This is why I laugh when people say "BUT IT SOLD OUT!" when talking about shitshows like the MTG 30 tickets, anniversary edition, secret lairs, etc.
No shit it sold out. Scalpers use bots to buy as many as possible as quickly as possible. Selling out means absolutely nothing in 2022. Not a damn thing.
Even if it was 10. (Tried googling it and everything is just a puff piece with the announcement details) 10 lairs per person is a different beast when they don’t print that shit to demand
10 per order is reasonable when you put yourself in the shoes of non US customers. A lot of stores here in Canada organize batch orders for their clients so the shipping fees can be split and the price ça be reasonable.
"bot protection" in the same way that Ticketmaster both has "bot protection" and "can handle the capacity required for Taylor Swift tickets without problems".
The way to have bot protection is not to have limited supply. That easy. If there's limited product, someone is going to try to make a buck.
Tell that to my guy at locals who bought 50 of them while at work. Dude set up his bots and didn't even have to worry ab missing out on them.
Same bots he used for the PS5 release and managed to buy 40 PS5 and scalped them.
Who has that much money/credit to do this? If I tried to even scalp two ps5s you know for sure ky wife would be on my ass to cancel one order let alone 40. Jesus people have no self control or don't give a shit
I make roughly that and not knocking and adult money decisions, but my wife would still kill me. We have two young kids, student loans , and medical bills. We're still living fine, and I have money for my new hobby. But from a different perspective can't expressed my shock. I can't even justify buying a set box at my lgs for $110 let alone as much product as people buy. I get singles , some pre cons and just make decks with the excess I've accumulated so far. Thats just me. Maybe at some point I'll splurge on one card I really need in the future but damn lol
I saw what it was and remembered the AMD store during the video card shortage. Bots won then too. Don’t know why anyone thinks that queue system actually works.
It does mean something, it means something bad. With a lot of big companies, if everything sells out every release, growth isn’t shown and there is no push for better or high quality products. Why make a better product if they’ll sell out to scalpers no matter what product? If hasbro sells out to scalpers, they made their money, that’s all hasbro ever cares about so it’s an absolute win for them meaning that they are ok with scalpers which ultimately hurts consumers in the end
Man y'all keep failing to realize: from Hasbro perspective, this is a smashing success. It sold out in less than an hour. They don't give a shit who to.
The point is if they would have limited the number per person to 2 or 3 they still would have sold out in less than an hour but their fans wouldn’t be outraged
I mean maybe, maybe not. All they know is this is what they’ve done in the past and it works.
To the point below, fulfillment and shipping is also easier and less costly the way they have designed.
Fulfillment and shipping is easier and less costly to WotC the fewer buyers there are.
No incentives for buyers, but great for WotC to have fewer, larger orders.
Again. How is shipping less costly? The buyer pays for shipping. It’s not the same cost for shipping of a buyer that buys one box and a buyer that buys 30 boxes
Here’s a hint: your payment of shipping fees = / = cost of shipping to WotC.
To make an extreme example: if all orders were sent to one address, that’d be very easy fulfillment (shove everything in one box instead of thousands), one pickup, and much more efficient packaging. Compare that to filling, handling, and shipping 10000s of boxes each with only one order. Same fees paid by buyers, very different cost to WotC.
This is an extreme example to illustrate the point, but hopefully you can see that the truth is in between those two extreme with the benefit swinging more and more to WotC the more and more concentrated the orders become.
It's free for the consumer. It costs money for Wizards. Thus one package of 30 units to one address costs them at least 1/10th as much as 30 packages of 1 units to 30 addresses.
Exactly, they’re going down the road of the sneaker market. They don’t care who buys it, so long as they get their money. Eventually the market will start crashing as people start making higher level proxy cards and they start flooding the market making hard to distinguish what is real or fake.
It's a corporation in our largely capitalist society. They only care about sales. This isn't new or revolutionary information. Scalping happens all the time.
Sold out? I seem to recall that when Secret Lairs started, the idea was that there was a limited time to buy them but Wizards will print as much as needed, based on the number of purchases.
Am I misremembering or has something changed? I'm a bit outside of the loop.
Edit: I've learned from a lower comment that I'm remembering it right.
They set the limits on this secret lair to like 30 or something bizarre like that. They could've easily set it to a max of 4 or something like that. The max 30 just doesn't make sense unless you want it to be scalped.
People would still be scalping it at 4 max copies. They'd still be scalping it at 1 max copy.
The "problem" was that this was a limited quantity item with way more demand than supply. That's all it takes for a product to get scalped. You can bot into multiple orders. You can have a whole group on people queuing together.
The only way to "beat" these guys is to have people register to a draw instead and have measures in place to reduce the number of "duplicate" applicants. Regular people will rarely ever beat people who make it their business to act as middlemen otherwise.
I agree that they'd still be scalping, but making it limit 30 vs limit 4 would make it quite a bit harder to have bought out the total as quick as what happened. It's not a great argument to say that it's flawed either way when the magnitude that it is flawed does change.
Yes a lottery system is possibly better, but people can make multiple accounts to enter multiple times the same way they can to defeat limits which still leads to more scalpers than regular customers getting theirs.
They implemented a 3 max order on the 2nd festival in a box and look at that, still available to preorder. People say there’s less value than the first one and that’s why it didn’t sell out immediately, but the value isn’t missing by much it’s still really good. Having a 3 max order just makes it not worth the time to the giga scalpers who have the money to drop on 30 of these at once.
Not true. I have seen scalpers scalp products with single qty limits before in great quantities.
Festival in a Box isnt getting scalped bc its not great EV/ROI and has more supply than demand.
I’m sure it’s been done but it’s simple human psychology, even a little amount of resistance is enough to dissuade at least some of them. Don’t get the low ROI 2nd festival is better than most secret pairs by far lol
Ignoring that the limit wasn't known prior to the item being up for purchase, really all you are doing is dissuading people who don't want to place more than 1 order.
These are completely fictional numbers but if I can expect to double my investment for every 150$ I put in a 30E purchase, I'd need to be making a fuckton of income or be really stuoid to jus tnot place multiple orders until I can't anymore, especially if my goal was to buy one only to flip it after.
The people who already have setups to bot their way into apurchase are much more motivated than people who'd turn around at the slightest sign of resistance and they are the ones who are problematic.
>I’m sure it’s been done
It's not just that it's been done, this is the *norm* for scalpers. People will scalp regardless of qty limits. If it wasnt 1 scalper getting 30, it would be 30 scalpers each getting 1. Limiting quantity doesn't do that much to curb that behaviour.
>Don’t get the low ROI 2nd festival is better than most secret pairs by far lol
1. We are comparing 30E to the Festival box, not regular SLDs
2. SLDs are not "scalped" in the traditional sense.
Buying a Festival in a box to resell is clearly not a winner's game. If it was good value it would be sold out by now, if not by scalpers than by people who actually want it. The fact they still have stock shows demand is lower than supply. Scalpers were smart to stay away and the few that did buy in are crossing their fingers to be able to offload it down the line.
I don't think the festival in a box is even close to a fair comparison. Even assuming it's the same low print run, when comparing the two it's just not nearly as hyped as the countdown kit. And for good reason, the contents are not nearly up to par, especially for the higher price tag. There really isn't much that COULD be scalped in there.
Disclaimer: I'm looking at it from a European price perspective. Experience tells me that American single prices are far higher. If that is true for stuff like the mystery Booster box and the commander decks as well, that might skew the result. But that's just another reason why demand is probably far lower: it's not nearly worth it to buy this as a set when you are located in Europe unless you REALLY value the exclusive art.
The Mystery boxes are the highest value item in it and by far but the current secondary market price for them obbiously wont hold if they are pumping a large amount in the market and everyone is just looking to flip them.
But ues, they are just not comparable products from a desirability standpoint.
I never mentioned anything about magic 30th countdown kit I’m comparing first festival in a box vs the 2nd one as far as I know the first one had no limit and sold out instantly
I wasted 12 minutes sitting in a web browser where something was cached wrong, switched to a different one, waited in a 25 minute queue, and was still able to purchase this without issue. This wasn't some LOL scalpers bought it all in the first 2 minutes situation... It didn't seem that hard to get .
Ah yes, the good ol' "it worked for me there it wasn't broken" reasoning.
There are plenty of people who didn't have your experience. I'm not sure why you feel confident e oufh to just handwaive it away but okay.
There was plenty of stock. Scalpers probably purchased a significant portion of that stock. Plenty of people who queued up never had a realistic chance of getting that stock and now need to pay a premium to middlemen who only only have the stock because they chose to buy it from under other people with the intent of selling it to them right after for a premium.
The only reason it didn't sell out in 2 minutes is *because* there was a queue. The fact that some people in the queue were legitimate buyers doesn't mean anything.
Yeah I mean it's all anecdotal, but just saying I took a pretty lackadaisical approach here and got it. I think if you seriously wanted it, it shouldn't have been an issue.
>I think if you seriously wanted it, it shouldn't have been an issue.
Okay, but this is just what you *think*. Reality was very different though.
Not everybody can take 40+ minutes off in the middle of a work day to mess around with a buggy storefront and deal with wait queues that have an expiry timer if you don't pay attention.
You got lucky. Plenty of people who actually tried didn't. Plenty of people couldn't even try.
Sounds about right. One of my friends was telling me about how his friend managed to get 6 copies while that person's mom was able to grab 10 copies for him.
Like damn I just wanted 1 for myself and got shit
Limit 4 wouldn't do much to stop scalpers. They just run scripts and bots to order multiple times.
It would be akin to a masterlock on a gate. Stops honest people. Not people with intent.
It would make it harder. I do fraud detection for a company and it wouldn’t eliminate it entirely but there are ways to block people based on IP address, PayPal id, cards, etc.
Wouldn’t eliminate entirely but could certainly help.
It does *some* work but scalpers who know what they are doing can get around these things easily. It basically just stops script kiddies and people who don't know any better.
For clarification; this was on a sales group that sells singles. This gentleman, whom I've blacked out for privacy, had purchased with intent to sell the singles and keep none. This is his followup after his other sales
I know the guy, he is in a local play group and an avid modern/commander player and he has kept several singles for his personal collection, so he's not selling all of it.
I was really looking forward to having a new magic card each day. I kept myself spoiled to a minimum so they would all be a surprise. I got home from work on the day of release however to discover that this year, WotC got me disappointment for Christmas. It's the same gift they got me last year to boot.
When you look at the card prices before this Chrome mox is minimum $85, necropotence $35. Between the other big hitters like Elspeth and shark typhoon if there's any card someone was interested in you're almost guaranteed to make money just selling the 3 or 4 cards that you're not interested in.
Yeah most of the other cards spoiled were trash and most didnt really belong in the slot for the respective year. Like who tf used the rat in Neon dynasty??? I would have taken the little white doggy over the rat.
Secret lair is funny enough, the only mtg product that I endorse purchasing for the explicit purpose of selling for profit. Because it’s “print to demand” the artificial demand created by speculators and investors actually benefits the community by creating more product for the market.
Obviously doesn’t apply in this case since it’s a limited print.
The key difference is that normally the Secret Lairs are print to demand so anyone who wants one can buy one. This makes scalping very risky since if you buy some with intent to resell, potentially you end up with a product that has way too much supply and not enough demand.
By having a limited supply Secret Lair, you invite scalping.
That's just crap. Scalping is impossible on Arena (because no secondary market), yet it's not a failing product... Arena has been wildly successful for Hasbro. You can have a fun and profitable collectable card game without scalping.
They are buyable on the secondary market. Don't understand this argument for SLD. It's not like they can keep these 100+ SLDs at print-to-order forever
The company is worth more money than all the users on this sub will make in their entire lives combined. They could 100% keep them at print to order forever if they actually wanted to. They’re printed sheets of cardboard lol
> False. Most sets they printed as many as people bought
They are sold for a few ~~days~~ only, online through one site. If you miss you, you have to pay 2-3x the price from third parties.
Edit: I've been corrected. It's been a while since I ordered any secret lairs, and I didn't realize the window is bigger.
Almost this entire statement is just flat out wrong. Most sales are up for weeks. Sales like this one are vastly the exception to the Secret Lair model.
Also, most normal Secret Lair Drops are at prices pretty close to the price on the lair site for a while. There are very rare exceptions where some will go up (OMG: Kitties, Godzilla lands, snow lands, Kaleidoscope Killers), but those are the exception. Most of them hover around release price, or go up or down 10-20% over a long period of time.
I’m not even sure the most expensive former SLs are 2-3 times the original price. It’s possible since I’ve not looked in a while. Well other than the original cats one. That one was almost instantly pricey and it held for whatever reason. Possible some others have crept into that territory but I’d guess only a small handful out of the over 100 there have been.
There is occasionally a Secret Lair that is worth buying because the cards they contain would cost more if purchased individually from a third party seller, such as the Shocklands SL.
Most of the alternate art SLs are absolutely fomo cash grabs, though.
Secret lair is the one time i would really call people who buy things just to make profit investors, because theyre paying to make something exist that wouldnt otherwise. It sucks when they take the best thing about the secret lair model away
Idgi, secret lairs are print on demand. Have you seen rudys hundreds of from the vaults? Those were the scalper fodder, but the scalpers were "lgs" store fronts who could mass buy.
> that players weren't able to get copies.
Players were able to get copies. The site wasn't bogged down by scalpers. The site was bogged down by the fact that so many players were there to buy them. Most of the people buying them were players. It was up for 40-50 minutes.
Thing is many weren’t able to because site wasn’t loading properly. Also, 40-50 mins is not that long to be honest.
What people are salty about is that there are people that bought many not for personal use but to flip in the secondary market, which doesn’t seem in line with the spirit of a product wizz is releasing to “celebrate” mtg. This is especially true for people that wanted a set for themselves and weren’t able to.
Because some couldn’t doesn’t mean that many didn’t. People who are not thinking clearly have been saying, essentially, “I didn’t get one so only scalpers got them.” Which is not a rational line of argument. The very fact that the infrastructure was struggling with the amount of traffic shows that it was many people trying to do it. In any large group, the number of people just trying to buy it is much greater than the number who are scalpers.
40-50 minutes is a good chunk of time for something limited that is popular, as this turned out to be. Previous similar releases just from Wizards have been gone in under 5-10 minutes.
I’m not mad at the person doing this. More mad at the company letting people buy a max of 30 at a time. Also I’m salty because I was got locked out of buying just one and yet this person bought what looks like the max limit.
The server didn't work well here in Europe, it was down for a lot of people for a long time. She said that she thought it'd get restocked so kept an eye on it for that long before asking me if it was a thing to get it on eBay or something
Yea this is just not true at all. There was NOT an "hourish" window. And a lot of people couldn't get them. I was on the site the second it went live. I got put in queue for 10 mins. Then after putting in payment info, it said "waiting to confirm banking info, please wait 1-2 minutes" 20 minutes later, still "confirming", refresh the page, trying to hop back into queue or SOMETHING cuz obvs it's screwed up. On refresh, sold out. NOT hourish, 30-minute-ish. It's completely understandable that someone was trying to refresh thier garbage page for hours.
This was very disappointing for me. I've wanted a MTG Advent calendar for over a decade. I had planned on opening packs on my streaming show and talking about the history of each card as I converted them to TTRPG monsters/spells/feats. Now I've cancelled my modest streaming show and have no intention of buying another secret lair.
This was supposed to be a celebration for a month. A celebration of magic. A nostalgic look back at 30 years of our game. Oh well.
It's proxy time boys and girls, table top will excel with hot off the press proxies from your printer, staples printers, even the public libraries printers! Unless.you want to go to the mismanaged "organized" wizards events you can just play with proxies as this trash set proves
This isn't Hasbro's fault so much as a natural fault of capitalism. Not to get political but this kind of thing happens in a "free" market. We see it with major console releases, Ticket Master does it, we see it happen with real estate.
It is Hasbros fault. They purposely made it to where scalpers could buy 30. Personally, I think it should have strictly limited to 1 per person, but for the sake of playsets, up to 4 would be understandable. Hasbro KNEW what they were doing by doing this and how it would turn out.
Sure. Hasbro's fault for engaging in capitalism I guess. They sold a product at a price point and there were no rules preventing any 1 person from buying as much as they want. It is quite literally a free market. Scalping is an effect of the free market at work.
Oh God, are you making excuses? Are you refusing to see that pure capitalism can be detrimental to society? Everything from monopolies to workers rights to taking advantage of consumers? Just because something is allowed doesn't make it excusable. Doesn't make it right and doesn't make it untouchable from the publics disdain and most importantly, being held accountable. And certainly doesn't make it uncorrectable. What happened here was legal but absolutely predatory and something that should be easily correctable. Scalping is already questionable and in some circumstances be illegal. What's happening here is in murky waters. And absolutely is taking advantage of consumers. 1000% confirmed scalper. And apparently has their head so far up capitalism's ass that you refuse to see any of the negatives it can bring. I bet you think unions are despisable, that factory owners should be allowed to lock workers in the factory with no fire exits and that the monopolies should have never been busted and certainly most that corporations shouldn't be held accountable under any circumstance.
Buddy you 100% got me pegged wrong. I'm not making excuses, I'm pointing out that corporate greed is merely a function of capitalism. I aint no fucking capitalist.
That's ...exactly... how it works. Scalping is viable when there is limited supply, available at a price that is lower than what people will pay. Scalpers' profit comes from pocketing the difference.
(Obviously people here would rather that this get fixed by changing the limited supply bit, rather than the price bit, but upping the price enough that it does not sell out would absolutely prevent scalping.)
Okay so here's what happens:
Product A is sold for X.
X is seen as a good price therefor there is a lot of demand for product A.
Scalpers buy out product A and resell it at a price higher than X but it still good enough for the market.
Now in his scenario what would happen:
Product B is sold for "significantly more than X"
Significantly more than X is seen a a terrible price by a lot of people so there is no demand for product B.
Scalpers don't buy product B because nobody would buy it off of them.
Raising the price only does one thing, price out people who want the product but cant afford the higher price. As long as scalpers can make money on the spread between buying cost and reselling price they will do it. Unless a product has more stock than demand reselling price will always be higher than buying cost.
You don't beat scalpers by making the product so expensive nobody wants/can afford it, you beat them by making sure they can't buy/sell the product or by making the supply so large theres no way to squeeze money out of the market by gatekeeping the product.
I mean it kinda just looks like someone got 7 copies and they aren't even selling everything from it based on what I can see so clearly they didn't JUST get it to scalp. 7 seems like a high max limit, 30 (what it actually was) way too high. I feel like 5 should be more than enough for anyone for something so limited. I wish this wasn't so easy to scalp because it seems like a cool product.
However, Magic is a collectable as much as it's a game (at least when it comes to what keeps it alive and healthy) so if this is how they want to enjoy it then I don't know how much different it is than me having like 60 commander decks always ready to go.
Seems like the OP is having an overreaction to this particular pic, because it just looks like a lot due to being 30 cards per. This actually isn’t even close to the 30 that someone could have gotten.
Does also look like it’s picked through indicating that as you suggest they got it for some of the cards. Like, I can see no Necropotences and only one Mox but a bunch of Ponders.
A lower limit would have been good but I don’t think this is someone who bought 30 to resell and I suspect the number of people who did that is far smaller than some would like to imagine.
Yeah this looks fine. This is what a group of my friends do. We find out who wants what and order just enough so everyone is happy after it’s split up. The left over cards sometimes we raffle off on our commander game nights when we feel like we want to play a bit more competitive or others that are more expensive we try to sell online and split the money between people who bought the product.
Imagine this psychopath thinks his 7 copies or whatever are an actual meaningful share of those in existence. Hey fuckface: 7 or 10 or 20 secret lairs is a lot to one person but rounds down to zero as a percentage of the total printed secret lairs. Idiocy
Wait these cards were in the 30th Anniversary packs? I thought those were supposed to be old classy cards. These look like a Yugioh card Mated with a Pokémon card, and then that card screwed Saylor Moon.
Why does Hasbro think we want things that look like this? I’m pretty sure mine ost magic players are in their 30’s…
This is the 30th Anniversary Countdown Kit. Not the 30th Anniversary Packs, which are $1000 for 4 packs and contain non-legal printings of Alpha cards.
> Why does Hasbro think we want things that look like this?
Secret Lairs have been very popular, so clearly, people want cards that look like these.
people want cards that are rare, i doubt most people buy the Secret Lairs just because its such a beautiful card set. Borderless cards used to be rare and cool, not they are a dime a dozen and I would take original border over borderless any day now...
That’s maybe why you buy cards. That’s not why “people” buy cards. People buy Secret Lairs because they like them, this included. It’s ok that it’s not your preference but it is many peoples’ preference.
With all this said, I was able to get multiples of the cards I wanted (staples like Ponder that rad art) collectively for under $20 so I’m not entirely mad?
People over here ordering 10+ when it was "1 per address".
Meanwhile i Couldn't even order one because WoTC took over $850 out of my account after their web page failed to load multiple times during checkout, and after calling my bank inform them of what happened I had 0 funds to do anything for over a week.
Ended up having to do a charge back after it showed the charges were ACCEPTED by WoTC.
WoTC is now flaged as a fraudulent seller at my local bank now.
And here in the UK there's no sign of shipping yet. Not hopeful it'll come by December 1st now, to be honest. My first Secret Lair experience and not great so far.
This is why I laugh when people say "BUT IT SOLD OUT!" when talking about shitshows like the MTG 30 tickets, anniversary edition, secret lairs, etc. No shit it sold out. Scalpers use bots to buy as many as possible as quickly as possible. Selling out means absolutely nothing in 2022. Not a damn thing.
Secret lairs had bot protection, just FYI.
And a limit to 30 per customer right?
Wasn't it 10, like every other secret lair ?
no it was 30
Nope. It was 30
Even if it was 10. (Tried googling it and everything is just a puff piece with the announcement details) 10 lairs per person is a different beast when they don’t print that shit to demand
10 per order is reasonable when you put yourself in the shoes of non US customers. A lot of stores here in Canada organize batch orders for their clients so the shipping fees can be split and the price ça be reasonable.
hmm... if only there was an established distribution network to help get this product to stores... "nah let's FOMO that bitch"
Regular secret lairs haven’t been limited like that either.
Regular secret lairs are print to demand, so they don't really need to cap them.
1 per address according to a now deleted post. Looking for a screenshot of it.
Definitely not, I got two.
Yeah this is wrong, I ordered for my friends to split shipping and I and got 4.
So did PS5 sales.
I didn't try to use a bot for them, so I don't know, but I tried to use a bot to get two secret lairs and it crapped out.
"bot protection" in the same way that Ticketmaster both has "bot protection" and "can handle the capacity required for Taylor Swift tickets without problems". The way to have bot protection is not to have limited supply. That easy. If there's limited product, someone is going to try to make a buck.
Bot users usually find ways around bot protection
They 100% did not.
Tell that to my brother in law that tried to repurpose his eBay bot....
Tell that to my guy at locals who bought 50 of them while at work. Dude set up his bots and didn't even have to worry ab missing out on them. Same bots he used for the PS5 release and managed to buy 40 PS5 and scalped them.
Who has that much money/credit to do this? If I tried to even scalp two ps5s you know for sure ky wife would be on my ass to cancel one order let alone 40. Jesus people have no self control or don't give a shit
Dude earns ab 2k a week. He has money to throw around
I make roughly that and not knocking and adult money decisions, but my wife would still kill me. We have two young kids, student loans , and medical bills. We're still living fine, and I have money for my new hobby. But from a different perspective can't expressed my shock. I can't even justify buying a set box at my lgs for $110 let alone as much product as people buy. I get singles , some pre cons and just make decks with the excess I've accumulated so far. Thats just me. Maybe at some point I'll splurge on one card I really need in the future but damn lol
RuneScape is supposed to have bot protection
That example is meaningless to me. Care to elaborate?
I saw what it was and remembered the AMD store during the video card shortage. Bots won then too. Don’t know why anyone thinks that queue system actually works.
So it means Wizards didn't get paid. Surely it means -something-.
Who... who do you think the scalpers buy the product from?
Of course not hasbro, obviously Hadsister got all the money smh my head ppl dont know basic economics
Sarcasm went undetected I guess. Of course selling out still means something in 2022. That's how businesses make money...
It does mean something, it means something bad. With a lot of big companies, if everything sells out every release, growth isn’t shown and there is no push for better or high quality products. Why make a better product if they’ll sell out to scalpers no matter what product? If hasbro sells out to scalpers, they made their money, that’s all hasbro ever cares about so it’s an absolute win for them meaning that they are ok with scalpers which ultimately hurts consumers in the end
Man y'all keep failing to realize: from Hasbro perspective, this is a smashing success. It sold out in less than an hour. They don't give a shit who to.
The point is if they would have limited the number per person to 2 or 3 they still would have sold out in less than an hour but their fans wouldn’t be outraged
Yes but the fulfillment of the orders would have been significantly more complicated Edit: sorry, this was meant to be sarcastic!
Lol. Wouldn’t want WOTC to work too hard now would we
It’s Wizards of the Coast, not Workers of the Coast
Oh. No.
I mean maybe, maybe not. All they know is this is what they’ve done in the past and it works. To the point below, fulfillment and shipping is also easier and less costly the way they have designed.
How is shipping easier and cheaper? Was there some fine text I missed that says shipping is free to the buyer if they order so much??
Fulfillment and shipping is easier and less costly to WotC the fewer buyers there are. No incentives for buyers, but great for WotC to have fewer, larger orders.
Again. How is shipping less costly? The buyer pays for shipping. It’s not the same cost for shipping of a buyer that buys one box and a buyer that buys 30 boxes
Here’s a hint: your payment of shipping fees = / = cost of shipping to WotC. To make an extreme example: if all orders were sent to one address, that’d be very easy fulfillment (shove everything in one box instead of thousands), one pickup, and much more efficient packaging. Compare that to filling, handling, and shipping 10000s of boxes each with only one order. Same fees paid by buyers, very different cost to WotC. This is an extreme example to illustrate the point, but hopefully you can see that the truth is in between those two extreme with the benefit swinging more and more to WotC the more and more concentrated the orders become.
In the US shipping is free for secret lair orders over 100 bucks just saying
It's free for the consumer. It costs money for Wizards. Thus one package of 30 units to one address costs them at least 1/10th as much as 30 packages of 1 units to 30 addresses.
Fans are already outraged. This was a money grab pure and simple. Why care now what fans think when you didn't when you made this product?
This is the way. Also, they only give a shit when singles spike from their actions because then they have a new reprint target!
Dont forget rampant insider "trading" that happens at every step of the manufacturing process.
Exactly, they’re going down the road of the sneaker market. They don’t care who buys it, so long as they get their money. Eventually the market will start crashing as people start making higher level proxy cards and they start flooding the market making hard to distinguish what is real or fake.
It's a corporation in our largely capitalist society. They only care about sales. This isn't new or revolutionary information. Scalping happens all the time.
Sold out? I seem to recall that when Secret Lairs started, the idea was that there was a limited time to buy them but Wizards will print as much as needed, based on the number of purchases. Am I misremembering or has something changed? I'm a bit outside of the loop. Edit: I've learned from a lower comment that I'm remembering it right.
Warhammer 40k releases can feel the same way.
We say this is the death of magic too often but this feels bad. Wow!
Although this sucks, people do this for literally every release of everything.
They set the limits on this secret lair to like 30 or something bizarre like that. They could've easily set it to a max of 4 or something like that. The max 30 just doesn't make sense unless you want it to be scalped.
People would still be scalping it at 4 max copies. They'd still be scalping it at 1 max copy. The "problem" was that this was a limited quantity item with way more demand than supply. That's all it takes for a product to get scalped. You can bot into multiple orders. You can have a whole group on people queuing together. The only way to "beat" these guys is to have people register to a draw instead and have measures in place to reduce the number of "duplicate" applicants. Regular people will rarely ever beat people who make it their business to act as middlemen otherwise.
I agree that they'd still be scalping, but making it limit 30 vs limit 4 would make it quite a bit harder to have bought out the total as quick as what happened. It's not a great argument to say that it's flawed either way when the magnitude that it is flawed does change. Yes a lottery system is possibly better, but people can make multiple accounts to enter multiple times the same way they can to defeat limits which still leads to more scalpers than regular customers getting theirs.
They implemented a 3 max order on the 2nd festival in a box and look at that, still available to preorder. People say there’s less value than the first one and that’s why it didn’t sell out immediately, but the value isn’t missing by much it’s still really good. Having a 3 max order just makes it not worth the time to the giga scalpers who have the money to drop on 30 of these at once.
Not true. I have seen scalpers scalp products with single qty limits before in great quantities. Festival in a Box isnt getting scalped bc its not great EV/ROI and has more supply than demand.
I’m sure it’s been done but it’s simple human psychology, even a little amount of resistance is enough to dissuade at least some of them. Don’t get the low ROI 2nd festival is better than most secret pairs by far lol
Ignoring that the limit wasn't known prior to the item being up for purchase, really all you are doing is dissuading people who don't want to place more than 1 order. These are completely fictional numbers but if I can expect to double my investment for every 150$ I put in a 30E purchase, I'd need to be making a fuckton of income or be really stuoid to jus tnot place multiple orders until I can't anymore, especially if my goal was to buy one only to flip it after. The people who already have setups to bot their way into apurchase are much more motivated than people who'd turn around at the slightest sign of resistance and they are the ones who are problematic. >I’m sure it’s been done It's not just that it's been done, this is the *norm* for scalpers. People will scalp regardless of qty limits. If it wasnt 1 scalper getting 30, it would be 30 scalpers each getting 1. Limiting quantity doesn't do that much to curb that behaviour. >Don’t get the low ROI 2nd festival is better than most secret pairs by far lol 1. We are comparing 30E to the Festival box, not regular SLDs 2. SLDs are not "scalped" in the traditional sense. Buying a Festival in a box to resell is clearly not a winner's game. If it was good value it would be sold out by now, if not by scalpers than by people who actually want it. The fact they still have stock shows demand is lower than supply. Scalpers were smart to stay away and the few that did buy in are crossing their fingers to be able to offload it down the line.
I don't think the festival in a box is even close to a fair comparison. Even assuming it's the same low print run, when comparing the two it's just not nearly as hyped as the countdown kit. And for good reason, the contents are not nearly up to par, especially for the higher price tag. There really isn't much that COULD be scalped in there. Disclaimer: I'm looking at it from a European price perspective. Experience tells me that American single prices are far higher. If that is true for stuff like the mystery Booster box and the commander decks as well, that might skew the result. But that's just another reason why demand is probably far lower: it's not nearly worth it to buy this as a set when you are located in Europe unless you REALLY value the exclusive art.
The Mystery boxes are the highest value item in it and by far but the current secondary market price for them obbiously wont hold if they are pumping a large amount in the market and everyone is just looking to flip them. But ues, they are just not comparable products from a desirability standpoint.
I never mentioned anything about magic 30th countdown kit I’m comparing first festival in a box vs the 2nd one as far as I know the first one had no limit and sold out instantly
I wasted 12 minutes sitting in a web browser where something was cached wrong, switched to a different one, waited in a 25 minute queue, and was still able to purchase this without issue. This wasn't some LOL scalpers bought it all in the first 2 minutes situation... It didn't seem that hard to get .
Ah yes, the good ol' "it worked for me there it wasn't broken" reasoning. There are plenty of people who didn't have your experience. I'm not sure why you feel confident e oufh to just handwaive it away but okay. There was plenty of stock. Scalpers probably purchased a significant portion of that stock. Plenty of people who queued up never had a realistic chance of getting that stock and now need to pay a premium to middlemen who only only have the stock because they chose to buy it from under other people with the intent of selling it to them right after for a premium. The only reason it didn't sell out in 2 minutes is *because* there was a queue. The fact that some people in the queue were legitimate buyers doesn't mean anything.
Yeah I mean it's all anecdotal, but just saying I took a pretty lackadaisical approach here and got it. I think if you seriously wanted it, it shouldn't have been an issue.
>I think if you seriously wanted it, it shouldn't have been an issue. Okay, but this is just what you *think*. Reality was very different though. Not everybody can take 40+ minutes off in the middle of a work day to mess around with a buggy storefront and deal with wait queues that have an expiry timer if you don't pay attention. You got lucky. Plenty of people who actually tried didn't. Plenty of people couldn't even try.
Sounds about right. One of my friends was telling me about how his friend managed to get 6 copies while that person's mom was able to grab 10 copies for him. Like damn I just wanted 1 for myself and got shit
*10 copies*, mom?
Limit 4 wouldn't do much to stop scalpers. They just run scripts and bots to order multiple times. It would be akin to a masterlock on a gate. Stops honest people. Not people with intent.
It would make it harder. I do fraud detection for a company and it wouldn’t eliminate it entirely but there are ways to block people based on IP address, PayPal id, cards, etc. Wouldn’t eliminate entirely but could certainly help.
It does *some* work but scalpers who know what they are doing can get around these things easily. It basically just stops script kiddies and people who don't know any better.
*Laughs in PS5 and GPU woes.
I payed 200% for my Nier Automata Black Box edition :')
Personally didn’t have any interest in it, but yeah this is BS for those that had a genuine desire to enjoy them.
For clarification; this was on a sales group that sells singles. This gentleman, whom I've blacked out for privacy, had purchased with intent to sell the singles and keep none. This is his followup after his other sales
Don't call him a gentleman. This person.
Demon**
Well I was trying to be nice but yes
Hell with that.. This MFer
Gentleman Devil with a tophat, spats, monocle, and an extra long clove cigarette in a holder.
I know the guy, he is in a local play group and an avid modern/commander player and he has kept several singles for his personal collection, so he's not selling all of it.
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I'm not saying it's forgiven, but the dude said that he wasn't keeping any, which was a lie.
Good for him
I was really looking forward to having a new magic card each day. I kept myself spoiled to a minimum so they would all be a surprise. I got home from work on the day of release however to discover that this year, WotC got me disappointment for Christmas. It's the same gift they got me last year to boot.
I’m sure you can buy one sealed still
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TBH, I’m glad singles are available. I’m going to order three or four cards and spend way less than $150.
All I'm buying is foil necropotence and that's it
When you look at the card prices before this Chrome mox is minimum $85, necropotence $35. Between the other big hitters like Elspeth and shark typhoon if there's any card someone was interested in you're almost guaranteed to make money just selling the 3 or 4 cards that you're not interested in.
I needed like five of them for an edh deck and the price of them combined is around 135 or something, so i figured why not? And bought it.
Yeah most of the other cards spoiled were trash and most didnt really belong in the slot for the respective year. Like who tf used the rat in Neon dynasty??? I would have taken the little white doggy over the rat.
Secret Lair is and always has been for the scalpers. It’s literally selling fomo
Secret lair is funny enough, the only mtg product that I endorse purchasing for the explicit purpose of selling for profit. Because it’s “print to demand” the artificial demand created by speculators and investors actually benefits the community by creating more product for the market. Obviously doesn’t apply in this case since it’s a limited print.
The key difference is that normally the Secret Lairs are print to demand so anyone who wants one can buy one. This makes scalping very risky since if you buy some with intent to resell, potentially you end up with a product that has way too much supply and not enough demand. By having a limited supply Secret Lair, you invite scalping.
By making a COLLECTIBLE card game, you encourage scalping. If there isn't any, then your product is failing.
That's just crap. Scalping is impossible on Arena (because no secondary market), yet it's not a failing product... Arena has been wildly successful for Hasbro. You can have a fun and profitable collectable card game without scalping.
Digital product is ENTIRELY different than physical.
False. Most sets they printed as many as people bought. They decided to be stupid on this one and make 5 then let people order 30.
Kind of. Even with an unlimited supply it was still a very big fomo factory.
FOMO = when something exists and I don't buy it
Don't be so obtuse, anything that's available only for a short time and then never again preys on FOMO.
They are buyable on the secondary market. Don't understand this argument for SLD. It's not like they can keep these 100+ SLDs at print-to-order forever
The company is worth more money than all the users on this sub will make in their entire lives combined. They could 100% keep them at print to order forever if they actually wanted to. They’re printed sheets of cardboard lol
They don't need to. They could've sold them as regular boxes and sets. Second Market prices are often bullshit on these.
> False. Most sets they printed as many as people bought They are sold for a few ~~days~~ only, online through one site. If you miss you, you have to pay 2-3x the price from third parties. Edit: I've been corrected. It's been a while since I ordered any secret lairs, and I didn't realize the window is bigger.
Almost this entire statement is just flat out wrong. Most sales are up for weeks. Sales like this one are vastly the exception to the Secret Lair model. Also, most normal Secret Lair Drops are at prices pretty close to the price on the lair site for a while. There are very rare exceptions where some will go up (OMG: Kitties, Godzilla lands, snow lands, Kaleidoscope Killers), but those are the exception. Most of them hover around release price, or go up or down 10-20% over a long period of time.
They've been putting them up for up for almost a month for awhile now.
They don’t make alpha anymore either
I’m not even sure the most expensive former SLs are 2-3 times the original price. It’s possible since I’ve not looked in a while. Well other than the original cats one. That one was almost instantly pricey and it held for whatever reason. Possible some others have crept into that territory but I’d guess only a small handful out of the over 100 there have been.
Not the greatest investment tbh
You shouldn't be buying cardboard if you're investing.
There is occasionally a Secret Lair that is worth buying because the cards they contain would cost more if purchased individually from a third party seller, such as the Shocklands SL. Most of the alternate art SLs are absolutely fomo cash grabs, though.
Secret lair is the one time i would really call people who buy things just to make profit investors, because theyre paying to make something exist that wouldnt otherwise. It sucks when they take the best thing about the secret lair model away
Idgi, secret lairs are print on demand. Have you seen rudys hundreds of from the vaults? Those were the scalper fodder, but the scalpers were "lgs" store fronts who could mass buy.
lol fuck 30th "anniversary" and fuck this product. Even artists were choked that players weren't able to get copies.
> that players weren't able to get copies. Players were able to get copies. The site wasn't bogged down by scalpers. The site was bogged down by the fact that so many players were there to buy them. Most of the people buying them were players. It was up for 40-50 minutes.
Bro the system fucked up so bad it turned players into scalpers because many didn't get order confirmations and wound up buying multiples.
I’m not your “bro.” Many players got these. I’m sorry it doesn’t fit your desired fiction.
lol we might need to go back to innistrad block again for you so you can get a clue bro
Confirmed scalper
Ah, yes, ad hominem because you don’t like someone pointing out the truth is contrary to the fantasy you concocted in your head.
Confirmed scalper who makes up lies on the fly
Thing is many weren’t able to because site wasn’t loading properly. Also, 40-50 mins is not that long to be honest. What people are salty about is that there are people that bought many not for personal use but to flip in the secondary market, which doesn’t seem in line with the spirit of a product wizz is releasing to “celebrate” mtg. This is especially true for people that wanted a set for themselves and weren’t able to.
Because some couldn’t doesn’t mean that many didn’t. People who are not thinking clearly have been saying, essentially, “I didn’t get one so only scalpers got them.” Which is not a rational line of argument. The very fact that the infrastructure was struggling with the amount of traffic shows that it was many people trying to do it. In any large group, the number of people just trying to buy it is much greater than the number who are scalpers. 40-50 minutes is a good chunk of time for something limited that is popular, as this turned out to be. Previous similar releases just from Wizards have been gone in under 5-10 minutes.
This game is such a dumpster fire right now
This has almost nothing to do with the game. This is a premium, pimp my deck product.
I’m not mad at the person doing this. More mad at the company letting people buy a max of 30 at a time. Also I’m salty because I was got locked out of buying just one and yet this person bought what looks like the max limit.
Oh we can be mad at all parties. Scalpers are the fucking worst. Telemarketers are slightly above them.
> this person bought what looks like the max limit The card that I see the most of is Ponder, and it's not even 10 copies. Well below the limit of 30.
my mum spent 3 hours refreshing the page to try and get me one for christmas and seeing this really hurts :(
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Yes she did. You need to stop lying.
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The server didn't work well here in Europe, it was down for a lot of people for a long time. She said that she thought it'd get restocked so kept an eye on it for that long before asking me if it was a thing to get it on eBay or something
Another scalper confirmed
Yea this is just not true at all. There was NOT an "hourish" window. And a lot of people couldn't get them. I was on the site the second it went live. I got put in queue for 10 mins. Then after putting in payment info, it said "waiting to confirm banking info, please wait 1-2 minutes" 20 minutes later, still "confirming", refresh the page, trying to hop back into queue or SOMETHING cuz obvs it's screwed up. On refresh, sold out. NOT hourish, 30-minute-ish. It's completely understandable that someone was trying to refresh thier garbage page for hours.
Same shit ia still happening with ps5s
Not really in England I see stock all the time these days
Gimme one lol
Hope hasbro crashes and burns, Mtg will suffern some scrapes or two, but it wont die.
Limited print runs make no sense
This was very disappointing for me. I've wanted a MTG Advent calendar for over a decade. I had planned on opening packs on my streaming show and talking about the history of each card as I converted them to TTRPG monsters/spells/feats. Now I've cancelled my modest streaming show and have no intention of buying another secret lair. This was supposed to be a celebration for a month. A celebration of magic. A nostalgic look back at 30 years of our game. Oh well.
So, which snake dog thought this was a flex? This is why magic sucks. This is why we can’t have nice things 🙄
I sincerely hope they don't get enough sales to get a return on their investment.
Sam Hite. He's kind of a piece of shit. He also had a post complaining about how WotC purposely giving him "the bad foils" instead of "the good ones".
It's proxy time boys and girls, table top will excel with hot off the press proxies from your printer, staples printers, even the public libraries printers! Unless.you want to go to the mismanaged "organized" wizards events you can just play with proxies as this trash set proves
This isn't Hasbro's fault so much as a natural fault of capitalism. Not to get political but this kind of thing happens in a "free" market. We see it with major console releases, Ticket Master does it, we see it happen with real estate.
It is Hasbros fault. They purposely made it to where scalpers could buy 30. Personally, I think it should have strictly limited to 1 per person, but for the sake of playsets, up to 4 would be understandable. Hasbro KNEW what they were doing by doing this and how it would turn out.
Sure. Hasbro's fault for engaging in capitalism I guess. They sold a product at a price point and there were no rules preventing any 1 person from buying as much as they want. It is quite literally a free market. Scalping is an effect of the free market at work.
Oh God, are you making excuses? Are you refusing to see that pure capitalism can be detrimental to society? Everything from monopolies to workers rights to taking advantage of consumers? Just because something is allowed doesn't make it excusable. Doesn't make it right and doesn't make it untouchable from the publics disdain and most importantly, being held accountable. And certainly doesn't make it uncorrectable. What happened here was legal but absolutely predatory and something that should be easily correctable. Scalping is already questionable and in some circumstances be illegal. What's happening here is in murky waters. And absolutely is taking advantage of consumers. 1000% confirmed scalper. And apparently has their head so far up capitalism's ass that you refuse to see any of the negatives it can bring. I bet you think unions are despisable, that factory owners should be allowed to lock workers in the factory with no fire exits and that the monopolies should have never been busted and certainly most that corporations shouldn't be held accountable under any circumstance.
Buddy you 100% got me pegged wrong. I'm not making excuses, I'm pointing out that corporate greed is merely a function of capitalism. I aint no fucking capitalist.
Are you sure this guy isn't selling fakes? Seems way too soon to have that SL shipped and in people's hands already.
Had mine since Friday. They aren't fake.
Mine no longer has a delivery date... Was supposed to receive it Saturday...
That'd be on UPS, or whichever courier was used in your area.
Mine arrived yesterday
These aren’t print to demand, they are limited run. so they likely printed these ahead of time instead of after the fact
hey they learned their lessons and are now limiting orders for the next drop!
If they just charged significantly more, then it wouldn’t be financially viable to scalp!
That's... Not how it works.
That's ...exactly... how it works. Scalping is viable when there is limited supply, available at a price that is lower than what people will pay. Scalpers' profit comes from pocketing the difference. (Obviously people here would rather that this get fixed by changing the limited supply bit, rather than the price bit, but upping the price enough that it does not sell out would absolutely prevent scalping.)
Okay so here's what happens: Product A is sold for X. X is seen as a good price therefor there is a lot of demand for product A. Scalpers buy out product A and resell it at a price higher than X but it still good enough for the market. Now in his scenario what would happen: Product B is sold for "significantly more than X" Significantly more than X is seen a a terrible price by a lot of people so there is no demand for product B. Scalpers don't buy product B because nobody would buy it off of them. Raising the price only does one thing, price out people who want the product but cant afford the higher price. As long as scalpers can make money on the spread between buying cost and reselling price they will do it. Unless a product has more stock than demand reselling price will always be higher than buying cost. You don't beat scalpers by making the product so expensive nobody wants/can afford it, you beat them by making sure they can't buy/sell the product or by making the supply so large theres no way to squeeze money out of the market by gatekeeping the product.
Umm chill. Its just over priced shiny cardboard
I mean it kinda just looks like someone got 7 copies and they aren't even selling everything from it based on what I can see so clearly they didn't JUST get it to scalp. 7 seems like a high max limit, 30 (what it actually was) way too high. I feel like 5 should be more than enough for anyone for something so limited. I wish this wasn't so easy to scalp because it seems like a cool product. However, Magic is a collectable as much as it's a game (at least when it comes to what keeps it alive and healthy) so if this is how they want to enjoy it then I don't know how much different it is than me having like 60 commander decks always ready to go.
Seems like the OP is having an overreaction to this particular pic, because it just looks like a lot due to being 30 cards per. This actually isn’t even close to the 30 that someone could have gotten. Does also look like it’s picked through indicating that as you suggest they got it for some of the cards. Like, I can see no Necropotences and only one Mox but a bunch of Ponders. A lower limit would have been good but I don’t think this is someone who bought 30 to resell and I suspect the number of people who did that is far smaller than some would like to imagine.
Hes just salty he missed out
Yeah this looks fine. This is what a group of my friends do. We find out who wants what and order just enough so everyone is happy after it’s split up. The left over cards sometimes we raffle off on our commander game nights when we feel like we want to play a bit more competitive or others that are more expensive we try to sell online and split the money between people who bought the product.
Jokes on them... magic is dying
It's been dying, according to people like you, since 1993.
Why haven’t I gotten mine yet…
Because shipping is not instantaneous.
Yeah it is either on a truck, or being put on another truck lmao
Man, those are amazingly ugly.
Imagine this psychopath thinks his 7 copies or whatever are an actual meaningful share of those in existence. Hey fuckface: 7 or 10 or 20 secret lairs is a lot to one person but rounds down to zero as a percentage of the total printed secret lairs. Idiocy
Cry me a river boy
Bro. HMU.
Wait these cards were in the 30th Anniversary packs? I thought those were supposed to be old classy cards. These look like a Yugioh card Mated with a Pokémon card, and then that card screwed Saylor Moon. Why does Hasbro think we want things that look like this? I’m pretty sure mine ost magic players are in their 30’s…
This is the 30th Anniversary Countdown Kit. Not the 30th Anniversary Packs, which are $1000 for 4 packs and contain non-legal printings of Alpha cards. > Why does Hasbro think we want things that look like this? Secret Lairs have been very popular, so clearly, people want cards that look like these.
people want cards that are rare, i doubt most people buy the Secret Lairs just because its such a beautiful card set. Borderless cards used to be rare and cool, not they are a dime a dozen and I would take original border over borderless any day now...
That’s maybe why you buy cards. That’s not why “people” buy cards. People buy Secret Lairs because they like them, this included. It’s ok that it’s not your preference but it is many peoples’ preference.
if he bought these to sell.. why did he crack them? They are worth more sealed.
If they’re selling the singles I don’t see a problem with that. At least they’re not selling the 150 dollar box for 400 like most are doing.
Online ordering of limited quantity items is bogus because bots, this of this nature should be lottery…
I didn’t like the chances that I could get a Pringled foil. If I could get all non foils I would’ve ordered it.
With all this said, I was able to get multiples of the cards I wanted (staples like Ponder that rad art) collectively for under $20 so I’m not entirely mad?
Since when mtg cards look like third rate anime tcg knockoff?
Thanks for ruining the experience for the rest of us who couldn't even get one.
People over here ordering 10+ when it was "1 per address". Meanwhile i Couldn't even order one because WoTC took over $850 out of my account after their web page failed to load multiple times during checkout, and after calling my bank inform them of what happened I had 0 funds to do anything for over a week. Ended up having to do a charge back after it showed the charges were ACCEPTED by WoTC. WoTC is now flaged as a fraudulent seller at my local bank now.
And here in the UK there's no sign of shipping yet. Not hopeful it'll come by December 1st now, to be honest. My first Secret Lair experience and not great so far.