This is the sixth in a series of blog posts discussing the trading card game Magic The Gathering (hereafter shortened to just “Magic”) and its connections to the world of sales.
Oftentimes, before Magic sets are released, both players and financial speculators try to predict the quality of the coming set based on previous similar releases. In November of 2017, a set was released called Iconic Masters. Let me give you some background first before I continue.
In Magic: The Gathering, masters sets are a supplemental release product that consists of booster packs filled with reprints of generally high value and highly played cards. Iconic Masters was the fifth masters set, with the first four being Modern Masters in 2013, Modern Masters 2 in 2015, Eternal Masters in 2016, and Modern Masters 3 in 2017. The three Modern Masters sets were smash hits on the secondary market because they were sets that were printed every other year and focused on reprinting key/expensive cards that saw heavy play in the modern format. (For a refresher on the different Magic formats, see my third post here.) Eternal Masters was pretty successful in doing the same for legacy, albeit only one time. What prevented Eternal Masters from being truly successful was what is known as the Reserved List, Wizards of the Coast’s list of vintage cards that will never be reprinted. (For more on the Reserved List, see my ninth post here.)
Pre-orders for Magic sets typically go up months before the release date, well ahead of any spoilers about the set’s contents. Due to the previous success of the masters sets, expectations were high for the release of Iconic Masters. Wizards of the Coast had differed from the formula with Iconic Masters, theming the set to reprint what they considered the most “iconic” cards from past sets, instead of reprinting high value or highly played cards for a specific format.
However, as you may have guessed from my title, players’ high expectations for Iconic Masters were quickly dashed upon the set’s release. Demand was so low that this set, a product with an MSRP of $240, was being sold for a mere $140 just one week later. (For your reference, all other Masters sets up to this point had never sold for less than $200.)
Because masters sets are a premium supplemental product which are used as a vehicle to reprint expensive cards, booster packs of 15 cards are sold for the steep price of $10 per pack. The poor demand for Iconic Masters packs stemmed from the packs containing too many low value rare and mythic cards for the price paid. Spending $10 on a pack of 15 cards and opening a total value of less that $1 for all the cards combined is a pretty lousy return, and certainly a gamble I would not personally make. As soon as this information came to light, both players and financial speculators alike dropped Iconic Masters as fast as they had picked it up, making Iconic Masters officially Wizards of the Coast’s hottest garbage fire of 2017.
BoweryJE22