[Premium Article] Insider Trading - Are Proxies Hurting Vintage Tournament Atten

[Harlequin]

This is slightly off topic from the current discussion, but I just wanted to talk about the secondary market for a sec. 

Let's pretend that all of a sudden Wizards decides to print "From the Vault: Totally Broken Sh*t!"  And its a box that contains Power-9, 4 Workshops, 4 Bazaars, 4 Drains, Library, Timevault, Imp Seal, Grim Tutor, and any other vintage card over $100 I may have missed.  And lets say the box is a modest $49.99, and they print tons and tons of them.  Screw limited-edition. 

People say this will "kill" the secondary market for existing power.  But if we think it through, doing this can't do anything but help the secondary market in general, AND won't do much to harm existing power!

Lets think about a typical cross-section of our vintage player base (at least here in the US). Take 100 person sample.  I'd say out of 100, it probably breaks down something like this:
2-5 people - full beta power, almost never proxy anything.
10-15 people - either full power, or most power.  But very rarely proxy anything
10-15 people - mixed white boarded power, along with most expensive vintage staples, but probably proxy workshops and random 'new' stuff.
50 people - own enough to play basically anything... assuming they proxy 10-15 cards.  Maybe they have 1 or 2 peices of power they won, or a few drains, but for the most part they proxy anything over $60.
15 people - own enough to play thier deck with power, possibly make some sub-optimal choices.  But conistantly proxy stuff like goyfs, or forces, and duals.
5 people - play on a budget even though they can proxy.  Probably people just getting into vintage.

So this is our customer base.  Out of the 100 people potentially "interested" in buying power we have a handful of people who are willing to pay almost any price for something really rare (our black-boarder players), a good chunk of people who are willing to drop a few hundred on a 'good deal.'  The rest of the players are likely un-interested in power at all.  They know that so long as they have thier fetches, duels, and forces they can proxy anything else they need.  And they don't mind.  Any of the players who are interested in hundred dollar power could just as easily proxy like the rest of population but they CHOOSE not to.  They CHOOSE to build thier deck from expensive cards, maybe even at the expense of proxing other much much cheaper cards.  Because I personally own power I can proxy Junky cards I don't feel like buying.   I'm sure I could have traded my Mox Pearl for ALL the non-power cards I proxied in my last deck (1x Noble Hierrarch, 1x Cold-eyed selkie, 1x Trygon preditor). 

So what would happen. 'From the Vault: TBS' would fly off the shelves as glorified proxies.  Vintage would go sactioned. 
What happens next?  People like me have to go out to the secondary market to fill up the holes in our decks.  I suddenly need Hierrarchs,  need Goyfs, need Cold-Eyed Selkie, Intution, Crucibles, Confidants, Oaths, Anceint tombs, etc etc...  And I can't live with just have 2-3 of each with the safety net of proxing the 4th, If I want to stay "mobile" in my decks I need to stockpile playsets of everything and anything. 

What else would happen?  Now Joey-T2 can save his money and buy "Totally Broken Sh*t" for $49.99.  Suddenly he can play Vintage!  As he gets more interested now he needs duals, he needs fetches, he needs forces.  More players enter vintage. 

What else happen?  People want ~bling~ for thier decks.  The From the Vault new frames are stupid looking, I want blackboardered original power!  So out of our 100 person crossection the ration of players stay roughly the same... a handful want bling, but the majority are happy with thier $49.99 box of proxies.  Only rather than 100 players per region, there are 150 or 200.  I just don't see how the price of old power would fall much if at all, and I certainly would venture a guess that any who 'lost' money on power, made up for the lost 10 fold by the increase in the price of the rest of thier collection.  The bottom line is that people love bling.  I could even see power increasing slightly if sactioned vintage caught on as a 'big deal' format.  Econ101 supply and demand.

Saying that reprinted power would ruin the price of power is like saying that Foil Goyfs are hurt by the printing of non-foil goyfs.  Which I guess is technically true.  But you can't extend that to say that because foil and non-foil goyfs exist, that the price foil goyfs = price of non-foil - if you do, then I'd gladly buy your foil Goyfs. 

I'm just not sure what nay-sayers are afraid of...

[Smmenen]

Wow, your post is loaded with questionable assumptions, questionable induction, and too many generalities. 

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

Well I think that is overlooking the people that buy power solely to play in non-proxy tournaments. I'm not talking about the guys who go full out PSA 10 P9 in 15 hard sleeves per card I'm talking about the guys who grudgingly drop 2k on tiolet-paper condition P9 in the hopes of winning some more power and breaking even while having more fun and playing in more tournaments. This probably makes up at least 80% of players who own at least one piece of P9 because at least 80% of P9 is likely either white-bordered, in terrible condition, or both. All of the sudden those guys get royally screwed by WOTC. They're not the guys with stacks of FoWs/duals that go up to the roof to sell for a pile of money and just shrug off their losses. These are the guys with one playset of <100$ staples that cross their fingers that when the new set rotates in the playable pool is all common/uncommon as opposed to the collectors that want vintage Foil/Japanese/1000$ rares. In other words:

2-5 people - full beta power, almost never proxy anything. I agree their M/NM beta power won't drop in price because it will still be the same 30 guys in the world willing to pay for it.
10-15 people - either full power, or most power.  But very rarely proxy anything Screwed.
10-15 people - mixed white boarded power, along with most expensive vintage staples, but probably proxy workshops and random 'new' stuff. Screwed.
50 people - own enough to play basically anything... assuming they proxy 10-15 cards.  Maybe they have 1 or 2 peices of power they won, or a few drains, but for the most part they proxy anything over $60. Screwed.
15 people - own enough to play thier deck with power, possibly make some sub-optimal choices.  But conistantly proxy stuff like goyfs, or forces, and duals. Happy.
5 people - play on a budget even though they can proxy.  Probably people just getting into vintage. Happy.

It is true, the guys who get screwed would probably lose a couple hundred dollars each which is nothing compared to the general fear that collectors lose their life's savings. However, it doesn't change the fact that most of the current Vintage community would be pissed. This compounded by the fact that players would feel betrayed by WotC lying about their reprint policy would be enough to make a lot of people quit. Thus we would need to hope that the players are either on some kind of unpowered team in which case they can be happy for their friends, come back once they realise the money is spent so they may as well enjoy it, happy that their format is revived and sanctioned. In other words there would have to be a massive influx of new players to justify pulling this off.

In other words white bordered and bad-condition power would massively drop in value while Alpha/Beta in mint/near mint condition would probably stay the same if not go up.

[Nehptis]

It is true, the guys who get screwed would probably lose a couple hundred dollars each which is nothing compared to the general fear that collectors lose their life's savings. However, it doesn't change the fact that most of the current Vintage community would be pissed. This compounded by the fact that players would feel betrayed by WotC lying about their reprint policy would be enough to make a lot of people quit.

Can you or anyone else quantify this?
-Collector's who lose their life saving invested in MTG cards.  How many people in the MTG world fall into this category like 5?
-Most of the Current Vintage community that would be pissed.  I'm suggesting that this is a very small YET exceedingly VOCAL percentage of the community.
-Players would feel betrayed by WotC lying about their reprint policy.  Again, what kind of numbers are we talking about here?  It seems to me like is just a small number of players who like "victimizing" themselves when WOTC does something that they don't like.

I wish the Agents of Change within Vintage would be as vocal and persistent as the Purests out there who resist every ounce of Vintage / MTG change.

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

It is true, the guys who get screwed would probably lose a couple hundred dollars each which is nothing compared to the general fear that collectors lose their life's savings. However, it doesn't change the fact that most of the current Vintage community would be pissed. This compounded by the fact that players would feel betrayed by WotC lying about their reprint policy would be enough to make a lot of people quit.

Can you or anyone else quantify this?
-Collector's who lose their life saving invested in MTG cards.  How many people in the MTG world fall into this category like 5?
-Most of the Current Vintage community that would be pissed.  I'm suggesting that this is a very small YET exceedingly VOCAL percentage of the community.
-Players would feel betrayed by WotC lying about their reprint policy.  Again, what kind of numbers are we talking about here?  It seems to me like is just a small number of players who like "victimizing" themselves when WOTC does something that they don't like.

I wish the Agents of Change within Vintage would be as vocal and persistent as the Purests out there who resist every ounce of Vintage / MTG change.

-My point was exactly that. Individual people really won't be losing as much as all these people claiming the secondary market will collapse and kill Vintage.
-I doubt that it is a small percentage of the Vintage community. Contrary to popular belief there are actually a decent amount of vintage players that own at least some piece of P9. Europe should be a good indication of this as they can consistantly host sanctioned tournaments. Even assuming it was a small amount of people the fact that they are vocal means they are the ones trying to get WotC to care about Vintage.
-So you're happy that WotC is showing less and less interest in Vintage? People that care about how the governing body uses its power hardly "victimize themselves." Think about it this way, if tomorrow morning the President were to announce that he was going to nuke California because he thought the USA would do better like that you would say the people protesting are "victimizing themselves"? Replace President with WotC, nuke California with reprint power, and USA with Vintage.

Change isn't always a good thing and people who want change just for the sake of change are the ones that ruin many good things. There should be actual coherent arguments to justify changing a system that works rather than "oh just try it and we'll see what happens". Not owning P9 myself I don't have strong feelings either way I just think there should be a lot of data before such drastic changes are made and reprinting power should be the last resort.

[Harlequin]

50 people - own enough to play basically anything... assuming they proxy 10-15 cards.  Maybe they have 1 or 2 peices of power they won, or a few drains, but for the most part they proxy anything over $60. Screwed.

I would think that these people would benefit the most.  Your average, regular vintage tournement go-er typically has thier duals, fetches, and forces (stuff at or around $30).  What they lack are the $60 and up cards, drains, bazaars, mox, etc.  Today, those people pay essentially $0 for those proxies.  If anything they pay a sort of opportunity cost of thier next most expensive card.  So if in thier 75 card deck, if they are at 15 proxy and need to make room for say 4x tarmogoyf, and 11x cards over $100, and 1x Lotus... totalling 16 cards the don't have.  when they put $30 on the table for 1x goyf (i'm not sure the going price, but lets just say its $30), this enables them to run lotus.  So to "complete" thier deck, this player chose to spend $30 to run thier optimal deck.  In a way they just spent $30 for the opportunity to play Lotus.  Which for these 50 players, $30 on a single card is high - but acceptable for thier own budget.

So for these 50 players, I wouldn't say they are "screwed" instead of paying $30 to finish thier deck, they will need to spend $49.99 in my example + the cost of a set of goyfs.  Which again is not unreasonable for thier budget.  Right now, today, we have a continuum of people in vintage (really in any format).

|<-- 1 ------ 2| ------ 3 ---->|
1) People who make budget decks, they have to make sub-optimal decks with cheap cards.  They cut 'expensive' but good options from thier deck because they choose to spend thier entertainment dollars elsewhere
2) People who spend as little as possible to play thier 'optimal' deck.  So they maximize on thier proxies by always proxing the 15 most expensive cards and buy the rest.  little to no foiling, or 'old'-cards if reprints are availible.
3) People who care about the asthetics of thier deck.  Meaning they spend MORE money then the "cheapest" version of the deck they play.  They own power, and as a result always play under proxy.  Foils, Miscuts, Signed, Black-boardered, Alternate Art.... they want people to look at thier deck and be impressed.

Now we all exist somewhere on this continuum.  I for one and just a bit higher than a 2, I can build most decks with 5-10 proxies comfortably - but couldn't build an optimized zero-proxy deck.  I have some decent looking cards, a handful hard-to-get vintage foils.  But generally I'm looking to build my decks for cheap.  I almost never buy cards that are currently played in Type 2.  I just proxy them until they cycle out, then pick them up for cheaper.  The only way I'm "screwed" is because now I have to stay ontop of hot-t2 cards if I want to play them.  But my spending behaviors for vintage haven't changed.  I put my money on the table, buy my from the vault: proxies just like everyone else.  But I probably wouldn't sell off my existing power, because, I like it.   I'm neither Happy nor Screwed in my spending power for cards.  My decks are still going to be optimal with just a little bling mixed in.  But overall the format is bigger, events are sanctioned, and that would make me overall happier.

[Mr. Nightmare]

Paul Mastriano... Paul Mastriano

He's got two families and works two jobs, so Paul counts twice.

On topic, I agree that Eternal Magic in general has a much higher age median, and that it's not only a good thing, but fundamental to the health of the formats.

On the other hand, I've found myself playing much more limited and constructed than Eternal as of late, specifically because the other events are more readily available.  Its all well and good to resolve to play once a month, but if you have a random Wednesday night free and want to play, you're more often able to find a draft going than you are a vintage event.

[JACO]

Let's pretend that all of a sudden Wizards decides to print "From the Vault: Totally Broken Sh*t!"  And its a box that contains Power-9, 4 Workshops, 4 Bazaars, 4 Drains, Library, Timevault, Imp Seal, Grim Tutor, and any other vintage card over $100 I may have missed.  And lets say the box is a modest $49.99, and they print tons and tons of them.  Screw limited-edition. 

People say this will "kill" the secondary market for existing power.  But if we think it through, doing this can't do anything but help the secondary market in general, AND won't do much to harm existing power!...

...So what would happen. 'From the Vault: TBS' would fly off the shelves as glorified proxies.  Vintage would go sactioned. 
What happens next?  People like me have to go out to the secondary market to fill up the holes in our decks.  I suddenly need Hierrarchs,  need Goyfs, need Cold-Eyed Selkie, Intution, Crucibles, Confidants, Oaths, Anceint tombs, etc etc...  And I can't live with just have 2-3 of each with the safety net of proxing the 4th, If I want to stay "mobile" in my decks I need to stockpile playsets of everything and anything. 

What else would happen?  Now Joey-T2 can save his money and buy "Totally Broken Sh*t" for $49.99.  Suddenly he can play Vintage!  As he gets more interested now he needs duals, he needs fetches, he needs forces.  More players enter vintage. 

What else happen?  People want ~bling~ for thier decks.  The From the Vault new frames are stupid looking, I want blackboardered original power!  So out of our 100 person crossection the ration of players stay roughly the same... a handful want bling, but the majority are happy with thier $49.99 box of proxies.  Only rather than 100 players per region, there are 150 or 200.  I just don't see how the price of old power would fall much if at all, and I certainly would venture a guess that any who 'lost' money on power, made up for the lost 10 fold by the increase in the price of the rest of thier collection.  The bottom line is that people love bling.  I could even see power increasing slightly if sactioned vintage caught on as a 'big deal' format.  Econ101 supply and demand.

Saying that reprinted power would ruin the price of power is like saying that Foil Goyfs are hurt by the printing of non-foil goyfs.  Which I guess is technically true.  But you can't extend that to say that because foil and non-foil goyfs exist, that the price foil goyfs = price of non-foil - if you do, then I'd gladly buy your foil Goyfs.

Jeff, there is so much of your post that is off base. I'll just touch on a few things, and keep in mind I've had more 'pimp' cards than pretty much any person on this forum. I've also sold cards around the globe and have probably dealt/sold more than all of about 1% of the members of this forum.

While people might want 'bling' for their decks as you described it, the prices of the bling are driven by supply and demand. In one case, the reason people want Beta Power 9 over Unlimited Power 9 is because it looks much better, and it's not that much more expensive. The issue is that the supply of these cards in general relative to demand is what has driven Power up to $300+ each. If they had kept printing cards like Moxes, Ancestral, and even Wheel of Fortune past Unlimited/Revised, they wouldn't be worth more than $10-20 each, because of the supply.

If they were to reprint Power or even Mana Drain, for that matter, prices would plummet. An Unlimited Mox would go from $300 to $20, if that high. Mana Drain would go from about $85 to $5-10. While it might be cool to have all Vintage tournaments sanctioned, and you would certainly gain a modest player base, you would also lose players due to their damaged investment, and risk alienating pretty much everybody else who plays and also has an eye for collectability.

Part of the issue that relates to reprints and Magic is the collectability of the game. They have always marketed it as such (CCG = COLLECTIBLE card game), and to issue a "From the Vault: Apeshit Vintage Reprints Edition" would shatter any illusions about any of the cards maintaining viability as a collectible or investment. Is it worth it for them to do something like that? Probably only if they have a failed business model and are doing it as a last ditch money grab.

[Harlequin]

Right, its supply AND demand not supply alone.  A mis-cut card -is- considered 'bling' (to use the word as I've been using it) not because it looks better, but simply because someone is willing (or shall we say... demanding) to pay $25 instead of $10 for the clean-cut version. 
Right now, I can buy everything in From the Vault: never going to happen, for the actual retail price of $0.  I have been doing this for 10 years, and so have hundreds and hundreds of non-sactioned vintage players.    So any damage done to the collector market has ALREADY been done by the fact that there are 100 unsancted proxy events for every 1 non-proxy event.  The supply of $0 proxies is limited only by the number of junk commons and sharpy ink in the world.  Yet the demand for power is ~still~ out there.  The newly printed From the Vault power would replace the $0 power I currently own.  Which I think would largely leave the hundred dollar power I own untouched, because its rarety remains intacted. 

Look at the price for Summer cards.  You can BEARLY even tell a Summer card from a normal card, but Summer cards are astronomical in price as compared to thier whiteboarder counterparts.  The rarey of old power would remain the same as it is today, and therefor its collector value would remain the same.

Its like this...
Collector: Hey, check out my collectoin of antique handcrafted decorated eggs.  They are worth thousands a piece.
You: Wow!  Hey, I know a place called walmart where you can buy big bags of colored eggs for $1.15 for like 50 eggs.
Collector: OMG NO!! I thought my eggs were worth thousands, but it turns out the entire collection is worth $1.15!? I'm ruined.....
You: don't worry, I'll buy a bag of walmart eggs, you can collect the whole set in one purchase!
Collector: Yeah your right, thats way more satifing.

[Suicideking]

Right, its supply AND demand not supply alone.  A mis-cut card -is- considered 'bling' (to use the word as I've been using it) not because it looks better, but simply because someone is willing (or shall we say... demanding) to pay $25 instead of $10 for the clean-cut version. 
Right now, I can buy everything in From the Vault: never going to happen, for the actual retail price of $0.  I have been doing this for 10 years, and so have hundreds and hundreds of non-sactioned vintage players.    So any damage done to the collector market has ALREADY been done by the fact that there are 100 unsancted proxy events for every 1 non-proxy event.  The supply of $0 proxies is limited only by the number of junk commons and sharpy ink in the world.  Yet the demand for power is ~still~ out there.  The newly printed From the Vault power would replace the $0 power I currently own.  Which I think would largely leave the hundred dollar power I own untouched, because its rarety remains intacted. 

Look at the price for Summer cards.  You can BEARLY even tell a Summer card from a normal card, but Summer cards are astronomical in price as compared to thier whiteboarder counterparts.  The rarey of old power would remain the same as it is today, and therefor its collector value would remain the same.

Its like this...
Collector: Hey, check out my collectoin of antique handcrafted decorated eggs.  They are worth thousands a piece.
You: Wow!  Hey, I know a place called walmart where you can buy big bags of colored eggs for $1.15 for like 50 eggs.
Collector: OMG NO!! I thought my eggs were worth thousands, but it turns out the entire collection is worth $1.15!? I'm ruined.....
You: don't worry, I'll buy a bag of walmart eggs, you can collect the whole set in one purchase!
Collector: Yeah your right, thats way more satifing.

I think the answer is somewhat in the middle of you two.  I would hate to see people cards diminish in value.  But wizards has had a sort of mixed stance on how they stand with dealers and secondary value.  However as a person trying to be a top player, and currently owning zero power, if wizards said they were making crappy looking power and tournament attendance doubled and I could win bigger cash prizes, I'd be all for it. 

[Tha Gunslinga]

So any damage done to the collector market has ALREADY been done by the fact that there are 100 unsancted proxy events for every 1 non-proxy event.  The supply of $0 proxies is limited only by the number of junk commons and sharpy ink in the world.  Yet the demand for power is ~still~ out there. 

And gee, those proxies sure are useful in Europe, aren't they?  And in Vintage worlds?

Look at the price for Summer cards.  You can BEARLY even tell a Summer card from a normal card, but Summer cards are astronomical in price as compared to thier whiteboarder counterparts.

Man, this one-dollar bill looks almost the same as this hundred-dollar bill.  You can BEARLY tell them apart.

[Smmenen]

Regarding this plan of yours, I am curious as to what you have in store.

Hint Hint

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37702.msg524683#new

[Yare]

Regarding this plan of yours, I am curious as to what you have in store.

Hint Hint

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37702.msg524683#new]http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=37702.msg524683#new

Yeah, I noticed that today. I personally have been a big fan of the proxy tax, though that mostly went out of a style for a while for whatever reason. I'm not sure how I feel about CE cards, but I'm willing to give it a shot to see where it goes.

[InfectedMushroom]

That's really the intent, to see how such a tourney fares. Might take a few tournaments to really see how well of a system it is. But, it is good to try it out.

On the topic though, I really hope Wizards would never reprint any of the cards on the list. I love owning the power that I do, and I worked hard to be able to get some of it. These are collectible cards and WOTC should respect the fact that they said they would never reprint them.

[policehq]

Are the values of power nine cards tied to the success of the Vintage format?

Is the Vintage format truly going downhill? Is tournament attendance on the decline?

These are important questions, because if Vintage is actually dying a slow death, AND IF* the value of power nine cards are tied to its success, AND IF* reprinting Vintage staples would renew interest in the format, then such a reprint would secure any investments that have been made already.

*-I'm not making assumptions to answer my questions. I'm asking them honestly.

[arctic79]

Let's be honest, if Wotc actually reprinted the power 9 and what not in a "From the vault" type of deal it would be in a limited print run.  Will this hurt the value of the older cards?  Sure, but only if you intend on selling them anytime in the near future.  It's like people bemoaning the value of their property dropping because of the economic crisis, it only matters if you are going to sell during the downturn.  Also if you polled most shop owners, most would rather move 10 pieces of moderately priced power every week as opposed to 1 piece of expensive jewellery every 3-6 weeks (outside of big stores like SCG, I think this is a fair assessment considering how many times you see the same piece of jewelery sitting in a store's case week upon week).
A print run similar in size to what they did with CE would be about right, CE power goes for around $100 on average and we saw no real change in price on the original P9.

Investing in collectibles is a risk and there are no sure bets. If you can't afford the risk don't invest.

[FlyFlySideOfFry]

Let's be honest, if Wotc actually reprinted the power 9 and what not in a "From the vault" type of deal it would be in a limited print run.  Will this hurt the value of the older cards?  Sure, but only if you intend on selling them anytime in the near future.  It's like people bemoaning the value of their property dropping because of the economic crisis, it only matters if you are going to sell during the downturn.  Also if you polled most shop owners, most would rather move 10 pieces of moderately priced power every week as opposed to 1 piece of expensive jewellery every 3-6 weeks (outside of big stores like SCG, I think this is a fair assessment considering how many times you see the same piece of jewelery sitting in a store's case week upon week).
A print run similar in size to what they did with CE would be about right, CE power goes for around $100 on average and we saw no real change in price on the original P9.

Investing in collectibles is a risk and there are no sure bets. If you can't afford the risk don't invest.

CE isn't tournament legal why would it affect the price of original power? I think the best way to actually test what would happen rather than completely guessing would be to try one of these ideas on Mana Drain, Grim Tutor, or Imperial Seal. Notice they aren't on the reserved list and they still fall under what most people would consider too expensive to pick up a playset of. This way if it backfires people don't lose hundreds or thousands of dollars per card like reprinting P9 would cause, and they wouldn't be breaking their reserved list promise. Once WotC actually has some data based on those 3 cards then I think they should present it to us all, then poll just respected members of the Vintage community on their opinions about P9. Then there would also have to be a poll on the website asking us regular players if we want WotC to break the reprint policy or not.

[AmbivalentDuck]

Square corners...you're shitting me, right?

I remember reading on starcity about a player at a grand prix getting DQ-ed for running 4 foil kird ape in an otherwise non-foil deck.  Apparently with 5-10 minutes practice, the judge could consistently cut to a kird ape.  This is a few micron's thickness.  Square corners would be dead obvious when cutting...it would be a serious (dis)advantage to make your Ancestral and Lotus CE and the rest proxies or ABU power.  For a start, only hard toploaders would be even remotely acceptable.

Steve, I'm sorely disappointed.  Here I was thinking you had plans for getting us a nice, fat bailout...

Geez, here's my plan.  We inform President Obama that having the treasury print beta power is for more cost effective than printing $100 bills...it's like printing $500 bills.  The treasury then prints a few thousand copies of each piece of power, and uses them to pay off domestic debts (or for tax returns!!!).  Suddenly, interest in MtG and vintage particularly is spurred by people googling and eBaying the pieces of cardboard the government assures them are quite valuable.  Recession solved and the proxy problem fixed. 

[Wise]

the obama idea has got me thinking, if the general public was'nt awair that there was an influx of power to the market would the price drop? IE: the myths that wizards prints X amount of power each year to replace worn/destroyed power, but if this was a reality and wizards put in 1000 of each piece of P9 infor the market, and dident tell anyone would this have as large of an effect, granted its sneaky (original power vs unidetifyable reprint) and if it was publically known would cause more destruction of values, but the fact remains the fact that people would initially freak out and sell/quit or otherwise their power if wizards reprinted with new borders ect,  but its the fact people knew about it rather then the natural market, what was CE worth when it was released? now each pierce of CE power is worth over 50$ which is pretty fucking good for cards that cant even be played.. ever... which is why I have to disagree with JACO

If they were to reprint Power or even Mana Drain, for that matter, prices would plummet. An Unlimited Mox would go from $300 to $20, if that high. Mana Drain would go from about $85 to $5-10. While it might be cool to have all Vintage tournaments sanctioned, and you would certainly gain a modest player base, you would also lose players due to their damaged investment, and risk alienating pretty much everybody else who plays and also has an eye for collectability.

while I am not agreeing with reprinting power I say that it wont have as large of an affect on the price as you might think, if you reprinted P9 with white borders, on new frame, Beta power wouldent be affected in price much if at all, the players who want to shell out the cash for beta to have a more pimp deck with continue to do this, and compete amungst each other leaving the market value for these the same, the price that would be affect would be unlimited, which could be across the board, the prices wont drop below 50$ because then they are worth less then cards that arn't even playable which makes no sense, but I Dont think they would drop that far, while new players who dont already have those cards would purchace them, dealers and horders alike will do the same thing aticipating a price rise of the idividual cards (which they would) Remeber the first from the vault from Gencon last year? Wizards had to restrict the amount you were allowed to buy because of this reason, so who is to say for P9 this demand wouldent be two, three even four times that of some bad T2 cards & dragons, I would try to get my hands on a set, despite owning a full set ot UNL P9 simply for that reason inflation, there is obviously a demand for power, and no supply, leaving Vintage cards to escilate in price as more and more is destoryed, lost & horded while the priced would drop the day after the release of the from the vault broken shit, the prices would return to where they were, and in time increase.

[thecman]

*** NOTE *** Collector's Edition and International Edition cards will be LEGAL for this tournament

Great idea Smmenen.

It seems to me that reprinting P9 and other Vintage staples shouldn't hurt the "collector value" of the originals since the originals are still just as rare and just as collectable.  On the other hand I think the reprints would have a significant effect on the "play cost" of the cards because both the original and the reprint are equally playable and there would be an increased supply.  I think the reduced "play cost" would be good for the players and the relatively unchanged "collector value" would mean that the collectors should not be significantly affected.  I realize that this is an idealized statement but I think that if the reprinting were accompanied by a substitution of sanctioned tournaments for proxy tournaments the increased demand for tournament legal cards would make up a significant amount of the difference.

[mike_bergeron]

Square corners...you're shitting me, right?

I remember reading on starcity about a player at a grand prix getting DQ-ed for running 4 foil kird ape in an otherwise non-foil deck.  Apparently with 5-10 minutes practice, the judge could consistently cut to a kird ape.  This is a few micron's thickness.  Square corners would be dead obvious when cutting...it would be a serious (dis)advantage to make your Ancestral and Lotus CE and the rest proxies or ABU power.  For a start, only hard toploaders would be even remotely acceptable.

Steve, I'm sorely disappointed.  Here I was thinking you had plans for getting us a nice, fat bailout...

Geez, here's my plan.  We inform President Obama that having the treasury print beta power is for more cost effective than printing $100 bills...it's like printing $500 bills.  The treasury then prints a few thousand copies of each piece of power, and uses them to pay off domestic debts (or for tax returns!!!).  Suddenly, interest in MtG and vintage particularly is spurred by people googling and eBaying the pieces of cardboard the government assures them are quite valuable.  Recession solved and the proxy problem fixed. 

I play with tons of IE cards in my cube, and no one can tell the difference, or have even complained.  My opinion which I have already stated in this thread is that we either open up to new ideas like this (CE/IE legal) or risk allowing this format to be collectible only in most areas.  If we want to keep playing with the cards, we should encourage participation.


Steve, if I was near Ohio, I would come to support this and bring a deck with IE cards just to test the idea.  I proposed to my local gamestore that IE/CE be allowed in some fashion, and generated some great discussion.  Hopefully your results may spur that on again at some point, if all goes well. 

[arctic79]

Let's be honest, if Wotc actually reprinted the power 9 and what not in a "From the vault" type of deal it would be in a limited print run.  Will this hurt the value of the older cards?  Sure, but only if you intend on selling them anytime in the near future.  It's like people bemoaning the value of their property dropping because of the economic crisis, it only matters if you are going to sell during the downturn.  Also if you polled most shop owners, most would rather move 10 pieces of moderately priced power every week as opposed to 1 piece of expensive jewellery every 3-6 weeks (outside of big stores like SCG, I think this is a fair assessment considering how many times you see the same piece of jewelery sitting in a store's case week upon week).
A print run similar in size to what they did with CE would be about right, CE power goes for around $100 on average and we saw no real change in price on the original P9.

Investing in collectibles is a risk and there are no sure bets. If you can't afford the risk don't invest.

CE isn't tournament legal why would it affect the price of original power? I think the best way to actually test what would happen rather than completely guessing would be to try one of these ideas on Mana Drain, Grim Tutor, or Imperial Seal. Notice they aren't on the reserved list and they still fall under what most people would consider too expensive to pick up a playset of. This way if it backfires people don't lose hundreds or thousands of dollars per card like reprinting P9 would cause, and they wouldn't be breaking their reserved list promise. Once WotC actually has some data based on those 3 cards then I think they should present it to us all, then poll just respected members of the Vintage community on their opinions about P9. Then there would also have to be a poll on the website asking us regular players if we want WotC to break the reprint policy or not.

Right, I'm sure Wotc is going to get right on polling the vintage community about anything like that.  Sure they may discuss a few things with Stephen but beyond that wishful thinking.  Wotc is going to do whatever it is they feel they need to do to make money, and as it is they make $0 on any P9, and haven't made a cent off the P9 since they sold the original booster packs.  The way to regard the reserve list is to think that it applies to Standard, Extended, and Limited formats.  If they won't reprint a set that is vintage legal only why not outright ban the P9?  Sucks for those with power, but allows more sanctioned events with higher turnouts.

[AmbivalentDuck]

If they won't reprint a set that is vintage legal only why not outright ban the P9?  Sucks for those with power, but allows more sanctioned events with higher turnouts.

It's called legacy

[arctic79]

If they won't reprint a set that is vintage legal only why not outright ban the P9?  Sucks for those with power, but allows more sanctioned events with higher turnouts.

It's called legacy

Exactly!!! 

Unfortunately someones toes are going to get stepped on no matter what Wotc does.  Honestly all they have to do is look at the attendance numbers put up for the Legacy GPs in the last couple of years to realize the eternal formats aren't completely dead.  A fair assumption to make would be that accessability to legal cards is the most likely culprit for vintage numbers as I'm sure many who play Legacy would play Vintage in a sanctioned environment if they stood a fighting chance.  Of course they could all play Fish or Ichorid....yeah a real fun format.

[vassago]

Look at the price for Summer cards.  You can BEARLY even tell a Summer card from a normal card, but Summer cards are astronomical in price as compared to thier whiteboarder counterparts.

HA HA! This amusing to me because you can absolutely tell the difference between summer and other cards.  Every time I play some one new, they immediately notice that the basic lands in my type 1 deck are summer.  Sorry if it was off topic but it just seems like most people happen to know what Summer (edgar) is and what it looks like.   

[stu55]

For the value of the power coming down or any other card, it is really simple supply and demand, no crazy math here.

Reason they are so high is due to a low supply and high demand. This the same that happened to Tarmogoyf recently. You might argue that a ton were printed since print runs are in the hundred of thousands now-a-days, but it was still a 4-of in a lot of decks, thus driving the demand

If a ton of power is reprinted, you might have a difference in prices between the old and new of +/- $50 or so, but the upper scale would be $100ish at most for the original.

Reprinting anything old and expensive is generally a bad idea for the value of the game. Reason things hold value is because we believe and WOTC has told us that they will not be reprinted. This is a CCG, so they would not want to mess with the first "c".

[policehq]

For the value of the power coming down or any other card, it is really simple supply and demand, no crazy math here.

Reason they are so high is due to a low supply and high demand. This the same that happened to Tarmogoyf recently. You might argue that a ton were printed since print runs are in the hundred of thousands now-a-days, but it was still a 4-of in a lot of decks, those driving the demand

If a ton of power is reprinted, you might have a difference in prices between the old and new of +/- $50 or so, but the upper scale would be $100ish at most for the original.

Reprinting anything old and expensive is generally a bad idea for the value of the game. Reason things hold value is because we believe and WOTC has told us that they will not be reprinted. This is a CCG, so they would not want to mess with the first "c".

A lot of people in this thread seem to be ignoring the fact that Beta cards are significantly more valuable than Unlimited simply because they look better. Foils are also more expensive simply because they look better and are more collectible.

Also in this hypothetical situation, you're saying the original Mox and the new will have a difference of $50 with a maximum value of $100 (based on what?!) without any numbers of how many are printed or any proposition for how they're acquired.... So it's not really useful nor convincing

Note that I said hypothetical situation, though, because even though I think it would be good for the Vintage format that power cards were reprinted, I don't see it happening.

[Purple Hat]

If power were reprinted in a way that was distinct from the originals, new picture, especially a crappy one (mox emerald just has a green square where the pictures go or something) then I don't think that the value of the originals would decrease much.  Especially if they were printed in the "future" card face or something like that.  If they went out of their way to make them distinct and ugly people would still want the old ones and the prestige factor of original power would still be there.

I'm not really a "collector" I own cards to play with, I don't view them as an investment, but I still think about how cool it would be to own nice minty beta power and beta duals and so on just because they look nice.  Functionally I'm pretty well set up, just missing a few cards, but that doesn't mean I don't want nice looking cool cards.

[jaeppel]

what if they were to just reprint everything on magic online.  adding electronic copies of power et al. really doesnt violate their reprint policy.  are moxes really too broken even for 'vintage online'  this would open up a huge metagame and likely addict many players to the format, thus only raising the demand for the big cards.  sure there is mws, but there is really not a large international online tournament base, which is what we would have with sanctioned vintage online.

i dont own magic online.  standard doesnt really intrest me and 'classic' just looks like the worst format ever.  they have the complete oracle database there at wotc, it would take a snap of the fingers to digitally reprint everything.  if they did it would probably outsell every other game on the shelves, even diablo III.  giving every spike timmy and johnny access to the full cardpool would accelerate the metagame... which is far too stagnant.  after all, how long were remora and meditate around and unrestricted before we got around to using them?  shame on all of us.  there just arent enough vintage deckbuilders as compared to those in standard.  who knows what would happen if they opened the way to vintage online.

real moxes would sell for one thousand each (whiteborder)

[oneofchaos]

I seem to remember reading many years ago that Richard Garfield wanted his game to be as respected as chess.

I'll suggest that it has happened already.  Vintage is Chess.  Look at the meta-game it's Ich vs. Drain/Vault.  And this does not help the perception of Vintage to non-Vintage players.  Other factors like, high Costs of Cards and an aging Vintage player pool with less time on our hands also contribute to the Vintage decline.  But, I for one would make more room in my calendar if the metagame was more interesting.

It's the same analogy to going to the movies.  I made time in my schedule to go see The Dark Knight because it seemed like a film I would enjoy, and I did.  But, I didn't feel the need to make time for Mall Cop.  If Vintage crawls out from beneath this horribly boring Drain/Vault and Ichorid metagame then I'll find time again in my schedule whether the event is Proxy or Not.  Until then, I'll find something else to fill my time.  Anyone want to go see Mall Cop?

If your not a fan of the metagame, thats your personal view of it.  I am not a fan of Time Vault vs Ichorid but I always somehow manage to have fun.  Actually I can't think of a deck in magic history I hate more than ichorid.  I have nothing against most ichorid players, I respect mana ichorid, but I am not a fan of the glass cannon that is manaless ichorid.  I get annoyed that in order to beat ichorid I need to dedicate half my sideboard to answers to deal with it, and that I have to stop doing whatever my deck does and worry about beating ichorid.  Whenever you beat ichorid you never win with your deck, you force the ichorid player to lose with his.  Howling mine in type 2 was another deck like ichorid that bugged me, if I played control I was dead 100% of the time.  If I played aggro howling mine would scoop so they could eat lunch.  What vintage needs to do is draw in players that always speculated about vintage as a first turn kill format.  The minority of vintage players are under 20, and we need more of them.  I agree that the older players will be able to consistently purchase more, but who spends money quicker and in large amounts as teenager?