
The Curse of the Black Lotus – How MtG Avoided Becoming Beanie Babies - jsnell
http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=392381112
======
zachjbart
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.

~~~
derefr
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?

~~~
arvinsim
I am not sure but I read somewhere that mechanical equivalents are covered by
the agreement on the Reserved list.

~~~
zachjbart
This is correct, they included all functional reprints on the reserved list.
That's why people are praying for snow-covered dual lands, but honestly those
will never see the light of day.

------
ap22213
My friends and I were at the Origins conference in Ohio. It must have been
some time around 1992, or so. We were there to play some AD&D. But, we
happened to be roaming the conference area, and some guy, wearing a tshirt and
MC Hammer pants, was at a booth selling these cards in a plastic container. It
was a new game, he said. Magic. He gave us a bunch of cards for free and some
rule books.

We ended up playing all night. We liked it so much that the next morning we
bought the rest of his plastic containers. They were filled with cards of all
types. These ended up being all 'alpha' cards. Little did we know, we were
stacked with Moxes, Black Lotuses, etc. As a group, we must have had dozens of
them.

We had no idea that they'd be worth anything. And, neither did Wizards of the
Coast. The original rules stated that you had to ante a card out of your deck,
just to play!

------
columbo
I can only speak to MtG when it first came out, I've been out of the loop
since eh since when 4th edition started or so. MtG exploded because it was
(and I hate to use this term): hackable. You could build creative exploits
into the game, at our local shop there was a no CoP rule (no circle of
protection) because they were considered too unfair; in hindsight this was a
ridiculous rule.

Very few games embrace the unknown dynamic nature as well as MtG did. They
would introduce cards that could be mixed with past-future cards almost on a
whim, creating moments of pure frenzy as people managed to build systems that
seemed indestructible.

It's crazy to think how much some of these cards are worth now:
[http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Beta/Savannah](http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Beta/Savannah)

~~~
MichaelGG
Yeah I tried to get back into it a couple years ago, because it is a cool
game. But it was just simply no fun to play; it's obviously a game that mainly
relies on being able to spend a lot of money buying power. Even at a tiny
little shop, everyone had these insane combos and whatnot. Really impossible
to win against without investing a lot.

~~~
defen
Draft! 3 unopened booster packs per person. Everyone opens up a pack, picks a
card, and passes to the right. Keep doing that until all the cards are gone.
Then everyone opens a new deck, and passes to the left this time. Repeat for
the third deck, going right. Minimum deck size is 40. This eliminates any sort
of monetary advantage and privileges people who can come up with good deck
combinations on the fly.

~~~
caf
If you like the deckbuilding mechanic without the collectible aspect, you
might like games like Dominion.

~~~
defen
Huge Dominion fan :)

------
scott_karana
Interesting Disqus comment by Jessie King: [1]

This story illustrates one of the most important aspects of economics, and one
that often seems to get lost in the rush - an economy needs to do something
_other_ than move money around. The concepts of money, value, and all that,
are all just a means to an end. In this case, the end is an enduring,
entertaining game, and they achieved it.

All too many real world economists seem to forget the fact that there is no
value to an economy unless it is serving some end beyond its own cyclic
process of simply shuffling value around.

1
[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=392381112#comment-1903437075)

~~~
dsr_
More to the point: when money is locked up in vaults, it doesn't contribute to
the economy. The value of money is in making it circulate around.

Doing that consistently is an unsolved problem. If money leaves your pocket as
fast as it flows in, you aren't building any wealth for your future, and there
are entire classes of things you can't do with your money: save up for a large
purchase, invest, buy anything that isn't in your current means. But when
money accumulates in the hands of a person so fast that they cannot spend it,
cannot do anything but stick it into long-term investments or play status
games, then the money isn't moving as fast as the rest of the economy needs.

~~~
digi_owl
I find that one can liken money to blood, in that both need to circulate.

------
noahbradley
The original art that goes along with many of these pieces is also seeing an
incredible rise in recent years. Lots of collectors with increasingly deep
pockets. Both for the old stuff and some of the new stuff. It's begun
breaching the low 5 figures and seems to be only going up.

As one of the artists, it's a welcome sight to see.

~~~
zachjbart
For those who don't play the game, this guy is one of the great ones. Prolific
and well-respected artist contracting for Wizards of the Coast.

~~~
noahbradley
Why thank you very much. I'm around Magic nerds everywhere I go, I suppose.

------
Magi604
I have a friend who was a hardcore wheeler and dealer of Magic cards back in
highschool. He would travel around North America, buying and selling cards.

He had all the old cards: Alpha, Beta, Arabian Nights, etc. He would also
cycle through lots of copies of the "Power 9" (the moxes, lotus, Library of
Alexandria, Ancestral recall, Timetwister, Timewalk).

We played in type 1 tournaments (it's a format that lets you use all the cards
ever printed, with a few banned cards that involved things like coin flips)
and he would lend me all these power cards for my decks. It was always a treat
to play a mox or lotus on the first turn and watch my opponent's eyes go wide
just from seeing an actual card like that in play.

When we went to college, he ended up "cashing out" and selling something like
$30,000 worth of cards to fund his first apartment. He still had tens of
thousands worth of cards, and over the years he was slowly selling them off to
fund various things.

That was years ago. Prices for the old cards today have massively jumped in
price in just a few years. I think if he had held on to those old cards
instead of selling them to buy an apartment, he would have made more money
just from them going up in value vs. renting out his apartment to pay off its
mortgage.

~~~
devindotcom
Dear me. I have binders full of old Revised, Dark, Legends, Ice Age, etc.
Maybe I should take them in and get them valued. On the other hand, I'm trying
to get my friends to play casually with me using the rather more basic old
sets.

~~~
kelukelugames
You can search by set and sort by price to see what your cards are worth. I'm
fairly sure the only big money comes from Revised dual lands and Force of Will
in Alliance.

[http://sales.starcitygames.com/buylist/](http://sales.starcitygames.com/buylist/)

~~~
cssmoo
Thanks for posting this. I have about 500 very old MTG cards (pre'95). Had no
idea they were worth anything. Going to sort them now :)

Probably all shit ones though.

~~~
ufo
You might find this site useful to cut down on the sorting:
[http://mtg.dawnglare.com](http://mtg.dawnglare.com)

~~~
cssmoo
Thanks - that's really helpful and a lot easier to navigate through. Also
prices are a little higher by the looks which is more fun :)

------
imjk
If someone today were to identify a consumer products bubble like the Beanie
Baby craze or baseball card bubble of the 90s, what would be the best way to
capitalize on it. I posited this to my economist friend and he suggested
something ancillary like conferences, a publication, or website. I agreed but
it'd have to guarantee me a very substantial return for me to go through the
work of say putting together a national Beanie Baby convention, on top of the
dread of hosting something that I have no interest in. So I'm curious if
Hacker Newsers have any other thoughts on how to capitalize on a situation
like this for a large return with less work involved.

~~~
JamesSwift
I agree that remaining ancillary is the way to go. It should allow you to
profit during the bubble while not assuming the full risk of being directly
involved. The example that comes to mind is Samuel Brannan [1] who monopolized
the sale of mining equipment and profited handsomely by selling to the miners
themselves. Focusing on something that has a tangible value outside of the
bubble (physical goods like shovels and picks) can help in cutting your losses
if the bubble bursts at an inopportune time.

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Brannan)

------
jaimebuelta
I ran a comic book shop for a couple of years (this was 8 years ago),
including a big deal of MtG (selling, organising tournaments, etc) [1]

From the point of view of the marketing, it is absolutely BRILLIANT. It was an
amazing well oiled machine that was printing money, while developing an
impressive game that has been around for 20 years and hasn't grown old. They
knew all the ins and outs of the game from the rules to the way to organise
tournaments and how to create a community that is absolutely obsessed with it,
playing everyday. It's easy enough that I've seen 8 year old kids playing, and
complex enough that a match can be determine by a very precise use of the
rules.

I've never really been a hard core player, but after watching it from the
point of view of a business, it's really impressive.

[1] In case anyone is interested in a low-tech business experience, I talked
about it here: [https://wrongsideofmemphis.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/i-was-
on...](https://wrongsideofmemphis.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/i-was-once-a-non-
tech-entrepreneur/)

------
UweSchmidt
Everyone in this thread seems to play along and never question the basic
nature of either Magic or Beanie Babies or any other artificial scarcity that
ties real value to a virtual ressource fully controlled by a company.

Without invalidating anyone's experience or denying anyone their liberty to do
whatever they like, I'd like to encourage looking for something "realer".
Maybe collect things that have meaning to you, or do actual investing, or try
out challenging and interesting games that are not tied to such a crazy
scheme.

------
bikamonki
WoC did not beat speculation, it sustained growth with a powerful dose of
American patriotism. Allow me to explain. Their business model is the same as
telcos, software, movies, mosanto, etc. It is called artificial scarcity, in
other words, find a legal (in the case of MtG a moral) way to control
distribution of a product or service that is otherwise naturally abundant.
Bare with me. I was there in the 90's and Kinkos would print a very decent set
of 6 The Black Lotuses (or Lotusi?) for a buck and change. Go home, cut them
nice, dress them with a sleve and go play with your proxy.

Artificial scarcity has this big problem (or natural cure): piracy.

So proxy playing went well for a few months b/c it did not matter, what
mattered was playing such a badass game! But suddenly patriotism kicked in:
"dude, I wont duel if you play proxies, that's not right, blah, blah, blah".
Proxies died eventually, they where going to be the PopCornTime of MtG, the
Napster.

Me and a couple of playmates decided otherwise, we thought MtG needed to be
open-source. We created a small set and played it along MtG cards. Nothing
fancy since we sucked at drawing but fun still. At the time we knew of other
players doing something similar (do remember that MtG is rooted on D&D where
players make 'everything'). We gave in eventually. (Btw, I am from SA so the
theme on my custom cards was Inca mythology). Another proxy attack came
online: the first online apps to play MtG where NOT official MtG apps. Those
too died eventually b/c, you know, official online digital cards where also
collectible and artificially scarce.

I sold my first two collections, the third one is sitting there on a closet
waiting for my kid to grow up and waiting for a home-use cardboard color
printer (or maybe an online service that prints and ships proxies or custom
cards).

In the open sharing economy, every day there is less space for artificial
scarcity business models, MtG will not escape this reality, twice.

~~~
bigger_cheese
As someone who occasionally plays Vintage and pretty regularly plays Legacy
(two of the formats which allow use of 'any' cards printed including many of
the more expensive cards in mtg's history). I dislike playing against proxies
because it warps the metagame.

Some cards are so prohibitively expensive that building decks around them (in
a non-proxied tournament) is simply not feesible. Even if the expensive cards
are objectively better (which is arguable in legacy's case) they are 'priced
out of the market' so you rarely see them in tournamnets this is stuff like
(Tabernacle, imperial recruiter, candelabra, grim tutor etc. in legacy's
case).

Sure some people will throw down a small cars worth of cash to play with "the
best cards" but they are outliers in any tournament once you allow proxies
suddenly everyone has access to "the best cards" and suddenly an entire room
of people are all playing the same deck. When I go to a tournament half of my
enjoyment comes about because of the diversity of opponents you will face
playing the same match round after round is not fun and thats what proxing
leads to.

A good compromise is to allow for a limited number of proxies typically 5-10
cards maximum this allows you to play with a fewcopies of cards you otherwise
wouldn't have access to but stops people going online to find the best deck
and proxying 100% of it (decks are typically 60 cards).

~~~
apocolyps6
you are completely missing the beauty of the Legacy format.

Cards like Tabernacle, Imperial Recruiter, candelabra, Grim Tutor are not
objectively more powerful than commonly used alternatives. These are role
players in a couple of decks and while some of these decks are quite good,
none of these decks are particularly dominant.

The metagame would not collapse in on itself if the guys that spend $10K+ on
foiled out decks and beta duals just decided to buy rare expensive staples
instead. If there was a way to pay money to have an unfair advantage in
tournaments there is no way in hell the people who basically do it for a
living wouldn't be doing it.

I play almost exclusively Legacy and almost exclusively with people who have
either no qualms with proxying or large disposable incomes. My local meta is
extremely varied. We have unsanctioned tournaments with large prize payouts so
people are very much incentivized to play the best deck possible. Proxying
allows the people with less disposable income to have options outside of the
typical 3-5 tier 2 budget decks.

~~~
bigger_cheese
I said they were arguably better not definitively better. Legacy is not so bad
and you get a pretty diverse set of decks (that's why I like playing legacy -
Hell I've played Goblins for something like 9 years and its still competitive)
but in vintage it's a huge issue. Our store has vintage events with proxies
sometimes and it's always proxied mana drains, proxy ancestral recall, proxy
timewalk, proxy moxes and lotus, there will be 20 of the same Grixis control
deck.

The deck won once and then next week every single person copied the wining
deck from previous week there is zero innovation and proxies just discourage
that further. I really want to play with Gush but I don't want to sit through
multiple rounds against the same deck over and over again which I know will
happen.

~~~
apocolyps6
To some extent, this is how the vintage format is intended to be played. The
format is all about being able to play with your power and other "broken
cards". The fact that each deck starts of with 3-5 pieces of power is kind of
a given. That being said, I think that is more of a problem with your local
meta.

For example mana drain has been on the decline because it is a slowish and
hard to cast card (relative to the format) so it is relegated to ~3of in hard
control decks, if that.

Actually, UR delver and monastery mentor strategies as well as Fish decks are
very popular in vintage ATM. These decks deviate significantly from "play all
the best cards Grixis control" lists.

I myself play White Trash because my meta happens to be very weak to turn 1
uncounterable Thalias, and I can play between 0 and 2 pieces of power

------
cdr
This seems like a poor time to claim Wizards has solved speculation. Five
years ago you would've been on firmer ground.

Thanks in part to Wizards aggressively growing the number of players and
former addicted teens now being in their 30s with commensurate disposable
income, MtG speculation today is at an all time high - speculators prefer the
cute term "MtG finance". There's orders of magnitude more speculators today
than there's been in 20 years, and it's driving up card prices incredibly -
not great if you want to _play_ the game. Active players going up year after
year after year provides fuel for speculators, but if the game ever has a down
year the speculators are due for a painful contraction if not a bubble
bursting.

------
devindotcom
"You'd pay, like, $3 for pack and get a bunch of random cards. But
occasionally there would be a rare and powerful something in there - a dragon,
an angel."

Heh heh. I think we all know what dragon and what angel he's talking about.

~~~
nvader
I started playing at 8th Edition, so my "classic" Dragon and Angel are Shivan
and Serra, respectively. Don't know how far back those two go, though.

~~~
ycombobreaker
It was the same in Revised edition, in the early 1990's. My grade-school
friends and I would, of course, fawn over the Serra Angel at lunchtime. But
nobody ever acquired a Shivan Dragon, we just read about it in the catalog!

------
mhomde
ah the dreaded "Power Nine" :)

I think the most infuriating thing about MtG was the obsolation of whole sets,
I get that's its' smart business from WoT and there are some tournament forms
where you can use different sets... but still, felt a little bit like playing
a game you never could win :)

Must give credit to MtG for introducing me to a world of cutthroat deal-making
that would give UN a run for their money. Trying to saw together swaps with
other collectors could be very challenging and rewarding. You learned the hard
way the times you were "scammed" and someone got the better of you.

~~~
sliverstorm
Axing sets may be part dollars and cents, but it's also important to the field
of play. It allows them to recover from unintended power creep ("Crap we
accidentally made a combo way too powerful", think Psychatog or Urza's Saga)
and it also makes it easier to balance the game. They have so many cards in
circulation they could never playtest the whole thing.

~~~
pyre
Sometimes they revise the rules to break things. I remember creating a deck
that could generate an infinite amount of life. Actually way able to play the
combo in an Emperor tournament. 6th edition rules about how damage resolved
scuttled that though.

------
hyperion2010
Hrm. Personally my favorite format is limited. I've been drafting with the
same group of friends since highschool and even loosing is fun because I'm
playing an intellectually challenging game and hanging out with friends.
Legacy is incredibly fun to play but competition is completely out of the
question so we end up playing on line. The thing that drives me to buy boxes
is that I want to play with my friends, the fact that someone might need a
card or three for one of their decks later is entirely secondary.

