It doesn’t help that QS is US focused in general and it’s of course always tempting to reason from your own experience. I’m sure I do it too.

I suppose Magic players likely clump together, meaning that your local population of 200k may either have far fewer or far more players. This still works for calculating the number of playsets that should enter circulation in such an area on average, but as finance minded people we are likely the result of a more crowded area (because otherwise who would we work with?) and therefore our own experience might be somewhat tainted.

You bring up a very valid point though. I probably do view the MTG world through Rose colored glasses because I’m based here in the US. I will personally put additional thought into the realm of non-US Magic because this is a worldwide game and it is important to keep in mind. I definitely appreciate your feedback on this one.

If I could get 50 boxes at $180…I might honestly pass. But I don’t have a reliable out for sealed product. The boxes seem to have dropped back down to the $220 range. If you were to sell them on TCG or eBay they would take there 10% ish cut and your shipping cost would likely be in the $8-$10 range (here in the US). This means that all said and done you make around $10 per box which equates to about a 5.5% profit margin. While this isn’t a bad margin in some industries, if the price of a box drops to $210 you are suddenly only going to break even really. You are also investing $9000 to do this with the hope of making $495. I’d rather hold that money to buy collections or at the very least wait a few months for the mm2017 card prices to reach their likely lows and Target specific singles with the goal of unloading them before the next MM set hits.

That’s why I brought in population, I agree that land mass seems less reliable.

Fewer GP’s in other parts of the world may have different causes. People might not travel as easily (you are more used to long distance travel in the US), or there might be more local shops (as it’s more difficult to have big shops in a small country). There might be other events, like the SCG series, or the balance between casual and competitive players might be different. There could be more language barriers that make organizing an event that reaches neighboring countries a challenge or it could simply be advertising those events in other countries that makes it more difficult (most people speaking English is definitely an advantage for the US). It may also simply be that Wizards is making the same assumptions you are.

I can’t say for sure whether any of these would be true, just saying that half sounds like a lot.

This site shows 48 Grand Prix if I counted correctly and 19 of them in the US, with Las Vegas skewing things a little. This would make it 40%, 37% if we count Vegas as a single event. It would appear that even by your own reasoning half would be too much?

I don’t really mean to attack you too much on this, the lower number would definitely support your article even better. I just want to point out the US focussed reasoning because it can lead to incorrect conclusions and because I see it often.

Well land mass isn’t all that relevant when you consider that Russia is the worlds largest country (by land mass) yet the population is only 143 million. My assumption is more based on the focus WoTC gives to the continent regarding GPs and other major events. If the US only accounted for about 25% of the total MTG player base then I would expect more GPs to be held in other locations, but you are correct in that it’s difficult to prove. If that assumption is incorrect then the local playerbase would be even smaller and this print run would likely hurt the card prices even more (as there would be less demand).

Why would you assume half the Magic players live in North America? It accounts for about 15% of the world’s land mass. Population wise North America is about 8% of the world. Obviously Magic is not played equally often everywhere, but it seems like a strange assumption that half the players live in North America. I would not be surprised if the real number was closer to 25%.

Unfortunately my LGS owner can’t seem to recall how many MM2015 boxes he got. We both know it was more than original MM but the number isn’t exactly known. So unfortunately, I have to work with incomplete data. That being said I know for a fact he got 8x MM2013 boxes and 120 MM2017 boxes which is a 15x increase. While I don’t know if I’d equate the print run sizes exactly by this number it does indicate a MUCH larger print run than the original. The original print run was small enough that most local playerbases could absorb the small increase in supply to most of the modern playable cards without permanently obliterating their prices. But the math I did above shows that a MUCH larger amount of product would require a very “hungry” local playerbase, a ton of new players entering the format, or heavily deflated prices…I’m still of the belief it will be the latter.

Thanks. I actually wouldn’t have had much issue with the set, until I found out the print run was massively larger than previous ones. Adding a bunch of good cards to the supply isn’t a bad thing if it’s done with forethought of how that addition will affect local supply’s. I do think the set would be really fun to draft, but thanks to all the hype (and MSRP) I don’t think I would honestly get my money back at $35 a draft (given even SCG only has 15 rares/mythics worth above $10 which is MSRP on the pack).

You are correct here, luckily, that was just a typo when I was typing up my article, the 200,000* 0.00086= 172 is still correct. Thanks for catching this though I’ll get it edited.

I don’t disagree that there are plenty of cards that do appeal to the more casual crowd in this set. However, the assumption that the playerbase is suddenly going to explode because of this set is far more flawed (I think) than my assumption. The previous modern masters sets did spur playerbase growth (I won’t deny that), however, playerbase growth was already accelerating when MM2013 came out so to claim that MM2013 was causation is flawed logic. I would also argue your statement that the chase mythics are cards “every magic player wants”, I will admit that every magic player can likely find cards they like or want in the set but certainly not “every mythic is for everyone”. I would also argue that the “many prices went up” aspect was heavily due to the print run size of the previous MM sets, with them being small enough that the new playerbase growth demand clearly outpaced the additional supply. However, this print run is many many times larger, thus the additional supply will be many many times larger. I am not nearly as optimistic about the playerbase growth created due to this set compared to the large glut in supply. But I do appreciate your feedback (I think any useful criticism) is important and spurs our thought process and evaluation of a situation.