Is the Magic 30th Anniversary Edition a positive or negative product for the game? Let's take a look at a couple of positive and negative points of view about the product, and let's see if we can come up with a conclusion together.
Negatives
1. The price is prohibitive and out of reach for most players.
One thing that most Magic the Gathering players can agree on is that a thousand dollars is a lot of money. For that much money, you could buy a couple of Revised dual lands, a pack of Legends from 1994, or most tier-one Modern decks. Most Magic players don’t simply buy that stuff on a whim; they accrue it over years and years of grinding at the game. The fact of the matter is, this price will be too much for most Magic players to buy. Magic players come from all walks of life; for many players, this product will be something they will never experience.
2. It sets a bad precedent for Wizards of the Coast that the Magic community is willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money for a product.
Every time Wizards of the Coast puts out a product, they have employees carefully watch it to see if the product was a success or a failure. That decision has to do with how well the product sold and how much profit it made, especially now that they are under Hasbro. Over the years, Wizards has been pushing the profit line repeatedly to see how far they can push it. For all of the people who can’t believe that Wizards would do something “so stupid” as to sell four booster packs for a thousand dollars, they clearly haven’t been paying close attention to the market. Almost every time Wizards has put out a product, if they say there is a limited number of that product, it usually sells exceptionally well.
Part of the collectible card game’s financial strategy is that it feeds off FOMO (the fear of missing out). In 2018, Wizards announced that they would be selling a Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition Booster Box for $250, but there would be a limited quantity. On October 3rd, the sale went live on the Hasbro site, and the ensuing chaos caused the site to crash, tons of people who successfully ordered the product had their orders canceled, and a lot of hatred was thrown at Wizards. Wizards later issued an apology letter to the players, and when the exact same thing happened for the War of the Spark Mythic Edition, Wizards sent all of the players who had their orders canceled a foil sheet of War of the Spark cards. Most people would say this was a failure for Wizards, but it was the exact opposite. Wizards proved to themselves that they could take a product and put a high price tag on it, and it would sell out in minutes and create lots of drama, which is exactly what keeps Magic the Gathering going.
With this 30th Anniversary Edition, Wizards is just pushing the line again. This time they’re trying to see if they can sell four packs of fake Magic cards for one-thousand dollars, and guess what; they will. I predict this product will completely sell out on the first day, if not the first hour. And what does that mean? That means that Wizards will prove themselves correct again and won’t shy away from doing something like this again in the future. They are a company in a capitalist society; making money is their main prerogative.
3. The cards are proxies. You literally can’t play with them in tournaments.
I mean, there’s honestly not much more I can say about that. Yes, you could open up some ancient and fantastic cards. But they’re fake. They’re not real. If I were looking through someone’s binder and saw a Black Lotus, I would initially be amazed and impressed. But then, if they told me that it was a 30th Anniversary Edition Black Lotus, my level of amazement is immediately back down to zero. Oh, so you have a fake Black Lotus in your binder. Cool.
Part of the announcement was that there will be double the amount of dual lands printed in this product. This sounds great, until you remember that these aren’t dual lands; they’re fake dual lands. So instead of having an influx of dual lands that would make formats like Legacy easier to get into, we're instead getting an influx of fake cards that can theoretically only be used for kitchen table Magic.
4. The likelihood of hitting a black lotus is 1.05%, and the possibility that you hit a purelace is… also 1.05%.
Frank Karsten wrote an excellent article on TCG player (which can be found here) about the probability of opening a Black Lotus in a Magic 30th Anniversary Edition booster pack. He found that with 113 rares in the product and double the number of dual lands, your likelihood of opening a Black Lotus in the Modern or Retro frame is 1.05%. This means that, on average, you would have to open 24 of these products before you opened a Black Lotus, which, if you can do simple math, is $24,000.
If you were to assume that the prices of these cards are similar to the prices of the first Collector’s Edition from 1993, there are about 26 cards over $100. This sounds pretty good and means out of 113 rares, one of your packs might contain a card over $100. However, there are about 57 cards that are under $20. Twenty-four of those cards are under $5. Some people will spend a thousand dollars on this product only to open a Chaoslace, Web, Righteousness, and Pirate Ship for a total of ten dollars in value.
This is literally gambling. Please, for the love of Magic the Gathering, do not purchase this product expecting to open two dual lands and a piece of the power nine. Most of the time, you will be opening jank, just as Richard Garfield intended.
Who is this product for?
Okay, now that all the doom and gloom is out of the way, let’s look at the positives. Before we do that, I think it is essential to make one key point: who this product is intended for. Magic players may be tired of hearing this line, but you will be unhappy with Magic as a whole until you understand this. Not every product that Wizards creates is for you, and that is okay.
Players with expendable income
As I said earlier in this article, Magic players come from all walks of life. That means that while some players will not have the means to purchase this product, there are also Magic players who can readily and willingly shell out $1,000 to buy this product. And most likely, if a person can buy one of these products, they will probably buy more than one. For example, I’m reasonably sure that Post Malone will buy this product now that he’s heavily ingrained into the Magic culture. For a person of his financial status, what’s a thousand dollars? He could buy fifty of these products and not even blink at the cost.
Long-time players
Magic has been around for a long time (30 years, if you haven’t heard), and some players have been there for the whole ride. Some players started in 1993 and haven't opened up Beta cards since that year. Another group of players, like myself, got into Magic a couple of years after Beta came out and never got the chance to open any packs from those sets. For some players, this is the most reasonable chance at this moment to open up Beta cards. I can see some lifetime fans pitching in the thousand dollars to relive a moment from their past or create a memory they never had thirty years ago.
Collectors
And finally, the people who will cause this product to sell out. There will be some players with expendable income and some long-time players who buy this product, but most of the product will be purchased with collecting in mind. It amazes me how I have to explain this to some people, as it is obvious that this product was created with collectibility in mind. It’s a thousand-dollar, 30th Anniversary product. Do you really think Wizards was thinking, “limited players are going to love this product”? No, this product is a commemorative item that people can purchase and hold on to, and in 10-20 years, it will be worth triple its price, and people can show it off to their friends.
Positives
1. Players now have the chance to open a “beta” booster pack without spending even more money and ruining relics of the past.
Most Magic the Gathering players can agree that, other than winning the World Championship and getting into the Hall of Fame, opening a Black Lotus in a booster pack is one of the most exciting things you could do. For a select few, they will have that chance with this product.
This is mainly aimed at those “long-time players” who may want the nostalgia of opening a beta pack or players who never got to open one. But really, anybody can jump on this bandwagon. Do you know how much a Beta booster pack is? They can usually range from $5,000-$7,000, and most of the time, it has been searched if it was not taken directly out of a booster box. If you want to ensure you got an unsearched booster pack, your best bet is to buy a Beta booster box for $250,000 and take it out of the box yourself.
For 99.99% of players, spending $250,000 on a booster box is ludicrous. And even if you did save up enough to buy a Beta booster pack, are you really going to open it? There are only so many left in the world, and if you open it and get a Purelace or some other dud rare, you have successfully wasted thousands of dollars and destroyed a relic of the past.
However, what if I told you that instead of spending $7,000 on a relic and potentially destroying all your value, you could spend only $1,000 and have experience opening up Beta cards four times? Obviously, it’s not the same, and that idea may still sound crazy to you, but you have to understand that not all Magic players have the same interests in mind. Some old-school players would happily do this if only to crack open a Beta Shivan Dragon and relive some of their childhood memories.
2. Wizards is normalizing proxy use, which is healthy for many communities.
Many people have pointed out that because the cards are fake, Wizards of the Coast is scamming everyone, and they want you to spend thousands of dollars on proxies. But I think what many people are missing is what this product means: Wizards is giving the thumbs up for proxy use. Now I know these aren’t tournament-legal, but in this day and age, there is much more kitchen-table Magic being played than tournament Magic. If you haven’t noticed, Commander has quickly become the face of Magic the Gathering.
And I know many people will say, well, if these cards aren’t any different from other proxies, why wouldn’t I just print out my own proxies? EXACTLY. If you can’t afford this product or think it’s stupid to spend your money on fake cards, use your own proxies! Plenty of artists all over Facebook and Twitter make incredible proxies for casual use, and I’m sure this product will boost their sales. Many people who run Legacy, Vintage, and even Premodern tournaments are usually happy to allow proxy use, and this product will make it more normal for that to occur. For all of those players who have been kept out of these formats because of a high price tag, now is your time!
3. This is a collectible item that will hold value for a long time.
As I said before, this product will sell out very quickly. There are only a certain number of these packs, which means that the amount will decrease over time as more of them get opened. It’s the same thing with old booster boxes. Every time another Beta booster box gets opened, the rest of the Beta booster boxes will go up in price. It’s no different with this product. Every time a 30th Anniversary Edition gets opened, the others get a bit rarer. Over time this increases the price of the product. That means that yes, $1,000 might be a lot for this product, but what if I could show you the future, and in five years, you could sell it for $3,000? Or in ten years, it was $5,000? Would you buy it then?
Conclusion
It is interesting to observe all the different mindsets players have toward this product. For many players, their initial reaction to this product has been, “why would I spend $1,000 on fake cards?” I find this intriguing because my first reaction to this product was, “Only $1,000? This product will be worth much more in a couple of years.” Now, my reaction is different because I am a long-time collector and investor in Magic the Gathering. But just because I can make money off this product doesn’t necessarily mean it is a good product.
Everybody will have a different assessment of these packs based on their position in life and what matters to them. This product will likely be a home run for collectors and investors like me. Commander players may be happy that there are more dual lands in circulation to add to their decks or that the use of proxies may be more widely accepted now. Maybe the Vintage and Legacy format will see an influx of new players, and local tournaments may accept proxy use. But for Limited, Pioneer, Modern, and Standard players? I doubt most of them will love this product, and I have even seen some people demonizing anybody who buys it.
I know a lot of players will be upset by this, but for Wizards, I don’t see this being anything except for an absolute win. They’re going to make a lot of money, and they’re going to get tons of publicity, which is what the game needs to stay alive. The day that Wizards puts out a product like this, and nobody has any emotional reaction to it, is the day that Magic starts to die.
Final conclusion? If you don’t like this product or think it’s stupid, then it is not for you, and you should not buy it. But don’t demonize people that are excited about this product. Not every product is for everybody, and once again, that is okay. Magic is a very diverse game, and people get into Magic for all sorts of reasons. If you think this product is terrible, then guess what? You’re right! Don’t buy it. But if you think this product is good, then guess what? You’re also right! Have fun opening up your Power Nine and dual lands! (or your Purelaces and Sunglasses of Urza).
Agree or disagree with any of my points or opinions? Please let me know in the comments below!
Comments