4 ms·

Funny thing I noticed: they didn't mention the creation of the "Reserved List." For those who don't know, Wizards did everything in the NPR segment in the firs

Funny thing I noticed: they didn't mention the creation of the "Reserved List." For those who don't know, Wizards did everything in the NPR segment in the first couple years of magic. Despite this, and the show's tone doesn't really convey this, the secondary market was still there (for the times) and card scarcity was a big, big problem. Enter Chronicles. Wizards of the Coast reprinted basically everything they could from the first couple years of magic in one set. “Released in July 1995, this 125-card set was created in an effort to satisfy players’ demand for out-of-print cards.” This tanked the secondary market for cards. Investors who had been holding onto certain rare cards and treating them as an investment suddenly had the rug pulled out from under them. Long story short, a few years after this, Wizards created the Reserved List (tm), essentially a promise to NEVER reprint all cards contained within. Intended to create a safe haven for investors and collectors, this list covers the first ~5 years of Magic cards and almost all of its most expensive prints. It's a source of huge contention within the community as many people would like the reserved list to be abolished so they have access to play with cards they wouldn't be able to afford otherwise. Feel free to let me know if I missed something critical, was just an thought I had while listening to the show. The reserved list is a huge reason for the bubble's stability.

mhomde 12y ago
But but... only n00bs black with white border cards ;)
devindotcom 12y ago
Yeah, Chronicles and 4th edition really took a lot of the fun out of having some of the cool old cards. Of course, it also let you actually play with them, even if people would say "Oh man is that a... oh, it's 4th."
_raoulcousins 12y ago
The head designer of mtg (I'm getting this from his Drive to Work podcast) seems to imply that a lot of what was done in the early years was not nearly as planned as the NPR story says. From what I understand, they were printing as much as they could in the early years. Checking whether packs were selling above or below retail may have started after the disaster that was Fallen Empires (late 1994), which was so overprinted and underpowered that it still sells today for below retail. Interesting also that NPR said Wizards was very concerned with the secondary market prices, when Wizards spokespeople never mention secondary prices directly, referring to secondary prices indirectly with the phrase ``card availability''.
cdr 12y ago
Wizards actually came this close to doing away with the reserved list a few years ago. Abolitionists within the company actually got promos printed that violated it, so the issue eventually came to a head. There was a dramatic meeting and things abruptly reversed course: no more promos, no pushing the line at all. Players are likely stuck with the reserved list for the rest of the game's existence. The reserved list really does hurt great formats like Legacy that include cards covered by the reserved list. The market has gone absolutely crazy for those cards. Many Legacy-playable cards will set you back hundreds of dollars each, and a deck can hit $10,000+. This really limits the number of people that can play the format. Deciding to keep the reserved list also directly led to the creation of the Modern format, which tries to be Legacy but only with cards Wizards can reprint. Modern has not quite flopped, but is not all that popular considering the amount of resources Wizards has poured into it - and this is attributable to a lack of diversity of decks caused by the more restricted pool of cards. The reserved list kept the game going at the time, but in the end is probably one of the worst mistakes the company ever made.
- bsder 12y ago
  > Modern has not quite flopped, but is not all that popular considering the amount of resources Wizards has poured into it - and this is attributable to a lack of diversity of decks caused by the more restricted pool of cards. The fact that a card like Tarmogoyf goes for $200 shows that Modern is far from unpopular. Modern isn't as popular because it's 1) expensive and 2) complicated. To play Modern and have any hope of winning you had better be ready to throw down chunks of $1K and know the mechanics of Magic really well (a good Modern player is probably more knowledgeable than most low-level Magic judges). You also have to know which cards out of the 10,000+ can be used against you. etc. That's a big investment of time and money. Standard format -- $20 gets you into Sealed and Draft. $500 gets you the most expensive deck in Constructed. That's a LOT cheaper and you only have to know about a couple hundred cards. If they really wanted Legacy or Modern to be popular, the solution is really easy. Put big prizes behind winning them. Suddenly everybody will be playing Modern. They don't want Modern and Legacy to be driving things. They don't make money from those formats. They make money selling new cards--and that's all about Standard.
derefr 12y ago
Something I've never understood: the collectors value the Reserved cards for their rarity, not their usefulness, right? So you can do whatever you like as long as you don't reprint those exact cards. So why not just create a Chronicles-alike with new cards, which just so happen to be mechanically equivalent to the Reserved List cards?
- eli 12y ago
  Why not just print your own cards?
  - lbotos 12y ago
    They aren't tournament legal so people do (they call them proxies) but that's just for "fun".
    - eli 12y ago
      But a bunch of players could get together and decide to play the game however they want, right? If people are upset there are no "rare" cards to play, whey not create a league where certain proxy cards are legal?
      - derefr 12y ago
        Having asked this of a few friends who are MTG league judges: a lot of players feel a sort of "fiscal sympathy" for Wizards. They like the game, and want its continuing development to be incentivized, so they want to pay for cards rather than "pirating" them. Or rather, they want to act in such a way that cards still have value. It's similar to Bitcoin, in a way—nobody who holds the stuff is going around suggesting people should build their own private virtual economies instead.
- lbotos 12y ago
  It's kind of both rarity and usefulness. For example, Black Lotus, is rare but also incredibly useful. Creatures have mana cost (1 mana, 2 mana etc) in the game. To play creatures you need mana and mana cards can only be placed on the board 1 per turn. this means usually a deck with a some creatures having 1 mana cost so you can hopefully play them turn one, some with a cost of 2 for turn 2 ... etc. Black Lotus let's you get 3 mana when you play it. So you can put serious pressure if you have a BL because it's basically "turbo" and let's you put bigger creatures on the board "earlier" than normal. (In theory a creature costing 6mana wouldn't come into play until at least turn 6 because of the 1 mana played per turn.) There are also ways to use cards that copy other cards abilities so if you copied BL you could make a lot of mana fast. That "breaks" the game because everyone would start to use that tactic and you'd get a less diverse metagame. If WoTC made a "red lotus" that did the same exact thing as BL, the value of the Black lotus would drop (pissing off collectors) and they'd have to restrict this red lotus the same way (You can only have one BL per deck in the current rules) or the red lotus would end up more valuable than the black because it wouldn't be restricted to one per deck and people would want 4 of them. (the max of a regular card per deck.) This would also probably piss off current players because it "broke the meta" and would be expensive. The reserved list isn't the best solution in the world but it's pretty solid to avoid making even more people mad. Most people that have "invested" in a BL are still playing magic or involved in some way so why make them mad?
rasz_pl 12y ago
>"Reserved List." I dont quite get it. You can print and laminate whatever you want at costco/home depot, why arent players making their own 'reproductions'?
- apocolyps6 12y ago
  why aren't people printing their own money? a more serious answer: 1) The printing process is pretty difficult. There are multiple things you have to get right 2) There are people making fakes, most of them not good enough to pass as real cards. 3) The main point of having the real cards is to play in tournaments, where this stuff is enforced. If you are just playing with friends or trying out decks before settling on making one, it is common to make proxies of the cards you want. 4) Well made fake cards, like fake money will do Bad Things (tm) to the internal economy of the game.
- ObligatoryRef 12y ago
  There have been a lot of attempts, including a recent wave from China. However, there are unique features about how the cards are printed that make it difficult to reproduce: cards bend in a certain way, use a proprietary font, have a strip embedded between the layers, etc. High quality fakes can fool some people, but not usually those who can afford to fork over hundreds or thousands for the really valuable cards. (not to mention if you use fakes in sanctioned Magic and are caught, big penalties can ensue)

mhomde 12y ago

But but... only n00bs black with white border cards ;)

devindotcom 12y ago

Yeah, Chronicles and 4th edition really took a lot of the fun out of having some of the cool old cards. Of course, it also let you actually play with them, even if people would say "Oh man is that a... oh, it's 4th."

_raoulcousins 12y ago

The head designer of mtg (I'm getting this from his Drive to Work podcast) seems to imply that a lot of what was done in the early years was not nearly as planned as the NPR story says. From what I understand, they were printing as much as they could in the early years. Checking whether packs were selling above or below retail may have started after the disaster that was Fallen Empires (late 1994), which was so overprinted and underpowered that it still sells today for below retail. Interesting also that NPR said Wizards was very concerned with the secondary market prices, when Wizards spokespeople never mention secondary prices directly, referring to secondary prices indirectly with the phrase ``card availability''.

cdr 12y ago

Wizards actually came this close to doing away with the reserved list a few years ago. Abolitionists within the company actually got promos printed that violated it, so the issue eventually came to a head. There was a dramatic meeting and things abruptly reversed course: no more promos, no pushing the line at all. Players are likely stuck with the reserved list for the rest of the game's existence. The reserved list really does hurt great formats like Legacy that include cards covered by the reserved list. The market has gone absolutely crazy for those cards. Many Legacy-playable cards will set you back hundreds of dollars each, and a deck can hit $10,000+. This really limits the number of people that can play the format. Deciding to keep the reserved list also directly led to the creation of the Modern format, which tries to be Legacy but only with cards Wizards can reprint. Modern has not quite flopped, but is not all that popular considering the amount of resources Wizards has poured into it - and this is attributable to a lack of diversity of decks caused by the more restricted pool of cards. The reserved list kept the game going at the time, but in the end is probably one of the worst mistakes the company ever made.

bsder 12y ago
> Modern has not quite flopped, but is not all that popular considering the amount of resources Wizards has poured into it - and this is attributable to a lack of diversity of decks caused by the more restricted pool of cards. The fact that a card like Tarmogoyf goes for $200 shows that Modern is far from unpopular. Modern isn't as popular because it's 1) expensive and 2) complicated. To play Modern and have any hope of winning you had better be ready to throw down chunks of $1K and know the mechanics of Magic really well (a good Modern player is probably more knowledgeable than most low-level Magic judges). You also have to know which cards out of the 10,000+ can be used against you. etc. That's a big investment of time and money. Standard format -- $20 gets you into Sealed and Draft. $500 gets you the most expensive deck in Constructed. That's a LOT cheaper and you only have to know about a couple hundred cards. If they really wanted Legacy or Modern to be popular, the solution is really easy. Put big prizes behind winning them. Suddenly everybody will be playing Modern. They don't want Modern and Legacy to be driving things. They don't make money from those formats. They make money selling new cards--and that's all about Standard.

derefr 12y ago

Something I've never understood: the collectors value the Reserved cards for their rarity, not their usefulness, right? So you can do whatever you like as long as you don't reprint those exact cards. So why not just create a Chronicles-alike with new cards, which just so happen to be mechanically equivalent to the Reserved List cards?

eli 12y ago
Why not just print your own cards?
- lbotos 12y ago
  They aren't tournament legal so people do (they call them proxies) but that's just for "fun".
  - eli 12y ago
    But a bunch of players could get together and decide to play the game however they want, right? If people are upset there are no "rare" cards to play, whey not create a league where certain proxy cards are legal?
    - derefr 12y ago
      Having asked this of a few friends who are MTG league judges: a lot of players feel a sort of "fiscal sympathy" for Wizards. They like the game, and want its continuing development to be incentivized, so they want to pay for cards rather than "pirating" them. Or rather, they want to act in such a way that cards still have value. It's similar to Bitcoin, in a way—nobody who holds the stuff is going around suggesting people should build their own private virtual economies instead.
lbotos 12y ago
It's kind of both rarity and usefulness. For example, Black Lotus, is rare but also incredibly useful. Creatures have mana cost (1 mana, 2 mana etc) in the game. To play creatures you need mana and mana cards can only be placed on the board 1 per turn. this means usually a deck with a some creatures having 1 mana cost so you can hopefully play them turn one, some with a cost of 2 for turn 2 ... etc. Black Lotus let's you get 3 mana when you play it. So you can put serious pressure if you have a BL because it's basically "turbo" and let's you put bigger creatures on the board "earlier" than normal. (In theory a creature costing 6mana wouldn't come into play until at least turn 6 because of the 1 mana played per turn.) There are also ways to use cards that copy other cards abilities so if you copied BL you could make a lot of mana fast. That "breaks" the game because everyone would start to use that tactic and you'd get a less diverse metagame. If WoTC made a "red lotus" that did the same exact thing as BL, the value of the Black lotus would drop (pissing off collectors) and they'd have to restrict this red lotus the same way (You can only have one BL per deck in the current rules) or the red lotus would end up more valuable than the black because it wouldn't be restricted to one per deck and people would want 4 of them. (the max of a regular card per deck.) This would also probably piss off current players because it "broke the meta" and would be expensive. The reserved list isn't the best solution in the world but it's pretty solid to avoid making even more people mad. Most people that have "invested" in a BL are still playing magic or involved in some way so why make them mad?

rasz_pl 12y ago

>"Reserved List." I dont quite get it. You can print and laminate whatever you want at costco/home depot, why arent players making their own 'reproductions'?

apocolyps6 12y ago
why aren't people printing their own money? a more serious answer: 1) The printing process is pretty difficult. There are multiple things you have to get right 2) There are people making fakes, most of them not good enough to pass as real cards. 3) The main point of having the real cards is to play in tournaments, where this stuff is enforced. If you are just playing with friends or trying out decks before settling on making one, it is common to make proxies of the cards you want. 4) Well made fake cards, like fake money will do Bad Things (tm) to the internal economy of the game.
ObligatoryRef 12y ago
There have been a lot of attempts, including a recent wave from China. However, there are unique features about how the cards are printed that make it difficult to reproduce: cards bend in a certain way, use a proprietary font, have a strip embedded between the layers, etc. High quality fakes can fool some people, but not usually those who can afford to fork over hundreds or thousands for the really valuable cards. (not to mention if you use fakes in sanctioned Magic and are caught, big penalties can ensue)