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That is a good point. The target audience could most likely just buy the real thing for most of these cards. It would have been cooler to do some redesigned art or something fresh.
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This has been the issue with a lot of modern MTG products, at least from a collector perspective. Why spend $300+ on a collector box when you could just buy already sought after old cards either from ABU or the RL? This product here is really not making a whole lot of sense so far, because all youāre getting is non-tournament legal proxy cards that just happened to be created and branded by WOTC. Very hard to get excited about for me. A $1000 can get you either a really nice old MTG card or several very nice ones. Itās just too much of a gamble, unless you really want WOTC created proxy cards with the original art (or mostly original, depending on card).
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Illustrator proxy 
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Hell, for $1000 you can buy a booster box of Chronicles (the reprint set that spawned the RL).
45-pack box, too, and the cards have normal MTG backs! The more I think about it, the more idiotic the 30th Anniversary Product is. Itās telling that the best defense of it Iāve heard so far is ādonāt buy it.ā
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Exactly, itās very speculative from a collector/investor perspective and just feels risky when you have so many other safer options. Even if you pull the best cards, itās going to be hard to put a big price on them I feel when you have so many other options to choose from. The only comparable vintage product is CE, and people are starting to pay some pretty big prices for some of those. So maybe things like the Lotus and other P9 cards will command a premium over the long-term just because of the artwork and heritage they have, but I would still sooner put the $1000 towards existing old cards at this time. I can think of 100s of cards Iād sooner buy just on fundamentals alone.
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Thats probably the objective here: draw in all the fomo, hype, speculators. Capitalizing on all the wild money culture in collectibles thats spawned over the last few years
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The REAL question is:
What will the Lotus cost on TCGPlayer at the end of the year?
CE is like 4-5k so thatās probably the ceiling for old boarder. Maybe 3k? And how about for new boarder?
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Really depends on how limited the product actually is. If we assume that a Lotus is in ~1/30 boxes (meaning ~1/120 packs), then they would need to print and sell ~400,000 boxes of this product to match the print run of CE/ICE Lotus.
Thereās no way the print run will be anywhere near that large, so the 30th Anniversary Lotus will be much, much rarer than a CE Lotus. So, for all we know, they could end up selling for more than CE copies. Then again, I canāt imagine the Lotus being worth more than a few thousand. You can buy a beat-up Unlimited Lotus for <$10k, and no oneās going to be purchasing the brand new one for anywhere near as much as an Unlimited one.
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Yeah besides the priceā¦ and the fact they arenāt tourney legal.
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Seems like everyone else is complaining though on their subreddit lol.
People need to not buy it then. I am sure a lot of folk pushing back will cave in and purchase at least a pack or two. They also need to not watch youtube content such as pack openings or videos about it. A lot of these packs, imo, are going to be bought by youtubers/instagram folk because itās easy content and will easily get click throughs because of the absurdity of the product and the price. The less people pay attention to it, the better the message it sends.
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I donāt know a lot about Magic. I donāt hear about them as much as Pokemon. How do they compare in terms of sustainability?
What do you mean by āsustainability?ā MTG has a very different fanbase. Pokemon is a monumentally huge pop culture icon (as everyone here obviously knows lol). MTG isnāt even in the same universe as Pokemon in terms of the value/popularity of the IP.
But Magic is no slouch, either ā it comprises somewhere around ~60% of Hasbroās yearly profit (and Hasbro owns some pretty significant cultural phenomenons ā Transformers, Nerf, Monopoly, Play-Doh, My Little Pony, etc.).
MTG is also much more popular as a game than the Pokemon TCG (for instance, the MTG subreddit has 566k members and the Pokemon TCG subreddit has 197k. And tournament attendance numbers also bear this out).
So theyāre both important and humungously popular in their own ways. If you go to a local game store, youāll find 10x as many MTG players there as Pokemon players. But if you walk up to a random person (particularly in the 20-35 age range) on the street, thereās a much higher likelihood theyāll be familiar with Pokemon.
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Are you implying that 2020 changed the collectible hobbies forever?
It seems you are undecided:
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MTG & Pokemon have a different approach to sustainability. Compared to when I started playing Magic 20+ years ago, it is far more accessible now than ever. The EDH/Commander format really changed a lot of things and brought in a ton of players compared to just standard 1v1 formats of the past. It also has allowed the vintage market to flourish as many old cards have become better in Commander format than when they were released, depending on the deck.
Modern Magic cards and products are really catered to the playing side and so WOTC tends to focus on game balance and re-prints of already good cards instead to keep the supply high and the costs down for players of the game. Without the players, MTG doesnāt have nearly as many ways to sustain itself like Pokemon does. Pokemon has a lot more going for it in terms of media. Video games, comics/manga, anime/movies, toys/plushies, etc which also makes it very sustainable long-term even if the TCG were to decline at any point (which it has in the past).
The collector side of Magic is more in the vintage cards (mainly ABU) and also in what they call the Reserved List which are cards that WOTC assures they will never re-print and are often powerful in the game. In addition, the vintage cards tend to have arguably superior artworks and vibe compared to many of the modern cards. IMO the artwork in modern Magic has declined a lot compared to modern Pokemon. But, artwork doesnāt matter as much to players and itās all a pretty subjective thing either way. Some of the modern cards do look amazing, but just my opinion itās not as consistent or high quality as it was in the 90s or early 2000s.
So, I think Pokemon and specifically modern Pokemon is a more fun collectible TCG and has done a better job in this area, whereas MTG is more of a players game and the collectible side is mainly tied to the vintage market with only a few modern exceptions. I wish modern MTG would become more collectible like Pokemon, but due to the constant threat of re-prints, I donāt feel it will ever change.
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Would be sooooooo down for something like this in Pokemon. A high end collector set, that weeds out the scalpers, that also caters to the OG day 1 Pokemon fans, would chefs kiss.
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I love the optimism. I donāt think this will weed out the scalpers. This type of product will be immediately flipped on eBay for $3,000+.
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The only way something like this would work in Pokemon is if it were released in Japan. Look at the 25th creatures deck vs any English product that has an ounce of exclusivity or demand. They are night and day. 25th decks are bought and sold normally. While the UPCās are major scalper energy. Special delivery charizard had people exploiting pokemon center to get hundreds/thousands of copies. Hell look at how signing events differ in each country.
Collectibles have become a brand at this point. There are so many people chasing the trend. This type of product heavily targets that group. This would be another frenzy of fast money.
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