Magic's Concours D' Elegance

Hey Folks,

I haven't written in a while but I had a little bone to pick with the Magic: the Gathering (M:tG) community. The Reserved List. There are many strong opinions concerning this list and the inability for Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) to reprint the cards on it. Should it be abolished? Why keep it, it alienates a huge portion of the community! Kill Boomers! I am here to clarify why the issue is settled once and for all. The Reserved List should, and probably will never, go away.

This is why. A little history first, M:tG came out in August, 1993, the players were very few and far between in the early days. I know, because I was there. We had some ridiculously overpowered cards in the Power Nine, dual lands, and other uncommons such as Sol Ring and Demonic Tutor. There are other powerful, irreplaceable cards that came later. This doesn't explain why we can't have those cards again. Here's the reason for the infamous Reserved List for which I'll use an automotive analogy: Would you like to own a 1969 Shelby GT500KR? The key is that the numbers of these cars are limited to the amount the factory made, meaning that if they somehow produced more units, the cars would individually be worth less. "Well, that's just supply and demand, Mike."

Yeah, I get that. The difference is that I would like to own a Ferrari, or even a 1968 Dodge Dart SS (one of the quickest factory cars to not hit the street, ever). I don't have the $300,000+ needed to obtain either of them however. It is an exclusive group that owns these. I would like to be part of that group, but if everyone was, it wouldn't be exclusive anymore. 'Exclusive' literally means 'to exclude'. In this case, 'the peasantry'. To put it in perspective, if I wanted to simply drive a Lamborghini, I could rent one locally for about $1200 for 12 hours...and FEEL wealthy for half-a-day. I could also look at spending that money on a weekend trip to Las Vegas, or purchasing a single Vintage card such as an Unlimited Time Vault. Which of these would I want more. Choices, choices.

I have never thought, "Man, if they would only make a cheap version of [expensive Magic card] so I could play it." Okay, I did think that once about Imperial Seal, but there is one now, moving on. I saved my pennies back in 1998 and bought a Black Lotus, granted it was only $400, then again, it was rare for me to string together a few hundred bucks. I was broke all the time. Later, I started to collect other power and reserved-type cards (Moxes, Time Walks, Timetwisters, Wheels, etc.). I played Vintage for a little while back in the early 2000's, then I realized if I wanted to be serious about it, I needed to shell out some big dough...and find some other good Vintage players to test my mettle. Both were things that I was not prepared for and thus that idea fell by the wayside.

Fast forward to today, I still don't play all that much, and I share my knowledge and experience with newer players to help them train as a middling-power deck builder and brewer with a large collection. I still have a few of the RL cards, but I almost never play.

All this aside, the real point comes to yet another analogy. I remember passing through the Mediterranean Ocean via ship, when we stopped in Bodrum, Turkey (I realize that most people don't do this, but I was in the Navy, I couldn't help it). There were a bunch of tourist bars in town that the Navy folks warned us about. Some bars there will charge 100+Euros per drink. You might buy a couple of beers and find that you owe 300 euros, and be baffled, the menus don't have prices usually. The law there says you can't verbally dispute it, and if you duck out without paying you can be arrested. These bars price their drinks this way in order to keep the riff-raff out, and if you think the prices are high, then you are riff-raff. They normally don't tell you the prices because you should know better. Some folks were a bit miffed about this, but to be honest, those were some really nice bars. If I'd had that kinda dosh to toss around, I probably would have also used those places exclusively (no pun intended).

You might still be thinking, "Well, these are trading cards used in a game, and I want to play as well! The format would expand and be so much more fun if there were more people playing it."

Think about it another way, back to my car analogy, in modern auto-racing, do the drivers typically pay for their own cars? Or are they sponsored? How many people could jam out $2-3M for a high-end supercar, plus the team and parts and still be competitive? Even when short-changing the operation in auto-racing, the cars are still valued upwards of $400,000. Such as the Chevy Corvette in LeMans 24-hour, or for that matter when Dodge tried to snipe a win in the mid-90's with the Viper GTS, they came in at around $230K per car. They were good cars, but not quite at the level of their competition. So would it be better if these types of vehicles were made so that anyone could walk in and drive, maybe the same cost as a minivan?

In the same vein, does average Joe Schmuckatelly amble in and win a high-stakes, high-dollar Magic tournament with a $200 Vintage deck? I did it once (not really hi-dollar tourney, but I did win a Candelabra of Tawnos in an 8-player Vintage Throwdown with a RDW-Gobbo deck, sideboard chock full of cheap artifact hate). So yeah, it could happen, but it is not very likely, I know that I'd never be able to pull that off again.

Also, there have been a lot of people burned by reprint price drops. Some poor fool bought a playset of Japanese Tempest Wastelands for $320 and is kicking him- or herself now (what are they $20 ea?). Imagine if you had paid $8,000 for a beta Mox Emerald and they reprinted it a year later. Even if it were 1/300, it would absolutely kill the price of the originals, because they would be LESS exclusive. Granted, the type of person who pays that kind of money for cards usually has that money to lose, but it would still suck.

I am speaking as someone who owns a beta Black Lotus, currently valued between $40K-50K though I only paid $400 for it. I probably wouldn't really feel bad if the price dropped, even as much as 95%, because that is still way-y-y-y more than I paid for it, but I would rather that it didn't. There are other folks who spent far more, for instance: Post Malone's purported $800K on a Beta Lotus Artist Proof.

I've known at least two people who paid for houses using the proceeds of their cards. This would not be possible without the Reserved List. One of those guys never thought that he would ever own those cards, but is super glad that he managed to find a P9 set for a scandalously low price, then sell them to buy a house. I don't really feel envious of them either. I actually feel that their stories give hope and make others feel good for them. Someone still had to pay large quantities of money to get the cards they wanted from my friends, so the buyers should be happy too (not because they spent money, but because they wanted to spend that money on those cards).

To recap, the reasons for the Reserved List are: Exclusion, Envy, and Greed. The cards are worth more than others and that value limits the contestants. The result of this is that the cards become very desirable, thus very valuable (despite having limited usefulness due to the exclusive format), and can make (or break) someone's financial day. I don't think they could print any number of cards that would not negatively impact the secondary market; For example: less than the original amount of Power Nine (~1,000 Alpha, ~2,000 Beta, 7,000 UNL) would make the cards more exclusive, while higher numbers lessen the need for them.

Why rock the boat? The upsides are manifold, meanwhile, amongst the plentiful inverses would be that everyone could be the douchebag that brings a three-color Elf deck with Gaea's Cradle and dual lands to Commander. You don't want that, do you? Besides, in Commander, most folks play with proxies at casual tables anyways, while in most cases I have seen, Vintage often allows for proxies to get max participation. Tournaments like that technically can't be sanctioned, and stores that permit them in official events can receive penalties from WotC if they get reported (and they probably will, given our record everything/Tik-Tok culture).

If none of those arguments sway you, then understand that WotC made a promise to their Gen-X players in the mid-90's to protect that aspect of the game (and secondary market). I think that despite the many, many corporate mistakes they have made over the last thirty years with regards to the game, that is the one iron-clad promise that they have held true to, and I applaud them for keeping their word despite some very good incentives not to.