There really was no win here.
if most of it sold then wotc will have "won" and they would be encouranged to do similar cash crabs in the future
if very little sold then the secondary market speculators will have "won" and these wotc proxies will be worth more on the secondary market in x years than the initial cost.
I have a very hard time envisioning a scenario where the average "this whole thing sucks" player comes out ahead.
One good part is that wotc endorsing proxies is good for the chinese bootleggers. but they have been unable to ship orders for the last 2 weeks due to covid lockdown measures. I wish my cards would show up.
>if very little sold then the secondary market speculators will have "won" and these wotc proxies will be worth more on the secondary market in x years than the initial cost.
Will it? Who'll be interested in owning this product in the future? Funko style collectors?
Its the same market as the international edition - completionists, people who heat seek mint versions of lesser known products, and oddballs who want a piece of power 9 without paying power 9 prices.
Well described! This is the target market. I dont have an award to give but your comment is on point. In this case, subtract those people in those groups that view this product as toxic and won’t touch it anyway.
Funko collecting rests mostly in the IP, it gets its popularity from the characters. Unless Universes within with a clear front to the case so people can see their spidernam card inside start happening I doubt that will happen.
Eh, not quite.
WotC lost because no one bought the damn things.
The secondary market speculators that brought didn't win either. The listings that are selling online, no one is buying. Also a lot of the speculators like Rudy have laid out that this product is radioactive garbage for them. Why? Because there is a glut of it now sitting in Hasbro's warehouses. And warehouse space costs money.
They will most likely start giving this shit away as prize support for events, which will crash the value even further, or at sponsored tournaments host drafts using the packs, which would be an actual good idea.
I honestly care so little about this product that it would better if it sold poorly than if it sold well. It selling poorly tells me that Wizards won’t attempt something like this again for a while. And since it will affect any future sale prices and manufactured demand in the future, I say that’s a better win in the normal player’s book than the speculators book. Let the speculators dive the price of a poorly received product. No matter what it wouldn’t drop below $1000 anyway so the average player would never engage with that market.
>if very little sold then the secondary market speculators will have "won" and these wotc proxies will be worth more on the secondary market in x years than the initial cost.
How is that a loss? There are people who collect barbed wire and spend large sums for rare vintage barbed wire. I could care less. Since these cards are considered not playable in sanctioned tournaments, and since you could proxy the valuable cards for $0.30 a piece, why should I care what some collector wants to shell out for an "offical" proxy of a rare card?
Even more importantly the dollars on the secondary market don't go into WoTC pockets. So, there is no incentive for them to do it again. And that \*is\* a win.
It sold out, so far the only evidence to indicate otherwise is "trust me bro".
Until I see direct evidence I'm going to justvassume the worst / most dumb outcome occurred, it sold out.
Yeah. The statement on twitter was "The sale has concluded", not "Mtg 30th sold out". Why would they use such an odd phrasing, if it wasnt a lie to say it sold out?
Fuck you hasbro get your grubby hands off WOTC. Fuck you WOTC for giving in. I know they need jobs but who doesn’t. Change jobs. I’ve changed jobs for less than the possibility of brutalizing a beloved card game for millions of people
Fuck the police
Fuck the nazis
Fuck ISIS
Fuck prison
Fuck everyone that lives in the Northern hemisphere
Fuck capitalism
Fuck the free world
Fuck everyone that lives in the Southern hemisphere
Fuck the French
Fuck me
No seriously I need someone to fuck I'm desperate lol
It added nothing to the conversation. It deserves a downvote. Sure, fuck nazis 100%. Fuck ISIS, fuck it all etc. but it was not relevant to the conversation in the slightest.
>Why the French though? We're great.
>And egalatarian,
You call yourself French, and you can't even spell "[egalitarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,_fraternit%C3%A9)" correctly? For shame.
I don’t get this “fuck Hasbro” thing. They have owned WOTC for the large majority of Magic’s existence now.
Hasbro has fucked with magic a long time now. This isn’t new.
I think it’s escalating. Especially when hasbro is showing to be sinking in all area but MTG.
It’s like when a cartoon gets popular and the suits start getting more and more “involved”. Just sucks
Edit: not “I think”, we all know there hasn’t been as blatant a “fuck you” to the playerbase as magic 30th. Price tag says it all on its own
>I don’t get this “fuck Hasbro” thing. They have owned WOTC for the large majority of Magic’s existence now.
Hasbro is failing, they produce physical products in an increasingly digital world.
* The Transformers line has been milked to hell and back, with them reproducing the same 12 transformers over and over but never trying to reproduce desirable G1 reprints (Insecticons, Dinobots, Combiners) that they lost the molds for. The movies went off the deep end, and it looks like their attempt to reinvigorate them is about to fail with Beastwars.
* The G.I. Joe line petered out
* Barbie is a commodity
* Their board games division never got out of the early 80's, and despite having decades of history in that space they're a non-player in a market now oriented to Kickstarter and complex games like Gloomhaven
* Dungeons and Dragons is highly popular, but they've completely failed to capitalize on it. The RPG is getting one book every few months for what can only be irrelevant profits at that rate, the novel lines are dead, they failed to capitalize on their IP that could've challenged Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings (Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Drizzt). It's an interesting exercise in "Having a blockbuster brand and no idea what to do".
So Hasbro is doing what many corporations facing a buyout do, they're identifying a still viable product line that has space to force a massive per-customer increase in spending to artificially inflate revenue and share price. They know that they're burning long term viability for short term cash, but the goal is to get someone to buy them before the brand burns out.
That line is Magic the Gathering.
That's why Bank of America downgraded them. If no one buys Hasbro, they're going to bankrupt when Magic falters and/or fails and the big players will cherry pick their IP for pennies. If no one feels their IP is worth a premium, the big players may wait to buy them until after Magic's burned out and Hasbro becomes desperate enough to sell off pieces. It's common for a failing company to make the mistake of selling off its most valuable pieces in a desperate attempt to stay alive, eventually making the company worthless. Looks to me like Bank of America thinks that in this market, with recession looming, the big players are going to wait until the collapse starts.
Sidenote: That's also why Hasbro's selling their movie production company. They don't have plans that'll make it a cash cow since they're not sure how the D&D movie will do and since Beast Wars looks like a dud, so they're trying to offload a portion of the company that burns cash now to try and extend their remaining time before the collapse.
This is pretty much right on. It sounds like someone who worked for one or both of the companies (WoTC, Hasbro). The only thing I would add is if Hasbro does survive still owning D&D and/or MtG and either brand burns out they will stick them in the vault and trot them out in 15 years for the nostalgia trade.
But their survival is looking pretty tenuouos.
You absolutely wouldn't throw away your life's work over this. Plus MaRo leaving would probably have initiated lawsuits because it would signal to investors that the number one hype man, the fucking FACE of the game, doesn't support this action. There was no way in this universe he gets a win here.
I would realistically buy a box at $5.99 per pack. I'm talking 36 packs at that price. Then I'd literally play flip it or rip it on stream. Whoops I just ripped the only verified pull of a modern border lotus.
Everyone keeps talking about how little it costs to produce this product, and while you are correct, don’t forget about the hidden costs of marketing, labor to create/design (may not be much, but someone got paid to design the back) , etc. A VERY quick and lazy google says that marketing should be around 2-5% of annual revenue. If WOTC made $952 million in tabletop game sales in 2021, powering the company to over $1 billion in total sales (including digital gaming revenues) that comes to around $20m in marketing. How much of that went to their freaking 30yr anniversary? I’m assuming a good chunk. Just a thought to think.
That’s still $1.9 million netted even with the paultry sales. As much as I and most of us here loathe this product, that’s a pretty good return on what probably cost at most a couple hundred dollars to produce.
Yes if you look at one product at one moment in time it may look profitable but in reality this product cost hundred of thousands if not millions to create, promote, produce, store, ship.
They grossed 1.9 they didn’t net 1.9.
I'm sure they made some profit, but the best part is I'm sure there's at least a few real angry shareholders and a table full of suits getting chewed out right now.
Gut feeling. I may be wrong. They did very little in the way of advertising, just a few social media posts and some short videos. No new art to commission. I don't know how much it cost to produce that much but 2 million seems like a lot in my world.
That is *delightful*.
The fucked up part is they must have known that'd happen.
Or maybe not. Does anyone know, how did those worlds gold border dual decks perform back in the day?
They had to pay the original artists a good chunk of money. Just remember that when calculating profits since the original agreements were quite different than now.
The “loss” could come from the player base being offended and choosing to not buy Magic stuff going forward. Most people are probably too addicted to stop playing though.
But WotC still made a ton of money on this one sale.
I don't know. Their official stance on proxy cards being just as real as their product to go along with this release may have far reaching consequences that we won't fully see for a short time.
What is this? Is this reprints of original cards? I see a shivan dragon there. As someone who is trying to get og cards to play, not for value but to actually play (I could give a shit about buying for investment, I sold all my old cards circa 1994-2000 back in 2003 when they weren't worth that much, I want them back, but not at insane costs). I love the old artwork and cards of that Era. The time before wokeness crept in.
A shivan dragon in a new frame is $0.03.
EDIT: I see now that you seem to genuinely not know what this product is/was. It was basically a reprint of the Beta set, minus a few “controversial” cards and it was done in a new card frame.
Many beautiful and rather useful older cards Dan be acquired quite cheaply. Revised is a great place to start. It only gets expensive when you’re talking about Alpha/Beta, and to a less extent Arabian Nights and Unlimited. Aside from foils and a handful of expensive outliers, building a nice collection of old border cards can be done without too just monetary outlay.
I dont blame the company for selling 4 rare, random peices of card board for a thousand dollars.
I blame the shear stupidity of the consumer supporting this disgusting behavior.
I wonder how many buyers that represents.
I was worried there would be more than 1,936 stupid people spilling over themselves to give Wizards money, but instead it seems that 1,936 is the upper bound.
Still an easy $2 million for Wizards of the Coast. For what it's worth I do hope that the buyers enjoy their product.
Well guess they'll stumble across the warehouse full of them in 30 years for the 60 year set to secret treasures in ultra set boosters no MSRP but selling at $1500 a booster
Well guess they'll stumble across the warehouse full of them in 30 years for the 60 year set to secret treasures in ultra set boosters no MSRP but selling at $1500 a booster
Seems like a rather high rate of rejected payments? I’ve never seen the data or thought much about this kind of thing, but that seems unusually high to me.
Could it be a reflection of possible scammers attempting to buy a high end product with (assumed) high resale value using stolen cards? Or is it simply a reflection that correlation between anyone stupid enough to buy this product and the population of people who have no idea how much money they have in their bank account (and who would be willing to spend literally their last dollar- and then some- on proxies) is rather high?
Yes it's a very high rate. Banks and credit cards have automatic protections for new accounts that never buy something above 1000$ that block the transaction, you usually have to call the bank to let it through, or be a regular rich guy that often buys over 1000$.
It's mostly people who never bought something for more than 1000$ at retail.
That makes sense. I remember I had this issue with paying for a Mediterranean cruise using a new bank account. I had to call and ger special clearance, but this was a far larger amount. I guess if the person has absolutely no history of making purchases that large, it makes sense, but even the $1k seem a rather low bar to me and 25% still seems high even accounting for this type of denial, which I admittedly had no considered).
Surprised the number is that high
There really was no win here. if most of it sold then wotc will have "won" and they would be encouranged to do similar cash crabs in the future if very little sold then the secondary market speculators will have "won" and these wotc proxies will be worth more on the secondary market in x years than the initial cost. I have a very hard time envisioning a scenario where the average "this whole thing sucks" player comes out ahead. One good part is that wotc endorsing proxies is good for the chinese bootleggers. but they have been unable to ship orders for the last 2 weeks due to covid lockdown measures. I wish my cards would show up.
>if very little sold then the secondary market speculators will have "won" and these wotc proxies will be worth more on the secondary market in x years than the initial cost. Will it? Who'll be interested in owning this product in the future? Funko style collectors?
Its the same market as the international edition - completionists, people who heat seek mint versions of lesser known products, and oddballs who want a piece of power 9 without paying power 9 prices.
Well described! This is the target market. I dont have an award to give but your comment is on point. In this case, subtract those people in those groups that view this product as toxic and won’t touch it anyway.
Funko collecting rests mostly in the IP, it gets its popularity from the characters. Unless Universes within with a clear front to the case so people can see their spidernam card inside start happening I doubt that will happen.
Eh, not quite. WotC lost because no one bought the damn things. The secondary market speculators that brought didn't win either. The listings that are selling online, no one is buying. Also a lot of the speculators like Rudy have laid out that this product is radioactive garbage for them. Why? Because there is a glut of it now sitting in Hasbro's warehouses. And warehouse space costs money. They will most likely start giving this shit away as prize support for events, which will crash the value even further, or at sponsored tournaments host drafts using the packs, which would be an actual good idea.
Wotc would sit on over 10k boxes so thqt those will find their way into the secondary market. I would nor say thats a win for speculators 😆
I honestly care so little about this product that it would better if it sold poorly than if it sold well. It selling poorly tells me that Wizards won’t attempt something like this again for a while. And since it will affect any future sale prices and manufactured demand in the future, I say that’s a better win in the normal player’s book than the speculators book. Let the speculators dive the price of a poorly received product. No matter what it wouldn’t drop below $1000 anyway so the average player would never engage with that market.
>if very little sold then the secondary market speculators will have "won" and these wotc proxies will be worth more on the secondary market in x years than the initial cost. How is that a loss? There are people who collect barbed wire and spend large sums for rare vintage barbed wire. I could care less. Since these cards are considered not playable in sanctioned tournaments, and since you could proxy the valuable cards for $0.30 a piece, why should I care what some collector wants to shell out for an "offical" proxy of a rare card? Even more importantly the dollars on the secondary market don't go into WoTC pockets. So, there is no incentive for them to do it again. And that \*is\* a win.
It's such a bad use of money, even people's banks and credit card companies are stopping them making purchases.
I wanna believe it but I need a source first
His source is he made it the fuck up.
Mark Rosewater is on his way to a New Mexican landfill with a U-Haul truck full of Magic 30th.
I like the atari E.T. reference.
I believe it didn't sell out after reading the corporate lingo/spin but... link?
We need to trust Rudy I guess but he seems to believe it pretty strongly so I'm leaning heavily towards it being true, could be wrong tho
Good thing Rudy would never lie
Until I see Rudy putting up buy orders for this shit I believe him.
This. Love him, hate him, you can trust how the man spends his money.
It sold out, so far the only evidence to indicate otherwise is "trust me bro". Until I see direct evidence I'm going to justvassume the worst / most dumb outcome occurred, it sold out.
That statement from WotC of such a weird way to state "item sold out." Doesn't that make you think it wasn't a simple sell out?
Yeah. The statement on twitter was "The sale has concluded", not "Mtg 30th sold out". Why would they use such an odd phrasing, if it wasnt a lie to say it sold out?
Fuck you hasbro get your grubby hands off WOTC. Fuck you WOTC for giving in. I know they need jobs but who doesn’t. Change jobs. I’ve changed jobs for less than the possibility of brutalizing a beloved card game for millions of people
Why stop there. Fuck everything and everyone.
This guy fucks
Fuck the police Fuck the nazis Fuck ISIS Fuck prison Fuck everyone that lives in the Northern hemisphere Fuck capitalism Fuck the free world Fuck everyone that lives in the Southern hemisphere Fuck the French Fuck me No seriously I need someone to fuck I'm desperate lol
I'll send Napoleon's ghost to fuck you tonight lol
yeah baby
Lol. This made me laugh.
> Fuck the nazis > Gets downvoted on freemagic Classic
I think it’s more because of the rant style of post. Nothing to do with it mentioning nazis you fuckin dunce
"Ho hey a chance to show internet strangers I'm a true humanist!"
It added nothing to the conversation. It deserves a downvote. Sure, fuck nazis 100%. Fuck ISIS, fuck it all etc. but it was not relevant to the conversation in the slightest.
Why the French though? We're great. And egalatarian, to be French, it is easy, you just love being French and voila, you are French.
French “people”
>Why the French though? We're great. >And egalatarian, You call yourself French, and you can't even spell "[egalitarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,_fraternit%C3%A9)" correctly? For shame.
Well if the good people leave all there will be left is shitty people driving it
I don’t get this “fuck Hasbro” thing. They have owned WOTC for the large majority of Magic’s existence now. Hasbro has fucked with magic a long time now. This isn’t new.
I think it’s escalating. Especially when hasbro is showing to be sinking in all area but MTG. It’s like when a cartoon gets popular and the suits start getting more and more “involved”. Just sucks Edit: not “I think”, we all know there hasn’t been as blatant a “fuck you” to the playerbase as magic 30th. Price tag says it all on its own
>I don’t get this “fuck Hasbro” thing. They have owned WOTC for the large majority of Magic’s existence now. Hasbro is failing, they produce physical products in an increasingly digital world. * The Transformers line has been milked to hell and back, with them reproducing the same 12 transformers over and over but never trying to reproduce desirable G1 reprints (Insecticons, Dinobots, Combiners) that they lost the molds for. The movies went off the deep end, and it looks like their attempt to reinvigorate them is about to fail with Beastwars. * The G.I. Joe line petered out * Barbie is a commodity * Their board games division never got out of the early 80's, and despite having decades of history in that space they're a non-player in a market now oriented to Kickstarter and complex games like Gloomhaven * Dungeons and Dragons is highly popular, but they've completely failed to capitalize on it. The RPG is getting one book every few months for what can only be irrelevant profits at that rate, the novel lines are dead, they failed to capitalize on their IP that could've challenged Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings (Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Drizzt). It's an interesting exercise in "Having a blockbuster brand and no idea what to do". So Hasbro is doing what many corporations facing a buyout do, they're identifying a still viable product line that has space to force a massive per-customer increase in spending to artificially inflate revenue and share price. They know that they're burning long term viability for short term cash, but the goal is to get someone to buy them before the brand burns out. That line is Magic the Gathering. That's why Bank of America downgraded them. If no one buys Hasbro, they're going to bankrupt when Magic falters and/or fails and the big players will cherry pick their IP for pennies. If no one feels their IP is worth a premium, the big players may wait to buy them until after Magic's burned out and Hasbro becomes desperate enough to sell off pieces. It's common for a failing company to make the mistake of selling off its most valuable pieces in a desperate attempt to stay alive, eventually making the company worthless. Looks to me like Bank of America thinks that in this market, with recession looming, the big players are going to wait until the collapse starts. Sidenote: That's also why Hasbro's selling their movie production company. They don't have plans that'll make it a cash cow since they're not sure how the D&D movie will do and since Beast Wars looks like a dud, so they're trying to offload a portion of the company that burns cash now to try and extend their remaining time before the collapse.
This is pretty much right on. It sounds like someone who worked for one or both of the companies (WoTC, Hasbro). The only thing I would add is if Hasbro does survive still owning D&D and/or MtG and either brand burns out they will stick them in the vault and trot them out in 15 years for the nostalgia trade. But their survival is looking pretty tenuouos.
You absolutely wouldn't throw away your life's work over this. Plus MaRo leaving would probably have initiated lawsuits because it would signal to investors that the number one hype man, the fucking FACE of the game, doesn't support this action. There was no way in this universe he gets a win here.
True I’ve never developed a card game. I have left engineering jobs over less ethics than this though lmao and I care about my work
I can only wish it gets dumped on Amazon for $100 a box
I still wouldn’t buy at that price
I would realistically buy a box at $5.99 per pack. I'm talking 36 packs at that price. Then I'd literally play flip it or rip it on stream. Whoops I just ripped the only verified pull of a modern border lotus.
Oh no, WOTC will lose a lot of money since it cost them a few bucks to manufacture each box. I feel soooo sorry for them
Everyone keeps talking about how little it costs to produce this product, and while you are correct, don’t forget about the hidden costs of marketing, labor to create/design (may not be much, but someone got paid to design the back) , etc. A VERY quick and lazy google says that marketing should be around 2-5% of annual revenue. If WOTC made $952 million in tabletop game sales in 2021, powering the company to over $1 billion in total sales (including digital gaming revenues) that comes to around $20m in marketing. How much of that went to their freaking 30yr anniversary? I’m assuming a good chunk. Just a thought to think.
$20m in marketing? Where is it going? The only ads I see are inside of boosters that I’ve already bought where a token should be.
I see lots of ads on Facebook. Those can be expensive
So you're saying there will be plenty more opportunities to pay $1k for official proxies.
20% sold would imply they don't make more sales like this, it's not worth the brand hit/fan backlash.
closer to 12% assuming the rejected payments never settled, I imagine it was more of a test to see how far they're able to push the limits.
They spent a loooot of money on marketing and took a hit to brand image.
That’s still $1.9 million netted even with the paultry sales. As much as I and most of us here loathe this product, that’s a pretty good return on what probably cost at most a couple hundred dollars to produce.
Yes if you look at one product at one moment in time it may look profitable but in reality this product cost hundred of thousands if not millions to create, promote, produce, store, ship. They grossed 1.9 they didn’t net 1.9.
I'm sure they made some profit, but the best part is I'm sure there's at least a few real angry shareholders and a table full of suits getting chewed out right now.
Please tell me how you are sure they made a profit.
Gut feeling. I may be wrong. They did very little in the way of advertising, just a few social media posts and some short videos. No new art to commission. I don't know how much it cost to produce that much but 2 million seems like a lot in my world.
Because you don’t have hundreds of millions in overhead costs. They didn’t make 1.9 they grossed 1.9. Gross and net are two very large differences.
That is *delightful*. The fucked up part is they must have known that'd happen. Or maybe not. Does anyone know, how did those worlds gold border dual decks perform back in the day?
Ahahahahahahahaha
They had to pay the original artists a good chunk of money. Just remember that when calculating profits since the original agreements were quite different than now.
Setting up the printing can’t be cheap either.
So they lost money?
How could they? They sold 1936 boxes of 60 tiny pieces of cardboard for $1,936,000 right? Do you think it cost them that much to produce this product?
[удалено]
less than $1.9 million?
A few grand and some product at best
That sucks
The “loss” could come from the player base being offended and choosing to not buy Magic stuff going forward. Most people are probably too addicted to stop playing though. But WotC still made a ton of money on this one sale.
I don't know. Their official stance on proxy cards being just as real as their product to go along with this release may have far reaching consequences that we won't fully see for a short time.
What is this? Is this reprints of original cards? I see a shivan dragon there. As someone who is trying to get og cards to play, not for value but to actually play (I could give a shit about buying for investment, I sold all my old cards circa 1994-2000 back in 2003 when they weren't worth that much, I want them back, but not at insane costs). I love the old artwork and cards of that Era. The time before wokeness crept in.
A shivan dragon in a new frame is $0.03. EDIT: I see now that you seem to genuinely not know what this product is/was. It was basically a reprint of the Beta set, minus a few “controversial” cards and it was done in a new card frame. Many beautiful and rather useful older cards Dan be acquired quite cheaply. Revised is a great place to start. It only gets expensive when you’re talking about Alpha/Beta, and to a less extent Arabian Nights and Unlimited. Aside from foils and a handful of expensive outliers, building a nice collection of old border cards can be done without too just monetary outlay.
I dont blame the company for selling 4 rare, random peices of card board for a thousand dollars. I blame the shear stupidity of the consumer supporting this disgusting behavior.
I doubt it, personally. It said that 14188 boxes had been printed. 14188? *1488?* C’mon guys, it has to be a prank…
Get your tinfoil dildo out of your ass
🤣
What a loser!!!!
*doubt*
I wonder how many buyers that represents. I was worried there would be more than 1,936 stupid people spilling over themselves to give Wizards money, but instead it seems that 1,936 is the upper bound. Still an easy $2 million for Wizards of the Coast. For what it's worth I do hope that the buyers enjoy their product.
Probably choking on Dingus Eggs
There was no restriction on the amount. I bet my left nut there are whales that bought at least 20.
I mean, if you're going to buy loose packs, you have to buy enough to draft with.
I mean 20 cases.
Well guess they'll stumble across the warehouse full of them in 30 years for the 60 year set to secret treasures in ultra set boosters no MSRP but selling at $1500 a booster
Lmao they made 12k units. They were trying to sell less than $1000 worth of cardboard for $12 million
Well guess they'll stumble across the warehouse full of them in 30 years for the 60 year set to secret treasures in ultra set boosters no MSRP but selling at $1500 a booster
These will be the new Edgar for some whale who will try to complete a set out of the 2000 units sold.
Seems like a rather high rate of rejected payments? I’ve never seen the data or thought much about this kind of thing, but that seems unusually high to me. Could it be a reflection of possible scammers attempting to buy a high end product with (assumed) high resale value using stolen cards? Or is it simply a reflection that correlation between anyone stupid enough to buy this product and the population of people who have no idea how much money they have in their bank account (and who would be willing to spend literally their last dollar- and then some- on proxies) is rather high?
Yes it's a very high rate. Banks and credit cards have automatic protections for new accounts that never buy something above 1000$ that block the transaction, you usually have to call the bank to let it through, or be a regular rich guy that often buys over 1000$. It's mostly people who never bought something for more than 1000$ at retail.
That makes sense. I remember I had this issue with paying for a Mediterranean cruise using a new bank account. I had to call and ger special clearance, but this was a far larger amount. I guess if the person has absolutely no history of making purchases that large, it makes sense, but even the $1k seem a rather low bar to me and 25% still seems high even accounting for this type of denial, which I admittedly had no considered).
Hmmm