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Modern Masters 2015 is out, in paper, in stores. Releases happened last weekend and it was supposed to be the first glimpse of a cool set.
I saw foil Tarmogoyfs getting posted to Twitter, but I also saw some rumblings from guys like Don Wiggins, who does box reports. The report: cards were damaged coming straight out of the pack.
The packs are cardboard and look like this:
These packs harm cards and can be tampered with.
Let's go through these two issues. First, the rare/mythic is at the back of the pack. Due to the packaging, they often end up with scratched corners or backs, right from the pack. This means that many MM2015 rares will not be NM. My prediction, by the way, is that this will drive the prices even lower, since a NM- could be the standard.
Next, I've heard reports that these packs can be tampered with and then resealed. That is to say, I can carefully open a pack, remove the rare, put in a junk mythic (enjoy that Comet Storm!) and seal it back up to trade out at $10. To me, this puts them in the same category as Legends packs. You must assume that loose packs have been searched. You should only purchase packs from a dealer who you know and trust and watch them take the packs from a box, ideally a sealed box.
This is effectively a burn notice on sealed packs. Sadly, I think that if you get these as prizes, you should crack them and see what's in them instead of hoarding them or trading them away. As we get further from release date, these are even more suspicious.
If you want to see how they can be opened and then resealed, this is a good video to watch. Importantly, the host tells you how to spot an opened pack.
Also: Japanese and Chinese packs are in traditional plastic packaging. They cannot be searched and they are not facing damage that the English cards are. Few people chase Chinese cards, but the Japanese packs will be valuable for years to come.
Collation of packs is turning out to be pretty strange.
You've opened a box and there's a foil in each pack! Unfortunately, they're all this:
Yep, Rusted Relic is showing up as pack foils in MM2015. Why this one? The answer turns out to be that Rusted Relic is printed at the bottom of the foil uncommon/common sheet for filler. They're supposed to be discarded.
The printer does not want to make half sheets, so they run off a full sheet like this:
Now if they've got actual humans working on a flagship product that retails for $10, the printer would not have let this happen. Unfortunately, school's out and they put unpaid high school interns on this, or so it would seem.
This means that if you start seeing Rusted Relics show up in a box, stop pulling from that box if you can--ask your LGS owner to open a new one.
Some packs don't even have a rare in them.
This is the most frightening part of the collation issue. Some of these packs don't even have a rare in them. Imagine a casual Magic player springing $10 for a pack, then finding that there's not even a rare in it. Did it get tampered with? Did they just not see it? Did Wizards screw up? None of these are good thoughts. They're going to be driving the Brand Manager sick. This is absolutely not the experience you want for your banner Summer product.
It'll be even stranger if we see rareless packs show up at the Grand Prix in draft. While the top-level drafting has all pre-screened (and stamped) cards, I've got to wonder what happens at the end of Day One or in a side event when a pack has only 14 cards in it. That is assuredly not the lasting image that WOTC wants from GP: Las Vegas.
My advice is to ask your store owner what would happen if a pack had no rare in it when you bought it--whether they would offer a refund or not. Then open the packs in front of the store owner.
Unfortunately, Wizards gave a non-answer about refunds or exchanges on these packs. Bad communication is unsurprising from WOTC. Ideally, they would work with store owners to set up exchanges for cards opened in the store and they would stick their printer, Carta Mundi, with the bill for it all.
Then again, you may get a bunch of miscut money rares that end up being even more money:
There is no good official solution to MM2015's mistakes.
Wizards hasn't instituted a refund program and they probably will not. It's quite hard to come up with a solution that doesn't leave them open to a great deal of fraud. And while the packs cost them far less than $10 to make, they want the price point to remain where it is--they don't want dealers to exchange in hundreds of dollars of packs that they allege didn't contain rares.
If the problem could be isolated to a certain lot number, it would be easier to find out what went wrong and give an exchange.
Compounding this is the fact that there is only one printing of MM2015, so this problem isn't going to get solved in a later wave. All the Modern Masters that was going to get printed has already been printed.
I have a feeling that the non-apology that we get is all we'll see. I imagine Wizards will quickly try to ignore that this happened and draw attention to Magic: Origins, the summer set.
All of this should result in MM2015 rares and mythics being even less expensive.
Let's add up the factors going into the set's lower value. Would you buy a box in a year if:
- it might not have rares
- it might have damaged cards
- it might have Rusted Relics instead of normal foils
Probably not. There's a strong incentive to just rip the packs right now unless they're Japanese, so the product isn't going to be hoarded like the original Modern Masters (MMA) was. The rares and mythics from MMA saw a dip of about 30% in value, barring a few that climbed later due to heavy Modern play (Slaughter Pact, Blood Moon, Cryptic Command among others).
I'm supposing that the rares in this pack will follow the 4:2:1 pattern I discovered awhile back. If the original price pre-reprint was $40, the price of the old one will drop to $20 and the new printing will drop to $10. I've only corroborated this with rares, so I can't speak to your dreams of a $25 Tarmogoyf. Ignoble Hierarch, for example, has dropped from $60 to about $38 and is poised to go lower.
I'm left feeling that MM2015 was mostly a disappointment. The chase rares any mythics are unexciting. The fear of opening a Comet Storm now has to be tempered with the fear of not opening a rare at all. If Wizards gets around to doing MM2017 or later, I hope that they learn from the bountiful lessons of failure in this set.
What do you think of the errors that have cropped up? Are you more likely to open MM2015 packs or do you want anything to do with the set?
-Doug
The internet makes these problems easier to share with the world. But these happens every time, again and again.
Just because we notice it more on the internet now, doesn’t mean it happens more than usual.
Mistakes, happen, last year, we had a box used for drafting that had Spanish rares instead of English rares.
We solved it the civilian way, instead of screaming on the internet.
Just contact WOTC, and they solve everything very fine. You’ll be happy.
If people refuse to communicate with WOTC first, let them complain.
People on this site, are hopefully better in comunication, and someone should write an article about we should stay calm instead of following the screamers running around on the internet.
We should all ask one question to ourselves:
Did I open a pack with a mistake?
if no: why do you care?
if yes: contact WOTC directly.
I’ve read this on twitter – just because we hear about it now doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before.
This hasn’t happened before because :
i) they haven’t previously used packaging that is damaging the cards;
ii) they haven’t previously used packaging that can so easily be repacked and resealed;
iii) they haven’t previously charged $10 a pack;
iv) they have very rarely put a foil into every single pack especially of premium product.
The implications for finance moving forward are significant.
1. Damaged cards: didn’t happen to me. But happened before in old packaging.
Remember, this kind of packaging allows us to open boosters without damaging cards. If you draft sometimes, you know how people open their boosters and what damage can be the result of that.
2. I haven’t found a booster that I can open without breaking it.
But I do remember that people could predict every rare in a booster, based on their position in the booster box. I tried it myself, so I know how easy it was. Finding boosters you can open an close without damage is more difficult I think.
3. Price is irrelevant in this discussion I think.
The price is not a guarantee to have less mistakes than any other set.
4. Before you know it, rusted relic foil will be a collector’s item ;).
1. The damaged cards coming straight out of the booster is a thing that is happening. The most obvious and widespread so far will be the whitening on the edges which is a real sticking point when it comes to things being NM. Having your cards bump around in a box will do that to them while having them do the same in your average booster pack wrapping is a lot less damaging.
2. There are a bunch of videos out there detailing how you can do this and how to spot tampered boosters. You just need a knife and some glue to do this. One of these videos is even linked in the article.
3. The price carries the idea that this is a premium item and with it the expectation that the quality is higher. They’ve never charged this much for a booster pack before and so it’s just par for the course when people expect a lot more when they do.
4. I honestly doubt that one.
And last, it’s not a good idea to just hand wave people off and tell them to go to WotC if they get a problematic pack or box and pretend like nothing’s wrong. If this happened to any pack and some casual or new player comes around to buy packs to find them just missing rares or having damaged cards, it’s just going to be an awful experience and might just drive them away from the game before they even bother to try to actually contact WotC.
Sure, the amount of miscuts, misprints and bad collation so far could be a thing that happens just as often in other sets and it might just be getting blown out of proportion, but there are problems with this set which are not just these alone, and WotC do need to recognise that they have to at least try to sort them out in future sets.
I really disagree with this comment. Sure, if there is a problem you can resolve simply by calling WotC, then you can resolve it without complaining over the internet. What if, however, there is a giant issue in the way in which packs are sealed which can cause the average player to get easily ripped off? If it’s a problem that is associated with every single pack, it’s a serious problem, and there should be a ton of backlash.
OK, if this such a problem, find me a pack, personally, that can be used for that?
I haven’t found one yet.
So there are some packs that can be opened undamaged. But a few years ago, every single boosterbox of return to ravnica could be mapped. Every boosterbox!!! And it was untracable if you abused that.
What’s that compared to a few boosters, just because people shared this story more?
Now we are talking about a few boosters that are not sealed correctly by mechanical error probably. And you can detect if there is a chance on fraud.
It’s not good, I admit, but we don’t need to act like this is never seen before.
Based on a few conversations: the fact that there are errors in MM is more known to people than the fact fake markets are on the market and box mapping was a thing 2 years ago.
I think this is meanly because people want to find all kind of reasons to dislike the new booster package. it’s a change, and it’s going to destroy the game again.
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t the foil at the back of the pack?
Having just watched the linked video it looks like it’s a token/promotional card, then the foil, and then the rare/mythic from the bottom of the pack up.
after watching a couple of different videos it looks like the token/promotional card is at the top of the pack so the foil would be at the bottom. Glad they went to the trouble of protecting that top common…
Actually I am now indeed more likely to open an MMA15 pack, just to see what the fuzz is about. Previously I wasn’t going to buy any at all, now I might consider getting a few.
I’ve seen damaged cards come out of packs as early as Judgment. I personally opened two Shards of Alara boxes where I would’ve graded most commons between EX and NM- and my Fate Reforged box had mildly damaged uncommons. I’ve opened minor misprints and miscuts too. The only serious issue I had was with a Commander deck where the oversized foil got bent severely. Had to send it to Wizards and got back a good looking copy and a booster.