
Investing in “Magic” Cards - miobrien
https://kotaku.com/forget-bitcoin-these-guys-invest-in-magic-cards-1821624926
======
empath75
My original magic card collection was stolen out of a gym bag when I parked in
a not-great side street in Philadelphia in the late 1990s. Some homeless guy
probably dumped it in the trash a few blocks away.

At the time, the collection was worth about $3000 -- it was revised and
antiquities up to about Ice Age-era cards. I had, I think, 5 of the power nine
cards and a full set of 4 of each dual land. It would probably worth close to
$100k or more today if I sold everything at face value.

Even so, the return isn't _that_ great, compared to other things you could
have invested in:

Today an unlimited black lotus is about $4k. In 1995, it was about $300, if I
remember correctly, maybe even a little bit less.

If you bought a black lotus in 1995, you'd have about a 1,300% return. If you
had bought Hasbro stock instead, you'd have about 700% return.

if you had bought apple stock, you'd have had 12,000% return, and the market
for stocks is a lot more liquid than the market for magic cards.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
Of course there were better investments, but you are cherry-picking. Apple in
1995 wasn't exactly an obvious stock to buy. At that time, Apple was thought
to be practically dead. How many people had the vision (or rather the luck) to
pick a stock providing more than 1300% return?

A realistic benchmark would be S&P500, and that would give you a 150% return.

~~~
gnicholas
Yes, but GP is also cherry-picking cards. Black Lotus was a valuable card back
then, but that doesn't make it a good investment. If they had printed other
cards with similar powers, for example, it wouldn't be worth as much as it is.

A better comparison would be unopened packs of Magic cards vs the S&P. I don't
know how that comes out though.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
I was taking Black Lotus as obvious because it has been universally regarded
as the best Magic card since the early days of Magic. But yes, you're right,
the risk you mention existed. They could very well have reprinted the card
during these years (it would be a really bad move, but you never know who's
going to buy a company and gut it). So it's hard to determine what's a fair
comparison.

~~~
jldugger
There's also the risk that one of the myraid CCGs replaces MtG. Or in 1995,
the risk that CCGs fade in general.

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CydeWeys
I got involved in Magic speculation as a small-time "side gig" long after I
was done playing regularly. Primarily I would buy some boosters and/or a
booster box of a high value limited release (like Modern Masters), hold onto
it for 1-2 years, then sell it on eBay. I did the same thing with the
collector's edition of a WoW expansion awhile back too.

I've since stopped doing it because the hassle wasn't worth the relatively
paltry profits from it (a couple hundred bucks a year). It was worth doing in
college but not anymore. Also, having to hold onto physical inventory is
annoying, especially if you move between acquisition and sale, which I did
frequently.

My advice would be to not get involved unless you're going big and have the
storage space to match. Then through economies of scale it can be worth your
time ... if you don't mind spending lots of time managing eBay auctions or a
site and packing/shipping things, anyway.

~~~
carnifexetal
Yeah, the only independent guy I knew to succeed in this carried about $10,000
worth of cards on him from tourney to tourney. You really have to operate at
scale for it to be worth the effort, and like you said...at that point, why
not something else?

~~~
CydeWeys
It's more "worth it" if Magic is already a huge hobby that you devote a lot of
time to anyway, and if your time isn't otherwise that valuable. The delta of
the speculative aspect of it thus becomes a lot less if you're already fully
immersed into it, already going into tournaments, already researching
strategies and new sets, and already buying/selling/trading cards for deck-
building purposes.

I made a decent amount of money off the MechWarrior collectible miniatures
game back when I was still in high school. Well, I didn't "make" money, but I
essentially got to play for free with a collection that was worth a couple
thousand dollars, financed by making smart trades and selling miniatures that
I wasn't using or had extras of. I spent a lot time selling stuff on eBay,
wrapping packages and going to the post office; to this day most of my seller
feedback # is still traceable to these activities. Of course, I was already
spending hours a week playing this game in hobby shops and hours more
participating in online forums.

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pmoriarty
_" Chang can remember a time when Black Lotuses were pushed around card shops
for $50, or blithely traded for mediocre creatures by people who didn’t
respect its power. Things are different now. In 2013 a 9.5-graded Alpha Black
Lotus sold for $27,000 at auction."_

I'd expect old Magic cards would not be difficult to forge, and would be very
surprised if it didn't happen.

People forge art, they forge money, why not $27k Magic cards?

~~~
kenoyer130
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-xnjDevAzE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-xnjDevAzE)
. Fakes are indeed a part and fear of the market. Note the cards have specific
tests that weed most out, due to the amount of effort needed. The light test
and spring test for example.

------
GFischer
Considering mtGox started out as a Magic the Gathering exchange, it's not the
first time I see it :)

As long as M:TG stays popular, this sounds like a good investment. I wonder if
M:TG will ever give in to their famous and controversial reprint policy (or
print a functional equivalent or something).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox)

[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/official-
repri...](https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/official-reprint-
policy-2010-03-10)

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
M:TG has had an amazing run for 20+ years, but I think the writing is on the
wall with the popularity of digital card games.

There will always be some type of antiques/historians market, but for the
masses the next 20 years will have to be about playing magic style games
through mobile devices and AR.

Seeing your card of a fire breathing dragon display in the real world and blow
fire on your enemy is just too much WOW for the next generation to stay
enthused about physical cards.

~~~
GFischer
I quit physical cards, and now play Hearthstone and other online games (I
won't play MTGO until they fix their client, and they also take too much
time).

Not sure if the wow factor should matter that much, but definitely digital is
way more convenient.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
The Wow factor doesn't matter at all for the "mature" player. I'm convinced
that games like Chess in their traditional form until the end of humanity.
After 20+ hours the WOW effect wears off and the game has to appeal on a
strategic level.

But if you are talking about the < 10 yr. old demographic that is vital for
when most people START becoming players, it is huge. You have to have
something really cool to show them to pull kids away from an XBOX or Nintendo
Switch.

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genofon
Just want to share this vey interesting channel on the topic, Alpha
Investments: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTp-
iVOtTrKau0skmfZlo5Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTp-iVOtTrKau0skmfZlo5Q)
I'm no into magic but I enjoy the explanation and history

~~~
kleff
Seconding this! I have no interest in ever playing Magic or any other
collectible card game, but I still love watching his videos.

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reificator
As a slight tangent, I find it very odd that the article refers to Magic as a
kid's game multiple times.

As a kid I definitely played a lot of Magic, and much more than I do now.

But when I was trying to put together a playgroup, no one was interested in
something so complex, and I went to multiple nerd schools. Pokemon was played,
and later Yu-Gi-Oh, but very little Magic. Across three different schools I
managed to put together a group of about six kids who cared at all about it.

Meanwhile, going to any comic book store, or Friday Night Magic, there were
dozens of people in their 20s and 30s. Usually even a dozen older than that.
As kids we were always outnumbered.

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scottdevries
I've been actively in the MTG Market for over 10 years, selling and trading
cards at [http://deckbox.org](http://deckbox.org).

As of last year, I started offloading my collection. It's been a good run, and
I have had fun with the game, but the amount of product produced by Wizards of
the Coast has increased dramatically along with the player base. I believe we
are approaching a glut and the supply/demand curve is beginning to swing the
other way.

~~~
lbotos
As a player, I'm mildly excited by this. I would love to live in a world where
price was not a limiting factor for a streamlined deck. I don't really want to
pay $40 for a piece of cardboard.

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yermom
there was a time in the 90's where i was between jobs and enrollments where i
was trading for cards that were easily sold for cash. Howling Mines,
Nevinyrral's Disk, Birds of Paradise, dual lands. any of those were $5 cash,
almost instantly. most duals cost me about $3. it's insane what they go for
now.

trading has gotten way more formal and less fun now. also they print way too
many garbage cards that are worth nothing. the first few sets they couldn't
keep up with demand, and those are the cards that are still pretty expensive.

now the sets are hit and miss. back in the day, i think stores and lack of
supply and general usage of the internet kept rares in the couple of dollar
range and up. now there are "bulk rares" that are like $.10 or so. or there
are staple cards that are common that are $5 or more, and foil ultra rares
that can be triple digits in price even in print, but those are the exception,
not the rule.

still having some of the old cards and seeing the prices on the secondary
market, my fear would be that some new Hasbro CEO could come in and just
rescind the reserved list and basically just print money in the short term and
rerelease the paper cards like they did online.

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swang
I watched a lot of Rudy's videos on YouTube. He was really entertaining and
informative on all aspects of the MTG/CCG business. Not only the value of the
cardboard and boxes but how much it costs to start up a game card shop. He has
a series on his channel about him renting a property and talks about the cost
(apparently signage is very expensive!)

A thing they didn't mention much in the article, but Rudy talks a lot about,
is he buys tons of unopened boxes from older sets and just holds them then
slowly follows prices on ebay and the like and sells off boxes here and there.
Don't consider Rudy some kind of scrappy fighter, as he is definitely a big
dog in this game.

I didn't end up doing anything after watching his videos, because as someone
below already mentioned, there is a huge cost in storing them and reselling
them, then also hoping WOTC doesn't reprint the cards you were holding onto.
All of this kinda makes it not worth the effort for what amounts to maybe +$20
in profit per box after keeping them for 2 years. Maybe that sounds good to
someone else, but I am space-sensitive (I live in San Francisco).

I heard about Rudy right nearly when he started making videos 1.5 years ago
(due to watching some mtg summaries, his channel was recommended to me by
youtube), and if you had started then, _maybe_ it would be worth it. now that
this article has been published I think the cat's out of the bag and you're
going to see a large number of people trying to buy up mtg boxes/cards. Mostly
though I'm worried that once WOTC gets a bigger whiff that there's this
demand, they'll go the way of sports card producers and comic book makers of
the 90s. Create more product than there is demand and cause the markets to
crash.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> That ensures an environment where a huge swathe of the player base will
never get the chance to play with, say, a Black Lotus or a Time Walk.

Weeell, that's not strictly true. Anyone can "play with a Black Lotus"\- just
not in a sanctioned game. There is nothing Wizards (or anyone, really) can do
to stop you from printing out copies of any M:tG card you wish and play with
it against your friends, with similarly copied cards. The only requirement is
that your opponents agree to it.

In fact, the practice is quite common among competitive players, common enough
to have a name: the practice of copying the cards is called "proxying", the
copies themselves "proxies". In the case of competitive players, they are
useful because one needs to practice with a deck even when they don't have the
necessary cards at hand (competitive players will often borrow their cards
from friends, or even trade in the last minute, just before a tournament). On
the other hand, although this is completely a guess, my hunch is that casual
players would be much more averse to accepting proxies in their game, than
competitive players are.

I digress. My point is that perhaps it's not just Wizards' promise to not
reprint the cards on the reserved list that is keeping their prices high (and
rising), it's also the willingness of the M:tG playerbase to embrace organised
play, in the way it's provided as a service by Wizards. Players buy cards,
yes, but they also buy a whole set of social conventions regarding their use,
including the rules of the game (nothing stopping you and your friends for
making up your own rules...) and the rules of Organised Play.

I guess I'd go as far as to say that what's important to the players is not
really the physical cards themselves -the Power Nine and so on- but the
opportunity to take part in more or less organised events, with clearly
defined rules, enforced by an impartial authority (who happens to be the same
people who sell the game).

In that sense, the cards will only ever go out of fashion when the game itself
does- and that will happen when Wizards is no longer able to support it
financially.

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TaylorGood
Small story; when I was a kid my father helped MTG secure the buildings for
their new HQ. After move in they held an open house and I met the CEO. He
pulled maybe a dozen Black Lotus cards out of his pocket. As an avid fan at
the time, he reached god status but of course the CEO had those cards.

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avryhof
Damn. I haven't played much since about 1998 or so, and still have several of
my decks from then, and some of the cards I used were quite valuable at the
time.

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AcerbicZero
Pffft, everyone knows the real money is made by investing in CS:GO skins. /s

~~~
sleibrock
Jokes aside, the price on the Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore is pretty crazy. The
lowest estimate I can find for a Factory New is somewhere in the 10,000 keys
area (keys are 2.49usd/ea).

~~~
AcerbicZero
Wow....I had no idea things had gone that far. Maybe I should log into my
CS:GO account and see if I've got anything valuable left over.

