Subject: WOTC & Price Guides Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 03:24:27 -0700 From: jbeckmon To: fkusumot@ix.netcom.com I've been reading with interest the posts on the WOTC & Price Guides. First of all I'd like to state that I own and operate Beckmon's Cards in Kimberly, Idaho. I run Arena tournaments. I think a Lot of you are way off base on this one. WOTC is not making up the prices that are going to appear in the price guide. They have contacted Retail Stores (I know they contacted me) about appearing in their Price Guide. Basically the price guide will reflect the prices that cards are selling for in those Retail stores not any artificial amount Wizards could create. And I can tell you that no magazine has a perfect price listing. There are wide differences in prices of cards across the U.S. The internet is changing a lot of that as competition for singles sales is very rough. For example when Inquest was listing the price of Cursed Scroll at $6.00 I was already selling it for $15.00. The reason is because of the law of supply and demand. More people want something then the price goes up. Less then the price goes down. What Inquest lists in their price guide (or The Duelist or Scrye) doesn't mean a whole lot. The people really driving the price of cards are the PLAYERS! Whoever is buying the cards is creating the demand for the cards not the magazines. A Retailer will set whatever price the Players are willing to pay regardless of what a magazine says. In fact it's the retailers themselves telling INQUEST, SCRYE and the DUELIST what cards are worth on the secondary market not the other way around. When a set first comes out there is no price guides for anything and yet cards are being priced all over the place already. I also sell cards much much lower than magazine prices as well. What matters is am I selling the cards at the price I list them at? If yes and in great numbers then the price goes up as their is a lot of demand. If no then the price goes down because nobody wants it. Pricing new sets is very tough because you can't always predict what will be popular and what not. A Player can take advantage of that fact sometimes when a new set comes out. For example I was originally selling Cursed Scrolls for $2.50 and Tradewind Riders for $2.50. They sold out quick because someone recognized their potential. Another example is Oath of Druids- I was originally selling it for $2.00 apiece and it sat in my stock for a long time before the Druids deck came out at nationals. Within the next day or two I was sold out of them at that price and the price immediately jumped to $6.00 apiece which I now sell them at. And I can tell you for a fact that E. Hamilton hit it right on the nose when he said that T2 is what drives the prices. Since T2 is one of the most popular tournaments out there and players want more cards for it than any other the prices of those cards tend to go up and down a lot more than any other depending on whether the particular card is widely used in that format or not. So in reality WOTC in the Duelist will only be listing prices that retailers have given them not prices they just invent out of thin air. They don't really have too much interest in the Secondary market from a sales perspective as they won't personally be selling single cards. They will still be selling boxes of cards. So having a price listing isn't going to make them any money other than the fact that the Duelist could get more subscribers since that's what a lot of Subscribers have said they wanted listed in it. It's the players who drive the prices of secondary cards...Remember that. Sincerely, Jon Beckmon Beckmon's Cards http://www.webpak.net/~jbeckmon/magic/magic.htm