6 ms·

Who thought letting children gamble was a good idea? But here we are 30 years later and Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon cards are still a thing. Most people do

Who thought letting children gamble was a good idea? But here we are 30 years later and Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon cards are still a thing. Most people don't even recognize them as gambling. Just because a slot machine has a guaranteed minimum payout, which in this case is 10 pieces of cardboard with nice pictures on them, doesn't make it not gambling.

kjkjadksj 4y ago
The new formulation is a lot stronger though. Most kids probably bought one pack of cards perhaps, got burned, never bought another random pack. Now people cant watch a sporting event without gambling.
randopos 4y ago
Gacha, loot boxes, trading cards, etc... all proven super effective at getting kids to spend money on what is essentially nothing. Imo the stuff that is essentially gambling but not regulated and taxed as such is worse than things that are obviously gambling like casinos, sports betting, etc...
- hinkley 4y ago
  Didn’t they ban this in Europe?
- dvzk 4y ago
  Casinos typically have an RTP percentage of 90-99%. Still extremely bad, but what is the average market valuation of an MTG booster pack? 10 or 15 percent?
hinkley 4y ago
MtG is baseball cards for a different kind of nerd. This is much older than Wizards of the Coast
- 93po 4y ago
  Did baseball cards have artificial scarcity? Did you buy them in packs with unknown cards in them? Legitimate question, I have no idea
  - PebblesRox 4y ago
    According to my research just now, they were initially included as a bonus to another product, like gum or cigarettes! Presumably you didn't know which ones you were going to get and had to trade around if you wanted a complete collection. According to this source [0], the trend switched from cigarettes to gum after it became illegal to sell cigarettes to children. I think the scarcity that led to certain cards becoming more valuable was incidental rather than intentional, but I'm not an expert. [0] https://www.amerlegends.com/the-history-of-marketing-baseball-cards/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20in%20the%201880's,to%20sell%20tobacco%20to%20children https://www.amerlegends.com/the-history-of-marketing-basebal.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card
  - buttercraft 4y ago
    Yes to both. Bought them I was growing up. Got mostly the same crap cards over and over it seemed. Each pack also had a stick of gum in it.
JimWestergren 4y ago
Take a look at the latest crazyness cash grab from Wizards the creators of Magic: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/celebrate-30-years-magic-gathering-30th-anniversary-edition-2022-10-04 https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/celebrate... $999 for 4 packs of 15 cards in which 2 are rare. Not real magic cards - not valid for tournament play.
- jedberg 4y ago
  Man I wish I knew where my magic cards were. I have all of those rare cards from their original editions! I had a deck that was five colors, almost all rare, and only multilands. I can't even imagine what that would be worth today (or if they're even tournament legal anymore, I haven't checked the rules in about 25 years).
  - JimWestergren 4y ago
    They are probably tournament legal in old school (cards printed in 93/94 which I play with my son) and in something called Vintage. With multilands you must mean the Dual Lands and they have a lot of value. https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/6 https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/6 - even if they are from the revised set and have been played with we speak about at least $200 each and you probably had 20 or so in your deck. If by original editions you mean Alpha (black border, round corners) and Beta (black border) - they have insane value depending on which cards of course. Do you remember if the cards had black borders? Would love to see some photos of your deck :)
    - jedberg 4y ago
      I had about 20 mulitlands in the deck (all in sleeves) as well as a whole second set of pristine multilands. And yes, mostly Beta (black border), a few Alphas, and a lot of Unlimited, Arabian Nights, and Legends still in sleeves. I stopped collecting after that. > Would love to see some photos of your deck :) Would love to be able to find them and take those photos!! I actually ran a business selling Magic cards back in '95. I'd go buy cases at wholesale and then sell them out of my trunk at retail with my buddy. Instead of taking profit, we'd open one pack for every one we sold, so I got all my money back and a shitload of rare cards. It was my most successful business in my career!
_osorin_ 4y ago
Unfortunately booster packs are the only way they can profit and create a meta game. The biggest scam of them all are the printing ratios. They will print a fairly strong game breaking and defining card but only in short prints meaning you will probably get 1 copy out of 2 boxes (boxes prices above 80$ depending on the game). Hence the high demand and low supply will rule even the secondary market adjusting prices the way the companies intended. That's how a game dies.
chimeracoder 4y ago
> Who thought letting children gamble was a good idea? But here we are 30 years later and Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon cards are still a thing. Most people don't even recognize them as gambling. Even under the least charitable framing imaginable, there's a world of differences between trading card games and slot machines. For starters, slot machines are not random; the payouts are are specifically preprogrammed to manipulate users into the patterns of behavior that maximize playtime and minimize total volume of payouts. When you learn about how they really work, it's actually shocking that slot machines are legal at all, because of the amount of explicit deception that goes on, compared to even roulette, craps, or even blackjack. Not to mention that trading card games are multifacted; not only is it possible to participate in those games without interfacing with any of the aspects that could be construed as "gambling", but it's a known and actively encouraged set of playstyles. From the perspective of many users (including the most engaged ones), those aspects don't even exist, insofar as they don't interface with them at all.
Auracle 4y ago
I go against the grain here and think that if there’s a time for people to learn their “gambling lesson” it’s when they’re kids/teens and can’t lose their entire retirement. I doubt it turns anyone into a gambling addict but it could show them how much money you can waste on it with no return. Of course I have an adult friend that has bragged many times in the past about how much he sold individual MTG cards for but never seems to tally up how much he spent to get them in the first place, so…
bsder 4y ago
> Just because a slot machine has a guaranteed minimum payout, which in this case is 10 pieces of cardboard with nice pictures on them, doesn't make it not gambling. I mark the difference as to whether you can simply buy the thing you want. For MTG and its ilk, you can buy a card instead of open packs. In addition, you can sell any card you get. This is a little different from normal gambling in that these card games have an upside that is okay and a downside that is generally capped. This is different from some of the online "gacha games" where you MUST gamble, and, even then, you are not guaranteed to cough up the card you want. And, even if you get the card, you generally can't sell it to somebody else. These have infinite downside and are flat-out gambling and need to be treated as such.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  > For MTG and its ilk, you can buy a card instead of open packs. That's false. The manufacturer (Wizards of the Coast) does not sell individual cards. You have to gamble and buy random packs. You're describing buying specific cards from people who have done the gambling already by buying packs and opening them.
  - bsder 4y ago
    > That's false. The manufacturer (Wizards of the Coast) does not sell individual cards. You have to gamble and buy random packs. This is true but glosses over the fact that you bought a thing. And you can buy and sell that thing--as can others. In addition, most of the "boxes" that were sold for MTG were almost always net positive in terms of money spent. Yeah, make sure you preorder and don't buy from scalpers. However, if you spent $200 on cards you generally got slightly more than $200 in value if you kept them in good shape and then cashed them in later. Contrast this to something like Genshin Impact where you simply cannot dodge the gacha mechanics in any way, shape or form AND you have zero idea what the probabilities are and whether the game company is being consistent (they almost certainly are not). Side note: This example is, of course, one of the reasons why WotC is getting hammered for the 30th anniversary box. The MTG community appears to be quite sensitive to getting taken for a ride. So, there's clearly some difference between MTG-like games and pure gambling or gacha mechanics.

kjkjadksj 4y ago

The new formulation is a lot stronger though. Most kids probably bought one pack of cards perhaps, got burned, never bought another random pack. Now people cant watch a sporting event without gambling.

randopos 4y ago

Gacha, loot boxes, trading cards, etc... all proven super effective at getting kids to spend money on what is essentially nothing. Imo the stuff that is essentially gambling but not regulated and taxed as such is worse than things that are obviously gambling like casinos, sports betting, etc...

hinkley 4y ago
Didn’t they ban this in Europe?
dvzk 4y ago
Casinos typically have an RTP percentage of 90-99%. Still extremely bad, but what is the average market valuation of an MTG booster pack? 10 or 15 percent?

hinkley 4y ago

MtG is baseball cards for a different kind of nerd. This is much older than Wizards of the Coast

93po 4y ago
Did baseball cards have artificial scarcity? Did you buy them in packs with unknown cards in them? Legitimate question, I have no idea
- PebblesRox 4y ago
  According to my research just now, they were initially included as a bonus to another product, like gum or cigarettes! Presumably you didn't know which ones you were going to get and had to trade around if you wanted a complete collection. According to this source [0], the trend switched from cigarettes to gum after it became illegal to sell cigarettes to children. I think the scarcity that led to certain cards becoming more valuable was incidental rather than intentional, but I'm not an expert. [0] https://www.amerlegends.com/the-history-of-marketing-baseball-cards/#:~:text=For%20example%2C%20in%20the%201880's,to%20sell%20tobacco%20to%20children https://www.amerlegends.com/the-history-of-marketing-basebal.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseball_card
- buttercraft 4y ago
  Yes to both. Bought them I was growing up. Got mostly the same crap cards over and over it seemed. Each pack also had a stick of gum in it.

JimWestergren 4y ago

Take a look at the latest crazyness cash grab from Wizards the creators of Magic: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/celebrate-30-years-magic-gathering-30th-anniversary-edition-2022-10-04 https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/celebrate... $999 for 4 packs of 15 cards in which 2 are rare. Not real magic cards - not valid for tournament play.

jedberg 4y ago
Man I wish I knew where my magic cards were. I have all of those rare cards from their original editions! I had a deck that was five colors, almost all rare, and only multilands. I can't even imagine what that would be worth today (or if they're even tournament legal anymore, I haven't checked the rules in about 25 years).
- JimWestergren 4y ago
  They are probably tournament legal in old school (cards printed in 93/94 which I play with my son) and in something called Vintage. With multilands you must mean the Dual Lands and they have a lot of value. https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/6 https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/6 - even if they are from the revised set and have been played with we speak about at least $200 each and you probably had 20 or so in your deck. If by original editions you mean Alpha (black border, round corners) and Beta (black border) - they have insane value depending on which cards of course. Do you remember if the cards had black borders? Would love to see some photos of your deck :)
  - jedberg 4y ago
    I had about 20 mulitlands in the deck (all in sleeves) as well as a whole second set of pristine multilands. And yes, mostly Beta (black border), a few Alphas, and a lot of Unlimited, Arabian Nights, and Legends still in sleeves. I stopped collecting after that. > Would love to see some photos of your deck :) Would love to be able to find them and take those photos!! I actually ran a business selling Magic cards back in '95. I'd go buy cases at wholesale and then sell them out of my trunk at retail with my buddy. Instead of taking profit, we'd open one pack for every one we sold, so I got all my money back and a shitload of rare cards. It was my most successful business in my career!

_osorin_ 4y ago

Unfortunately booster packs are the only way they can profit and create a meta game. The biggest scam of them all are the printing ratios. They will print a fairly strong game breaking and defining card but only in short prints meaning you will probably get 1 copy out of 2 boxes (boxes prices above 80$ depending on the game). Hence the high demand and low supply will rule even the secondary market adjusting prices the way the companies intended. That's how a game dies.

chimeracoder 4y ago

> Who thought letting children gamble was a good idea? But here we are 30 years later and Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon cards are still a thing. Most people don't even recognize them as gambling. Even under the least charitable framing imaginable, there's a world of differences between trading card games and slot machines. For starters, slot machines are not random; the payouts are are specifically preprogrammed to manipulate users into the patterns of behavior that maximize playtime and minimize total volume of payouts. When you learn about how they really work, it's actually shocking that slot machines are legal at all, because of the amount of explicit deception that goes on, compared to even roulette, craps, or even blackjack. Not to mention that trading card games are multifacted; not only is it possible to participate in those games without interfacing with any of the aspects that could be construed as "gambling", but it's a known and actively encouraged set of playstyles. From the perspective of many users (including the most engaged ones), those aspects don't even exist, insofar as they don't interface with them at all.

Auracle 4y ago

I go against the grain here and think that if there’s a time for people to learn their “gambling lesson” it’s when they’re kids/teens and can’t lose their entire retirement. I doubt it turns anyone into a gambling addict but it could show them how much money you can waste on it with no return. Of course I have an adult friend that has bragged many times in the past about how much he sold individual MTG cards for but never seems to tally up how much he spent to get them in the first place, so…

bsder 4y ago

> Just because a slot machine has a guaranteed minimum payout, which in this case is 10 pieces of cardboard with nice pictures on them, doesn't make it not gambling. I mark the difference as to whether you can simply buy the thing you want. For MTG and its ilk, you can buy a card instead of open packs. In addition, you can sell any card you get. This is a little different from normal gambling in that these card games have an upside that is okay and a downside that is generally capped. This is different from some of the online "gacha games" where you MUST gamble, and, even then, you are not guaranteed to cough up the card you want. And, even if you get the card, you generally can't sell it to somebody else. These have infinite downside and are flat-out gambling and need to be treated as such.

hypertele-Xii 4y ago
> For MTG and its ilk, you can buy a card instead of open packs. That's false. The manufacturer (Wizards of the Coast) does not sell individual cards. You have to gamble and buy random packs. You're describing buying specific cards from people who have done the gambling already by buying packs and opening them.
- bsder 4y ago
  > That's false. The manufacturer (Wizards of the Coast) does not sell individual cards. You have to gamble and buy random packs. This is true but glosses over the fact that you bought a thing. And you can buy and sell that thing--as can others. In addition, most of the "boxes" that were sold for MTG were almost always net positive in terms of money spent. Yeah, make sure you preorder and don't buy from scalpers. However, if you spent $200 on cards you generally got slightly more than $200 in value if you kept them in good shape and then cashed them in later. Contrast this to something like Genshin Impact where you simply cannot dodge the gacha mechanics in any way, shape or form AND you have zero idea what the probabilities are and whether the game company is being consistent (they almost certainly are not). Side note: This example is, of course, one of the reasons why WotC is getting hammered for the 30th anniversary box. The MTG community appears to be quite sensitive to getting taken for a ride. So, there's clearly some difference between MTG-like games and pure gambling or gacha mechanics.