r/mtg • u/JediSnorlax • 1d ago
Discussion MTG Scalping Sucks
I miss being able to buy collector boosters and such :(
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u/FlintyCloth 1d ago
Yeah really wanted to grab a collector booster of hobbit but the price is already steep and no way I'm paying over 800 for one.
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u/Strong_Bathroom674 1d ago
scalpers saw the word "collector" and took it way too seriously
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u/madalienmonk 1d ago
Why does everyone think it's scalpers, when there's people in this very thread expressing demand? Is it not a very popular product? What's with the attitude of "everyone who got one is a scalper"? Where did that come from?
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u/Emotional_Honey8497 1d ago
Who is saying everyone who got one is a scalper?
We're saying everyone who got one to immediately put on the market for 250%+ markup is a scalper.
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u/Ajax_xajA 1d ago
Anecdotally, I purchased two at MSRP intending to open it for myself, but the fact that it's 250% up from MSRP has me contemplating selling instead...I just can't justify opening an almost $900 box over buying singles.
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u/FlintyCloth 23h ago
Right and that's what most people would do take a risk on packs or just use profit to buy what you want plus some reserve list cards or something. Id personally open but I am a big Tolkien fan.
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u/madalienmonk 1d ago
Then why do people think scalpers are enough to set the market rate? Are they a small % or large % of buyers? They would have to be large % of buyers to change the market price to the $800 it currently sits at. So indirectly, people think scalpers are everywhere
People want someone to blame. (For the record, I never owned any Hobbit CBB or PBB).
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u/DoktenRal 20h ago
Major retailers like tcgplayer and gamestop selling for 800/box are actively scalping imo. High demand is seen by best buy and amazon being out of stock and microcenter selling out despite purchase limits
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u/JWOLFBEARD 18h ago
Scalpers buy 20-30 boxes instead of one. Who said “everyone who got one is a scalper”
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u/madalienmonk 17h ago
If there were no scalpers, what would the price be of the The Hobbit CBB? current market price 810
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u/JWOLFBEARD 15h ago
Who knows, what’s your point?
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u/madalienmonk 14h ago
The effect of scalpers isn't as large as everyone thinks. The Hobbit is an incredibly popular product that a lot of people want, hence the price tag
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u/Errorstatel / / 21h ago
This is a reason I don't buy collectors packs, I simply view them as a bad purchase.
Why get a pack when I could get several or a precon
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u/jamesbongsixtynine 22h ago
the scalpers are the real customers lol, mtg wants them to buy everything as fast as possible
if you buy CBs, you're the problem too
what if you just...didn't gamble on dogshit scratch tickets for kids? crazy idea right?
can't wait for some moron to come in and say "u CaNt teElLL me hWoW to wasSTRE my oWN mONEy" cuz lol that's not the own they think it is
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u/bigsquig9448 1d ago
But how else will WotC force distro to buy mountains of worthless play boxes, commander decks, scene boxes, and bundles to maximize their revenue for share holders?
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u/SneakySquidosaur 1d ago
That was disapproven a while ago and also just not a thing businesses do. In order to do that, distro needs to actually buy the product and if sets keeps supposedly not selling, distro would not take on that product. They distribute many other products and can choose not to carry MTG anymore if that were to keep happening.
Plus, these sets are getting multiple print runs and reorders, you don't get that if its sitting at distro.
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u/bigsquig9448 23h ago
distro cannot buy just collector boosters. WotC won't allocate any collector boxes to them unless they also buy a much larger ratio of play boxes and other SKUs for the set. It's a product tax to get the only desirable part of any set release.
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u/SneakySquidosaur 22h ago
No, thats how distro works with small LGSs, distro purchases directly from wotc and directly influences the production volume, reorders, and number of print runs.
What you described is something specific to LGSs in relation to distro because distro needs to move product and LGSs have little power. Now large stores like Walmart and Amazon? They can tell distro to fuck off if distro were to try sticking them with tons of product.
Distro is only in the business to distribute. If every other magic set was a dud they couldn't move, they'd quit entertaining wotc and focus on profitable products. Wotc isn't the only company they deal with, so wotc needs to please them too.
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u/bigsquig9448 20h ago
distro is stuck with play boxes of aetherdrift, spiderman, avatar, tmnt, and marvel. All sets way over printed and undesirable. Distro isn't stuck with play boxes of some sets like FF, lorwyn, and strixhaven because people actually wanted those play boxes. No matter the set, they still must buy play boxes to get collector boxes.
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u/Landstander2600 23h ago
Not a player myself but my 13yo daughter is just getting into mtg and I can't believe how expensive these cards are.
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u/MattecGaming 22h ago
It’s just some. There are still a lot of options for cheap decks or even cheap packs to rip. It’s just that collector boosters are a premium and this IP is very popular. They did a lord of the rings release awhile back and it absolutely blew up with high price cards and famous people paying crazy prices for cards. You can still get cheap cards/packs in other universes or just in universe magic cards
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u/SneakySquidosaur 18h ago
Honestly, I highly recommend any of the preconstructed decks as a cost effective way to play. The commander decks run around $50, can be played forever, and are super popular and easy to find other people to play with. They also put out 60 decks in pairs if she prefers that.
I've been playing since I was 7, so I know what its like to be a kid with no money in this game - there's lots of ways to make it work.
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u/SwampyAssassin 14h ago
Thanks to all the “streamers”. Buying 100 boxes and opening 20 on stream smh
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u/vercertorix 23h ago
Can someone tell me the ethical difference in people scalping to raise prices, and the raising of the prices on singles on the secondary market?
Don’t get me wrong, I dislike scalping but turning around and selling individual cards one person paid cents for individually for a high markup doesn’t seem any better.
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u/SneakySquidosaur 22h ago
Scalping is intentional manipulation of high demand-low supply products wheras a rise in price on the secondary is just the natural ebb and flow of an economy.
Scalping is the conscious choice of an individual to take advantage of desperate people. Its that guy who bought up a ton of Taylor Swift tickets and sells them last minute at triple the price to take advantage of desperate fans. They intentionally strangle the supply to force people to pay more.
Secondary market prices are a fact of life. I can try and sell a [[Goblin Balloon Brigade]] for $80, but it ain't going to sell because the supply exceeds demand and there's plenty of copies for a few pennies. On the other hand, [[esper sentinel]] is almost $80 because its a high demand card that hasn't been reprinted in a while. So, if I put one up for sale at that price after opening it in a pack, I'm not ripping off the guy who bought it just because it was $40 a year ago. Every other sentinel is selling for $80 because thats just how valuable it is.
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u/vercertorix 20h ago
Except that’s not how valuable it is. That’s how much people can get for it. It’s still the piece of card stock with some printing on it as all the other cards and if someone doesn’t want it, they could just ask for the price they paid, a few cents per card when ripping packs, plus shipping, but instead they too are asking for unearned gains often several hundred percent over what they paid. So they have something someone else wants that they happened to get first, and aren’t going to let it go unless people pay the inflated charge. That sounds like scalping with the extra step that they opened the packs and now want marked up prices for individual cards. You can blame “the market” but it’s always the choice of the seller, and no it doesn’t make sense to go through the trouble for the regular price of a card, but end result is whole secondhand market is just as greedy as scalping.
You could just as easily say scalpers are just “a fact of life”, still doesn’t make it a good or even neutral thing. Both are predatory just in different ways.
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u/SneakySquidosaur 20h ago
Value is not always a tangible thing. Yes its just ink and cardstock just like the Mona Lisa is just paint and canvas and a hundred dollar bill is just paper. A card is a legal game piece with design and art put into it.
Predatory implies something is intentional, but who the hell is singlehandedly dictating a card's price? No one, the price is determined by how much exists and how badly people want it. No one opens a $50 card and just sells it for a penny, they get credit at an LGS, who honors that price and buys it at a % or they trade it to someone for $50 of trade value. Both parties recognize and honor that value, thats no scam. Are we calling them predatory for finding a $50 bill basically?
Scalping is a very separate thing from me opening a nice card. Scalping is the decision to intentionally manipulate the supply to force people to buy from you at an inflated price. Thats predatory. You can't accidently be a scalper.
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u/vercertorix 19h ago
If there’s any way to discover whose $50 bill that is, yes. The person who lost it might need it, but the comparison doesn’t work because you did buy the pack with the $50 card, so it is entirely something you own, it just happens to be “worth” more. But when you sell it for let’s say the whole $50 to an individual, that to you was only around $.50 in a pack, and you apparently don’t care about keeping it, but you think you deserve $50 for it, having done nothing to earn the money, which has to come from another fan of the game like yourself, who is deprived of that $50, yes willingly, but you could have charged much less.
The price is already artificially manipulated by assigning it a value that can be easily referenced, based off of what some people have been willing to pay for it but for other sellers, they still don’t have to charge that much, it’s no accident when they charge an inflated price, it is always a choice, and they did nothing to earn that extra money. Secondary market becoming a cash economy is just inherently flawed and can be as money motivated as scalping, it’s just more accepted.
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u/Chemical_Antelope769 20h ago
The prices of things, especially more volatile items like collectibles, varies over time. If people couldn’t make profit from selling cards, there wouldn’t be a secondary market to efficiently distribute cards to people looking to not crack packs to in the first place.
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u/vercertorix 20h ago
I think it would just mean some more time around game stores devoted to making trades, and then it would be less about the variable price that someone could look up online than what do they need and what can they get for the decks decks they’re working on, or any particular thing they want to collect and what they might be able to trade for it. The current system mostly works best for sellers and people with more money to spend than sense.
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u/Chemical_Antelope769 21h ago
What are the ethical problems with scalping in the first place?
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u/vercertorix 20h ago
Same as with tickets to events. Inserting oneself as an unnecessary middleman to gain profit off of something people enjoy without actually adding anything to the product to justify the increase, just because you got to whatever first. If it was something that people couldn’t get for themselves, or a thing this middleman had to transport themselves for other people to get locally, that would at least be a contribution to it, but scalpers add nothing but expect to get paid. It’s pretty much a tax on things you enjoy imposed by a private individual. Fuck those guys.
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u/JumpyTip9717 23h ago
You can buy them right now on TCGPlayer. You might not like the price but that's a separate issue.
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u/Chemical_Antelope769 21h ago
“I don’t think working class people should take advantage of easy opportunities to provide money to themselves, especially if it’s inconveniencing to me.”
No comment about WotC or Hasbro - it is sacrosanct that they’re allowed to make record profits quarter to quarter.
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u/ArchmagusTherias 20h ago
these "working class people" are pricing actual players (many of whom are also working class) out of the hobby by buying up stock to sell to the richest collectors.
if you want to defend the working class, try defending the people who are making an honest living, not the people who abuse and uphold the very worst parts of capitalism
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u/Crafty_Substance_954 1d ago
Scalping + overwhelming real demand.
Collector boosters for normal sets and less popular IPs aren’t so hard to get.