> If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops? We really should. Generally, buying

> If we ban loot boxes in video games, why dont we ban Magic/Pokemon card boosters that you can buy from physical shops? We really should. Generally, buying and opening a $4 magic booster pack gives you a shot at a card worth $30+ (sometimes 10x more) on the secondary market, but it's a lot more likely you get card worth $1. This is clearly gambling. AFAIK, Wizards only gets away with this by pleading ignorance to the secondary market value of the cards and claiming the contents of each pack is worth the same amount. To this end, they can't discuss prices internally, even though they definitely know if a card is very powerful, it is likely to be sought after and expensive. Now a lot of you will say, "No one opens packs for cards, people just buy the cards they need." Well, that is easy to say when you have $500 dollars of disposable income to put towards a single Magic deck (which will be obsolete within the year due to rotating sets). As a child, I couldn't afford all the cards I needed for my decks, so I bought packs and cracked them. Specifically, I would buy a box of booster packs and hope to get lucky. This is what all my friends did, and AFAIK continues to be extremely common among kids. Moreover, despite feigned ignorance, they do know the relative desirability of each card in a given set. They test very heavily internally. Therefore, they can know how many copies the market will demand, and adjust the rarities accordingly to boost sales of booster packs to the secondary market (the card sellers are also buying bulk booster packs and cracking them to get their stock).