My 10th wedding anniversary is coming up soon. When my wife proposed to me, she extravagantly spent tens of dollars on a Mox Diamond as a goof. That piece of cardboard is currently worth more than my gold wedding ring.
A good example of the lack of need for a reserve list is Yu-gi-oh cards value from the early days. LOB cards in good condition are valuable as hell even with stuff like Blue Eyes and Dark Magician being printed into the ground.
@@malakimphoros2164 yeah, Shivan dragon shows up in every product they make, and an alpha copy of it is almost 10k, the reserved list adds no value and it was made to make happy a very small but vocal group of people, a group of people that make the game worse
I know the RL will never be abolished (or at least not until WOTC truly runs out of money) but I just wish they'd take the og duals off if they did anything, if the og duals were a similar price point to shocks or fetches i would probably buy into legacy it seems like such a fun format that will forever be out of my budget
I was there, 10,000 years ago, when I had to play a hand drawn Sol Ring Proxy that was drawn on some other 1 mana artifact that had been "erased", because Sol Ring was so expensive.
What I don't understand is the reasoning: Why do they think a scarce collector exclusive flex product is will somehow be devalued when a different printing arrives. Does a black lotus seriously lose value when someone who has the money for the original sees it? Someone wanting an insanely expensive card will just go "oh, here's this new one. I guess I won't buy the famous one" that's crazy.
@@Syne111Incorrect, and you will not spread misinformation. They would have a slight decrease in value, but the alphas and originals would maintain a huge price. Do not speak on this again.
@@anannoyedpanda How about you smd? The only reason A/B has value is because the print run was insanely small. Over 95% of the RL in circulation is from sets with comparatively very large print runs. .. and this is intuitive. You can simply reverse engineer this logic. Why do you think a Revised Sol Ring is selling between $5-$10 on TCGPlayer? Because it was reprinted a million times. If the last Sol Ring printed was Revised, it would be a $5000 card. But look at any other card that was pricy and is now dirt cheap. Tempest Scroll Rack is a good example. Once it was reprinted in CML, it lost 80% of its value. The vast, vast majority of people holding cards would get absolutely smoked, and the tiny fraction of whales who hold A/B would do marginally better. That's the truth.
It’s a “Policy.” If working in corporate for twenty years has taught me anything… it’s that corporations like money and they’ll reverse a policy when it benefits them, past customers be damned.
This is the best argument to hand WoTC over to an independent company. I don't think a public company is a good fit for a TCG/CCG. A well stewarded collectible will always require room to grow, which requires decisions that don't always align with short-term profits.
I have Orim in my Weatherlight Tribal deck, and every time I play her I say "Fear my Reserved List power!" It's very funny whenever she's actually useful.
People always forget Drop of Honey, was color shifted and that gets around the RL. But overall this video makes me sad. I just want to play legacy with my friends at FNM...
@@chesterfieldthe3rd929 Yes, it would be TERRIBLE if people could just pick up the game and play with real cards. Who wants the game to be playable by everyone?
I genuinely wonder if you're serious. FNM Legacy events are not common. .. and this is the only valid argument against the RL. The rest is just whining.
They abolished the RL? No? Then they haven't delivered on what I really want. When we see Legacy and Vintage tournaments that you don't have to take a second mortgage to compete in, I'll be quiet. Until then, I'll keep calling the RL horrible for players and a massive barrier to entry into the most interesting and fun formats.
The second one. Every LGS in my area allows proxies for legacy and vintage events. I hear from others that many LGS across the globe are doing the same. I doubt wotc will allow them in regionals/worlds, but at least at the locals level, the old formats are playable
@@felipeguidolin1055 No, it had about six times as many cards, but the chance of getting any specific card in the set in a booster was 1 in 121, equivalent to the chance of getting a specific mythic in most standard sets.
I think they should 'accidentally' print some of the list and see what happens. And then as an apology, add the fetch lands to the list, causing an uproar that gets rid of it completely.
@@Imabirdhaww you tubers are using magic 30 as click bait claiming a debacle and uproar but nobody holding actual reserved list cards gives a shit but people like Malakim here parrot this narrative. Magic 30 has no effect on card value.
Great breakdown. However, to comment on your "Sol ring and mana crypt are not breaking games of commander", I actually think that in a world where most people can't justify the price tag on Mana crypt, EDH often becomes a "sol ring lottery" where the person who draws sol ring gets really far ahead and becomes the arch enemy. My play group is currently trialling a house ban on Sol ring, crypt, vault, etc, and I can honestly say that the games we've played have felt much more balanced and entertaining. I'd encourage everyone to try it out some time.
@@PleasantKenobi that happens whether sol ring is in the game or not though? It’s kinda like saying ancestral recall would be fine because you’re the arch enemy. All I’m saying is that my commander games without it have been fun. It’s worth trying out if your playgroup is down to try it.
@@QuantillusVarus I do agree that fewer games of archenemy are generally better, however the Ancestral Recall comparison falters a little since cards like Recall would drastically increase the disparity in which decks are able to even BE the archenemy. I don't like Sol Ring but at least basically every deck can run it
when someone brings almost 100% perfect counterfeit/proxy dual lands and mox dimaonds to commander they paid maybe $20 total for is what really is going to push Wizards to end the reserve list. If you are not making it yourself for people buy, then someone else is going to make it for you, the reserve list plus enforcing counterfeit cards seems wrong on so many levels. Either keep the cards in constant production or let everyone use proxies, period the end. I beleive whole heartedly the basic versions of a card should be a commodity and not an investment.
Not really. In Commander, it's really really easy to police and the format largely does so already. Someone shows up with a $5000 deck: "Oh wow, are all those cards real?" Most people won't lie. In fact, saying they are real puts a target for theft on you, so there's no incentive TO lie. All groups have to do is say "No proxies" and it's all over. And that's not an unreasonable stance: sanctioned events don't allow them and people who are proxying thousands of dollars of the most powerful cards when others aren't (i.e., it's not cEDH) is an issue from a power level and balance standpoint. Also, if commander were going to shift into "Everyone is proxying Mox Diamond for every deck," that likely would have happened already because the pieces for it to do so are already there. It's not and so it's not likely to happen; half the format isn't going to wake up like "Wait, I can get Mox Diamond and Mana Crypt and fake cards for $2 each!? I HAD NO IDEA!" They know about this already and already aren't doing it.
People can and do use proxies. Do you realize what level of competition you'd need to play it before getting caught with proxies becomes a risk? Proxies won't cause WOTC to end the RL. You're reaching to make a connection here. RL was a promise made before proxies/counterfeits were mass produced.
@@Syne111 What the OP is saying is that people will start making proxies en masse. WotC will then start to feel left out and decide they are leaving money on the table. They will then reprint the entire RL. P Perhaps even into the ground b/c if they're going to compete against proxies, every card needs to be $2 (and same for recent sets too). I don't buy it. It only considers the players' side of things that "what is best for ME (all the RL cards and cheap) is best for WotC." For one, WotC benefits from "unicorn" cards they can't reprint in PR and other ways. There's value in the RL that lasts a lot longer than a cash grab that destroys consumer confidence. The big thing: your longest term customers are your best. Sacrificing the RL to get the newer players a fix is probably not worth your longest term collectors exiting in rage.
@@JD-gk7eh Except that it's pretty clear that selling boosters = "good for WotC." Spiraling secondary market prices don't make WotC money, selling boxes does. Now, think about WotC's actions over the last few years and tell me they won't do whatever they think will actually make them a lot of money in the short term?
5:02 I recall a Black Lotus selling for about $300 in 1996, but it was the most expensive card by far. I'm not sure whether any of the rest of the Power 9 had broken $100. Edit: Just saw your insert of Inquest.
Damn this shows my age but when I was a sophomore in high school in 96, I remember seeing mox pearl for $50. Should’ve bought it then, snes games cost that much back then smh
Back in the days of EDH, Sol Ring had a much bigger impact on games. I remember from 2008-2010, I avoided playing Sol Ring in my EDH deck (and I did have one or two) because I didn't like what it did to games. I was hoping it would get banned. Then WotC started including it in commander pre-cons, so I just accepted the fate of the format and put Sol Rings in my decks. Luckily, the format plays very differently now, and while Sol Ring is still insanely good, it doesn't warp the game like it used to.
That doesn't really make sense. As the power level of a format goes up, the power of fast mana goes up. We saw that in Modern: Mox Opal was more or less fine for years (when it was casting 2 drop creatures) and then new more powerful cards made it not so. With 4 and 5 mana commanders that function as whole decks now (seriously, cards like Chulane and Othari do what a whole deck of cards used to do!), getting those things out faster has a more massive effect on the game. Sure, your deck has cards like that too, so you can catch up a bit easier, but the advantage of getting out in front with cards that snowball, now more common than ever, has never been greater.
I'm so glad fast mana isn't game warping, I'm sure you'd be happy to see Mana Crypt, the legal Moxes, Ancient Tomb, etc. now that Sol Ring is also not game warping.
We asked about the reserve list during every one of our interviews for our MTG documentary. We're now cutting together a clip of 30+ people saying various flavors of "no comment". *wry grin*
@@PleasantKenobi Rosewater has publically said several times he can't talk about it, and can't talk about WHY he can't talk about it. I assume most people at WotC are under the same restrictions.
Recently in a Discord QnA when asked about card value, Mark Rosewater said that they increased the number of rares in Play Boosters, which therefore increases the value. Everyone was just like... Sir, have you heard of supply and demand? NO MORE QUESTIONS!
I have played since 1994. Avid competetive Vintage player starting around 2000 and I once owned a literal Playset of Vintage and Legacy up until 2009 when I started selling. I mostly gave it to friends dirt cheap when I should have put it on ebay, at the very lease. Or used it as a startup collection to start a gaming store alone with a financial partner. I dont like to think about the boat I missed out on holding between 2009 and today. Anyways, I believed back then, and still(obviously) do today that this is a game. If the game is unplayable, well thats a problem. Even if I owned the cards. Do you expect both myself and a friend to play with them? Babe Ruth cards dont have their value because nobody can ever print a Babe Ruth again but because of the fact that it came from an era when people didnt think to save things. Just like all early magic players I played the first several years unsleeved. It wasnt until around when Tempest came out a buddy showed up using penny sleeves, then it was about a year later I feel like gaming sleeves became a thing. If they existed before, none of us knew. Just print the cards. let us have fun. Keep us buying through reprints. Oh man, and dont get me started on how small businesses are supposed to catalog and sell these cards when there are sooooooo many variants and etc. Im all for the variants, im just saying it would help organize for stores easier if there was a finite-ish numver of card names.
@@iNCoMpeTeNtplAyS The rate was similar to a mythic in most any other set: 1 in 121. Each of the 15 slots in a pack had 121 different cards that could only be found in that slot, which is why there's 1800+ cards to the set, but Mana Crypt could be pulled in 1 out of 121 packs.
Even premium products are only premium products if Wizards thinks you like the latest cash grab. If it tanks like Commander Masters they say it is not premium despite insane price point.
@@PleasantKenobi It's rather easy to verify -- check the release dates. The Urza block wasn't even eligible for the reserved list until 7th edition. By that time all the Gaea's Cradle variants had been published. The foil was a judge gift card in 1998 and the championship deck version was 1999. Seventh was 2001.
The funny thing is it wasn't FTV that caused Wizards to double-down on the Reserved List. It was Phyrexia vs. Coalition and the reprint of Phyrexian Negator. I found documentation of the "whoopsie" announcement on an MTG Salvation thread from 2010 (probably the only place it still exists since WotC borked their own old articles on the Mothership). The decklists of Phyrexia vs. Coalition were announced in February 2010 and they revised the reprint policy in March 2010. In the announcement of the revised policy, they say there are already some products in the pipeline with RL cards (including FTV) and they announce which cards those are, but say that they will not be reprinted again after those products release. I find it really weird because there was a judge promo of Negator in 2004, after it was on the RL, and no one batted an eye.
IMO it wasn't so much the reprint, but that WoTC listened to the people who moaned about it. Seriously. If these people who moaned about it did half the reading, they would have knoiwn the RL applied to non-premium reprints (on top of only applying to reprints and functional reprints, not stuff that came arbitrarily close -making the Reverberate debacle incredibly frustrating, IMO).
I just think it is absurd that people cannot play a game format because some cards are not printed anymore. There are many ways to make cards retain some value. Cmon look at other games where cards are reprinted and there are still cards worth hundreds or thousands (and some of them are not even played).
@@Syne111 exactly. Some stores in my area are starting to organize unofficial turnaments with up to 16 proxies allowed for older formats. This will be a growing trend.
So if you work at Wotc and you also collect and sell cards on the secondary market, you could be aware of upcoming reprints that might affect a card's value and cash out your personal collection ahead of time. Would that qualify as insider trading?
Exactly the same. Every penny I have invested I cycled out of crypto into MTG RL back in 2021. I don't even own a home. Every day I pray that every penny of my savings goes into some bloated Hasbro exec's pocket.
@@Syne111 it's not about that. I play legacy routinely and I want kids in high school to be able to play with real cards one day. Mtg is a game first. I think people miss that. Every year more rl cards leave the market and while you want to feast upon the value that brings greedily, I see it as a tragedy.
@@Trazaeth There's 30,000+ "real cards". You want them to play with the 0.001% of cards meant for collectors you mean? Do you know what I want for kids in high school? To enjoy the same value that the last 30yrs of magic collectors enjoyed. To be able to pass something valuable down to their kids. To recoup the money spent on this hobby, like everyone else did.
@@Syne111 treating a card game like it's a stock is just dumb. Again it's a game for people to play. Additionally how much is beta birds of paradise again? Oh that's right $2000. What's the price of birds of paradise from dominaria remastered? $6. Edition and rarity will always matter. Even if they massively print new duals so people can play alpha and beta will still be high value.
Fun fact, should have looked at beta not at alpha, since back then beta was quite a bit more expensive. The reason being that alpha was considered non playable cards due to the alpha corner. Beta however was both collectible AND playable and thus fetched a higher price despite the higher printrun
Promising not to do something like Reverberate was a mistake. The RL covers reprints, and functional reprints, period. People who bitched about that, and bitch about the 30th anniversary solely because RL cards are reprinted need to re-read the RL (where it says it is reprints and functional reprints, and only applies to tournament legal printings), and Wizards needs to grow some clearly-lacking balls.
While I think the reserved list is a mistake, I also don't really want everything to be worthless, so my idea instead of the reserved list would be to reprint rares & mythics only after 10 years or so and I would apply this to every rare & mythic. This would ensure that cards don't get too cheap, but also that prices stay somewhere reasonable. Imagine every 10 years a set with duals, a set with power 9 or all the good old artifacts, a set with all the broken expensive lands and so on. On the other hand imagine opening a fetchland, goyf or Jtms and know that it will be worth something for the next 10 years.
While this has its drawbacks, I do appreciate you brainstorming beyond the braindead "RL bad" that these geniuses seem to think stands in for discussion.
@@Syne111 I think there is no option without any drawbacks, just abolishing the reserved list would destroy the last bit of trust WotC has and depending on the way they do it, it could suck out all financial value from the game, keeping the RL just makes formats like Legacy, Vintage, Premodern, Oldschool and to a certain extent even commander unapproachable for newer players who are maybe interested, but simply can't afford it. Proxy boosters like Magic 30 are also not the way to go since they're overpriced, not tournament legal and not readily available. My Idea isn't perfect either, sure putting everything on a list like that would result in price Spikes on certain cards, some cards could be cheap but hard to get since there wouldn't be that many copies flying around or they would get expensive if they aren't in the reprint set, but on the other hand you'd get your hands on those cards eventually. Another way to keep the value would be to abolish the reserved list but at the same time promise to never reprint the cards in the old frame and with the old art, in that way the old cards would keep value for collectors, but players could get their hands on those cards for more reasonable prices. I mean that way they could print Vintage Masters in paper for the stuff that is mostly played in vintage, Eternal Masters 2 for the duals, grim monoliths and other legacy focused cards and another commander masters for cards like the Legends from Legends, wheel of fortune and all that stuff.
@@vargsieber Why can't people just print their own proxies, and leave it up to Wizards to compete with long-term value? I see it this way. If Wizards can prove to the market that their collectibles stand the test of time, people won't proxy. They will purchase real cards. That's a win/win for everyone. Even those who can't afford everything right away will enjoy having their collections appreciate over time, thus giving them cost savings for each new set.
@@Syne111 proxys are fine, but I think if they would be allowed for sanctioned tournament play you'd have to set standards, a self written piece of paper in a sleeve with a basic land obviously isn't the best idea, a proxy printed in black & white can also be difficult to recognize for the opponent and if you print it yourself there's also the question about paper thickness if the deck doesn't completely consist of proxys and then there's the question about those Chinese"Proxys" aka counterfeits. But before that is even a discussion we need another step before. That would be to make the Proxys WotC printed legal (CE, IE, WCD, Magic 30).
@@Syne111 *and leave it up to Wizards to compete with long-term value?* Those treating the game as an investment vechicle should be forced to play by that same rule, as well.
If the reserve list isn't going away, all cards on it need to be banned in EDH. Edit: Also, considering that the RL already has been changed before and some cards already have seen reprints, it is utterly meaningless.
There’s no need to have an official ban of the cards that 99% of players don’t actually own in the first place. Just have a rule zero conversation with your tables.
The whole "we don't need official rules when we have rule 0" argument has always annoyed me. There are people unable to have a rule 0 conversation, such as those who's only reliable way to play is at weekly LGS tournaments. Even without that, saying thst a games official rules don't matter when you can homebrew anything just feels like offloading the maintenance and balance of the game onto players.
I have 31 Mox Diamonds for my EDH decks. One is real, in well-played condition. The others each cost me approx 20 cents and feature different art treatments. Use proxies, people.
Couldn't agree more. I own all real cards and embrace others using proxies for rl. Genuinely nobody who owns the real cards cares if others use proxies.
I also play yugioh. The best card in the game, banned everywhere (just like black lotus) can run you, in its most expensive print, can run you about… 10 euros. Ten fucking euros. Imagine getting a black lotus for less than a euro if you’re on a budget or 10 euros if you wanna spend a lot.
"Investors", not "collectors." I only say this because I'm a collector (someone who enjoys collecting every card from a set/year), but I also want cards to be affordable and accessible because I want to be able to actually...you know, collect the cards. It's people who see cards as an investment who have the conflict of interest, because they're looking for a return on their investment.
@@nathandavis9830 MTG cards are absolutely an investment in every sense of the word. They cost lots of money, they take a lot of time to assemble, and a lot of mental energy to play. Anything that taxes my wallet, my time, and my mental faculties is an investment. The fact that there's a built-in financial reward that has persisted for 30+ years is the icing on the cake.
@@nathandavis9830 The absolute best ways to make cards affordable is to make them valuable. A healthy trade binder will ALWAYS result in more cost savings than a few bucks off the sticker price. Plus, by going after the retail cost, you throw LGS' and distributors under the bus. Value > Price.
I agree terrible mistake, knee jerk reaction to outrage and the rush to address it lead to it being handled horribly. Things like the OG dual lands should never had been put on it. Commons should have never been put on it, there are far more bad cards on it then good ones.
Was playing at the time and vested in total power and heavily played in Type I and Type II. I traveled around multiple towns for tourneys and played casual as well in multiple game stores. NEVER heard 1 player complain about Chronicles crashing prices. I am sure a few big money collectors bitched. Of course that means the rich had to be catered to at the 3x Penske of the rest of us.
I don't know why their promise is so important for the reserve list specifically.... it's not like WOTC hasn't broken multiple promises continuously over the last few years.
I believe it comes down to the amount of money they make off of people who invest in MTG. A lot of the people who invest in older vintage product also stack modern products as well. Whether you like the RL or not, there is a ton of money invested into MTG each year with the RL as the base upon which the rest is built. If the base disappears, then any belief in the product by those investors would be lost resulting in WOTC getting less money on current product. I believe players vastly undervalue the number of people who buy modern product and premium sets for investment purposes. WOTC could have preserved value in a way different from the RL originally, but they didn't. So, the RL is what it is all built on. I was one of the people who have a sizeable vintage collection and who also bought a lot of modern product. After MTG 30, I no longer buy modern product. That is about 20-30K a year WOTC does not get any longer. It does not take too many people like me to stop buying before they feel it. And no, I have no issue with the concept of MTG 30. Honestly, if they sold it for normal box price to let people draft Alpha copies, it would have been fine. But it was clear they were trying to find a way to back out of the RL concept. That shook the foundation. I always thought breaking the RL for profits alone would be the death knell showing the company was out of ideas. And they did it. That tells me the company has no idea what they are doing, so modern product will just get more basic and more uninteresting. I now just collect vintage product alone. I don't care if it goes to 0 later. I just like it. But WOTC does not deserve my money otherwise. TLDR - The RL is important because it exists. If they had never done it, I think the game would be fine. But they did. And that one would be a broken promise to drive most all investors out. And that loses a ton of money for WOTC. I quit buying WOTC product, not because they broke the RL, but because breaking it tells me they have no idea what to do with the company moving forward.
@@NOLA-vv3sz YES, HOLY CRAP.. ONE SANE MATURE PERSON FINALLY WEIGHS IN. I wish this was the only post, because it's the only one that matters. I'm exactly the same! WOTC lost about 10k/yr I would be spending on modern product. They're scaring away the people who spend money, and the only happy people are the ones who don't. Sorry, but you don't matter!
@@NOLA-vv3sz The RL explicitly does not make WotC any money, is hated by the vast majority of the playerbase, and drives a large wedge between the haves and have-nots that creates constant tension in the community. It did its job, but nowadays, it's nothing but negatives. "Confidence" is a non-answer, because when you respond to what the majority of your customers want, you build confidence. When you fail, repeatedly, to address their concerns, you lose it. WotC has said the RL was a bad idea. It doesn't build confidence to hear "this is stupid, but I'm going to do it because I said I would."
I would say you cannot say with any confidence that even 10% of the playerbase hates it just like I can't say with any confidence even 10% likes it. Most of the playerbase is silent and just plays MTG with friends. Only the truly vocal of us (usually a very small segment) cares enough to argue about it. I know a ton of people who think it should stay and still others who think it should not. None of what you wrote refutes anything I said on anything other than an emotional level. However, the "confidence" you dismiss is enough to move company valuations over 100 billion in a day. Fortunes are lost and made solely on confidence in a company thus moving its value in the market. Confidence in a company creates an atmosphere where a segment of the population (usually one with a ton of money) is willing to put it into Investment A vs. Investment B. Confidence in WOTC, whether built on the RL or its competence in general, is what kept a large income part of the MTG population spending money on modern product. The amount that segment spends is sizeable given how greedily WOTC is going after it with special sets, cards, collector boxes, etc. They know those people have the money and are willing to spend it. There is a reason revenue dropped immediately after MTG30. Part of that reason was people with money bailing due to lack of confidence in WOTC. Losing those investors means WOTC will squeeze those of us who are left with higher prices and even more rapid releases. That is until the wheels truly fall off requiring them to reinvent things somehow. That is not a good place to be. There is a space between the RL and the mess of product WOTC is currently printing and reprinting. They could satisfy both collectors and players. But I have zero confidence they know how to do it.
Good video. I don’t completely agree with all your conclusions, but still bro really good video. Personally, I think the Reserve List should be a living document.
Good thing that will never happen. The anti-WotC sentiment has been growing stronger in the playerbase for a long time, and no new whales are arriving to replace those claimed by natural attrition. If WotC started adding cards to the RL, that might finally be enough to unite the MtG community against them, the way the D&D community rose in rebellion against the OGL. On 2nd thought, I think adding to the RL is a fine idea. ;) WotC’s cardstock was successfully matched by the top counterfeit-style proxy makers this year. Only a matter of time until the dot-matrix “L” falls, now. :)
Love ya, PK... but you are missing a huge chunk of the story that is important to understand when describing the Reserve List and it's creation. While you touched on Chronicles (The white boarder set that caused all these issues in the first place), You failed to fully reveal WHY it had the impact on the secondary market that it did. Chronicles was INTENDED to be an ongoing release of reprints, with cards rotating in and out of the set. At the time, it was the first and only reprint set - and it was WAY over-produced with a print run that ran for over a year. It DID tank the value of some previously powerful cards by flooding the market with "cheap copies". Collectors were (rightfully) upset. But the Reserve List was an over-correction. And now has done more harm than Chronicles ever did. Instead of a permanent stream of reprints in a white boarder set, reprints were moved into the expansion sets themselves as well as the core sets. WotC found a better way, that wouldnt completely tank values, and is now stuck with a handful of powerful cards that (because of this promise), has become the bane of players and created the worst barrier for Legacy formats. Now, vintage and legacy are only available to the wealthy who can afford old reserve list cards.
This is good info. The one saving grace of Chronicles is that the cards looked like cheap copies of the originals. The white border, the set symbol, and even the inking was inferior. This 'game piece' philosophy I believe they did correctly. Compare that to "The List" where they have tried to make near 1:1 counterfeits of original cards. This was Wizards' biggest mistake IMO, and luckily it looks like they will be moving away from this soon.
the reserved list made me quite magic, but not for why you think. I owned all the cards, did since I got my first job in 1997 and spent until around 2002 buying up duals and power and workshops and bazaars etc. well by 2010 they were so expensive nobody could afford to play with me on my level. I got frustrated and sold out, but basically gave it all away, depressed and angry that a game i love was run by such a stupid decision. that was before commander came along. that was before they closed the "premium versions"loophole. its all even more expensive now. I could have bought a house, cash even in this market with what I gave up. fuck the reserved list. I advocated getting rid of it when I owned power. and still do now. so, I just play Pauper now. Its the spirit of magic I love. no gatekeeping or the rich guy just winning. love it.
Maybe they were going to put the power ten into Chronicles, and someone said "let's wait for Chronicles 2 to put them in." Imagine what could have been...
Reserve list should be abolished its a game meant to be played if people want to hoard cards for a profit and they want the guarantee of profit they just want the stock market without any risk.
I'm so mad at myself. I had a chance to get From the Vault: Relics for MSRP. I turned it down because nothing in there was needed at the time, just before I started playing EDH. Aside from that, the usual "Get rid of the reserved list", get rid of it, insert related other comment here. Needs to go.
@@marklehman5272 lol it’s funny I’m a RL purist myself but I don’t support proxies for casual. In my experience people who proxy have very little restraint when it comes to deck building in edh, essentially making lesser cEDH lists. They don’t proxy to enhance the gameplay experience, they proxy to optimize for the win. Optimizing to win doesn’t seem casual to me… I’d be totally for proxies in competitive play though. Those games should definitely come down to skill and not budget.
The reserve list is a scam that WotC can get rid of at any time with no legal headache. Who cares if some players quit because of it? They're the ones that never spend any money on this game anyway. The reserve list has definitely gotten worse because of WotC closing the special reprint / judge foil "loophole." I remember when they did that, players were strongly in favor of abolishing the RL and instead WotC tightened it. Most likely due to the request of places like Star City Games, which had just launched their amazingly successful Legacy tournament series, and reprinting of legacy staples would have hurt their sales.
people hated the foil loophole and the final nail was the foil mox diamond reprint. players hated it enough that they told wotc in droves not to do that again. thats just fact but i would be in favor of foil reserved list cards being printed.
I buy and play all the time and I’m fine with the existence of the RL. I just came to the conclusion that there are some cards I’ll never own and that’s ok. The RL cards I do own I saved up for, traded for, or waited to get a good deal. MtG is a luxury hobby and I don’t feel entitled to every card just because they exist
@@marklehman5272 - Attorneys specializing in this matter say I'm right, but since random fucko in the internet says "you're wrong" I guess they're all wrong. Wait, no, that's not how it works.
the demonic tutor example is a perfect encapsulation of why the reserved list is utter bullshit. That many printings and the alpha version still holds value while the newer versions still have a price tag. Heck even shivan dragon has a massive upcharge for an alpha or beta printing
Yes the original printings of cards would still hold up (Alpha/Beta) but lesser reprints wouldn’t. Do you think the dual lands from Unlimited/Revised would hold up at all if there was a reprint? White frame cards have a long history of distaste among the MtG community. We have some examples here of reprinting definitely hurting the value of non Original cards. The judge printing of Imperial Seal and Imperial Recruiter took BIG hits with reprints and are unlikely to ever recover.
@@mathewdebol923 and this is a bad thing why? More cards being more accessible to more people will only get more players into older formats and allow those who didn't play back in the 90s a chance to actually own and play with these old cards. If there is a version that still has massive value and can be of interest to collectors why shouldnt there also be lesser reprints that are more affordable? everybody wins
Exactly. People want to say Tarmogoyf lost value because of reprintings, but the fact is that it lost value because people STOPPED PLAYING IT. Cards didn't go down in Chronicles because of the reprinting, they went down because players got these before unobtainable cards and realized that... they were mostly shit and unplayable. Birds of Paradise will always be in the $8-$10 range every time it's printed (if it's ever printed into standard again) because it's an amazingly useful card in the format that will always be played if available. Price depends more on usefulness than scarcity at the rare / mythic level.
@@DerekScottBland we have proof of value loss. Originals may hold up, but reprints don’t do well. So UNL/Revised cards will come CRASHING down with a RL repeal as they will definitely be the less sought after. Hell the repeal would shake the very belief in the game itself. The RL has been the one bedrock principle that’s held true from WotC.
@@dancook6114 Everybody doesn't win though.. Use your head. 99% of the people who hold value in RL have non-AB copies of cards. Your version of "everyone" is only the top 1% of collectors. Everyone else who has collected gets screwed. Even if you don't care about those people for your own reasons, your arguments are dishonest. For every Shivan Dragon, I can give you 100 examples of modern cards decimating original printings. Sylvan Library, Scroll Rack, Birds of Paradise, Food Chain, Grim Tutor, Crop Rotation, Aura Shards, Strip Mine, Worldly Tutor, Blood Moon, Jitte, Reflecting Pool.. I could go on all day. In fact, I've started picking up OG copies of these staples because they've been nuked by reprints. Your OP is wrong. Original cards DO NOT hold value. Move the goalposts all you like, but you're still wrong.
The power creep of duals will likely be triomes. Make a version that only comes into play tapped if you have more than one opponent (to sell to legacy formats players), and then make another version that only comes into play tapped if you only have one opponent (to sell to commander players). As a secret lair both would make them more significantly money than reprinting duals. Or put them as mythic in boxes to increase box sales.
Wait... what? Why? Why is it a bad example? Its just... an example. Neither good, nor bad. Drop whatever weird bias you have and try to explain yourself.
@@PleasantKenobi older foils tend to carry a premium, especially if no other foil version exists. Given that I would say the example of a RL reprint with higher value than the original is a bad example, or at least a misleading one. I’ll give an example though of value hurt by reprints that could carry over to the RL. We don’t have perfect RL reprint samples to use but I’ll go with Imperial Seal. It’s an older card with almost no reprints until recently. The PK3 was untouched, but the judge foil lost 50% with that reprint. Imperial Recruiter’s judge foil follows a similar downward drop when reprinted in Masters 25. I believe that Alpha/Beta would be rather untouched by a reprint but Unl/Revised cards would follow a similar price collapse as my examples for the following reasons. 1. Any reprint will be cheaper than the currently available sought after Unl/Revised cards. 2. White frame cards are largely disliked by the MtG community. A black frame version would likely be more sought after, especially if cheaper.
@@swolegolisopod7340because some people decided to pay the high amounts of money to play with those cards based on the fact they wouldn’t be reprinted per the company. You think I’d pay $250 for a Grim Monolith if I knew a $100 or less reprint was around the corner?
The ONLY class of cards I really really really really really really REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted OUT of the reserved list and printed in a version that's affordable, are the original Dual Lands. Just a dual land with no caveats or downside. Just a dual land.
The reserved list is serious about "functionally identical" . Magic invented the term Strictly Better, so any change, even the smallest change ever, makes it not functionally identical.
The Roc example kind of weird me out because then you could say that every creature that flies and is more than 3/3 with upside is a strictly better Roc. Consecrated Sphinx? Roc. Emrakul? Also, a better Roc.
@PleasantKenobi yeah whoops you're right. Sorry, I didn't consider that but I guess the point stands that there are probably a hell of a lot of them. I think it's more to say about the weirdness of a vanilla creature to be on the reserved list because it has nothing unique about it other than a mana value and statline which hardly seem important to reserve.
Flesh and Blood has a good market for collectors while still being able to reprint in demand cards. The first printing of the rarest equipment cards get a rainbow foil and a “cold foil” treatment. The latter being incredibly rare and usually 5-10x the rainbow foil price. If the card is reprinted in later sets, it will only be non-foil. Making the foiled versions still desirable and collectible.
Unfortunately, WoTC can't seem to honor their own "special" treatments. They're constantly giving themselves reacharounds and getting high on their own supply. They need to firmly state their intent for special treatments, so there is collector confidence. They need to make serialized cards with unique art, because nobody is going to care if you just tramp stamp a card that has a million other copies.
Its not less bad. Entire people will never playvexause of it. I sold all my power and my extreme whale of a collection. And ive trulynever been happier. I have real hobbies now and dont havr to rely on others for entertainment.
I guess I will never understand the sentiment of the reserved list. Would I be sad if my cards suddenly became worthless? A little I guess. But I play magic to play, not collect. So if it was somehow undone, all it would mean is my favorite format, legacy, would become more accessible. Sure its not everyone's cup of tea, but the fact that there is a price barrier for entry causes the play groups to slowly dwindle as more and more people can't afford the format. Talking about proxies, sure those do indeed exist... but I, as well as many others, like owning the cards they use. I am not saying never use proxies, if you want to play a 100% proxy legacy deck and bring it to my local so we have more player PLEASE do, but it is a mentality some players do hold. Also sanctioned events exist still for the formats so even if you proxy at locals, you would be prohibited from playing at larger events, My last statement is kind of targeted but a comment said that they like the reserved list because they don't like the play in older formats because of the older cards, but other people do and enjoy the way new and old cards interact to form stuff that is only playable in those formats. someone debatably wise once stated "don't yuck someone's yum".
@@DerekScottBland True, in my head I tend to put collectors and players separate even though you can be both and collectors sometimes do it for fun and not investment, but 100% your comment is how I intended it.
Most people I know, collect AND play. Many also invest AND play. These aren't mutually exclusive ideas. Myself, I play what I collect. So I play with MP-HP cards that I'm proud to own, because they're rare and valuable. I doubt I'd play if I couldn't also enjoy my collection. The two go hand-in-hand for me.
The value of a card you're never going to sell is irrelevant, you're never going to sell it. If you care about playing, then "value" is a cute made-up number that means very little to you.
@@Orinn000 It's not irrelevant. One day I'll hand them off to my kids and they will be able to attend college, or get a down payment on their first home. This is a 30yr legacy, not some new collectible franchise.
@@marklehman5272probably something along the lines of investors seeing cards selling for big money, so they invest in Wizards so they can get big money.
MANA CRYPT ISN’T ON THE RESERVED LIST?!? Why in the everloving hell is it so rare then?!? It should have been reprinted into the ground like Sol Ring then!
As he explained in the video, WOTC know what are high demand cards. There's no reason for them to reprint Mana Crypt into the ground. They have a handful of cards they only sporadically reprint in order to REALLY sell a premium set with high demand reprints. If Mana Crypt got reprinted three times or more a year the card WOULD lose a lot of it's desirability. It's no longer that delicious 'chase card' they can sprinkle into $20 packs.
The funny thing to me is that mana crypt is part of the reason the reserved list exists, yet was never added to it. 🤣 people really wanted to buy boosters and crack packs vs going to live events or buying books and sending in the coupon. I don’t blame them but wow it’s been such a wild ride. And we need the snow duals 🌚 damn RL saving and killing mtg at the same time.
I own a bit of reserve list stuff from my early days of magic, i'd like a bit more but not dropping that kind of cash. While i think reprinting some of the playable reserve list cards for edh, legacy and vintage would be good i've also considered Rudy's point about the value of modern cards. The fact that very few if any of the cards my daughter pulls from her boosters will hold any value and any that do will nearly certainly see a reprint at some point is a negative, i'm not sure if adding cards to the reserved list is the answer but putting a handful of art styles each set on the reserved list would be a nice idea and might repay the debt of removing some of the needed reprints from the list to make the eternal formats playable.
the reserved list shoud reserve card meaning that they shouldn't be reprinted for a time and be limited not never reprinted inflating the prices lead to a bubble waiting to burst and no fun for EDH players like me , rare and powerful cards will always catch money make it limited art even better just make the cards limited and not reprinted in the ground and no collector should be worried.
Every time I hear that they specified it wouldn't be printed in black or white border, I think that they should have put the reprints in an Un-set. But I guess we've missed our chance, now that unsets have black borders.
So, if I read that correctly "we will never be printed again in black or white border in game-functionally identical form". Don't we have borderless cards now? That wouldn't break the rule. They already broke the spirit with the foils, so they can't claim that. Imagine the prices if it was borderless. They could also make it harder to forge, unlike the old copies that people keep proxying.
WotC has violated the Reserve List several times now through attempted workarounds, which shows that the Reserve List is bad for the company as a whole. More importantly, it demonstrates WotC's understanding that (much to the chagrin of collectors) Magic card values are mostly dictated by their demand as *competitive play* game pieces. However, due to the scarcity of those cards, casual players simply print proxies, and competitive players are largely driven to formats reliant on few or no Reserve List cards. As it stands right now, the Reserve List appears to me to be an active form of market manipulation on behalf of some internal WotC employees, which is completely unethical if not actually illegal.
The RL is like a forced savings account of consumer confidence that WOTC can't touch, despite wanting to. It's good for the company long-term, because new players buy into the game with the understanding that they can drop $500-$1000 and it won't turn to dust tomorrow. Believe it or not, the RL gives people the confidence to spend that money.
I hate the Reserve list I think Sliver Queen should be made more but after the whole Pinkertons thing I don't think for sure I want be buying anymore nor touch their stuff.
I would argue the Reserved List was not needed back then (at the very least in the form they made it), and it is definitely not needed today. The Pro Tour and tourney play did more for the game than the RL ever did.
You clearly weren't around at the time of Chronicles. It was very much needed. Chronicles was a HUGE deal when it hit. Like, there was mass panic. People really were really quitting the game over it. They were afraid Moxes were going to be in it, it was WILD. At a time when they didn't release spoilers, they released the entire contents of the set in advance to calm the fervor. That was something they would not do officially until some 15 or 20 years later. (I can't remember when that started. Spoiler season is more of a recent thing than not.) It was absolutely necessary at the time. Very much. As the first TCG, Magic needed stability and buyer confidence. The RL was essential for doing that when it came out.
@J D I absolutely was around through Chronicles. "People" were not panicking and quitting the game. Dealers, unscrupulous traders and collectible "investors" were losing their shit, because all their wheeling and dealing to corner the market on the elusive cards was threatening to come to an end. The general public were loving the set, because they could get a hold of cards that generally most hadn't ever seen. The only thing wrong with the set really was the over-printing of it (that and it wasn't really that good of a set overall). Coupled with being released just after Fourth Edition and Ice Age (which were also seen as a dumpster fire), and after the massive "overprinting" of Fallen Empires, led to people being disenfranchised with Magic as a whole. Homelands came about and people were livid. Many used Chronicles as a scapegoat, overblowing its impact and repeating talking points from their LGS owners upset at being able to charge $40 for their Legends Nicol Bolas anymore and Carrion Ants for $20. It was the creation of Type 2 and the Pro Tour Championships that drove Magic sales, not the Reserved List. The Reserve List was a mistake that should never have happened, and should be done away with, especially considering it has outlived any and all usefulness, and only helps create a classist game.
@@LordJaroh How is it classist? You have 30,000 cards to play with and more choices than ever to create powerful decks. Dual lands barely give an edge anymore, it's just a flex at this point. If you're losing games it's because you aren't creative enough, not because you can't afford the cards. You can get a very competitive deck going for around $100.
@@LordJaroh THANK YOU. This is also how I remember things. Players were happy to have those cards available to play with, I never heard any complaints from any of the stores I went to back then. it was the large card sellers who complained. The secondary market is important, no doubt about it, but you can't base everything on a group of people who are always going to put their bottom line ahead of the health of the game, which is exactly what WotC did.
Honestly I'm so close to just not caring anymore. I've done my absolute best to put together solid real life iterations of cedh lists in paper with as much money as I can scrape together. Most of my lists I'm close to complete minus the expensive rocks and RL stuff. I kind of have a neurotic thing for owning the stuff I play, but like...I just can't see a good reason not to proxy anymore. The only people that care are wotc.
I don't understand this MSRP thing. LGS are still buying products for specific prices, what's wrong with using those numbers? It's just MSRP without the name
You know what the reserved list doesn't stop them from doing with those cards? Banning them. They should just ban all reserved list cards from all sanctioned formats. F those cards. Like 1% of players have them. Why give them an advantage? And I was buying cards in 1994.
I equate the reserve list to the Treasury in your govt. Just as the dollar is backed by the treasury hoarding gold and other assets. So to does wizards with the reserve list. It is obviously not a direct correlation as mtg holds its value with mtg instead of outside sources.
"Put your tea down first, then throw your hands into the air." -- bro we don't drink tea here in the USA. We take our cocaine laced with fentanyl and die like adults.
The comparison in power is wholly contextual. A sol ring is functionally the weakest card in your deck if you're not running enough colorless pips to actually make use of the mana it produces. Sol ring is strictly better in artifact decks that care little for colors. It's far less useful in pip heavy decks when you'd rather have the same amount of mana with a land drop and a mox to fit your mana requirements.
Sol ring is more powerful in lower power decks. It doesn't produce colour and on t1, adds the same amount of acceleration as a mox. It also requires you to have access to 1 mana (which invalidates some bad hands where you draw no lands). The higher the power level, the better moxes become. In metas where t0-2 wins are relatively common, moxes are better.
@@TaskMaster5 by turn 4 and up you can spend 2 colorless and with most decks they have turn 2 or 3 ramp with 2 colorless like a signet or kodama’s reach
As big a mistake as it seems now, it was a necessary evil at the time. If they didn't enact the reserve list, it's quite possible that the game would have died in the late 90s, and it wouldn't be going on today. They have removed cards from the RL before, and that's what they should do for high demand cards like the OG duals and some other Legacy/Vintage staples. That would get droves of people into playing these nearly dead formats. Though it seems they've been satisfied with them remaining effectively online.
@@Kakerate2 collectors were a major force in the game back then as there was nothing like MtG back then. Chronicles was perceived as a “why bother collecting this when they just make another cheaper card with the same art?” It killed card value overnight and it got collectors angry
@@mathewdebol923 Well put. We also have to remember at the time WotC's revenue was fractional compared to what it is today. If WotC lost 30% of it's revenue from Magic tomorrow they'd be very hurt but would survive. Back then, when Magic was their only profitable venture, it could have been lethal to the company.
I think people are making entirely too big a deal of OG duals. There are so many duals that come in untapped now. The advantage these would bring to decks is miniscule.
@@mathewdebol923 Don't kid yourself. Collectors are still a huge part of WOTCs revenue. They're playing with fire right now. BOA knows it, which is why they keep downgrading their stock.
Instructions unclear, my reserved list cards are now covered in tea
😂😂😂
My 10th wedding anniversary is coming up soon. When my wife proposed to me, she extravagantly spent tens of dollars on a Mox Diamond as a goof. That piece of cardboard is currently worth more than my gold wedding ring.
Lol your wife proposed to you? How often does your wife's boyfriend come over to play magic with you guys?
@@mikev7357 Can you explain which part of the oc´s comment hurt your fragile masculinity? Jesus, grow up, it´s 2023 ffs.
@@origaminosferatu3357 🤣
Just imagine if the reserve list didn't exist.....it be worth pennies.
@@mikev7357 Damn, insecure men are so unfunny lol.
to think, one of the most common tokens we use today is basically a former reserved list card. (treasures, lotus petal)
You can use treasure tokens as Lotus Petal proxies
@@joelhaggis5054 and vice-versa; I use lotus petals as my treasure tokens lol
@@S1L3NTDr460n At least it isn't a masterpiece version, right?
@@Oxygen1004 *stares in Anakin Skywalker*
I wish they added Talrand in the reserved list. I have way too many copies of that card lol.
A good example of the lack of need for a reserve list is Yu-gi-oh cards value from the early days. LOB cards in good condition are valuable as hell even with stuff like Blue Eyes and Dark Magician being printed into the ground.
Another good example is Mana Drain. Price had been $200-300 for an original legends copy for decades and only spiked above that briefly.
Literally. They are literally releasing more packs and boxes of LOB this year. Those 1st Ed blue eyes will still be worth tons.
Alpha Shivan Dragon is worth a lot despite being given for free
@@malakimphoros2164 yeah, Shivan dragon shows up in every product they make, and an alpha copy of it is almost 10k, the reserved list adds no value and it was made to make happy a very small but vocal group of people, a group of people that make the game worse
@@andygoody2599 How is that a good example. It's $150 now.
How do you attribute it losing 50% of its value?
I know the RL will never be abolished (or at least not until WOTC truly runs out of money) but I just wish they'd take the og duals off if they did anything, if the og duals were a similar price point to shocks or fetches i would probably buy into legacy it seems like such a fun format that will forever be out of my budget
*Especially* as Commander is their champion format now, so any card legal in Commander should be realistically available
Wizards hates being consistent. Commander is supposed to be a casual format but competitive cards are legal and casual cards get banned.
@@andygoody2599 what casual cards have been banned by WotC?
Agreed. I’d also love all lands off of the RL but that’s asking too much
@@mathewdebol923 wotc doesn't ban cards in commander
I was there, 10,000 years ago, when I had to play a hand drawn Sol Ring Proxy that was drawn on some other 1 mana artifact that had been "erased", because Sol Ring was so expensive.
I picked up my first Revised Sol Ring for $6 in the late 90s.
@@andygoody2599 And in 2009, it was more expensive than that.
I remember that time I bought a 20ish$ sol ring, which was the cheapest printing, as xmas gift for a friend.
How much was it?
@@SilverAlex92 That hardly deserves a proxy. That would just be a cool card in your deck.
What I don't understand is the reasoning: Why do they think a scarce collector exclusive flex product is will somehow be devalued when a different printing arrives. Does a black lotus seriously lose value when someone who has the money for the original sees it? Someone wanting an insanely expensive card will just go "oh, here's this new one. I guess I won't buy the famous one" that's crazy.
Shivan is a free card in welcome packs, but Alpha Shivan is worth over 5k... reserve list is a joke
It's not crazy. No matter what your views on reprints, Revised cards would undeniably get giga-rekt if the RL was violated.
@@Syne111Incorrect, and you will not spread misinformation.
They would have a slight decrease in value, but the alphas and originals would maintain a huge price.
Do not speak on this again.
@@anannoyedpanda How about you smd?
The only reason A/B has value is because the print run was insanely small.
Over 95% of the RL in circulation is from sets with comparatively very large print runs.
.. and this is intuitive. You can simply reverse engineer this logic.
Why do you think a Revised Sol Ring is selling between $5-$10 on TCGPlayer? Because it was reprinted a million times.
If the last Sol Ring printed was Revised, it would be a $5000 card.
But look at any other card that was pricy and is now dirt cheap. Tempest Scroll Rack is a good example. Once it was reprinted in CML, it lost 80% of its value.
The vast, vast majority of people holding cards would get absolutely smoked, and the tiny fraction of whales who hold A/B would do marginally better. That's the truth.
It’s a “Policy.” If working in corporate for twenty years has taught me anything… it’s that corporations like money and they’ll reverse a policy when it benefits them, past customers be damned.
This is the best argument to hand WoTC over to an independent company. I don't think a public company is a good fit for a TCG/CCG. A well stewarded collectible will always require room to grow, which requires decisions that don't always align with short-term profits.
I have Orim in my Weatherlight Tribal deck, and every time I play her I say "Fear my Reserved List power!" It's very funny whenever she's actually useful.
I didn't realize the art on her was by Kaja.
Now I need to go find that.
Hah.
People always forget Drop of Honey, was color shifted and that gets around the RL.
But overall this video makes me sad. I just want to play legacy with my friends at FNM...
Make proxies. We don't want worthless cards. Can you imagine how horrible it would be if it didn't exist? Wotc prints EVERYTHING TOO MUCH.
@@chesterfieldthe3rd929 Yes, it would be TERRIBLE if people could just pick up the game and play with real cards. Who wants the game to be playable by everyone?
I genuinely wonder if you're serious. FNM Legacy events are not common.
.. and this is the only valid argument against the RL. The rest is just whining.
@@Orinn000 What more do you want? If today's prices aren't motivating you, nothing will. Wizards gave you what you asked for.
They abolished the RL? No? Then they haven't delivered on what I really want. When we see Legacy and Vintage tournaments that you don't have to take a second mortgage to compete in, I'll be quiet. Until then, I'll keep calling the RL horrible for players and a massive barrier to entry into the most interesting and fun formats.
Either legacy will die or unsanctioned proxied events will happen.
The second one. Every LGS in my area allows proxies for legacy and vintage events. I hear from others that many LGS across the globe are doing the same. I doubt wotc will allow them in regionals/worlds, but at least at the locals level, the old formats are playable
it is dying
Unsanctioned proxy events already happen.
@@Syne111 I mean on a larger scale but yes
@@S1L3NTDr460n wizards basically has 0 support for eternal formats these days, so being sanctioned by wotc is pretty useless
I really appreciate the Duelist content. I helped get them online and more game history with those magazines as the source would be great!
I'm tempted to do a full issue review. Do we have most of them online?
Ah yes. I remember trading a Jace the Mind Sculptor for FTV: Relics.
Man that Karn EDH deck was cracked.
Mans crypt was in mystery boosters, which had a smaller retail price than masters.
It also had twice as many cards, making the pull rates worse
That's not a good reprint
@@felipeguidolin1055 No, it had about six times as many cards, but the chance of getting any specific card in the set in a booster was 1 in 121, equivalent to the chance of getting a specific mythic in most standard sets.
And I cracked two. From the same LGS. They still talk about it today lmaoo
Snow Duals would just be functionally better duals.
There are snow duels that enter tapped already
Not with cards like "Break the Ice". But I see your point.
I'm down
They would just result in too many mono color decks.
I think they should 'accidentally' print some of the list and see what happens. And then as an apology, add the fetch lands to the list, causing an uproar that gets rid of it completely.
Magic 30th did that
@@malakimphoros2164 magic 30th were proxies, so I fail to see your connection.
@@Imabirdhaww you tubers are using magic 30 as click bait claiming a debacle and uproar but nobody holding actual reserved list cards gives a shit but people like Malakim here parrot this narrative. Magic 30 has no effect on card value.
This makes absolutely no sense.
Great breakdown. However, to comment on your "Sol ring and mana crypt are not breaking games of commander", I actually think that in a world where most people can't justify the price tag on Mana crypt, EDH often becomes a "sol ring lottery" where the person who draws sol ring gets really far ahead and becomes the arch enemy. My play group is currently trialling a house ban on Sol ring, crypt, vault, etc, and I can honestly say that the games we've played have felt much more balanced and entertaining. I'd encourage everyone to try it out some time.
I agree. I don't think we should be playing fast mana in a casual format.
I disagree because I enjoy the power fast mana gives and it helps to end games faster by just making decks faster
But you kinda proved my point.
Its a multilayer format, so it makes you the arch enemy. That's a balance and a check in itself.
@@PleasantKenobi that happens whether sol ring is in the game or not though? It’s kinda like saying ancestral recall would be fine because you’re the arch enemy. All I’m saying is that my commander games without it have been fun. It’s worth trying out if your playgroup is down to try it.
@@QuantillusVarus I do agree that fewer games of archenemy are generally better, however the Ancestral Recall comparison falters a little since cards like Recall would drastically increase the disparity in which decks are able to even BE the archenemy. I don't like Sol Ring but at least basically every deck can run it
when someone brings almost 100% perfect counterfeit/proxy dual lands and mox dimaonds to commander they paid maybe $20 total for is what really is going to push Wizards to end the reserve list. If you are not making it yourself for people buy, then someone else is going to make it for you, the reserve list plus enforcing counterfeit cards seems wrong on so many levels. Either keep the cards in constant production or let everyone use proxies, period the end. I beleive whole heartedly the basic versions of a card should be a commodity and not an investment.
Not really. In Commander, it's really really easy to police and the format largely does so already. Someone shows up with a $5000 deck: "Oh wow, are all those cards real?" Most people won't lie. In fact, saying they are real puts a target for theft on you, so there's no incentive TO lie. All groups have to do is say "No proxies" and it's all over. And that's not an unreasonable stance: sanctioned events don't allow them and people who are proxying thousands of dollars of the most powerful cards when others aren't (i.e., it's not cEDH) is an issue from a power level and balance standpoint.
Also, if commander were going to shift into "Everyone is proxying Mox Diamond for every deck," that likely would have happened already because the pieces for it to do so are already there. It's not and so it's not likely to happen; half the format isn't going to wake up like "Wait, I can get Mox Diamond and Mana Crypt and fake cards for $2 each!? I HAD NO IDEA!" They know about this already and already aren't doing it.
Wizards doesn't make profit off of Reserve List Card.
People can and do use proxies. Do you realize what level of competition you'd need to play it before getting caught with proxies becomes a risk?
Proxies won't cause WOTC to end the RL. You're reaching to make a connection here. RL was a promise made before proxies/counterfeits were mass produced.
@@Syne111 What the OP is saying is that people will start making proxies en masse. WotC will then start to feel left out and decide they are leaving money on the table. They will then reprint the entire RL. P Perhaps even into the ground b/c if they're going to compete against proxies, every card needs to be $2 (and same for recent sets too).
I don't buy it. It only considers the players' side of things that "what is best for ME (all the RL cards and cheap) is best for WotC." For one, WotC benefits from "unicorn" cards they can't reprint in PR and other ways. There's value in the RL that lasts a lot longer than a cash grab that destroys consumer confidence. The big thing: your longest term customers are your best. Sacrificing the RL to get the newer players a fix is probably not worth your longest term collectors exiting in rage.
@@JD-gk7eh Except that it's pretty clear that selling boosters = "good for WotC." Spiraling secondary market prices don't make WotC money, selling boxes does. Now, think about WotC's actions over the last few years and tell me they won't do whatever they think will actually make them a lot of money in the short term?
5:02 I recall a Black Lotus selling for about $300 in 1996, but it was the most expensive card by far. I'm not sure whether any of the rest of the Power 9 had broken $100.
Edit: Just saw your insert of Inquest.
Damn this shows my age but when I was a sophomore in high school in 96, I remember seeing mox pearl for $50. Should’ve bought it then, snes games cost that much back then smh
@@arkknight92 - You are a true 90's kid if you remember power 9s from MTG and SNES games!!
Back in the days of EDH, Sol Ring had a much bigger impact on games. I remember from 2008-2010, I avoided playing Sol Ring in my EDH deck (and I did have one or two) because I didn't like what it did to games. I was hoping it would get banned.
Then WotC started including it in commander pre-cons, so I just accepted the fate of the format and put Sol Rings in my decks.
Luckily, the format plays very differently now, and while Sol Ring is still insanely good, it doesn't warp the game like it used to.
That doesn't really make sense. As the power level of a format goes up, the power of fast mana goes up. We saw that in Modern: Mox Opal was more or less fine for years (when it was casting 2 drop creatures) and then new more powerful cards made it not so. With 4 and 5 mana commanders that function as whole decks now (seriously, cards like Chulane and Othari do what a whole deck of cards used to do!), getting those things out faster has a more massive effect on the game. Sure, your deck has cards like that too, so you can catch up a bit easier, but the advantage of getting out in front with cards that snowball, now more common than ever, has never been greater.
I'm so glad fast mana isn't game warping, I'm sure you'd be happy to see Mana Crypt, the legal Moxes, Ancient Tomb, etc. now that Sol Ring is also not game warping.
Same thing with OG dual lands. They barely impact games, yet people screech that it's unfair that they're expensive.
We asked about the reserve list during every one of our interviews for our MTG documentary. We're now cutting together a clip of 30+ people saying various flavors of "no comment". *wry grin*
What?
@@PleasantKenobi Rosewater has publically said several times he can't talk about it, and can't talk about WHY he can't talk about it. I assume most people at WotC are under the same restrictions.
Recently in a Discord QnA when asked about card value, Mark Rosewater said that they increased the number of rares in Play Boosters, which therefore increases the value.
Everyone was just like... Sir, have you heard of supply and demand?
NO MORE QUESTIONS!
I have played since 1994. Avid competetive Vintage player starting around 2000 and I once owned a literal Playset of Vintage and Legacy up until 2009 when I started selling. I mostly gave it to friends dirt cheap when I should have put it on ebay, at the very lease. Or used it as a startup collection to start a gaming store alone with a financial partner. I dont like to think about the boat I missed out on holding between 2009 and today. Anyways, I believed back then, and still(obviously) do today that this is a game. If the game is unplayable, well thats a problem. Even if I owned the cards. Do you expect both myself and a friend to play with them? Babe Ruth cards dont have their value because nobody can ever print a Babe Ruth again but because of the fact that it came from an era when people didnt think to save things. Just like all early magic players I played the first several years unsleeved. It wasnt until around when Tempest came out a buddy showed up using penny sleeves, then it was about a year later I feel like gaming sleeves became a thing. If they existed before, none of us knew. Just print the cards. let us have fun. Keep us buying through reprints. Oh man, and dont get me started on how small businesses are supposed to catalog and sell these cards when there are sooooooo many variants and etc. Im all for the variants, im just saying it would help organize for stores easier if there was a finite-ish numver of card names.
Minor point, Mana Crypt was also in Mystery Booster, but I suppose that you can argue that was also a premium product.
It's draftable so it should count. However, it was a pretty hard to find product so he probably just forgot to mention it.
That box had like over 1000 cards to pull from. It definitely doesn't count as a good set to get a mana crypt from.
@@iNCoMpeTeNtplAyS The rate was similar to a mythic in most any other set: 1 in 121. Each of the 15 slots in a pack had 121 different cards that could only be found in that slot, which is why there's 1800+ cards to the set, but Mana Crypt could be pulled in 1 out of 121 packs.
Even premium products are only premium products if Wizards thinks you like the latest cash grab. If it tanks like Commander Masters they say it is not premium despite insane price point.
All the reprints of Gaea's Cradle (the foil, the championship decks, etc) were before it was on the Reserved List, so bad example.
Can you prove this? I believe it was added when the set after released.
@@PleasantKenobi It's rather easy to verify -- check the release dates. The Urza block wasn't even eligible for the reserved list until 7th edition. By that time all the Gaea's Cradle variants had been published. The foil was a judge gift card in 1998 and the championship deck version was 1999. Seventh was 2001.
I think you're the only channel where I actually listen to and enjoy the ads
Promising not to do something like Reverberate is interesting because they recently put it into a Warhammer EDH precon.
The funny thing is it wasn't FTV that caused Wizards to double-down on the Reserved List. It was Phyrexia vs. Coalition and the reprint of Phyrexian Negator. I found documentation of the "whoopsie" announcement on an MTG Salvation thread from 2010 (probably the only place it still exists since WotC borked their own old articles on the Mothership). The decklists of Phyrexia vs. Coalition were announced in February 2010 and they revised the reprint policy in March 2010. In the announcement of the revised policy, they say there are already some products in the pipeline with RL cards (including FTV) and they announce which cards those are, but say that they will not be reprinted again after those products release.
I find it really weird because there was a judge promo of Negator in 2004, after it was on the RL, and no one batted an eye.
IMO it wasn't so much the reprint, but that WoTC listened to the people who moaned about it.
Seriously. If these people who moaned about it did half the reading, they would have knoiwn the RL applied to non-premium reprints (on top of only applying to reprints and functional reprints, not stuff that came arbitrarily close -making the Reverberate debacle incredibly frustrating, IMO).
People absolutely batted several eyes.
I just think it is absurd that people cannot play a game format because some cards are not printed anymore. There are many ways to make cards retain some value. Cmon look at other games where cards are reprinted and there are still cards worth hundreds or thousands (and some of them are not even played).
People proxy. Life goes on.
@@Syne111 exactly. Some stores in my area are starting to organize unofficial turnaments with up to 16 proxies allowed for older formats. This will be a growing trend.
So if you work at Wotc and you also collect and sell cards on the secondary market, you could be aware of upcoming reprints that might affect a card's value and cash out your personal collection ahead of time. Would that qualify as insider trading?
Yes.
I am around 20k into the reserved list in duals alone and every day I pray it gets abolished.
Have a similar value in reserved list stuff here too and I'm right with you.
Exactly the same. Every penny I have invested I cycled out of crypto into MTG RL back in 2021. I don't even own a home. Every day I pray that every penny of my savings goes into some bloated Hasbro exec's pocket.
@@Syne111 it's not about that. I play legacy routinely and I want kids in high school to be able to play with real cards one day. Mtg is a game first. I think people miss that. Every year more rl cards leave the market and while you want to feast upon the value that brings greedily, I see it as a tragedy.
@@Trazaeth There's 30,000+ "real cards". You want them to play with the 0.001% of cards meant for collectors you mean?
Do you know what I want for kids in high school? To enjoy the same value that the last 30yrs of magic collectors enjoyed. To be able to pass something valuable down to their kids. To recoup the money spent on this hobby, like everyone else did.
@@Syne111 treating a card game like it's a stock is just dumb. Again it's a game for people to play. Additionally how much is beta birds of paradise again? Oh that's right $2000. What's the price of birds of paradise from dominaria remastered? $6. Edition and rarity will always matter. Even if they massively print new duals so people can play alpha and beta will still be high value.
Fun fact, should have looked at beta not at alpha, since back then beta was quite a bit more expensive. The reason being that alpha was considered non playable cards due to the alpha corner. Beta however was both collectible AND playable and thus fetched a higher price despite the higher printrun
Promising not to do something like Reverberate was a mistake. The RL covers reprints, and functional reprints, period. People who bitched about that, and bitch about the 30th anniversary solely because RL cards are reprinted need to re-read the RL (where it says it is reprints and functional reprints, and only applies to tournament legal printings), and Wizards needs to grow some clearly-lacking balls.
Luckily China doesn't observe the reserve list.
Make your own proxies. It's so disrespectful to the wonderful artists to support chinese counterfeits. Have a conscience.
I got a nice black lotus proxy as a goof for $2, came from Texas. I see your point tho, if it were a proxy I'd play, I'd pay an artist I like
While I think the reserved list is a mistake, I also don't really want everything to be worthless, so my idea instead of the reserved list would be to reprint rares & mythics only after 10 years or so and I would apply this to every rare & mythic. This would ensure that cards don't get too cheap, but also that prices stay somewhere reasonable. Imagine every 10 years a set with duals, a set with power 9 or all the good old artifacts, a set with all the broken expensive lands and so on. On the other hand imagine opening a fetchland, goyf or Jtms and know that it will be worth something for the next 10 years.
While this has its drawbacks, I do appreciate you brainstorming beyond the braindead "RL bad" that these geniuses seem to think stands in for discussion.
@@Syne111 I think there is no option without any drawbacks, just abolishing the reserved list would destroy the last bit of trust WotC has and depending on the way they do it, it could suck out all financial value from the game, keeping the RL just makes formats like Legacy, Vintage, Premodern, Oldschool and to a certain extent even commander unapproachable for newer players who are maybe interested, but simply can't afford it. Proxy boosters like Magic 30 are also not the way to go since they're overpriced, not tournament legal and not readily available. My Idea isn't perfect either, sure putting everything on a list like that would result in price Spikes on certain cards, some cards could be cheap but hard to get since there wouldn't be that many copies flying around or they would get expensive if they aren't in the reprint set, but on the other hand you'd get your hands on those cards eventually.
Another way to keep the value would be to abolish the reserved list but at the same time promise to never reprint the cards in the old frame and with the old art, in that way the old cards would keep value for collectors, but players could get their hands on those cards for more reasonable prices. I mean that way they could print Vintage Masters in paper for the stuff that is mostly played in vintage, Eternal Masters 2 for the duals, grim monoliths and other legacy focused cards and another commander masters for cards like the Legends from Legends, wheel of fortune and all that stuff.
@@vargsieber Why can't people just print their own proxies, and leave it up to Wizards to compete with long-term value?
I see it this way. If Wizards can prove to the market that their collectibles stand the test of time, people won't proxy. They will purchase real cards. That's a win/win for everyone.
Even those who can't afford everything right away will enjoy having their collections appreciate over time, thus giving them cost savings for each new set.
@@Syne111 proxys are fine, but I think if they would be allowed for sanctioned tournament play you'd have to set standards, a self written piece of paper in a sleeve with a basic land obviously isn't the best idea, a proxy printed in black & white can also be difficult to recognize for the opponent and if you print it yourself there's also the question about paper thickness if the deck doesn't completely consist of proxys and then there's the question about those Chinese"Proxys" aka counterfeits. But before that is even a discussion we need another step before. That would be to make the Proxys WotC printed legal (CE, IE, WCD, Magic 30).
@@Syne111 *and leave it up to Wizards to compete with long-term value?*
Those treating the game as an investment vechicle should be forced to play by that same rule, as well.
If the reserve list isn't going away, all cards on it need to be banned in EDH.
Edit: Also, considering that the RL already has been changed before and some cards already have seen reprints, it is utterly meaningless.
That's fair. Maybe rule 0 That in your local group
My playgroup didn't need to ban RL... No one has the money to buy them anyway
There’s no need to have an official ban of the cards that 99% of players don’t actually own in the first place. Just have a rule zero conversation with your tables.
The whole "we don't need official rules when we have rule 0" argument has always annoyed me. There are people unable to have a rule 0 conversation, such as those who's only reliable way to play is at weekly LGS tournaments.
Even without that, saying thst a games official rules don't matter when you can homebrew anything just feels like offloading the maintenance and balance of the game onto players.
Thanks I needed a good laugh today
I have 31 Mox Diamonds for my EDH decks. One is real, in well-played condition. The others each cost me approx 20 cents and feature different art treatments. Use proxies, people.
Couldn't agree more. I own all real cards and embrace others using proxies for rl. Genuinely nobody who owns the real cards cares if others use proxies.
@@marklehman5272 I do care, but not wholesale. I start to care when people get out of hand with proxies and they’re just trying to build cEDH lite
@@mathewdebol923 I don't like those that do that either.... but I just try to let them be and avoid them.
@@marklehman5272 that’s difficult because I don’t know any proxy users who are like that lol
As long as you bring your binder with your originals to show before games, that's fine
I also play yugioh. The best card in the game, banned everywhere (just like black lotus) can run you, in its most expensive print, can run you about… 10 euros. Ten fucking euros. Imagine getting a black lotus for less than a euro if you’re on a budget or 10 euros if you wanna spend a lot.
The conflict of interest between collectors and players is always interesting to see imo
"Investors", not "collectors."
I only say this because I'm a collector (someone who enjoys collecting every card from a set/year), but I also want cards to be affordable and accessible because I want to be able to actually...you know, collect the cards. It's people who see cards as an investment who have the conflict of interest, because they're looking for a return on their investment.
@@nathandavis9830 MTG cards are absolutely an investment in every sense of the word. They cost lots of money, they take a lot of time to assemble, and a lot of mental energy to play. Anything that taxes my wallet, my time, and my mental faculties is an investment.
The fact that there's a built-in financial reward that has persisted for 30+ years is the icing on the cake.
And how WotC always goes all-in against the players' best interests.
@@nathandavis9830 The absolute best ways to make cards affordable is to make them valuable. A healthy trade binder will ALWAYS result in more cost savings than a few bucks off the sticker price. Plus, by going after the retail cost, you throw LGS' and distributors under the bus.
Value > Price.
This video was a fairly balanced take - thankyou for giving some airtime to both sides of the issue.
Yep. It's clear how many people just read the headline and flew straight to the comments to give their own hot take.
I agree terrible mistake, knee jerk reaction to outrage and the rush to address it lead to it being handled horribly. Things like the OG dual lands should never had been put on it. Commons should have never been put on it, there are far more bad cards on it then good ones.
Was playing at the time and vested in total power and heavily played in Type I and Type II. I traveled around multiple towns for tourneys and played casual as well in multiple game stores. NEVER heard 1 player complain about Chronicles crashing prices. I am sure a few big money collectors bitched. Of course that means the rich had to be catered to at the 3x Penske of the rest of us.
I don't know why their promise is so important for the reserve list specifically.... it's not like WOTC hasn't broken multiple promises continuously over the last few years.
I believe it comes down to the amount of money they make off of people who invest in MTG. A lot of the people who invest in older vintage product also stack modern products as well. Whether you like the RL or not, there is a ton of money invested into MTG each year with the RL as the base upon which the rest is built. If the base disappears, then any belief in the product by those investors would be lost resulting in WOTC getting less money on current product. I believe players vastly undervalue the number of people who buy modern product and premium sets for investment purposes. WOTC could have preserved value in a way different from the RL originally, but they didn't. So, the RL is what it is all built on. I was one of the people who have a sizeable vintage collection and who also bought a lot of modern product. After MTG 30, I no longer buy modern product. That is about 20-30K a year WOTC does not get any longer. It does not take too many people like me to stop buying before they feel it.
And no, I have no issue with the concept of MTG 30. Honestly, if they sold it for normal box price to let people draft Alpha copies, it would have been fine. But it was clear they were trying to find a way to back out of the RL concept. That shook the foundation. I always thought breaking the RL for profits alone would be the death knell showing the company was out of ideas. And they did it. That tells me the company has no idea what they are doing, so modern product will just get more basic and more uninteresting. I now just collect vintage product alone. I don't care if it goes to 0 later. I just like it. But WOTC does not deserve my money otherwise.
TLDR - The RL is important because it exists. If they had never done it, I think the game would be fine. But they did. And that one would be a broken promise to drive most all investors out. And that loses a ton of money for WOTC. I quit buying WOTC product, not because they broke the RL, but because breaking it tells me they have no idea what to do with the company moving forward.
@@NOLA-vv3sz YES, HOLY CRAP.. ONE SANE MATURE PERSON FINALLY WEIGHS IN. I wish this was the only post, because it's the only one that matters.
I'm exactly the same! WOTC lost about 10k/yr I would be spending on modern product. They're scaring away the people who spend money, and the only happy people are the ones who don't. Sorry, but you don't matter!
@@NOLA-vv3sz The RL explicitly does not make WotC any money, is hated by the vast majority of the playerbase, and drives a large wedge between the haves and have-nots that creates constant tension in the community. It did its job, but nowadays, it's nothing but negatives. "Confidence" is a non-answer, because when you respond to what the majority of your customers want, you build confidence. When you fail, repeatedly, to address their concerns, you lose it.
WotC has said the RL was a bad idea. It doesn't build confidence to hear "this is stupid, but I'm going to do it because I said I would."
I would say you cannot say with any confidence that even 10% of the playerbase hates it just like I can't say with any confidence even 10% likes it. Most of the playerbase is silent and just plays MTG with friends. Only the truly vocal of us (usually a very small segment) cares enough to argue about it. I know a ton of people who think it should stay and still others who think it should not. None of what you wrote refutes anything I said on anything other than an emotional level.
However, the "confidence" you dismiss is enough to move company valuations over 100 billion in a day. Fortunes are lost and made solely on confidence in a company thus moving its value in the market. Confidence in a company creates an atmosphere where a segment of the population (usually one with a ton of money) is willing to put it into Investment A vs. Investment B. Confidence in WOTC, whether built on the RL or its competence in general, is what kept a large income part of the MTG population spending money on modern product. The amount that segment spends is sizeable given how greedily WOTC is going after it with special sets, cards, collector boxes, etc. They know those people have the money and are willing to spend it. There is a reason revenue dropped immediately after MTG30. Part of that reason was people with money bailing due to lack of confidence in WOTC. Losing those investors means WOTC will squeeze those of us who are left with higher prices and even more rapid releases. That is until the wheels truly fall off requiring them to reinvent things somehow. That is not a good place to be.
There is a space between the RL and the mess of product WOTC is currently printing and reprinting. They could satisfy both collectors and players. But I have zero confidence they know how to do it.
Good video. I don’t completely agree with all your conclusions, but still bro really good video.
Personally, I think the Reserve List should be a living document.
No
With art added.. Mystical Archives treatment belongs on the RL.
@@cax1175 Yes. He's absolutely right. Too many crybabies taking up all the oxygen in the room.
Good thing that will never happen.
The anti-WotC sentiment has been growing stronger in the playerbase for a long time, and no new whales are arriving to replace those claimed by natural attrition.
If WotC started adding cards to the RL, that might finally be enough to unite the MtG community against them, the way the D&D community rose in rebellion against the OGL.
On 2nd thought, I think adding to the RL is a fine idea. ;)
WotC’s cardstock was successfully matched by the top counterfeit-style proxy makers this year.
Only a matter of time until the dot-matrix “L” falls, now. :)
Love ya, PK... but you are missing a huge chunk of the story that is important to understand when describing the Reserve List and it's creation. While you touched on Chronicles (The white boarder set that caused all these issues in the first place), You failed to fully reveal WHY it had the impact on the secondary market that it did. Chronicles was INTENDED to be an ongoing release of reprints, with cards rotating in and out of the set. At the time, it was the first and only reprint set - and it was WAY over-produced with a print run that ran for over a year. It DID tank the value of some previously powerful cards by flooding the market with "cheap copies". Collectors were (rightfully) upset. But the Reserve List was an over-correction. And now has done more harm than Chronicles ever did. Instead of a permanent stream of reprints in a white boarder set, reprints were moved into the expansion sets themselves as well as the core sets. WotC found a better way, that wouldnt completely tank values, and is now stuck with a handful of powerful cards that (because of this promise), has become the bane of players and created the worst barrier for Legacy formats. Now, vintage and legacy are only available to the wealthy who can afford old reserve list cards.
This is good info. The one saving grace of Chronicles is that the cards looked like cheap copies of the originals. The white border, the set symbol, and even the inking was inferior. This 'game piece' philosophy I believe they did correctly.
Compare that to "The List" where they have tried to make near 1:1 counterfeits of original cards. This was Wizards' biggest mistake IMO, and luckily it looks like they will be moving away from this soon.
Vince, the secret gem of all of your videos is the liberal use of Mario 64 music and sound effects. Definitely keep this up! 👍
the reserved list made me quite magic, but not for why you think. I owned all the cards, did since I got my first job in 1997 and spent until around 2002 buying up duals and power and workshops and bazaars etc.
well by 2010 they were so expensive nobody could afford to play with me on my level.
I got frustrated and sold out, but basically gave it all away, depressed and angry that a game i love was run by such a stupid decision.
that was before commander came along. that was before they closed the "premium versions"loophole.
its all even more expensive now. I could have bought a house, cash even in this market with what I gave up.
fuck the reserved list. I advocated getting rid of it when I owned power. and still do now.
so, I just play Pauper now. Its the spirit of magic I love. no gatekeeping or the rich guy just winning. love it.
Cool. Soooo boarderless black lotus when
If it doesn't have a border, then it won't go against the reserve list
Power level but mostly scarcity drives the reserved list prices.
Other than OG duals and Cradle, what are the non-banned power cards?
You missed my point. Card are often kept scarce because of their power.
I REALLY like that snow dual land pitch
Answer is easy. They never said they wouldn't reprint them boarderless.
Yes they did.
I was a ten year whale quit purely due to the reserved list
Oops. You could have made a fortune.
Maybe they were going to put the power ten into Chronicles, and someone said "let's wait for Chronicles 2 to put them in." Imagine what could have been...
Reserve list should be abolished its a game meant to be played if people want to hoard cards for a profit and they want the guarantee of profit they just want the stock market without any risk.
I'm so mad at myself. I had a chance to get From the Vault: Relics for MSRP. I turned it down because nothing in there was needed at the time, just before I started playing EDH. Aside from that, the usual "Get rid of the reserved list", get rid of it, insert related other comment here. Needs to go.
Proxy everything. Especially anything on the Reserved List, but after the Magic 30 debacle, fuck it proxy everything.
I'm a reserve list purist and I certainly endorse proxies for casual. Have fun frfr
@@marklehman5272 lol it’s funny I’m a RL purist myself but I don’t support proxies for casual.
In my experience people who proxy have very little restraint when it comes to deck building in edh, essentially making lesser cEDH lists. They don’t proxy to enhance the gameplay experience, they proxy to optimize for the win. Optimizing to win doesn’t seem casual to me…
I’d be totally for proxies in competitive play though. Those games should definitely come down to skill and not budget.
The reserve list is a scam that WotC can get rid of at any time with no legal headache. Who cares if some players quit because of it? They're the ones that never spend any money on this game anyway.
The reserve list has definitely gotten worse because of WotC closing the special reprint / judge foil "loophole." I remember when they did that, players were strongly in favor of abolishing the RL and instead WotC tightened it. Most likely due to the request of places like Star City Games, which had just launched their amazingly successful Legacy tournament series, and reprinting of legacy staples would have hurt their sales.
Youre wrong🤣🤣🤷♂️🤷♂️
Like the more I read this I'm genuinely shocked by how uninformed and misrepresenting this statement is... wild bro
people hated the foil loophole and the final nail was the foil mox diamond reprint. players hated it enough that they told wotc in droves not to do that again. thats just fact but i would be in favor of foil reserved list cards being printed.
I buy and play all the time and I’m fine with the existence of the RL. I just came to the conclusion that there are some cards I’ll never own and that’s ok. The RL cards I do own I saved up for, traded for, or waited to get a good deal.
MtG is a luxury hobby and I don’t feel entitled to every card just because they exist
@@marklehman5272 - Attorneys specializing in this matter say I'm right, but since random fucko in the internet says "you're wrong" I guess they're all wrong. Wait, no, that's not how it works.
the demonic tutor example is a perfect encapsulation of why the reserved list is utter bullshit. That many printings and the alpha version still holds value while the newer versions still have a price tag. Heck even shivan dragon has a massive upcharge for an alpha or beta printing
Yes the original printings of cards would still hold up (Alpha/Beta) but lesser reprints wouldn’t. Do you think the dual lands from Unlimited/Revised would hold up at all if there was a reprint? White frame cards have a long history of distaste among the MtG community.
We have some examples here of reprinting definitely hurting the value of non Original cards. The judge printing of Imperial Seal and Imperial Recruiter took BIG hits with reprints and are unlikely to ever recover.
@@mathewdebol923 and this is a bad thing why? More cards being more accessible to more people will only get more players into older formats and allow those who didn't play back in the 90s a chance to actually own and play with these old cards. If there is a version that still has massive value and can be of interest to collectors why shouldnt there also be lesser reprints that are more affordable? everybody wins
Exactly. People want to say Tarmogoyf lost value because of reprintings, but the fact is that it lost value because people STOPPED PLAYING IT. Cards didn't go down in Chronicles because of the reprinting, they went down because players got these before unobtainable cards and realized that... they were mostly shit and unplayable.
Birds of Paradise will always be in the $8-$10 range every time it's printed (if it's ever printed into standard again) because it's an amazingly useful card in the format that will always be played if available.
Price depends more on usefulness than scarcity at the rare / mythic level.
@@DerekScottBland we have proof of value loss. Originals may hold up, but reprints don’t do well. So UNL/Revised cards will come CRASHING down with a RL repeal as they will definitely be the less sought after.
Hell the repeal would shake the very belief in the game itself. The RL has been the one bedrock principle that’s held true from WotC.
@@dancook6114 Everybody doesn't win though.. Use your head. 99% of the people who hold value in RL have non-AB copies of cards. Your version of "everyone" is only the top 1% of collectors. Everyone else who has collected gets screwed.
Even if you don't care about those people for your own reasons, your arguments are dishonest. For every Shivan Dragon, I can give you 100 examples of modern cards decimating original printings. Sylvan Library, Scroll Rack, Birds of Paradise, Food Chain, Grim Tutor, Crop Rotation, Aura Shards, Strip Mine, Worldly Tutor, Blood Moon, Jitte, Reflecting Pool.. I could go on all day. In fact, I've started picking up OG copies of these staples because they've been nuked by reprints.
Your OP is wrong. Original cards DO NOT hold value. Move the goalposts all you like, but you're still wrong.
The power creep of duals will likely be triomes. Make a version that only comes into play tapped if you have more than one opponent (to sell to legacy formats players), and then make another version that only comes into play tapped if you only have one opponent (to sell to commander players). As a secret lair both would make them more significantly money than reprinting duals. Or put them as mythic in boxes to increase box sales.
Genuinely this list has done irreparable harm to MtG as a game and community imo
Taking one instance of a card being worth more than it's rl copy is absolutely laughable.
I agree. Mox Diamond is a bad example as some people look for foil versions. Myself included
Wait... what? Why? Why is it a bad example?
Its just... an example. Neither good, nor bad.
Drop whatever weird bias you have and try to explain yourself.
@@PleasantKenobi older foils tend to carry a premium, especially if no other foil version exists. Given that I would say the example of a RL reprint with higher value than the original is a bad example, or at least a misleading one.
I’ll give an example though of value hurt by reprints that could carry over to the RL. We don’t have perfect RL reprint samples to use but I’ll go with Imperial Seal. It’s an older card with almost no reprints until recently. The PK3 was untouched, but the judge foil lost 50% with that reprint. Imperial Recruiter’s judge foil follows a similar downward drop when reprinted in Masters 25.
I believe that Alpha/Beta would be rather untouched by a reprint but Unl/Revised cards would follow a similar price collapse as my examples for the following reasons.
1. Any reprint will be cheaper than the currently available sought after Unl/Revised cards.
2. White frame cards are largely disliked by the MtG community. A black frame version would likely be more sought after, especially if cheaper.
@@mathewdebol923 And this is bad because? It's a card game, not a stock market.
@@swolegolisopod7340because some people decided to pay the high amounts of money to play with those cards based on the fact they wouldn’t be reprinted per the company.
You think I’d pay $250 for a Grim Monolith if I knew a $100 or less reprint was around the corner?
The newer one might have a higher average than reserved list price because the older cards have a higher range of damage from HP/LP.
The ONLY class of cards I really really really really really really REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted OUT of the reserved list and printed in a version that's affordable, are the original Dual Lands.
Just a dual land with no caveats or downside. Just a dual land.
The reserved list is serious about "functionally identical" . Magic invented the term Strictly Better, so any change, even the smallest change ever, makes it not functionally identical.
I.e. snow duals are very much a possibility. Same as a black border White Lotus that taps for 4
@@andygoody2599 Or a Not-Black Lotus which gives you an energy counter as well.
@@andygoody2599 Violating the spirit of a promise is more dishonest.
The Roc example kind of weird me out because then you could say that every creature that flies and is more than 3/3 with upside is a strictly better Roc. Consecrated Sphinx? Roc. Emrakul? Also, a better Roc.
Neither of those are 4 mana, RED flyers.
@PleasantKenobi yeah whoops you're right. Sorry, I didn't consider that but I guess the point stands that there are probably a hell of a lot of them. I think it's more to say about the weirdness of a vanilla creature to be on the reserved list because it has nothing unique about it other than a mana value and statline which hardly seem important to reserve.
Net runner was fun, too
Flesh and Blood has a good market for collectors while still being able to reprint in demand cards.
The first printing of the rarest equipment cards get a rainbow foil and a “cold foil” treatment. The latter being incredibly rare and usually 5-10x the rainbow foil price.
If the card is reprinted in later sets, it will only be non-foil. Making the foiled versions still desirable and collectible.
Unfortunately, WoTC can't seem to honor their own "special" treatments. They're constantly giving themselves reacharounds and getting high on their own supply.
They need to firmly state their intent for special treatments, so there is collector confidence. They need to make serialized cards with unique art, because nobody is going to care if you just tramp stamp a card that has a million other copies.
I'm really curious to know how much insider trading actually goes on in wotc
Its not less bad. Entire people will never playvexause of it. I sold all my power and my extreme whale of a collection. And ive trulynever been happier. I have real hobbies now and dont havr to rely on others for entertainment.
So because you've made 5-6 figures in profit, it can now safely be reprinted?
.. and what about the people you sold to?
I guess I will never understand the sentiment of the reserved list. Would I be sad if my cards suddenly became worthless? A little I guess. But I play magic to play, not collect. So if it was somehow undone, all it would mean is my favorite format, legacy, would become more accessible. Sure its not everyone's cup of tea, but the fact that there is a price barrier for entry causes the play groups to slowly dwindle as more and more people can't afford the format.
Talking about proxies, sure those do indeed exist... but I, as well as many others, like owning the cards they use. I am not saying never use proxies, if you want to play a 100% proxy legacy deck and bring it to my local so we have more player PLEASE do, but it is a mentality some players do hold. Also sanctioned events exist still for the formats so even if you proxy at locals, you would be prohibited from playing at larger events,
My last statement is kind of targeted but a comment said that they like the reserved list because they don't like the play in older formats because of the older cards, but other people do and enjoy the way new and old cards interact to form stuff that is only playable in those formats. someone debatably wise once stated "don't yuck someone's yum".
Correction - you play and collect. You don't invest / speculate. Big difference. Collecting is fine.
@@DerekScottBland True, in my head I tend to put collectors and players separate even though you can be both and collectors sometimes do it for fun and not investment, but 100% your comment is how I intended it.
Most people I know, collect AND play. Many also invest AND play. These aren't mutually exclusive ideas. Myself, I play what I collect. So I play with MP-HP cards that I'm proud to own, because they're rare and valuable.
I doubt I'd play if I couldn't also enjoy my collection. The two go hand-in-hand for me.
The value of a card you're never going to sell is irrelevant, you're never going to sell it. If you care about playing, then "value" is a cute made-up number that means very little to you.
@@Orinn000 It's not irrelevant. One day I'll hand them off to my kids and they will be able to attend college, or get a down payment on their first home. This is a 30yr legacy, not some new collectible franchise.
reserve list is a mistake, so is the mythical rarity.
I wish Sliver Queen wasn't on the Reserve List.
You can get a MP-HP one for like $100 if you look around. It's cheaper than it has been in years.
The reserve list is just manifested scarcity for profit
How does wizards profit off the reserved list?
@@marklehman5272probably something along the lines of investors seeing cards selling for big money, so they invest in Wizards so they can get big money.
@@davidhower7095 that's just silly....read more and type less good lord.
@@davidhower7095 wow… that is just an incredibly bad take.
@@mathewdebol923 You got any other ideas? I’d love to hear them
Wow. I think this is my new favorite video from you. This was super well done.
Thank you. Really appreciate it.
I still have that issue of White Dwarf 😂
The poster that came in the next issue is up on my son's wall 🤘
MANA CRYPT ISN’T ON THE RESERVED LIST?!? Why in the everloving hell is it so rare then?!? It should have been reprinted into the ground like Sol Ring then!
As he explained in the video, WOTC know what are high demand cards. There's no reason for them to reprint Mana Crypt into the ground. They have a handful of cards they only sporadically reprint in order to REALLY sell a premium set with high demand reprints. If Mana Crypt got reprinted three times or more a year the card WOULD lose a lot of it's desirability. It's no longer that delicious 'chase card' they can sprinkle into $20 packs.
It's the last card over $100. Relax. Ixilan will dump it.
Reserved list is great for Magic it shows History of the Game. Gives it a Deeper Feeling and somefing to work for, other Games would kill to get it.
The funny thing to me is that mana crypt is part of the reason the reserved list exists, yet was never added to it. 🤣 people really wanted to buy boosters and crack packs vs going to live events or buying books and sending in the coupon. I don’t blame them but wow it’s been such a wild ride. And we need the snow duals 🌚 damn RL saving and killing mtg at the same time.
I own a bit of reserve list stuff from my early days of magic, i'd like a bit more but not dropping that kind of cash.
While i think reprinting some of the playable reserve list cards for edh, legacy and vintage would be good i've also considered Rudy's point about the value of modern cards.
The fact that very few if any of the cards my daughter pulls from her boosters will hold any value and any that do will nearly certainly see a reprint at some point is a negative, i'm not sure if adding cards to the reserved list is the answer but putting a handful of art styles each set on the reserved list would be a nice idea and might repay the debt of removing some of the needed reprints from the list to make the eternal formats playable.
the reserved list shoud reserve card meaning that they shouldn't be reprinted for a time and be limited not never reprinted inflating the prices lead to a bubble waiting to burst and no fun for EDH players like me , rare and powerful cards will always catch money make it limited art even better just make the cards limited and not reprinted in the ground and no collector should be worried.
Every time I hear that they specified it wouldn't be printed in black or white border, I think that they should have put the reprints in an Un-set. But I guess we've missed our chance, now that unsets have black borders.
The worst fucking decision they ever made for the community of players that is now 90 % of their player base.
So, if I read that correctly "we will never be printed again in black or white border in game-functionally identical form". Don't we have borderless cards now? That wouldn't break the rule. They already broke the spirit with the foils, so they can't claim that. Imagine the prices if it was borderless. They could also make it harder to forge, unlike the old copies that people keep proxying.
WotC has violated the Reserve List several times now through attempted workarounds, which shows that the Reserve List is bad for the company as a whole. More importantly, it demonstrates WotC's understanding that (much to the chagrin of collectors) Magic card values are mostly dictated by their demand as *competitive play* game pieces. However, due to the scarcity of those cards, casual players simply print proxies, and competitive players are largely driven to formats reliant on few or no Reserve List cards.
As it stands right now, the Reserve List appears to me to be an active form of market manipulation on behalf of some internal WotC employees, which is completely unethical if not actually illegal.
The RL is like a forced savings account of consumer confidence that WOTC can't touch, despite wanting to. It's good for the company long-term, because new players buy into the game with the understanding that they can drop $500-$1000 and it won't turn to dust tomorrow. Believe it or not, the RL gives people the confidence to spend that money.
Nice walk-through of the history there, Vince.
manacrypt was also in mystery boosters
Rare cards should be rare so thumbs up for the reserve list
Absolutely.
Biggest freaking mistake ever. This a card game, not a freaking investment.
I hate the Reserve list I think Sliver Queen should be made more but after the whole Pinkertons thing I don't think for sure I want be buying anymore nor touch their stuff.
Just print it (lol)
@@malakimphoros2164 Good point print it
I would argue the Reserved List was not needed back then (at the very least in the form they made it), and it is definitely not needed today. The Pro Tour and tourney play did more for the game than the RL ever did.
You clearly weren't around at the time of Chronicles. It was very much needed. Chronicles was a HUGE deal when it hit. Like, there was mass panic. People really were really quitting the game over it. They were afraid Moxes were going to be in it, it was WILD. At a time when they didn't release spoilers, they released the entire contents of the set in advance to calm the fervor. That was something they would not do officially until some 15 or 20 years later. (I can't remember when that started. Spoiler season is more of a recent thing than not.)
It was absolutely necessary at the time. Very much. As the first TCG, Magic needed stability and buyer confidence. The RL was essential for doing that when it came out.
@J D I absolutely was around through Chronicles. "People" were not panicking and quitting the game. Dealers, unscrupulous traders and collectible "investors" were losing their shit, because all their wheeling and dealing to corner the market on the elusive cards was threatening to come to an end. The general public were loving the set, because they could get a hold of cards that generally most hadn't ever seen. The only thing wrong with the set really was the over-printing of it (that and it wasn't really that good of a set overall). Coupled with being released just after Fourth Edition and Ice Age (which were also seen as a dumpster fire), and after the massive "overprinting" of Fallen Empires, led to people being disenfranchised with Magic as a whole. Homelands came about and people were livid. Many used Chronicles as a scapegoat, overblowing its impact and repeating talking points from their LGS owners upset at being able to charge $40 for their Legends Nicol Bolas anymore and Carrion Ants for $20.
It was the creation of Type 2 and the Pro Tour Championships that drove Magic sales, not the Reserved List. The Reserve List was a mistake that should never have happened, and should be done away with, especially considering it has outlived any and all usefulness, and only helps create a classist game.
@@LordJaroh How is it classist? You have 30,000 cards to play with and more choices than ever to create powerful decks. Dual lands barely give an edge anymore, it's just a flex at this point. If you're losing games it's because you aren't creative enough, not because you can't afford the cards. You can get a very competitive deck going for around $100.
@@LordJaroh THANK YOU. This is also how I remember things. Players were happy to have those cards available to play with, I never heard any complaints from any of the stores I went to back then. it was the large card sellers who complained. The secondary market is important, no doubt about it, but you can't base everything on a group of people who are always going to put their bottom line ahead of the health of the game, which is exactly what WotC did.
Honestly I'm so close to just not caring anymore. I've done my absolute best to put together solid real life iterations of cedh lists in paper with as much money as I can scrape together. Most of my lists I'm close to complete minus the expensive rocks and RL stuff. I kind of have a neurotic thing for owning the stuff I play, but like...I just can't see a good reason not to proxy anymore. The only people that care are wotc.
Just proxy. Who cares?
@@PleasantKenobi I respect people who don't proxy. There's something special about double-sleeving and playing with your best cards.
Your neurosis is kind of your own issue. Nobody should cater to it. You're not entitled to own all 27,000+ cards.
Just proxy and say less.
I know all of this but still always good to watch people hate the RL
entitled crybabies that want everything for free
I don't understand this MSRP thing. LGS are still buying products for specific prices, what's wrong with using those numbers? It's just MSRP without the name
You sure Magic 30th wasn't their biggest mistake?
Nice playmat btw
You know what the reserved list doesn't stop them from doing with those cards? Banning them. They should just ban all reserved list cards from all sanctioned formats. F those cards. Like 1% of players have them. Why give them an advantage? And I was buying cards in 1994.
Maybe Triomes that don't come into play tapped or have cycling. Just "better" versions of Dual Lands. That would be crazy.
I equate the reserve list to the Treasury in your govt. Just as the dollar is backed by the treasury hoarding gold and other assets. So to does wizards with the reserve list. It is obviously not a direct correlation as mtg holds its value with mtg instead of outside sources.
Resetved list- a tool to keep average players younger then 45 years old from playing Vintage and Legacy.
"Put your tea down first, then throw your hands into the air." -- bro we don't drink tea here in the USA. We take our cocaine laced with fentanyl and die like adults.
I still say sol ring is more powerful than a mox. But the moxen are banned because of price.
The comparison in power is wholly contextual. A sol ring is functionally the weakest card in your deck if you're not running enough colorless pips to actually make use of the mana it produces. Sol ring is strictly better in artifact decks that care little for colors. It's far less useful in pip heavy decks when you'd rather have the same amount of mana with a land drop and a mox to fit your mana requirements.
Sol ring is more powerful in lower power decks. It doesn't produce colour and on t1, adds the same amount of acceleration as a mox. It also requires you to have access to 1 mana (which invalidates some bad hands where you draw no lands). The higher the power level, the better moxes become. In metas where t0-2 wins are relatively common, moxes are better.
@@TaskMaster5 by turn 4 and up you can spend 2 colorless and with most decks they have turn 2 or 3 ramp with 2 colorless like a signet or kodama’s reach
As big a mistake as it seems now, it was a necessary evil at the time. If they didn't enact the reserve list, it's quite possible that the game would have died in the late 90s, and it wouldn't be going on today. They have removed cards from the RL before, and that's what they should do for high demand cards like the OG duals and some other Legacy/Vintage staples. That would get droves of people into playing these nearly dead formats. Though it seems they've been satisfied with them remaining effectively online.
why would it have died
@@Kakerate2 collectors were a major force in the game back then as there was nothing like MtG back then. Chronicles was perceived as a “why bother collecting this when they just make another cheaper card with the same art?” It killed card value overnight and it got collectors angry
@@mathewdebol923 Well put. We also have to remember at the time WotC's revenue was fractional compared to what it is today. If WotC lost 30% of it's revenue from Magic tomorrow they'd be very hurt but would survive. Back then, when Magic was their only profitable venture, it could have been lethal to the company.
I think people are making entirely too big a deal of OG duals. There are so many duals that come in untapped now. The advantage these would bring to decks is miniscule.
@@mathewdebol923 Don't kid yourself. Collectors are still a huge part of WOTCs revenue. They're playing with fire right now. BOA knows it, which is why they keep downgrading their stock.