buying. For example, currently SCG has Bazaar of Baghdad at like 280 or something, where most ebay auctions are still ending under 200 (I'd say maybe 60%?). The Bazaar's aren't selling. Considering Ichorid is still the budget vintage deck, this shows that they are priced to high for current demand. (Now my personal guess is that since Bazaar's come in so rarely, they price them higher because eventually they do find buyers).
And just in case anyone forgot. In the golden age of vintage, people were showing up by the hundreds to play in SCG's power 9 tournaments. (I only ever got to play in the very last one, Ben, I know you're reading this, these need to come back! That trip (22 hour drive! though less than the 30 to GenCon) made up one of my best memories!) If you feel you are getting priced out of legacy, perhaps you need to be more patient with acquiring staples. Can you play legacy overnight? No, not really. You have to put a bit of time in acquiring these things. Ask any player with a big legacy collection, it took a while.
The idea that SCG can actually price fix is kind of silly. If other stores copy their prices and are able to sell, it means we were willing to pay that much! There is always a ceiling to what you will pay. It is magic cards we are talking about after all, not basic necessities of life. If legacy outprices you, it sucks, but if you really want to play, you'll put the work in to earning the money for the cards.
And To vouch for Ben, I did notice that most of these buy prices hadn't even changed, and even on some of the ones that had, the sell price didn't. I can remember being at the SCG tournament in Chicago for vintage, and I can say that it was a great relief to see how well stocked they were. If they had shown up with say, only 10 Tarmogoyf's that day, it would have been a catastrophe. (As it is, Illusionary Mask was the card of the day!). The only way to get 40 Tarmogoyf's in stock is to raise a buy price so people sell theirs.
Sidenote, sounds like Ben has probably the coolest job in the world. I've been studying Econ for 4 years now, about to graduate if I want (Debating taking a run at law school), and I really have no interest in most of the jobs available for it. His however, I would take in a heartbeat. Its like when you first learned that your math class could be applied to Storm Combo :).
EDIT: And for the situation, If SCG were to show up understocked in a hot card like Wasteland, well consider that at Pro-Tour who the heck cares, I remember the story was dealers sold out so fast, by the end Loxodon Hierarch was going for $40 a pop!
I tend to agree with this, but I will say this: it is getting harder and harder each year for people who don't have a Legacy collection to start playing Legacy. That's a problem that can't be ignored. Yes, you can't build a Legacy collection overnight, and yes it took many Legacy players a while to acquire their staples. What you're forgetting though is that they acquired said staples years ago when there was little demand for them. i.e., back when Wasteland was $12, Forces were $25, and blue dual lands were around $35-$40. Imagine trying to build the same collection from the ground up with today's current prices. You'd be better off just investing in something like power.
EDIT: And for the situation, If SCG were to show up understocked in a hot card like Wasteland, well consider that at Pro-Tour who the heck cares, I remember the story was dealers sold out so fast, by the end Loxodon Hierarch was going for $40 a pop!
Loxodon Hierarch never even came close to $40 when it was at its height, but your story actually doesn't surprise me if the cards were sold on-site. It's easy to gouge players when they're desperate to fill the last few slots of their deck before registration. It happens all the time.
At the same time, it potentially hyperinflates the cost of some format staples past the point of viability and generally takes advantage of the buyer, since it's a zero-loss game to SCG, as they can easily get those prices (or greater) on-site at their $5k events.
I don't like what this could potentially do to the game overall, but it would have to stick and become widely accepted as the new status quo for values on these staple cards.
That said, there are many of these cards circulating through other vendors and on eBay. If that pool stays healthy, the market stays healthy, and "the big bad stores" don't "price us all out" and win.
It seems like a massive weight for players at absolutely no expense to SCG and other retailers (who can afford holding stock of these cards purchased at the higher prices) who attempt to ride this gouging trend.
Buy from me on TCGPlayer::Twitter::Flickr
I also thing this is a move with GP Providence coming up in just over 2 months. People are going to be gobbling up good cards for that event, such as FoWs etc, and hopefully the market will settle back down afterwards. Although if Euro and Japan (although I'm greatly discounting Japan right now given recent events, they have other things to worry about other than a card game at this point) markets are exploding for legacy, duals are going to just keep rising. FoW has the potential to be brought back down, and if WotC really tries to push Legacy via GPs etc, it would not surprise me to see them throw FoW out as a promo somewhere, deflating the price.
Ok that went a little OT, and I'm sorry. The original point was made though. Sucks now for the buyer short term, and hopefully this is just a lead in for the legacy GPs.
Never, ever before has there been a store where you could cash out your staples for effectively, the lower end of the acceptable value range. Usually, you'd have to take a 30-50% Value hit in order to convert to $.
And the fact that it's SCG means that everyone is going to see these values, and use them as a floor for bargaining, meaning the value of some of these staples is only going to go higher.
I can only hope it stops after GP: Providence.
Legacy Decks:
Legendary Maverick GW
Seems eerily familiar, considering Finn wrote this article five and a half years go.
MTGOTraders - Coupon mtgsallypaypal for 8% off orders paid for with paypal.
MTGO Hotlist! - Pays more than bots for singles.
CapeFearGames - Coupon mtgsally for 5% off entire order. Orders ship same day if order placed before 3pm EST M-F. Do not stack with other coupons please.
Paying extra 20% on paper cards for MTGOTraders credits.
This isn't even specifically aimed at SCG, but cards like Force of Will and Wasteland are generally considered the "hurdle" cards a new Legacy player needs to cross before they start playing Legacy competitively. By raising that hurdle $20+ across the board (the price of a NM Underground Sea is effectively tacked on; two if you're trying to nab both cards), it can effectively price many new (and even old) players out of the format, which may very well do more damage to Legacy in the long term than the short-term financial gain it causes. It also reduces competition in the marketplace because now the grand mean of buy prices are currently set at what the average person gets through eBay for a single copy of a card, which means the restock cost for smaller vendors is now much much higher if that trend sticks across the board on these cards.
A less-competitive market and less open market is bad for sellers, bad for players, and bad for the game. I don't think this price jump will kill Legacy or any kind of doomsaying of the sort, but I don't think this kind of paradigm is healthy for it.
Edit for clarity: I get why SCG does this, given that they run the events they then have to supply cards for and that it creates an astronomical, if not insular, demand curve for them. The broader application of this curve and its effects on the rest of the Legacy economy does not seem good, long-term.
Buy from me on TCGPlayer::Twitter::Flickr
If the higher buy prices are not followed up by actual demand then there will be a huge problem. If there is true higher demand for them that means more people are playing the format hence the demand. I see what your saying but at the same time there are a ton of different aspects to look at this from. I think we will see more legacy cards trading places from just a collectible in a trade binder to seeing play at a tournament which I think is a great thing.
MTGOTraders - Coupon mtgsallypaypal for 8% off orders paid for with paypal.
MTGO Hotlist! - Pays more than bots for singles.
CapeFearGames - Coupon mtgsally for 5% off entire order. Orders ship same day if order placed before 3pm EST M-F. Do not stack with other coupons please.
Paying extra 20% on paper cards for MTGOTraders credits.
A business runs over head costs, and that will be reflected in their product and cost. But you get what you pay for. Ebay will always have a cheaper option if you look and hunt for it. But what is your time worth? How fast do you need said card(s), what is the risk of the ebay or trader, purchase from another player being a fake verus paying a higher cost from a online or LSG store?
No matter what, if the demand isnt there, the price will drop. If inventory swells, the price will drop. customers will correct the market. Retailers will have to adjust or bring in less revenue. Also when your dealing with the secondary market you never know when you invest in a purchase if youll make your money back much less a profit. Think of inventory as money not in your bank account, and maybe not making an interest, maybe taking a loss the longer it takes to sell. Dealers may try to control the prices or keep their prices in check with each other, but again if customers hold out and refuse to purchase it will correct the market. The problem is, how many will hold out. We arent talking about cards still in print. Each purchase takes the supply even lower.
Sure sitting on some cards could give huge returns years from now, but I doubt there are many stores really sitting on huge stock piles of uncommons thinking it will be worth something like FOW ten years from now.
This depends on how you're getting into legacy though.
If you play competitive standard but want to start playing legacy, it's very wise to sell your jaces now at $85-90 a piece via ebay (maybe more now? i haven't checked in well over a month, but did see some hit $95 even then). Even at the low end that's $340 and at the high end it's $380
Force of Will x4 $200-220
Wasteland x4 $120-160
So effectively you can sell your jaces and cash in on those cards before they rise too high. If you have the rest of the standard junk like stoneforge mystics ($18-20 through stores, i'm sure $16-18 easily can be made on ebay) primeval titans ($30?), tezz (hot and $40 seems plausible), swords (Body $10 and Feast $20), Gideon ($25+) etc i'm sure you can get on your way towards the rest of the first legacy deck and getting playsets of some other old staples before they rise further or things like onslaught fetches.
Even the mid/low end things like Jace Beleran, etc add up eventually if you sell them, and some stuff can be traded outright vs legacy stuff. I did a trade recently involving a maelstrom pulse up to a stifle, and another trade that was stuff like Kalastria Highborn, Jace Beleran, Creeping Tar Pit, and one of the SOM duals for a polluted delta. I did a trade of 3 zendikar fetches (2 rainforest, 1 catacombs) for 2 foreign windswept heath. It depends on your market. Standard PTQs are coming, and a lot of stuff will rise for the season until we get close to rotation. I can't play standard for now, so its easier to get rid of everything and convert it to legacy while it's hot. Standard will drop but legacy won't.
I think people are reading way too much into this. For the most part, our sell prices stayed the same on almost every card on our "hot" buys list, it was only the buy prices we changed. For instance, Force of Will has been $60 on our website for a while now. Notable exceptions right now are Rishadan Port, Candelabra of Tawnos, and Wasteland.
We travel to a lot of shows (our Open series, GPs, PTs, PTQs, REgionals, etc), and this list was based on cards that we just are having trouble buying. Let's take Wasteland for example.
In January, we were advertising a $15 buy price and $25 sell price on Wasteland. Couldn't keep them in stock.
Around GP Atlanta, we raised the buy price to $20 and the sell price to $30. Still couldn't keep them in stock.
In mid-February, we raised the buy price to $25 and the sell price to $35. STILL weren't getting even close to enough Wastelands to meet demand.
So on a straight supply/demand curve, I have a card that we can't get in stock at $25. My options are:
1) Continue not to stock the card, at the $25 buy price,
or
2) Raise our buy price to $30, and hope that we finally can get a sufficient supply of Wastelands.
Other cards (such as Goblin Lackey/Aether Vial/Sensei's Divining Top) were at $15 sell / $8 buy for a while, and were bumped mostly to $15 sell / $10 buy (though a couple were bumped a couple of dollars on the sell price as well). Again - if we aren't getting these cards in the quantities we need to keep up with demand at $8, the logical thing is to raise our buy price to $10, to try to get a sufficient supply.
With the exception of Bloodstained Mire (which I included because it felt weird to exclude one of the five old Fetchlands), all of these cards are ones that we have just not been able to stock well for a few months now.
Anyone can check our website on all of these cards and see that we're just out of stock on the majority of the cards on this Hot List. You can draw two conclusions:
1) We are out of stock on these cards, and so we raised our buy prices on these cards, so we can stock them, and sell them, or
2) We are hoarding these cards to try to manipulate the entire Legacy Magic economy
Let's look at the arguments for each:
Scenario #1: We run 30 SCG LEgacy Opens a year (which have been getting 150-300 players each so far this year). We also have two SCG Invitationals that use LEgacy as a format, and we are attending GP: Providence (Which is Legacy). We also service a worldwide Legacy audience through our online shop. We have a huge demand on these cards, and are pricing our buy prices accordingly,
or
Scenario #2: We like paying tens of thousands of dollars for cards and then not selling them to the player base, listed in Scenario #1.
Considering how vocal I've been (and SCG has been as a company) about abolishing the Reserve List so that a lot of these Legacy Staples can be reprinted (and make Legacy more affordable), I'd like to think that I get the benefit of the doubt here - ie, that we're trying to keep up with demand, and not that we're doing some widespread market manipulation for the sake of driving up prices.
Point blank - if Legacy gets so expensive that people are priced out of being able to get into the format at all, I don't think there's any other company in the world that stands to lose more than StarCityGames.com!
- Ben Bleiweiss
- Director of Sales, StarCityGames.com
And thanks for the lengthy explanation. It's great that you frequent this board.
I'm the source of the Japan/Europe Legacy information - http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/finance/21257_Ten_Predictions_For_Magic_In_2011_And_Beyond_Part_2.html
The only comment I can share beyond what I've written in that article is that given the tragedy that's unfolding in Japan as we speak, I don't think that the Japan will be a strong market for Legacy (or Magic in general) for the short-to-medium term. Just my gut check there.
- Ben
On a side note. I wonder how much of the supply problem is people that have quit and just kept their collections versus the speculation buys.
Heck, I even do this on standard cards sometimes when they are selling quickly, sometimes offering another $1 or $2 or something can make the difference between someone being willing to sell/trade a hot card, or not. It is the way the business works for those businesses that want to keep the cards people want in stock.
Thanks again.
Like most things in magic that change, it always seems like it may be doomsday for the community but they rarely are.
Thanks again for the responses
Currently Playing (Standard - Legacy - Commander- Cube)
My Cube - Updated 12/31/2013
Fetchlands
Dual Lands
Wasteland
Force of Will
Tarmogoyf
and even the semi-staples like Vials, Tops, Ports, Mox Diamond, and anything else that sees a lot of demand can often times be hard to get.
From a trading perspective, it's always hard to get these cards, even with high end staples in other formats. People want legacy/vintage for legacy/vintage more often than not. Also most people don't want to trade these cards, much less sell them as they're trying to complete and maintain playsets, it's also equally harder to have more than playsets of many of these cards.
From a store perspective like SCG who hosts legacy events its harder to tap into communities who want to get rid of them vs how many people are probably trying to build their cards through online stores. I know one thing i try to get at my local store are these staples with my credit or to buy, but for the most part, the owner has a very hard time keeping them in stock as most other players want them too.
Supply and demand means that the stores have a harder time getting them in, which means higher prices over all until they get a high enough stock bought in and are able to sell at a fair pace.
And just in case anyone forgot. In the golden age of vintage, people were showing up by the hundreds to play in SCG's power 9 tournaments. (I only ever got to play in the very last one, Ben, I know you're reading this, these need to come back! That trip (22 hour drive! though less than the 30 to GenCon) made up one of my best memories!) If you feel you are getting priced out of legacy, perhaps you need to be more patient with acquiring staples. Can you play legacy overnight? No, not really. You have to put a bit of time in acquiring these things. Ask any player with a big legacy collection, it took a while.
The idea that SCG can actually price fix is kind of silly. If other stores copy their prices and are able to sell, it means we were willing to pay that much! There is always a ceiling to what you will pay. It is magic cards we are talking about after all, not basic necessities of life. If legacy outprices you, it sucks, but if you really want to play, you'll put the work in to earning the money for the cards.
And To vouch for Ben, I did notice that most of these buy prices hadn't even changed, and even on some of the ones that had, the sell price didn't. I can remember being at the SCG tournament in Chicago for vintage, and I can say that it was a great relief to see how well stocked they were. If they had shown up with say, only 10 Tarmogoyf's that day, it would have been a catastrophe. (As it is, Illusionary Mask was the card of the day!). The only way to get 40 Tarmogoyf's in stock is to raise a buy price so people sell theirs.
Sidenote, sounds like Ben has probably the coolest job in the world. I've been studying Econ for 4 years now, about to graduate if I want (Debating taking a run at law school), and I really have no interest in most of the jobs available for it. His however, I would take in a heartbeat. Its like when you first learned that your math class could be applied to Storm Combo :).
EDIT: And for the situation, If SCG were to show up understocked in a hot card like Wasteland, well consider that at Pro-Tour who the heck cares, I remember the story was dealers sold out so fast, by the end Loxodon Hierarch was going for $40 a pop!
I tend to agree with this, but I will say this: it is getting harder and harder each year for people who don't have a Legacy collection to start playing Legacy. That's a problem that can't be ignored. Yes, you can't build a Legacy collection overnight, and yes it took many Legacy players a while to acquire their staples. What you're forgetting though is that they acquired said staples years ago when there was little demand for them. i.e., back when Wasteland was $12, Forces were $25, and blue dual lands were around $35-$40. Imagine trying to build the same collection from the ground up with today's current prices. You'd be better off just investing in something like power.
Loxodon Hierarch never even came close to $40 when it was at its height, but your story actually doesn't surprise me if the cards were sold on-site. It's easy to gouge players when they're desperate to fill the last few slots of their deck before registration. It happens all the time.