18 Sealed Stadium Events hit the market, many more.

[Exhuminator]

then we must also debate the ethics of the person that has more money than sense and pays that much for the games

Amen brother.

A seller can only ask a price that the market is willing to bear.

[MrPopo]

Doesn't Popo own a copy of Stadium Events?

No, it's the NWC Grey Cart.

I personally can't stand when people complain about some collectable they have going down in price because of whatever factors, especially if they try to claim things like "unfair". The Magic secondary market has a big problem there. Hell, it's even codified in the Reserved List, which is a list of cards Wizards has promised to never functionally reprint (so no making the same card with a different name to get around it) after the furor when the first reprint set came out and tanked the value of several cards that were only valuable to the casual market (i.e. the people who just want to play with the card, rather than those who enjoy the collectable aspect of the cards). Granted, that reprint set, Chronicles, was over printed, but it lead to a policy that is detrimental to the health of the eternal formats (many staples cannot be reprinted and don't have good enough alternates) and has lead them to be super cautious on the Modern Masters reprint set to avoid major dips (not even tanking) in the secondary value of expensive cards, again artificially increasing the barrier of entry to the Modern format.

[JoeAwesome]

Doesn't Popo own a copy of Stadium Events?

No, it's the NWC Grey Cart.

I personally can't stand when people complain about some collectable they have going down in price because of whatever factors, especially if they try to claim things like "unfair". The Magic secondary market has a big problem there. Hell, it's even codified in the Reserved List, which is a list of cards Wizards has promised to never functionally reprint (so no making the same card with a different name to get around it) after the furor when the first reprint set came out and tanked the value of several cards that were only valuable to the casual market (i.e. the people who just want to play with the card, rather than those who enjoy the collectable aspect of the cards). Granted, that reprint set, Chronicles, was over printed, but it lead to a policy that is detrimental to the health of the eternal formats (many staples cannot be reprinted and don't have good enough alternates) and has lead them to be super cautious on the Modern Masters reprint set to avoid major dips (not even tanking) in the secondary value of expensive cards, again artificially increasing the barrier of entry to the Modern format.

I'm curious how rare cards affect The Magic game. Do people even play them if they're so rare? Do people make bootlegs to be able to play (not sell) such cards? How well does the game function with/without those rare cards?

[ZBomber]

I think I feel the same way as pat does and like everyone else here. Who cares. If someone wants to spend that kind of money and never play the game and wants to corner the market then your in the hobby for the wrong reason.
I'm glad more games were found. I hope this makes the prices go down so gamers who enjoy the hobby may one day get the games they want to play.

I'm so glad I have everdrives. I know this guy Pete who works at thatse and he gave me great advice and I think it goes for gaming too. Right now in my game room I'm trying to collect the toys I once had as a kid not all of them just the ones I remember well from Christmas or my father gave me for my birthday, just really nostalgia that I remember having. Sense even the market have gone up for 80's toys I asked him advice on whether I should even continue trying to find the stuff. He told me the prices of gone up because people think in five years if they sit on the toys long enough that the market will finally go off and I'll make a fortune. He said if you think like that it's not even worth that you're going to fail. If you're trying to get them from the nostalgia and good memories and hold onto them forever then it's a good investment and I think the same goes for video games.
Who knows what the market will be in a couple years but the fact is if people think they going to buy these games and into years they going to flip them to make an absurd amount of money they're out of their damn mind.people should invest in other things if that's what they think.

I'm new here, but Thats E in Worcester? Love that store, and its cool to see another person from the area!

As for Stadium Events... eh. Personally I would rather spend that money on many other video games. It certainly is a neat piece of gaming history, but it seems hoardish to get mad at more people being able to own a copy out of fear of it slightly lowering the value of your collection.

[MrPopo]

Doesn't Popo own a copy of Stadium Events?

No, it's the NWC Grey Cart.

I personally can't stand when people complain about some collectable they have going down in price because of whatever factors, especially if they try to claim things like "unfair". The Magic secondary market has a big problem there. Hell, it's even codified in the Reserved List, which is a list of cards Wizards has promised to never functionally reprint (so no making the same card with a different name to get around it) after the furor when the first reprint set came out and tanked the value of several cards that were only valuable to the casual market (i.e. the people who just want to play with the card, rather than those who enjoy the collectable aspect of the cards). Granted, that reprint set, Chronicles, was over printed, but it lead to a policy that is detrimental to the health of the eternal formats (many staples cannot be reprinted and don't have good enough alternates) and has lead them to be super cautious on the Modern Masters reprint set to avoid major dips (not even tanking) in the secondary value of expensive cards, again artificially increasing the barrier of entry to the Modern format.

I'm curious how rare cards affect The Magic game. Do people even play them if they're so rare? Do people make bootlegs to be able to play (not sell) such cards? How well does the game function with/without those rare cards?

Aside from certain outliers (iconic cards from Alpha and Beta) the expensive cards in Magic are very strong in non-rotating formats. The latter is key; if a card is only strong in Standard then the price is kept down due to sets in Standard being printed as long as there is demand and people being unwilling to invest too much that will be lost once the format rotates. The cards that sit at the $100+ table (when you usually want a full playset, so 4x of each card) are cards that have proven themselves powerful in non-rotating formats like Modern, Legacy, and Commander. The first two are highly competitive formats and the latter is a casual format that has become the premier casual format that isn't kitchen table casual; there are certain cards which are expensive only because of Commander, as they are completely worthless in a competitive Vintage or Legacy deck but are highly efficient for a particular Commander strategy.

For the most part the expensive cards do not have a cheaper replacement. The closest you see is that the original dual lands can be replaced with the Ravnica shock lands in some, but not all, decks. Some decks can handle paying the two life to come into play untapped while others need every scrap of life they can get. Pretty much everything else is top of the class in whatever niche they fit into.

So, to go through your points, yes, people play them even though they are rare. For those considered about the condition of their cards the solution tends to be double or triple sleeving (double sleeving is a perfect fit sleeve upside down on the card, then that put into a sleeve right side up). A top tier Legacy deck will cost you in the realm of a couple thousand dollars. Vintage is more expensive, as Vintage allows you to play singleton copies of the Power 9. A set of Moxen plus Black Lotus will run you $5-10k depending on condition, and many Vintage decks start there. When properly sleeved cards will stay in pretty good shape if you don't shuffle too aggressively. People do play in Vintage tournaments, but the biggest issue there is supply. Lots of people self select out of the format because they feel they shouldn't even bother due to their inability to get any Power.

Do people make bootlegs? Of course. There's two different kinds, the counterfeit and the proxy. The counterfeits are generally produced in China and are designed to look like real cards. Wizards recently made some modifications to the cardface to add anti-counterfeiting features. Proxies are not intended to be passed off as real cards; they can be as simple as writing a card's name on a basic land in Sharpie to printing off an image of the card from online and slipping it into a sleeve with a real card (once again, usually a basic land). Proxies are not allowed in sanctioned tournaments; you tend to see them either when someone is testing a deck, playing Commander and waiting for a card to come in the mail, or in Cubes (usually Power Cubes, since few people have Power available to put in them).

How well does the game function without the rare cards? It highly depends on your goal while playing the game. If you just want to play then no, you don't need any of them. If you want to be competitive in a Modern or Legacy event, hell yes you need them. If you tried to play 12-Post without Candelabra of Tawnos you are going to lose a lot of games you would otherwise have won because you couldn't ramp hard enough in time. In Commander it highly depends. You definitely don't need ABUR duals in anything, but many of the other expensive cards will do a lot of work that you can't easily get otherwise.

[Tanooki]

I'm new here, but Thats E in Worcester? Love that store, and its cool to see another person from the area!

As for Stadium Events... eh. Personally I would rather spend that money on many other video games. It certainly is a neat piece of gaming history, but it seems hoardish to get mad at more people being able to own a copy out of fear of it slightly lowering the value of your collection.

That's entirely the problem right there. Hoarders going control freak and psycho over what people do with their property because it will probably affect the value of their own garbage being ultra selfish. Whether it's new sealed boxed up crated games to cleaning up and restoring some $10 cartridge with cuts in the plastic and a hosed up label you want to make like new again like for like. Whatever the spectrum may be, this event if you can call it that is just exposing the problems by bringing those problem people to the surface.

[mas]

I think I feel the same way as pat does and like everyone else here. Who cares. If someone wants to spend that kind of money and never play the game and wants to corner the market then your in the hobby for the wrong reason.
I'm glad more games were found. I hope this makes the prices go down so gamers who enjoy the hobby may one day get the games they want to play.

I'm so glad I have everdrives. I know this guy Pete who works at thatse and he gave me great advice and I think it goes for gaming too. Right now in my game room I'm trying to collect the toys I once had as a kid not all of them just the ones I remember well from Christmas or my father gave me for my birthday, just really nostalgia that I remember having. Sense even the market have gone up for 80's toys I asked him advice on whether I should even continue trying to find the stuff. He told me the prices of gone up because people think in five years if they sit on the toys long enough that the market will finally go off and I'll make a fortune. He said if you think like that it's not even worth that you're going to fail. If you're trying to get them from the nostalgia and good memories and hold onto them forever then it's a good investment and I think the same goes for video games.
Who knows what the market will be in a couple years but the fact is if people think they going to buy these games and into years they going to flip them to make an absurd amount of money they're out of their damn mind.people should invest in other things if that's what they think.

I'm new here, but Thats E in Worcester? Love that store, and its cool to see another person from the area!

As for Stadium Events... eh. Personally I would rather spend that money on many other video games. It certainly is a neat piece of gaming history, but it seems hoardish to get mad at more people being able to own a copy out of fear of it slightly lowering the value of your collection.

Hi there and welcome to Racketboy. You will love it here. Yes I'm talking about thatse in Worcester. Been going there for almost 25 years.
For the money people want to spent on these games and if pats correct 5 figures? This is where you draw the line. For that kind of money there is so much more you can do in life. Down payment on a house, buy a vehicle, put it towards your education, pay off any debt you have, I mean if someone said "hey I'm giving you a chance to own stadium events sealed or you can take the 13,000.00 it's worth I so would take the cash like most of us I hope would. For that money damn my family and I went to Disney world for a week with 4,000. You can do that and have money left over. I went on space mountain baby whoooo!!!! Lol

[Jmustang1968]

If you have the disposable income, and that is what you enjoy, then the game can be worth it to some. And in relative terms, gaming is a cheap hobby when compared to things like collecting coins, cars, or art.

I dont find personal enjoyment in collecting sealed stuff, as part of the appeal of collecting games, is that it becomes a library I can play. But I won't knock them for their enjoyment of that aspect of the hobby.

[Tanooki]

Well said. The only reason I'd (not that I have it) put up your 13K figure for that stupid game because I'd have a fish lined up to pay me a few thousand more for bothering with it. That money could fix the problems in part in my home, erase a small debt we have, pay off the car, etc.

If I had that kind of crap money floating around and I was free and clear I'd still say f*ck that game I'd rather put the $8K towards a dead minty cherry Indiana Jones Williams pinball machine, then some more towards Space Shuttle and Black Knight in similar form or perhaps T2. And if not for pinball there's be some other fun 'useless' ways to blow it that would actually be enjoyably used, abused, and displayed other than a plastic, silicon, and paper pile of worry that would need to be locked in some safety deposit box. Even if I did bother with the NES stuff still at $13K you could own the total pile of games (loose) of that library licensed anyway considering SE is kind of gray area as nintendo delicensed when they gobbled it up to put out the same game (twice no less) with a different name on it and a terrible one at that. Yeah that's right I don't consider SE part of 'the set' due to the unusual circumstances around it and never have even before it went from a .49 cent turd I and many others turned down a decade or two ago.

[Gunstar Green]

If you have the disposable income, and that is what you enjoy, then the game can be worth it to some. And in relative terms, gaming is a cheap hobby when compared to things like collecting coins, cars, or art.

I dont find personal enjoyment in collecting sealed stuff, as part of the appeal of collecting games, is that it becomes a library I can play. But I won't knock them for their enjoyment of that aspect of the hobby.

I have a few sealed old PC games that I love but that's only because:

1. They're cheap and incredibly common.
2. There are easier ways to play them than using the actual disks.

I don't have them around for any sort of bragging rights though, but for the big box artwork.

I can see why some people like to have new, pristine versions of the things they love and want to preserve them that way though for other people it's purely a value thing.

The worst thing collecting thing ever was in the 90's when they started selling "collectible" comics in sealed polybags. They were literally selling comics they never expected anyone to read.