Hi candle! Thanks for taking your time with the counter points. Let me answer, because I think I’m not understanding your points or see how are you disagreeing or counter arguing.
I don’t know how old are you. But I asure you that we played in playgrounds, and played hard! Magic was in our daily lives as children (at least in Spain). We were 8-10. All of my friends started same age (of course, many of them leaved the game and others remained playing). That is not happening any more. So I was just talking about facts. There is no seeming to be generational shift.
There is no way that Magic is more popular now than it was 15-20 years ago. I’ve played since I was young and still play now, and now the community is very divided:
There are the ones that play the official formats (by far the ones that have fallen the most in number of players in the last 10 years);
The ones that play community formats like Old School and Premodern: Older guys that played in those years and are retained in Magic because of nostalgia and love for the game. This is my case and I’m very involved in the community, as owner of tcdecks.net and active player. I can asure you that when all of us die, this formats will die with us. If new players enter this formats, are the same demographics;
And there are Commander players. Which most of the MTG community consider more a different board game than a Magic game. Commander seems in many cases to be the one sustaining Magic, that is true. And because of that, it can be even truer that Magic as it has been known for ever, disappears in the next 20-30 years. Someone that plays Commander may have the feeling that they are now more people playing it… that’s just because it’s something that wasn’t released as a comercial product until 2011, and popularity came several years later.
I’m sorry, but I think I have not understood your point here. In general, Magic players are not collectors, that’s a fact. All the points I am bringing to the article are not opinions, they are facts coming from my experience that comes from knowing literally thousands of Magic players along the course of my life.
You can talk about concrete cards that someone has attachment to for some reason, ok. That doesn’t mean that Magic players are collectors. I love Skirk Prospector, is my favourite Magic card. If I could find it in foil and BGS 10, I will probably buy it and put it in my shelf, because it has been a card that I have used in many decks and made me win many tournaments… but I don’t think that that means I’m a Magic collector. That card just brings me back to many good moments.
That there are Magic collectors? Of course. As I said, they are a minority. And that is not an opinion.
It’s investible, and it comes from what is talked about in this article, if you want to take a look: Are Collectibles, such as Pokémon TCG, Good Investments? - #4 by Versy
And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE MTG. And I would love to see how it really penetrates again in people’s life. I hope it does.
Thinking that it will not be here when other 20-30 years go pass is my personal opinion (and I will love to be wrong). But the points that you were trying to counter, are simply facts. Sorry if I have not made a correct explanation that made you think that they were opinions.