Reprints in MTG?

[decoypalmette]

@zorloth

It doesn’t have any real impact on collecting, though. There’s a reason why many unplayable RL cards can be literally purchased for like 10 cents. Expensive RL cards are expensive because of players + speculators, not collectors.

To be honest is really clear to me that collectors are a minority. But the final effect to a person trying to buy underground sea is the same, it costs a lot regardless of the purpose.
Saying that collecting is not impacted didn’t seem right to me, regardless how small is the % of people collecting cards outside ABU.

I’m really sorry to bother again, but I think that the discussion became like “is mtg collectible or not?”. Probably my fault, since I put too much emphasis on the artistic/historic value and the completing set thing.

What imho should be addressed is the opportunity to keep the RL in 2023, and if/how safely exit from this mindset.

After this discussion is my understanding that the RL has only 3 merits
–it maybe saved wotc back in the days
–it keeps artificially scarce cards protecting people investments
–has reputational value for hasbro/wotc

Like you said, many RL cards worth less than 5$, even cents, so their removal wouldn’t piss off investors.
The same thing could happen with powerful banned card like time walk: like you said nobody plays vintage, and the value of original releases will always remain → again no investor pissed off.

This can start a transition period, with people realizing that hoarding RL cards (like duals) is not a viable retirement plan lol

Like @Dyl said the abolition of RL is what a large (majority?) portion of the fanbase wants, so the reputational damage can be overcomed. A serious established company is capable of creating a trustful relationship with their players: we know that our cards will someday be reprinted, but we trust you to plan with care your print run, that you will allow some time (10 years?) to pass, won’t powercreep to oblivion, and so on.

Now I’ll return to my rebecca guay binder lol. Thank god her cards cost like 0.20€

[TheVisioN]

I 100% agree with this. The main difference between mtg and pokemon is that most mtg people actually play the game. The majority of pokemon players collect and have little idea on how to even play the game lol. mtg cards have the advantage of having “play value” and “collector value.” Of course pokemon cards have play value too, but really only in modern whereas mtg is played widely across formats. My point is, reprints mostly only affect “play value.” Pokemon reprints will never affect 1st ed base and shadowless.

[thsigma]

I’ll start out with I dont collect or play mtg and am purely looking at this through a Pokemon lens.

In my opinion, reprints are fine IF (and its a big if) the reprinted versions are clearly distinguishable from the original counterparts. That is the core of what I would want in a reprint. Other factors that are also important would be the frequency of reprints (don’t want so many that it dilutes the act of reprinting), the number of reprinted arts per card (I don’t want a yugioh situation with 20+ art reprints of multiple card arts), release pattern (a special set like Celebrations vs tossing in reprints in every single set b/c why not!)