Supply // Demand

Supply // Demand

Noah Anselm Zach

Let’s go back to 1993. Frosted tips, pizza bagels, and Metallica. That’s the spirit link to the time where Second Edition of Dungeons and Dragons was the only game on the block; we calculated THAC0, rolled 3d6 down the line, and memorized spells using the vancian magic system. Magic Gathering hit the scene and sold like gangbusters. A game with such principles behind it had never been encountered before. The trading card game. On the scale of roulette to go, it occupies the space directly in the middle. A game where you have a different hand every time like poker, which allows the game to be strategically interesting, and also a game like chess, where you and your opponent each have limited resources and strategies vary from trading resources with your opponent and playing to an endgame, like grandmaster Karpov, who plays boring moves until you go to sleep hitherto Karpov waking you up to notify you that you’ve lost to time, or focusing on winning as quickly as possible, like an aggressive Paul Morphy with his wild and crazy tactics. The changes in style are part of what makes the game compelling. Because it’s a trading card game, you can play whatever cards you want, and develop your own style as a player, for example, if I hear Corey Burkhart is at an event, I know he is playing a slow control deck with Cryptic Command and Gurmag Angler, and Patrick Sullivan never leaves home without his Goblin Guides. The great part about magic, or MTG for short, is that it’s still a card game, so the stochastic part forces players to stay on their toes, and additionally, there isn’t perfect information, so bluffing tricks is something that can also occur, and that’s 2 additional skills to be flexed, one on each side of the goblin game But that trading card element is the core of the game. You can choose what cards you put in your deck, and because it’s a trading card game, there is of course a secondary market for cardboard.

Wizards of the Coast makes MTG. They design the game, and control the supply. There has to be some scarcity, otherwise the product wouldn’t be lucrative; this isn’t a charity. At the same time, they have to make product to sell. Cards can get pretty expensive; old cards with shorter print runs can have massively inflated prices, partially due to the reserved list, which is a can of beans to be opened at a different time, but also because there just aren’t as many cards out there to support a constantly growing player base, especially in an age with superhero movies and ren-faire commercial advertisements, not to mention a well educated generation, where it is becoming more cool to be nerdy. Strictly speaking, they’re a monopoly, but that is only a part of the issue, because WOTC is a benevolent despot. Every so often, they have reprint sets to bring back the supply on those high value cards. Rishadan Port used to run you $120, but after a reprint in Masters 25, you can get one for $15. Port was originally printed 19 years ago, and because of the formats that the card is legal in, there really isn’t that much demand for the card, and because the product is a luxury good, it’s really demand inelastic; i.e. the demand isn’t really going to undergo a giant growth if the supply increases. Thus, the price change is so severe. On the other side of the coin, Lightning Bolt has been reprinted a billion times, and it’s never going to fall below a couple dollars because people will always need more Bolts because of its ubiquity in every format where it is legal. Everyone needs a Bolt.

This brings us to the centerpiece of tonight’s meal, Ultimate Masters, a product that has driven the community to ends. Wizards has apparently pulled out all the stops with this reprint set, shattering all expectations by hitting pretty much every card on the list of cards that need reprinting. This is typically the point where I’d run off a list of every Tarmogoyf and Snapcaster Mage-like card they reprinted, but every card, at every rarity, is pretty much a hit. From headliners like Karn and Cavern of Souls, down to the not-so-lowly commons such as fan-favorite Basking Rootwalla, and Mad Prophet, which is coincidentally the name of my latest rap album. On top of all of this, in every box there will be what is called an Ultimate Box Topper, a foil version of one of 40 chase cards in the set with extended artwork. Looking at a couple, they are indeed impressive, especially with the new artwork that some of the reprinted cards have been given. The friction comes at the price of the product. As of December 12th, you can get your box of Ultimate Masters for $275. The sticker shock did ruffle some feathers in the community. The Professor, at Tolarian Community College, a popular Magic-related Youtube channel, delivered the Wrath of God at the product’s price point in his podcast, Dies to Removal, given that it is a long-standing joke that his actual job as an adjunct at a community college is a source of general irritation at the instability in the field and the lack of adequate pay that comes with a job that generally requires a master's degree. That establishes his average joe-ness, with the means of a layman, and so comes the relatability. And his claims are well founded; you shouldn’t need that masters in economics to play a game; but, his degree is in English, so the Professor is more used to dealing with letters than numbers. After talking to people around the local game store, players are falling on both sides of the coin. On one hand, $275 for a pile of cardboard used for a children’s card game seems at the very least, a little bit silly, but on the other, it’s a luxury good, the demand of which is relatively inelastic. People are just going to buy the product no matter how much it costs, especially given that this particular product is very desirable, not to mention that the Ultimate Box Toppers essentially mean that there’s a 50 dollar bill stapled to every box.

Additionally, you don’t need to buy a box of Ultimate Masters to benefit from the reprint mania. If you just need specific cards for your deck, you can dismiss all worries by just buying them on the secondary market at capsized prices because of the increase in supply. The arcane denial for that claim is that the cards that weren’t reprinted spike in price due to increased demand for older formats, which is reasonable; cards like mox opal and manamorphose shot up after the full release of the list of cards in the set, but it isn’t logistically possible to reprint everything at once; there’s only a limited amount of space in the set. Creeping Tar Pit is down 60%, Bridge from Below is down 75%, and although prices will balance after the market returns to stasis, for your Gifts Given this Christmas season, you can get the 4 copies of the cards you need on the cheap.

Works Cited

Tcgplayer.com, www.tcgplayer.com/.

“The Aftermath of Ultimate Masters | Article by Jim Casale.” CoolStuffInc.com, www.coolstuffinc.com/a/jimcasale-12112018-the-aftermath-of-ultimate-masters.

College, Tolarian Community. “Dies To Removal Episode 2: Ultimate Masters Dies To Finance - A Magic: The Gathering Video Podcast.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Nov. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=pvdFempzvV0.

“How Much Is Ultimate Masters Helping Modern Prices?” S, www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/how-much-is-ultimate-masters-helping-modern-prices.
“MTGStocks.com.” MTGStocks, www.mtgstocks.com/news.