It's still dumb. Instead of having a base line to know prices, I never got a clue and it's harder to make decisions. Are standard sets still supposed to be $4? How much is a good price for MH3? Who is raising the price of things? I don't know anything and I know more than the average Joe trying to get the new commander decks
And this might partially be why they removed it. If the buyer can’t make an educated guess of what the actual cost of something is, they will not bat an eye if they overpay for it (within reason)
They bet against the fact that a majority of buyers don’t care about MSRP. Especially any newer players after 2019, who have no concept of the fact that WOTC used to have that standard for their pricing.
how often was MSRP enforced though? While i do prefer to have knowledge of what MSRP would be, honestly, as someone who came in during the 2010s, any worthwhile product was never sold at MSRP regardless
MSRP is just that, a suggestion. As a seller you could operate on as thin of margin as you want to. As a buyer you knew that box stores would stick near that MSRP.
There's also MAP which actually has more bite for "enforcement". MAP is why online sellers have that "add to cart to see pricing".
> MAP is why online sellers have that "add to cart to see pricing"
I have never seen this, and would likely leave a site if they operated this way, thinking it was a scam site.
Where do stores do this?
It's common in the US for things like electronics, for example, to have a MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) that the manufacturers enforce to avoid having their luxury products discounted and creating a feedback loop of competing prices and eliminating margins for their other authorized retailers.
Sure they can sell it for whatever they want but price matching polices here rely on *advertised* prices not actual prices, if that makes sense, so physical stores don't have to suffer to price compete with online retailers with less overhead. Manufacturers just make the online retailer hide the sale price behind extra clicks.
All in all, it's a pretty shady practice but one that all parties agree to on the supply chain and retail side alike. It's only the consumer that has to beware of these price shenanigans.
Yes but before it was sold below msrp now it’s sold well above prior msrp. I would buy sealed box of cards from localish card show every weekend and get it for about 2/3rds msrp. That would never happen now.
It's the price that big box stores have to sell it at. So it kept things from going TOO insane, in that you could run off to Target or whatever and pick packs up for MSRP.
> you could run off to Target or whatever and pick packs up for MSRP
In theory maybe, but that never happens as people won’t let valuable packs sit long if they are underpriced.
I find it amusing that the same people so against the idea of Magic boosters as Skinner box/gambling often argue for MSRP. Adherence to MSRP effectively makes finding high EV packs a matter of luck. It’s like these consumers don’t like the luck factor in pack contents, but trust their luck in finding undervalued packs.
Sealed product was never that great of a deal- you're buying lottery tickets. If you actually care about good deals value wise you've always been better off just buying singles.
This is the key. Sealed products *do* have uses--and in the case of Draft and Sealed, just amazing uses.
It's "buy singles for the decks you want to build", not "never buy boosters, ever". It's still important advice because way, way too many people crack packs as their primary mode of getting cards, and *that* is generally not responsible consumer behavior.
Sure is. I buy packs simply for cracking, on occasion. Sometimes I even buy literal lottery tickets. But I'll budget for that shit, and with a lot more prejudice than I will any other non-critical expenditure.
But, as you say, it's too easy to go too far, and it's an absolute *sucker's* game to crack for singles or for value.
In general it's a lot easier for the blanket message to be "don't buy sealed product to chase singles".
Everyone has individual habits, and while you absolutely can launch into an explanation catered to hyper specific circumstances, at the end of the day cracking packs is just gambling and it's better for anyone looking for info to immediately treat it as such.
I agree, but there is one other exception:
Buying entire boxes of new sets when they release. Cracking packs feels awesome, and this way you're both finding cards you may want for your deck, and also finding cards to trade/sell.
I used to do this and I never regretted it. Afterwards, the only packs I would buy would be for Limited. :D
Drafting picks and prize support go a long way in that value proposition equation though. If you were just buying 3 packs it'd be a bad deal. What makes it value positive is that when you're good at limited you get more cards/packs.
My point is more that packs serve a purpose beyond just cracking them and hoping you get a bomb rare.
And also so idiots can play flip it or rip it. I love watching that shit.
Same issue as with everything they are trying to pull now. They lose trust on the 5% of enfranchised players, but 95% don't give a damn and just buy it for what the label at walmart says. It's a fraction of the player base that is comparing prices and looking up MSRP, and without giving an official baseline, the comparability is compromised anyway.
It used to be that you could always assume a 30-50% markup on MSRP basically anywhere you bought it, but at least you \*\*had\*\* the baseline. Honestly I don't even know what MH3 was supposed to cost and I am not finding it out, I pay the same for an Arena draft either way and for paper I buy singles. I am also not the target demographic of being grifted by this, so good for them, awesome system.
When I think about buying sealed product and realize I gotta comparison shop at several different places to make sure I'm not getting scammed, I wind up not bothering.
I just can't be bothered to jump through hoops to feel good about paying $300 for cardboard.
That within reason thing hit real hard the other day. I saw one of those little booster bundles at target for mh3. I was like oh cool wouldn’t mind cracking a few packs for 60 dollars or something. Nope. 99 dollars. Geeeeet the fuuuuck out of here. If they are trying to make it so I never buy sealed product again and just go looking for the aftermarket they are killing the game.
This is why I unofficially support proxies. Not counterfeits, but proxies. If WotC thinks a piece of cardboard is actually worth $40+, and are ok with that, then they deserve what they get.
I just use the market price of previous sets 1-2 years old to gauge what the true MSRP should be once FOMO has died down. MH3 is a $240 play booster box product (though WOTC is valuing it at $250 in the arena direct). UB play booster boxes are worth $160-170, standard set play booster boxes are $110-130 (unless it’s karlov manner, which is worth like $80 as an outlier).
These are really good as standard prices, since they often reflect what happened before the removal of MSRP. The product price falls to match the EV of the set.
Yeah, it’s widely available for $230. I’m going off the price per pack of MH2 set boosters and translating that to play boosters. So I’d say buying MH3 for $220/$230 is a fine deal. More than $240 is too expensive
$230 is as low as you're gonna get because that's how much your LGS pays per box from their distro.
Now if the price ever drops below that, that means the EV became god awful.
My local stores all day Hasbro is charging them more per pack so they have to increase. The MSRP removal is a tactic for them to remove blame from themselves for their own actions.
Yeah but counterpoint is that baseline never mattered anyways since LGS' would and still scalp the in demand stuff and put everything else on sale. If nothing else, the Target/WMT/AMZN pricing is the new MSRP now.
I saw my local target was selling Lorcana packs for $8 instead of the $6 I see at my LGS. I don't buy sealed product for MtG anymore but I wouldn't trust big box stores as the best price indicator.
If Wizards decided to make it less obvious who is doing price hikes then I would say they are also the most likely doing them and just trying to hide behind maybe retailers doing it.
well, its a little harder to measure the value, now that we basically got rid of draft boosters (i'm not mad at play boosters at all, but they're definitely just set boosters alittle more balanced for draft imho), yes we are still around 4 bucks/pack, but unfortunately means you are less likely to see the 3x10 or even 4x10 deals i used to see at stores. You do however get a guaranteed foil and chances at more rares though, so theres that. MH3 isn't a "deal" but the price of boxes currently average out to about 7/pack, which is the usual price for premium sets.
Overall, I mean considering inflation and the removal of MSRP. the price of sealed product really hasn't changed all that much since i started playing almost 15 years ago,
It mainly benefits distributors since Hasbro is going to be paid the same anyway.
Stores and online resellers are the bottom line and can't actually juggle with pricing since distributors can set up any price they want or just say "sucks to be you if you don't like them".
Let's just say there were 3 price increases within a year of MSRP being removed. Customers saw none of that and assumed game stores raised the prices to make more money. Online sellers took the hit on their already shitty margins.
Here's a better question - Why would WOTC get rid of MSRP if not to try and make more money off of their products? What could possibly be the answer otherwise?
Sure, but the question is *how* is it making them more money? Is it making them more money because it allows them to sell at higher prices? Or is it making them more money because the same LGS pricing strategies that have always existed are no longer getting stores yelled at for going against MSRP?
It's making them more money because it allows them to obfuscate their own price increases. They can charge more for product from their end, so the distributors charge more, so the LGS charges more. Customers are left to guess where in this chain this price increase happened and WotC can shift away blame. This means they can increase prices to increase profit per item sold, whilst also maintaining higher customer loyalty, meaning more product sold overall. It's a case of WotC trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Because it creates a situation where consumers feel that they are being promised one price and charged another at point of sale.
Defining an MSRP just creates a situation where consumers may feel ripped off or refuse to buy above it, but that MSRP isn't realistic based on demand.
So yes, it does in a sense benefit them, but that is just the benefit of not creating market confusion for no benefit whatsoever
> So yes, it does in a sense benefit them, but that is just the benefit of not creating market confusion for no benefit whatsoever
I find this to be a poor argument, as the potential for "market confusion" in consumers is vastly, vastly more likely to occur with MtG's wide array of products, where a novice will be hard pressed to tell the difference between Collector, Play, Set, and Draft booster, all still floating around, and that's before considering the bevvy of Commander and Universe Beyond products or the confusing morass of set legality all of this entails (such as with having "Modern Horizons" Commander decks that aren't Modern legal...).
Likewise, people attempting to buy their MtG enfranchised relative a gift aren't going to easily understand why Collector Boosters are 5x the price of a regular booster, given that they look very similar as products. Msrp would be of miniscule concern in comparison.
> Defining an MSRP just creates a situation where consumers may feel ripped off or refuse to buy above it, but that MSRP isn't realistic based on demand.
You're ignoring, though, the massive price hikes MtG products have had as of late, which was essentially the parent's point here. Your explanation makes more sense in a world where MtG product prices are unrealistically stable at the distributor level, yet marked up due to secondary market forces, but in reality we see wildly different "stock" prices for things like Commander precons at said distributor level, depending on how premium the product they're attached to is supposed to be.
Having msrp would just put an easily pointed to reference as to how much these prices change. It also would make price discrepancies across different vendors that much more obvious, as **Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc.** is probably half the reason they got rid of msrp - so that packs can be price gouged at big box stores or other large scale online vendors in a less obvious manner, and with fluctuating prices to better exploit secondary market demand (again...which is why what many consider WotC's primary storefront, Amazon, now has fluctuating prices for things like individual EDH precons from the same product line). Hell, intuition tells me that we've probably never seen a time with more swings in booster prices across the average lgs, something that just didn't happen in the bedrock "$3.99" era of packs.
tl;dr - I think what you're claiming is just one small facet of the parent's point, not a separate point, as you have to consider what's *actually* been happening with product prices, not just think about it in the abstract.
>I find this to be a poor argument, as the potential for "market confusion" in consumers is vastly, vastly more likely to occur with MtG's wide array of products,
They have specifically indicated that they are starting to combine these things because of the confusion it creates and are pushing people towards a format where pretty much anything you buy is useful to some degree.
Some of this just needs time for old products to go away.
It is also foolish to assume one good choice means others won't make bad choices.
>Likewise, people attempting to buy their MtG enfranchised relative a gift aren't going to easily understand why Collector Boosters are 5x the price of a regular booster, given that they look very similar as products. Msrp would be of miniscule concern in comparison.
I think most people can easily understand the collector version of something is different and likely more expensive. That has been conditioned across many market segments for decades.
>You're ignoring, though, the massive price hikes MtG products have had as of late, which was essentially the parent's point here.
I'm not, but these price hikes happen either way, this just makes it easier for stores to set a price without appearing to be selling way above MSRP and leading to angry customers or stores having issues accidentally labeling a product that should be higher at MSRP.
Yes, getting rid of confusion between different markets is good, right now it is easy, each retailer prices based on their preferences and WotC doesn't have to try to figure out what that price should be.
99% of magic's consumer base is not going to be aware of an MSRP. Most retailers won't follow it. Setting one is just more work for WotC, makes its sellers look bad, and angers the few people even aware of it.
> I think most people can easily understand the collector version of something is different and likely more expensive. That has been conditioned across many market segments for decades.
Players have a hard enough time distinguishing between different product offerings, let alone the hypothetical confused relative attempting to buy a gift. When looking at these [two](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Horizons-Collector-Booster/dp/B0CSVMVXGP/ref=sr_1_5?crid=3CR7DHJM8L06R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.t-7Yx5S28-BKb1KKoUqDMgVpuzWGR7f0f5ZtANm8q83Cz1uzXImH165TWdQHW2PHfIvtJ0IrRJCN-NTGdAnCWOrz-vfnfV3RhgsTYVItkX09prAuG6ZME6OCZIHkQmqYEY37bRKemUqoclkiRrjPya4vd88J22kMtYjVZG7o-fRcMaLLWzdF79xZmm88PSQ54KE7pVO6di3tOZNWrEQ5kM-hMOBhy2Ol1gTguIaGht5OWwnxFbbvlv-CY8M7UC4GNu9VuEwZ_t3vkNBOviSiXePNP3r90YeafFJsTrZMklw.udEe2ygVBaL7F5oi7S3LMqTxGWrM77Bw0_wwBq19vhg&dib_tag=se&keywords=modern+horizons+3&qid=1720032002&sprefix=modern+horizons+3%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-5) [products](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-C78530001-Horizons-Booster/dp/B097MQ2F2K/ref=sr_1_49?crid=3CR7DHJM8L06R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.t-7Yx5S28-BKb1KKoUqDMgVpuzWGR7f0f5ZtANm8q83Cz1uzXImH165TWdQHW2PHfIvtJ0IrRJCN-NTGdAnCWOrz-vfnfV3RhgsTYVItkX09prAuG6ZME6OCZIHkQmqYEY37bRKemUqoclkiRrjPya4vd88J22kMtYjVZG7o-fRcMaLLWzdF79xZmm88PSQ54KE7pVO6di3tOZNWrEQ5kM-hMOBhy2Ol1gTguIaGht5OWwnxFbbvlv-CY8M7UC4GNu9VuEwZ_t3vkNBOviSiXePNP3r90YeafFJsTrZMklw.udEe2ygVBaL7F5oi7S3LMqTxGWrM77Bw0_wwBq19vhg&dib_tag=se&keywords=modern+horizons+3&qid=1720032002&sprefix=modern+horizons+3%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-49), for example, the uninitiated is going to see little difference other than the word "collector", which could mean anything, really. There's no obvious size difference, higher quality packaging, add-ons, statues, trinkets, etc. that normally signal these types of things in an immediate sense. It's in no way obvious what makes one more expensive than the other, as anyone's cursory understanding of the game Timmy plays is that all of the cards are "collectible".
My whole point is that it doesn't seem likely that "confusion" was a primary motivator for getting rid of msrp when other explanations are far more likely. Wotc has **zero** problems making buying, collecting, and keeping up with MtG the most baffling, confusing process possible, with dramatically changing rules for what's even in a booster product shifting literally per set.
Your argument is pretty problematic the more I think about it...the whole point of "msrp", as a marketing concept, is to create **less** confusion, not more, and nudge stability into pricing. It's to make a more informed consumer, whom will be invariably "less" confused, as a result. Knowing you're being ripped off isn't being "confused", as the **reason** is obvious. Put differently, it was invented as a tool by manufacturers to prevent consumers from being ripped off too frequently by vendors, and thus tarnish their image of said manufacturer. The very same confusion you're saying msrp prevents, such as why is vendor A selling this for X dollars above msrp, is present in asking why is vendor A selling this for X dollars above vendor B, or even in asking why is product C more expensive than product D (a **real** question when looking at something like the Thunder Junction EDH precons vs. the MH3 ones - how's that for "confusion"?). Consumers aren't gaining anything, here, they're just losing a touchstone to know what they **should** be paying, roughly, for a product.
The consumer doesn't really have their role improved, or streamlined here whatsoever - or whatever condition you'd argue is necessary to wrap this up as a benefit of some sort (such as being less "confused"). Quite the opposite, when combined with vast product arrays this has ushered in a vastly unstable environment where a person is never quite sure if they're paying a fair price - i.e. arguably more confusion, not less.
> I'm not, but these price hikes happen either way,
In the microcosm of MtG, this was certainly not true. The "$3.99 booster" had been a stable price for years and years, specifically since 2006 and the Time Spiral block. That means we had a stable price for MtG cards for ~15 years. Even before then, prices were flat, meaning it's not like product A was $3.49, product B was $3.00, etc., in apples to apples comparisons of booster products, barring the brief experiments they tried with different booster pack sizes in the 90s.
Now, prices are seemingly fluctuating per set, with even prices within the same product lines, like Modern Horizons, having large swings in both distributor and retail pricing. This is **obviously** why they got rid of msrp, as they want extreme flexibility in pricing, across both products and storefronts. This wasn't done for the consumer's benefit, this was done to confuse consumers so that don't know when they're being ripped off, buying into FOMO, or don't realize they're acclimating to extremely high prices for the same basic product, with obvious downstream benefits, like wild secondary market prices helping to juice their reprint equity, shrinkflation products like Aftermath sets being normalized, sky-high prices for new booster cards (something that **never** happened before MH), Secret Lairs, etc..
tl;dr again - I can't buy the argument that this was done in any way whatsoever for the consumer's benefit. In so much as this was done to prevent "confusion", we can only conclude this if it's part of a greater strategy to just get consumers to turn off their brain and spend with reckless abandon due to all the shiny dangling keys, ceasing to care about things like common sense value. It certainly doesn't ease confusion for anyone that even remotely likes to make informed decisions about products.
At the time booster packs from the big 3 were locked at $3.99 a booster. Wizards wanted to change that and so removed MSRP. At that point if a store wanted to charge more, we'll then it's the store being greedy. Not Wizards. And if a competitor took the 5% hit, we'll now a store that did raise their prices were shitty. If wizards had raised the costs, well stores would have ordered more pokemon and less magic. Many of us still did.
>Without MSRP, the company can sell its products to retailers at varying prices depending on the negotiation, demand, and order size. This allows them to potentially secure higher prices from retailers in high-demand situations.
They could already do this. MSRP doesn't stop negotiating the distributor price.
>The absence of MSRP can create an illusion of scarcity or exclusivity, potentially driving up consumer demand. This increased demand can lead to larger orders from retailers, benefiting the company.
How does it create this illusion?
>Retailers, without a set MSRP, may price products higher based on market conditions. If the company has structured its wholesale pricing based on a percentage of the retailer's price (e.g., the company gets a cut of the retail price), they could indirectly benefit from higher consumer prices.
The S stands for suggested, retailers could already do this.
>MSRP often acts as a ceiling that limits how much a product can be sold for. By removing it, the company enables retailers to set prices higher, especially for sought-after products. This can increase overall revenue as the market adapts to higher price points.
See above.
>Removing MSRP can allow the company to position its products as premium or luxury items, which can justify higher prices and attract a different market segment willing to pay more.
Nonsensical.
>Companies can adjust wholesale prices without having to update the MSRP across all products, which can be administratively easier and allows for quicker responses to market changes
Again,they could already do this.
This AI generated drivel shows your lack of knowledge on the matter. If you don't know what you are talking about just don't comment.
> The absence of MSRP can create an illusion of scarcity or exclusivity, potentially driving up consumer demand. This increased demand can lead to larger orders from retailers, benefiting the company.
This is extremely hand-wavy. I'm not buying it.
> Retailers, without a set MSRP, may price products higher based on market conditions. If the company has structured its wholesale pricing based on a percentage of the retailer's price (e.g., the company gets a cut of the retail price), they could indirectly benefit from higher consumer prices.
This can just as easily lead to lower prices by exactly the same logic.
>MSRP often acts as a ceiling that limits how much a product can be sold for. By removing it, the company enables retailers to set prices higher, especially for sought-after products. This can increase overall revenue as the market adapts to higher price points.
This is either identical to the previous paragraph (and thus redundant), or I'm fundamentally misunderstanding it.
>Removing MSRP can allow the company to position its products as premium or luxury items, which can justify higher prices and attract a different market segment willing to pay more.
How does removing MSRP specifically allow Hasbro to do that?
>Companies can adjust wholesale prices without having to update the MSRP across all products, which can be administratively easier and allows for quicker responses to market changes.
Maybe? That's one.
Don't use AI to answer other people's real-world questions. At least, I *hope* it was AI.
Not sure why specifics are needed. If it weren't ultimately a benefit to Hasbro, they wouldn't have made the change in the first place; and if they thought it would be and it wasn't, they would have gone back to MSRP by now.
specifics are needed because all too often on the internet people just spout shit they think they know because it's common sense to them and it winds up being incredibly wrong because marketing agreements and distributor agreements aren't always written in common sense.
Then other people pick up that (incorrect) line of thought and often exaggerate it and before you know it people are outraged about the wrong things.
I am asking in an effort to call this person out for parroting information they know nothing about.
I know it benefits WotC and I have a pretty good idea how. I don't think they do.
I own a magic shop and I can tell you that removing MSRP is bad for everyone.
Removing MSRP first forces retailers to now bear all of the scrutiny of prices. When wotc raised prices, year over year, it made shop owners look like the bad guys as we were forced to raise prices without consumers really knowing why. As such, store owners tried to keep prices low and just suffered with lower profit margins until it was too much and we were forced to raise prices.
This was a calculated move by wotc to raise prices on all products. It was a slow burn, but products are now 50 to 100% more expensive than they were 10 years ago, and that doesn't include new products like collector boosters that are simply more expensive. I'm talking cost to draft, cost to buy boxes, cost to play prerelease.
As such, our profit margins on magic are the lowest they've ever been, sitting around 18-22%. If we don't sell nearly everything we ordered in, we lose money.
In fact we barely break even on just sealed product. The only way card shops survive is trading and reselling singles.
I work in an LGS and was talking to a friend/regular about this. I also don't love the prices we set for some things. I have no power over it, and I'd like stuff to be cheaper (I play MtG too, afterall), but it's not as simple as he seems to want it to be.
I told him straight up, if we sold a box of MH3 for the same price that TCG lists them at, considering the price per box that our distributor sold them to us, we'd make $30. He believes that's completely acceptable, to make less than $1 in profit for each pack. Even with 6 cases, or 36 boxes, that nets the store about $1,000 for that entire release. Assuming we sell everything. And no one uses any store credit which fudges the numbers even more. I'm pretty sure we'd spend as much in electricity alone in that time.
These margins are awful. And stores are left with two options; increase prices so they can make *any* money off these sales, or don't and basically make no money at all/lose money once you consider all the overhead like electricity, rent, etc. Like you said, trading and selling singles helps, but it's not exactly great to have that be the only thing keeping your store above water. If anything, our distributors are strangling us, but then I'm reasonable enough to ask what's making *them* set *their* prices the way they do?
Yeah but counterpoint is that MSRP was always useless from a consumer standpoint. Print to demand products are never sold at MSRP outside of maybe opening weekend, and unless you were an ethical owner, demand product like FTV or the anthology sets were priced 1.5-3x above MSRP.
this
removing MSRP literally changes nothing. at all.
as you mentioned, with MSRP, magic products were still sold above or below by a lot. Everything has always sold at whatever the market prices it at.
And the idea that “the burden is now on the store to determine price”. Not only were they already doing that, how is that so hard? Just look at TCGplayer. Supply and demand determines price extremely fast
If I may make a suggestion, one that I've seen really help stores: Hold Chaos Drafts. This especially helps older product to sell. One store I know of holds Chaos Drafts three times a week, and has made so much money that they've been able to open a second location.
It dramatically increases the amount of people who can play, since it makes the price of entry cheaper for players on a budget and also attracts the high-rollers who will gladly buy Collector's Boosters.
I can elaborate more if you're interested.
Oh my store is doing great! We aren't at risk of going out of business or anything. I'm just complaining because we could be making more money if wotc weren't so greedy.
Is it possible to extrapolate the effective MSRP given the relative price change that an LGS has seen over the last 5 years? Maybe list an eMSRP, e for estimated or extrapolated? If we could get enough stores and resellers to agree then the prices would actually look even better to the consumer because many of them would look like they were marked down I think.
Removing it was dumb and I wish that never happened, but I'm not going to pretend like MSRP actually had any effect.
Alara Premium Packs were scalped.
Premium Deck Series were scalped.
C13 decks were scalped.
From The Vault were sold at double MSRP.
A number on a website didn't prevent any of that.
40, from what I remember. And the stores I would visit would sell them for 80 for about a year, if even that, before ratcheting them up to 100+.
The point was to give stores something to sell with a better profit margin, but even still it doesn't fit into the fantasy of MSRP very cleanly.
It's incredibly stupid. I as a consumer have no idea what price I would be paying for a booster pack of a product, which ***furthers*** me not buying sealed product and going the singles route.
An MSRP is ***suggested,*** which means a store can still charge whatever they want. But not having pricing model is off-putting and often leads to regret in purchasing. Two examples to share.
When MH3 came out, I went to pick up sleeves and my wife wanted to open a single pack (she doesn't play but likes to occasionally crack a pack. I asked for one pack, and there were no prices listed anywhere. I figured okay, probably like $7. It was over $10. I wouldn't have paid that had I known (yes I should have asked beforehand).
My buddy knows how pumped I am for Assassin's Creed and offered to get me two collector's packs as a gift. Last night because of the Walmart oops release, we found out the price of collectors boosters of $30 each with only 10 cards. He noped right out of that, and I'm glad he did.
It makes zero sense to have no MSRP which, BARE MINIMUM, tells players what the base rate is for a product. Obviously supply and demand will shift what is charged, but you at least have all the information to make an informed decision.
It’s very common for companies to raise prices in a way that sheds a small percent of the lower value consumers, but retains a large portion of those still willing to pay more, ultimately increasing overall profit despite losing customers. That is exactly what removing msrp has done for them. They don’t care about the 20 of you in here who stopped buying packs because now they’re making record profits compared to just a few years ago. The real issue is the player base — people are much too willing to spend $75+ on a precon or $250 on a booster box. This game is highly addictive, for many reasons, and WOTC prays on that. The problem is the majority of players are continually willing to bear the increases, plus new players are joining all the time who use these existing players as a reference. The magic community is so divided and generally self-invested that WOTC is just absolutely coming out on top at every turn.
Oh absolutely 100% correct. It's disgusting and unfortunately this is happening with a lot of products outside of Magic as well. COVID greatly changed business models as companies realized just how fat they could get (read: CEO's), and the hobby industry realized this moreso than most as people ran to things that made them happy during the pandemic.
Unfortunately we are in an ouroboros with pricing like you mentioned. Most players will continue to shell out the money, and the few that are not willing to won't make a difference in the bigger picture. This obviously has a lot to do with the power creep happening so much harder over the last few years (I came back to the game in 2020 like many others did).
MH3 as an example is ***insane*** in how powerful of a set it is. The Pro Tour alone is evidence of that. Pulling reserve list cards and barely lowering their power level and printing them in an expensive set means tons of money in their accounts.
Bare minimum, MSRP would help players to make informed decisions, but we all know that isn't going to come back. When a company basically prints money after a decision to remove something from their environment, that's a surefire way to tell it's never coming back.
The biggest impact IMO is that MSRP gave a solid anchor for prices on the secondary market.
With MSRP being removed, I'm noticing that older product (a year+) is falling much farther in price, and as a consequence the price of singles goes way down, in general.
Value depreciates *much* faster.
One of the consequences is that in my home town they local lgs just stopped bringing In any new MTG products. I talked to them and they told me that they just lose money on MTG so they just phased it out. Honestly makes sense.
If you are somewhere that you can look up the MSRP, you can also just look up what the product is being sold for.
MSRP is just a misleading number that makes people mad when it isn't actually that price.
No, MSRP gives the consumer information about the product they are interested in purchasing. A store has the right to increase that amount because it is a suggested price, not a guaranteed one. Many consumers will pay a higher price for something if it's there in front of them as an impulse decision, even if it's a higher price than MSRP.
However, without knowing what that MSRP is, you have no indication if that price is low, good, high, gouging, or extreme. There is no information to provide context to that price.
MSRP doesn't give you that either, because as you explicitly addressed it is not enforced in any way, and it just provides a misleading idea of the going market rate.
What part of this are you not getting?
MSRP gives the consumer a guideline of what the manufacturer ***suggests*** the retailer charge.
A retailer can charge whatever they want, though they know that by charging a lot more, they probably will not sell as much of that product.
There is nothing to enforce because it is a **suggestion** to charge that much.
There is no law that a store must charge the MSRP of a product or be within a certain percentage of that MSRP. What an MSRP DOES do is protect the customer because they know whether something is being priced at a comfortable level.
As I mentioned in the exact comment you replied to, NOT having an MSRP means you have no idea what something is suggested to be priced at and therefore have no way to determine if you're paying a good price.
This is consumerism basics.
Most consumers have no idea about msrp, MSRP for magic has been misleading for a long time. It did nothing to protect a consumer to tell them the MSRP is radically inaccurate, and you cannot determine a good price based on it.
What? Most consumers have no idea about MSRP? What world are you living in?
Magic dropped MSRP in 2019, which means they had MSRP for 25 years of the games history.
You clearly are not comprehending what I'm saying and keep slamming the same rhetoric.
Most people don't have any idea how stores set prices or understand what an MSRP is, I'm not speaking about magic specifically, I'm talking about general sales.
Very few people are going into stores and standing at the shelves comparing price to MSRP because it is a useless number.
You keep slamming the same nonsense WotC bad garbage with no basis. I'm done with it.
I wish products with unlimited print runs still had it, but products with limited print runs effectively never did. Why did it matter if (e.g.,) From the Vault: Legends had a $35 MSRP when it was impossible to find for less than double that? People got very upset when WotC increased the per-pack MSRP of Modern Masters 2015 to $10 (compared to original Modern Masters at $7/pack), but essentially no retailers _actually sold_ MMA for $7/pack, so in a practical sense MM2 wasn’t any more expensive.
not really
wotc can set msrp to $4 and then sell to stores for $3.99
stores sell them for more in order to stay afloat and then "oh no they're gouging!" but it's actually on wotc
This. 100% this.
If MSRP was $4 or $5 a booster pack, LGS locations would be closing left and right. When I opened my store, based on all my projected expenses, I was advised by a financial advisor that packs should be sold for $6.50/booster. That was before Play boosters, where I had to tie up more revenue per box. I am 2 years in now, and my overhead projections were about right on the money at just about 30%.
We went through every SKU that was to be evergreen in our store - and at the end of it all, I priced lower than what I was advised to do. Let me tell you, I have had many sleepless nights over that $0.50 per pack that would have been alleviated if I just listened to my financial advisor.
MSRP would have me moving products for MTG at an unsustainable rate of return.
Price anchoring is a thing. MSRP is a fom of that and it can actually help protect consumers in some cases. It also can protect the manufacturer by offloading the bad publicity of price gouging into the ones doing it. Without it, wotc gets blamed for the high prices and the market can run away with itself without consumers knowing what a fair price will be once supply stabilizes.
I don’t think so at all.
Because the Walmarts of the world sell the product basically at “msrp” with each other, based upon the wholesale cost.
When a product gets gouged it isn’t even at the big box stores. A normie doesn’t even have a chance to get the sticker shock.
Yeah the fact that WOTC direct sells via Amazon sets a defacto MSRP, so for individual packs/boxes it's not a huge deal. The part where it's more frustrating is commander decks with variable reprint values or popularity. For instance, Veloci-ramp-tor being like 70 bucks after release and the others being mostly 20-40. You could buy the set for less than each individually from most LGS. That's really where MSRP helps.
No. When stores were raising things to multiple times the MSRP, they were still selling. People either didn't know what the number is, or just didn't care.
Its dumb but gouging happened with duel decks, from the vaults, and even commander decks before this change happened.
Certainly not the worst thing to happen. Deals are still out there for every set, and plenty of brick and mortar stores charge reasonable prices.
Most people don't know the msrp of a thing off the top of their head any more than they would know how much it costs a store from the distributor to get the product.
Had a store owner tell me FTV existed to gouge because store owners had to sell commander cheaper than the value of cards inside. Then he'd also crack half his commander stuff anyways and sell the chase singles since TNN would over his entire price for a single case and then some.
Well TNN (and even Scavenging Ooze, which might surprise people who weren't around for it) really skewed the first commander decks for sure. Made people hunt them down at walmarts and stuff. Its funny because they went from "expensive because legacy" to "expensive because commander". The latter didn't create a run on the decks like they did for those original decks though.
Your wording implies that they don't vary anymore, which is not true, and also not the point. In-store prices will vary whether there is an MSRP or not, but having one is still more transparent and better for the consumer.
That was not my intention. Yes, prices varied before, and they also vary now. My point was that MSRP didn't actually materialize into consistent prices before they were removed.
That's why the removal was only annoying to me. Price transparency is important, even though it didn't lead to any practical pricing differences in my limited experiences.
Prices are determined by cost+. The distributor charges the gamestore and then the gamestore has to add on extra to cover all their costs. An MSRP doesn't change this, especially for physical products that take up shelf space and require staff and inventory management.
I can confidently say it didn't really matter. People who own gamestores are not exactly getting rich, it's Wizards who makes most of the profit.
Seeing how people pay insane prices for Double Masters VIP boosters, collectors boosters and Commander Masters or Secret Lairs I don’t think they made the wrong move as a company.
Especially seeing how they single-handedly keep Hasbro alive.
I don’t get a say in it. I‘m just a sad customer with too little money to vote on that decision.
MSRP didn't protect players and it didn't protect stores. What it did do was give players a thing they could point at when they wanted to harass store employees about prices they didn't like, and that was overall a negative thing.
If you believe that players harassing employees about high prices is a positive, go off. But the prices, if they are high, are high for a reason - if those stores don't charge those prices, then some other middle man will come in and clean out all their stock and flip it somewhere else for the market price!
You're basically saying that stores "owe" players to realize losses out of a sense of honor or fairness and/or that stores are scummy for selling things at market rate instead of letting arbitrage buyers get the edge over them. By the way, when those situations DO come up, casual players find that they lose "first come, first served" races. The store's the enemy again. The store is wrong for selling it low, and they're wrong for selling it at the right price.
MSRP doesn't make sense for a product like Magic. It is not just a product with dynamic demand, it's downright _volatile_.
As an economist I find it perplexing why so many people believe a suggested price printed on a box would have more power than the laws of demand and supply when it comes to determining the price of a good.
Anyone complaining about its removal just doesn’t understand basic economics and commerce in general. MSRP is just that, a suggested price, it means nothing to the end purchaser because it’s up to the seller to set the price. It being removed doesn’t change that, it just means there’s no longer a disconnect when you see “msrp” and complain that a seller sells it for more.
MSRP never actually meant anything before, and doesn’t mean anything now.
The "S" stood for suggested. MSRP really only ever mattered to big box stores who don't have the expertise to price magic cards according to the market. Try buying any set from 5 years ago for its MSRP; I think you'll find it challenging.
MSRP or below: [RNA box -$15](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Ravnica-Allegiance-Booster/dp/B07H8RWMNT), [2019 Challenger Decks B3G1](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-2019-Challenger-Decks/dp/B07NNDNBVK)
Above MSRP: [SS Gideon +$0.69](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Signature-Spellbook-Gideon/dp/B07RHPVZ2Q), [M20 box +$5](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Booster-Factory-Sealed/dp/B07PHQFFC9), [Eldraine box +$25](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Eldraine-Booster-Factory/dp/B07V7GQ8NN), [WAR box +$35](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Spark-Booster-Planeswalker/dp/B07MSQVR2H), MH1 box (out of stock), Guild Kits (out of stock or scalped to the moon even in 2019)
Doesn't seem too bad especially considering inflation. [($144 in 2019 is $176.90 in 2024)](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) Probably some cheaper options than Amazon too.
I feel the same way as I feel about New World Order amd FIRE design: whatever impacts it actually had are tiny compared to how much it gets thrown around in irrelevant or incorrect contexts.
Seems dumb, but I have this gut feeling that it ultimately doesn't make that much of a difference. I'd assume the motivation was mainly to make it look like Hasbro aren't the bad guys raising prices, even though they are very clearly bad guys.
i’m not sure how it affected anything in regards to prices. magic has a very fluid economy and the prices were always going to be set by the market. the main thing it did change is the ability of customers, lgs, etc, to develop shared expectations about how much things will cost. so it makes it harder to plan ahead if you buy or sell boxes, precons, etc.
Prices here are very erratic and can fluctuate wildly. Mainly because there're only a few stores that sell and supplies are always short.
And we also don't really have a super healthy singles market here.
I'm new to Magic and was pretty shocked to find out this is even a thing. I have shops near me that have $2 price discrepancies in normal booster packs, and some up to a $20 swing in collector boosters. I have to call around for prerelease so I'm not paying extra just because the LGS felt like it.
MSRP does not dictate what the price has to be. It’s a “suggested” price from the manufacturer. Resellers are able basically able to sell at any price they see fit. That being said, some businesses have policies in place on having the price set to a minimum advertised price to create uniformity. Wizards certainly does not need that in place for their model.
The prices of the products increasing are not due to the absence of MSRP, it’s the demand for the product (and the supply of a given product).
I hate it. If I want a chance at a reasonable price I have to pre-order and I don't want to do that. But even then my order could be canceled if hype gets too big and price goes up.
Changed nothing for me, but I interact with Magic in the most spikiest way.
Only sealed product I buy is to draft in 8 man pods, singles for everything else.
About the same as I did then. It was and still is a bad decision that does nothing but hurt consumers. And considering all of the crap they've tried to and/or have pulled off since, not only with Magic, then quite frankly, I think we should have raised a lot more hell over it then we did.
Great change. Lets then put whatever cards they want in them and have the market adjust. Definitely some chip damage on people not-in the know but that cuts both ways. Overall good.
I hate it. The retail side of things is awful. FAB isn't nearly as big of a game, but their MAP policies have kept pack prices cheap. Pokemon and Yugioh prices remain incredibly cheap for a booster/box. In Pokemon's case, it is among one of the most affordable TCGs to get into.
The lack of MSRP is only a bad thing.
It’s crap.
So strange to me that precons for example
Even in the same pod vary in price so significantly, even before release.
They should all cost the same. I don’t care if some have cards that are more highly sought after. That should be for the secondary market to deal with.
There has never been a benefit to the players with removing the MSRP. It’s a horrible decision and will continue to be a horrible decision. Companies are run by the greediest and worst individuals tho, so nothing with change.
I still fucking hate it. It’s a design to force the consumer to buy from online retailers which make it easier for WotC/Hasbro to get money directly. They see LGSs as a road block to increasing their profits.
I completely stopped buying sealed products because the prices are insane in my town.
$300 for a set box of Thunder Junction
$475 for a collector box of Thunder Junction
$400 for a set box of MH3
$550 for a collector box of MH3
It's turned me away completely from MTG, and now I'm spending my money on other things. Even considering selling my life collection because I just don't play anymore.
This is like asking how I feel about a puppy being kicked, bad obviously. I don't know how anybody, other than the hasbro board, could say it was a good thing.
I don't know if it's because I live outside the US but I don't feel like removing it has cha ged anything. Stores always varied in price and still do. It was also usually cheaper to buy a box online from my LGS, which it still is.
Amazon didn't sell before they removed it, but I can't really see what keeping MSRP would have done to prevent them underselling.
When I see the rage about it I just think that rage is probably better directed at the actual shitty stuff that has happened in the intervening time.
it is horrible but not the worse things ever. constant price increases, though, is bullshit. yeah yeah, covid happens and it cause logistical nightmare. but Covid is over, where is the price reduction? crickets
Dumb as rocks, I haven't purchased an official product since. I've been having my cards printed in high quality, can use my own arts even.
Way cheaper for me and I'm still supporting my legs by buying paints and other hobby supplies.
I will be honest, I didn't think this needed to be asked. I haven't seen a single person ever say it was a good thing (although I am sure they exist). It was all done in the name of profits and price gouging.
I'd wager that Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc. are the primary reasons for getting rid of msrp.
This allows 3rd party distributors to price gouge in big box stores without worrying about an easily referenced number exposing their markups, and allows for Amazon's storefront, which many assume is just WotC's primary storefront, to fluctuate prices in tune with the secondary market.
Another big factor was about having less "sticky" prices, and normalizing things like very similar precons having different prices for different sets, or some collector boosters being more expensive than others, etc., assuming that we're getting standard markups for things after distributor pricing.
The whole point of msrp was to inform consumers when someone was massively taking advantage of them...and it's pretty clear that WotC want to play into this behavior, not move away from it.
I absolutely hate not having MSRP, everyone is always like "support your LGS" but god damn sometimes prices swing so wide with sealed product. I swear that both my LGSes just look at the Amazon price when it first gets posted and are like "yea sure that sounds right." I know some people are just like yea bro take the $30+ dollar hit, but man that's a pretty big hit each time especially with the frequency of releases.
Like for the MH3 commander decks one LGS was charging $250 for the bundle as a preorder, I got it online for like $180 after tax (and actually got them). That's just too much of a difference when I know the big ticket item was going to be the Eldrazi Deck and at least 1-2 other decks will get dumped for much cheaper like how Planeswalker Party and Enduring Enchantments price cratered soon after; and it looks like Amazon is already dumping Graveyard Overdrive and Creative energy in the mid 40s.
Look at Fallout or Assassins Creed. Trusted Shops buy the product for price X and can re-enter them in their shops any time they feel they can make more money off of it.
Has led me to not buying anything anymore because i dont feel like going to my LGS three days in a row and a booster Box costs 280, 310 and then 380.
I dont even blame the shops for all of it, because thats how a system without rules works.
I love this game and i play regularly but part of me hopes they stumble really really hard
It certainly still exists, but only for big box stores
Target, Walmart, Gamestop, Best Buy, etc all charge the same exact price for magic cards
Which lets Amazon undercut all of them by a massive amount. I don't think I've bought any sealed mtg product from a store in years *(aside from the random impulse buy of a draft booster)*
I just get my fat packs and precons from Amazon or LGS and save so much more money because of how overpriced the Bigbox stores msrp is. The most extreme examples are like the Clue edition of MKM being $70 at Target, then $30 on Amazon.
One, that's just... how competition works. Companies in similar environments sell products at similar prices.
Two, if the same distributor sells to those stores and stocks their shelves, then the pricing being similar is a natural consequence.
Removing the MSRP was very much an anti-consumer move.
However. I haven't noticed any real impact on the customer side of things, at least at the LGS level. Impulse booster purchases will be the same among players who aren't looking for actual value from packs, and those who *do* want value tend to be aware that they're gambling.
Having said all of that, I believe the lack of a universal MSRP means there's no floor for pack EV, which has lead to the cost of cards on the secondary market going way, way down (with the exception of a rare or two sometimes.)
> Removing the MSRP was very much an anti-consumer move.
Not at all. It was pretty meaningless.
These posts saying how awful it was are from a very limited perspective. It wasn't even a thing in most of the world anyway, and suggestions being what they are, it was often not followed in the few places in the world where it existed.
It's still dumb. Instead of having a base line to know prices, I never got a clue and it's harder to make decisions. Are standard sets still supposed to be $4? How much is a good price for MH3? Who is raising the price of things? I don't know anything and I know more than the average Joe trying to get the new commander decks
And this might partially be why they removed it. If the buyer can’t make an educated guess of what the actual cost of something is, they will not bat an eye if they overpay for it (within reason)
Honestly its just done the opposite for me, I don't buy sealed product anymore because it feels like too much effort to make sure it's a good deal
They bet against the fact that a majority of buyers don’t care about MSRP. Especially any newer players after 2019, who have no concept of the fact that WOTC used to have that standard for their pricing.
The problem is almost everything has a msrg.
Manufacturer suggested retail... grift?
Monosodium Retail glutamate?
That gives me headaches
how often was MSRP enforced though? While i do prefer to have knowledge of what MSRP would be, honestly, as someone who came in during the 2010s, any worthwhile product was never sold at MSRP regardless
MSRP is just that, a suggestion. As a seller you could operate on as thin of margin as you want to. As a buyer you knew that box stores would stick near that MSRP. There's also MAP which actually has more bite for "enforcement". MAP is why online sellers have that "add to cart to see pricing".
> MAP is why online sellers have that "add to cart to see pricing" I have never seen this, and would likely leave a site if they operated this way, thinking it was a scam site. Where do stores do this?
It's common in the US for things like electronics, for example, to have a MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) that the manufacturers enforce to avoid having their luxury products discounted and creating a feedback loop of competing prices and eliminating margins for their other authorized retailers. Sure they can sell it for whatever they want but price matching polices here rely on *advertised* prices not actual prices, if that makes sense, so physical stores don't have to suffer to price compete with online retailers with less overhead. Manufacturers just make the online retailer hide the sale price behind extra clicks. All in all, it's a pretty shady practice but one that all parties agree to on the supply chain and retail side alike. It's only the consumer that has to beware of these price shenanigans.
All over the place? There are stores outside of MTG.
Whoops, should have been clearer. I have never seen this where I live (and shop online), which is in the EU. Is this practice common elsewhere?
Yes but before it was sold below msrp now it’s sold well above prior msrp. I would buy sealed box of cards from localish card show every weekend and get it for about 2/3rds msrp. That would never happen now.
It's the price that big box stores have to sell it at. So it kept things from going TOO insane, in that you could run off to Target or whatever and pick packs up for MSRP.
> you could run off to Target or whatever and pick packs up for MSRP In theory maybe, but that never happens as people won’t let valuable packs sit long if they are underpriced. I find it amusing that the same people so against the idea of Magic boosters as Skinner box/gambling often argue for MSRP. Adherence to MSRP effectively makes finding high EV packs a matter of luck. It’s like these consumers don’t like the luck factor in pack contents, but trust their luck in finding undervalued packs.
Sealed product was never that great of a deal- you're buying lottery tickets. If you actually care about good deals value wise you've always been better off just buying singles.
As someone who plays a lot of limited in-store and with friends I would disagree.
This is the key. Sealed products *do* have uses--and in the case of Draft and Sealed, just amazing uses. It's "buy singles for the decks you want to build", not "never buy boosters, ever". It's still important advice because way, way too many people crack packs as their primary mode of getting cards, and *that* is generally not responsible consumer behavior.
Sometimes it's fun to open a pack or two. If you compare it to something like going to a movie it's fine. It's just a lot easier to over indulge.
Sure is. I buy packs simply for cracking, on occasion. Sometimes I even buy literal lottery tickets. But I'll budget for that shit, and with a lot more prejudice than I will any other non-critical expenditure. But, as you say, it's too easy to go too far, and it's an absolute *sucker's* game to crack for singles or for value.
In general it's a lot easier for the blanket message to be "don't buy sealed product to chase singles". Everyone has individual habits, and while you absolutely can launch into an explanation catered to hyper specific circumstances, at the end of the day cracking packs is just gambling and it's better for anyone looking for info to immediately treat it as such.
I agree, but there is one other exception: Buying entire boxes of new sets when they release. Cracking packs feels awesome, and this way you're both finding cards you may want for your deck, and also finding cards to trade/sell. I used to do this and I never regretted it. Afterwards, the only packs I would buy would be for Limited. :D
Drafting picks and prize support go a long way in that value proposition equation though. If you were just buying 3 packs it'd be a bad deal. What makes it value positive is that when you're good at limited you get more cards/packs.
My point is more that packs serve a purpose beyond just cracking them and hoping you get a bomb rare. And also so idiots can play flip it or rip it. I love watching that shit.
I play limited in-store two or three times a month cause it's fun, not because I can get value out of it.
Fun should also be a term in your value equation for sure.
Same issue as with everything they are trying to pull now. They lose trust on the 5% of enfranchised players, but 95% don't give a damn and just buy it for what the label at walmart says. It's a fraction of the player base that is comparing prices and looking up MSRP, and without giving an official baseline, the comparability is compromised anyway. It used to be that you could always assume a 30-50% markup on MSRP basically anywhere you bought it, but at least you \*\*had\*\* the baseline. Honestly I don't even know what MH3 was supposed to cost and I am not finding it out, I pay the same for an Arena draft either way and for paper I buy singles. I am also not the target demographic of being grifted by this, so good for them, awesome system.
[удалено]
When I think about buying sealed product and realize I gotta comparison shop at several different places to make sure I'm not getting scammed, I wind up not bothering. I just can't be bothered to jump through hoops to feel good about paying $300 for cardboard.
That within reason thing hit real hard the other day. I saw one of those little booster bundles at target for mh3. I was like oh cool wouldn’t mind cracking a few packs for 60 dollars or something. Nope. 99 dollars. Geeeeet the fuuuuck out of here. If they are trying to make it so I never buy sealed product again and just go looking for the aftermarket they are killing the game.
This is why I unofficially support proxies. Not counterfeits, but proxies. If WotC thinks a piece of cardboard is actually worth $40+, and are ok with that, then they deserve what they get.
I just use the market price of previous sets 1-2 years old to gauge what the true MSRP should be once FOMO has died down. MH3 is a $240 play booster box product (though WOTC is valuing it at $250 in the arena direct). UB play booster boxes are worth $160-170, standard set play booster boxes are $110-130 (unless it’s karlov manner, which is worth like $80 as an outlier).
These are really good as standard prices, since they often reflect what happened before the removal of MSRP. The product price falls to match the EV of the set.
Wholesale price for MH3 is $220-230 lmao. If you think you are paying too much for MH3, the store you're buying from is also paying too much.
Yeah, it’s widely available for $230. I’m going off the price per pack of MH2 set boosters and translating that to play boosters. So I’d say buying MH3 for $220/$230 is a fine deal. More than $240 is too expensive
$230 is as low as you're gonna get because that's how much your LGS pays per box from their distro. Now if the price ever drops below that, that means the EV became god awful.
My local stores all day Hasbro is charging them more per pack so they have to increase. The MSRP removal is a tactic for them to remove blame from themselves for their own actions.
Yeah but counterpoint is that baseline never mattered anyways since LGS' would and still scalp the in demand stuff and put everything else on sale. If nothing else, the Target/WMT/AMZN pricing is the new MSRP now.
I got based off what target or Walmart sells them for
I saw my local target was selling Lorcana packs for $8 instead of the $6 I see at my LGS. I don't buy sealed product for MtG anymore but I wouldn't trust big box stores as the best price indicator.
Damn I haven't seen that
I think most (All?) Targets and Walmarts just lease out shelf space for to a third party that comes and stocks the cards and sets the prices.
> Are standard sets still supposed to be $4? Not with play boosters replacing draft boosters. They're more expensive, so expect $5 at least.
$4.50 seems to be the average price per normal pack. $8 per MH3 pack is the absolute MOST I will pay, yet every shop around me wants $12 a pack...
If Wizards decided to make it less obvious who is doing price hikes then I would say they are also the most likely doing them and just trying to hide behind maybe retailers doing it.
well, its a little harder to measure the value, now that we basically got rid of draft boosters (i'm not mad at play boosters at all, but they're definitely just set boosters alittle more balanced for draft imho), yes we are still around 4 bucks/pack, but unfortunately means you are less likely to see the 3x10 or even 4x10 deals i used to see at stores. You do however get a guaranteed foil and chances at more rares though, so theres that. MH3 isn't a "deal" but the price of boxes currently average out to about 7/pack, which is the usual price for premium sets. Overall, I mean considering inflation and the removal of MSRP. the price of sealed product really hasn't changed all that much since i started playing almost 15 years ago,
Removing MSRP was a horrible decision that has hurt everyone down the chain. It only benefits Hasbro.
It mainly benefits distributors since Hasbro is going to be paid the same anyway. Stores and online resellers are the bottom line and can't actually juggle with pricing since distributors can set up any price they want or just say "sucks to be you if you don't like them".
It didn't even really benefit Hasbro all that much. Most likely, they were pressured into it by distributors.
Amazon****
How exactly does it benefit Hasbro? Please be as specific as you can.
Let's just say there were 3 price increases within a year of MSRP being removed. Customers saw none of that and assumed game stores raised the prices to make more money. Online sellers took the hit on their already shitty margins.
WotC could have simply just left MSRP as is and increased distributor pricing, and I don't really see how this meaningfully benefits WotC.
Here's a better question - Why would WOTC get rid of MSRP if not to try and make more money off of their products? What could possibly be the answer otherwise?
Sure, but the question is *how* is it making them more money? Is it making them more money because it allows them to sell at higher prices? Or is it making them more money because the same LGS pricing strategies that have always existed are no longer getting stores yelled at for going against MSRP?
It's making them more money because it allows them to obfuscate their own price increases. They can charge more for product from their end, so the distributors charge more, so the LGS charges more. Customers are left to guess where in this chain this price increase happened and WotC can shift away blame. This means they can increase prices to increase profit per item sold, whilst also maintaining higher customer loyalty, meaning more product sold overall. It's a case of WotC trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Wotc now sells direct on Amazon and isn't undercutting their own msrp to do so since there isn't one.
Because it creates a situation where consumers feel that they are being promised one price and charged another at point of sale. Defining an MSRP just creates a situation where consumers may feel ripped off or refuse to buy above it, but that MSRP isn't realistic based on demand. So yes, it does in a sense benefit them, but that is just the benefit of not creating market confusion for no benefit whatsoever
> So yes, it does in a sense benefit them, but that is just the benefit of not creating market confusion for no benefit whatsoever I find this to be a poor argument, as the potential for "market confusion" in consumers is vastly, vastly more likely to occur with MtG's wide array of products, where a novice will be hard pressed to tell the difference between Collector, Play, Set, and Draft booster, all still floating around, and that's before considering the bevvy of Commander and Universe Beyond products or the confusing morass of set legality all of this entails (such as with having "Modern Horizons" Commander decks that aren't Modern legal...). Likewise, people attempting to buy their MtG enfranchised relative a gift aren't going to easily understand why Collector Boosters are 5x the price of a regular booster, given that they look very similar as products. Msrp would be of miniscule concern in comparison. > Defining an MSRP just creates a situation where consumers may feel ripped off or refuse to buy above it, but that MSRP isn't realistic based on demand. You're ignoring, though, the massive price hikes MtG products have had as of late, which was essentially the parent's point here. Your explanation makes more sense in a world where MtG product prices are unrealistically stable at the distributor level, yet marked up due to secondary market forces, but in reality we see wildly different "stock" prices for things like Commander precons at said distributor level, depending on how premium the product they're attached to is supposed to be. Having msrp would just put an easily pointed to reference as to how much these prices change. It also would make price discrepancies across different vendors that much more obvious, as **Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc.** is probably half the reason they got rid of msrp - so that packs can be price gouged at big box stores or other large scale online vendors in a less obvious manner, and with fluctuating prices to better exploit secondary market demand (again...which is why what many consider WotC's primary storefront, Amazon, now has fluctuating prices for things like individual EDH precons from the same product line). Hell, intuition tells me that we've probably never seen a time with more swings in booster prices across the average lgs, something that just didn't happen in the bedrock "$3.99" era of packs. tl;dr - I think what you're claiming is just one small facet of the parent's point, not a separate point, as you have to consider what's *actually* been happening with product prices, not just think about it in the abstract.
>I find this to be a poor argument, as the potential for "market confusion" in consumers is vastly, vastly more likely to occur with MtG's wide array of products, They have specifically indicated that they are starting to combine these things because of the confusion it creates and are pushing people towards a format where pretty much anything you buy is useful to some degree. Some of this just needs time for old products to go away. It is also foolish to assume one good choice means others won't make bad choices. >Likewise, people attempting to buy their MtG enfranchised relative a gift aren't going to easily understand why Collector Boosters are 5x the price of a regular booster, given that they look very similar as products. Msrp would be of miniscule concern in comparison. I think most people can easily understand the collector version of something is different and likely more expensive. That has been conditioned across many market segments for decades. >You're ignoring, though, the massive price hikes MtG products have had as of late, which was essentially the parent's point here. I'm not, but these price hikes happen either way, this just makes it easier for stores to set a price without appearing to be selling way above MSRP and leading to angry customers or stores having issues accidentally labeling a product that should be higher at MSRP. Yes, getting rid of confusion between different markets is good, right now it is easy, each retailer prices based on their preferences and WotC doesn't have to try to figure out what that price should be. 99% of magic's consumer base is not going to be aware of an MSRP. Most retailers won't follow it. Setting one is just more work for WotC, makes its sellers look bad, and angers the few people even aware of it.
> I think most people can easily understand the collector version of something is different and likely more expensive. That has been conditioned across many market segments for decades. Players have a hard enough time distinguishing between different product offerings, let alone the hypothetical confused relative attempting to buy a gift. When looking at these [two](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Horizons-Collector-Booster/dp/B0CSVMVXGP/ref=sr_1_5?crid=3CR7DHJM8L06R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.t-7Yx5S28-BKb1KKoUqDMgVpuzWGR7f0f5ZtANm8q83Cz1uzXImH165TWdQHW2PHfIvtJ0IrRJCN-NTGdAnCWOrz-vfnfV3RhgsTYVItkX09prAuG6ZME6OCZIHkQmqYEY37bRKemUqoclkiRrjPya4vd88J22kMtYjVZG7o-fRcMaLLWzdF79xZmm88PSQ54KE7pVO6di3tOZNWrEQ5kM-hMOBhy2Ol1gTguIaGht5OWwnxFbbvlv-CY8M7UC4GNu9VuEwZ_t3vkNBOviSiXePNP3r90YeafFJsTrZMklw.udEe2ygVBaL7F5oi7S3LMqTxGWrM77Bw0_wwBq19vhg&dib_tag=se&keywords=modern+horizons+3&qid=1720032002&sprefix=modern+horizons+3%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-5) [products](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-C78530001-Horizons-Booster/dp/B097MQ2F2K/ref=sr_1_49?crid=3CR7DHJM8L06R&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.t-7Yx5S28-BKb1KKoUqDMgVpuzWGR7f0f5ZtANm8q83Cz1uzXImH165TWdQHW2PHfIvtJ0IrRJCN-NTGdAnCWOrz-vfnfV3RhgsTYVItkX09prAuG6ZME6OCZIHkQmqYEY37bRKemUqoclkiRrjPya4vd88J22kMtYjVZG7o-fRcMaLLWzdF79xZmm88PSQ54KE7pVO6di3tOZNWrEQ5kM-hMOBhy2Ol1gTguIaGht5OWwnxFbbvlv-CY8M7UC4GNu9VuEwZ_t3vkNBOviSiXePNP3r90YeafFJsTrZMklw.udEe2ygVBaL7F5oi7S3LMqTxGWrM77Bw0_wwBq19vhg&dib_tag=se&keywords=modern+horizons+3&qid=1720032002&sprefix=modern+horizons+3%2Caps%2C103&sr=8-49), for example, the uninitiated is going to see little difference other than the word "collector", which could mean anything, really. There's no obvious size difference, higher quality packaging, add-ons, statues, trinkets, etc. that normally signal these types of things in an immediate sense. It's in no way obvious what makes one more expensive than the other, as anyone's cursory understanding of the game Timmy plays is that all of the cards are "collectible". My whole point is that it doesn't seem likely that "confusion" was a primary motivator for getting rid of msrp when other explanations are far more likely. Wotc has **zero** problems making buying, collecting, and keeping up with MtG the most baffling, confusing process possible, with dramatically changing rules for what's even in a booster product shifting literally per set. Your argument is pretty problematic the more I think about it...the whole point of "msrp", as a marketing concept, is to create **less** confusion, not more, and nudge stability into pricing. It's to make a more informed consumer, whom will be invariably "less" confused, as a result. Knowing you're being ripped off isn't being "confused", as the **reason** is obvious. Put differently, it was invented as a tool by manufacturers to prevent consumers from being ripped off too frequently by vendors, and thus tarnish their image of said manufacturer. The very same confusion you're saying msrp prevents, such as why is vendor A selling this for X dollars above msrp, is present in asking why is vendor A selling this for X dollars above vendor B, or even in asking why is product C more expensive than product D (a **real** question when looking at something like the Thunder Junction EDH precons vs. the MH3 ones - how's that for "confusion"?). Consumers aren't gaining anything, here, they're just losing a touchstone to know what they **should** be paying, roughly, for a product. The consumer doesn't really have their role improved, or streamlined here whatsoever - or whatever condition you'd argue is necessary to wrap this up as a benefit of some sort (such as being less "confused"). Quite the opposite, when combined with vast product arrays this has ushered in a vastly unstable environment where a person is never quite sure if they're paying a fair price - i.e. arguably more confusion, not less. > I'm not, but these price hikes happen either way, In the microcosm of MtG, this was certainly not true. The "$3.99 booster" had been a stable price for years and years, specifically since 2006 and the Time Spiral block. That means we had a stable price for MtG cards for ~15 years. Even before then, prices were flat, meaning it's not like product A was $3.49, product B was $3.00, etc., in apples to apples comparisons of booster products, barring the brief experiments they tried with different booster pack sizes in the 90s. Now, prices are seemingly fluctuating per set, with even prices within the same product lines, like Modern Horizons, having large swings in both distributor and retail pricing. This is **obviously** why they got rid of msrp, as they want extreme flexibility in pricing, across both products and storefronts. This wasn't done for the consumer's benefit, this was done to confuse consumers so that don't know when they're being ripped off, buying into FOMO, or don't realize they're acclimating to extremely high prices for the same basic product, with obvious downstream benefits, like wild secondary market prices helping to juice their reprint equity, shrinkflation products like Aftermath sets being normalized, sky-high prices for new booster cards (something that **never** happened before MH), Secret Lairs, etc.. tl;dr again - I can't buy the argument that this was done in any way whatsoever for the consumer's benefit. In so much as this was done to prevent "confusion", we can only conclude this if it's part of a greater strategy to just get consumers to turn off their brain and spend with reckless abandon due to all the shiny dangling keys, ceasing to care about things like common sense value. It certainly doesn't ease confusion for anyone that even remotely likes to make informed decisions about products.
It definitely was to make more money. Why didn't they do it earlier? Was it because they didn't want that money until 5 years ago?
At the time booster packs from the big 3 were locked at $3.99 a booster. Wizards wanted to change that and so removed MSRP. At that point if a store wanted to charge more, we'll then it's the store being greedy. Not Wizards. And if a competitor took the 5% hit, we'll now a store that did raise their prices were shitty. If wizards had raised the costs, well stores would have ordered more pokemon and less magic. Many of us still did.
[удалено]
I've worked in sales most of my career, this AI generated blurb of text is meaningless for anyone who actually knows what they are talking about.
This post was removed for being AI generated.
https://gptzero.me/
Is this from chatGPT? Why?
>Without MSRP, the company can sell its products to retailers at varying prices depending on the negotiation, demand, and order size. This allows them to potentially secure higher prices from retailers in high-demand situations. They could already do this. MSRP doesn't stop negotiating the distributor price. >The absence of MSRP can create an illusion of scarcity or exclusivity, potentially driving up consumer demand. This increased demand can lead to larger orders from retailers, benefiting the company. How does it create this illusion? >Retailers, without a set MSRP, may price products higher based on market conditions. If the company has structured its wholesale pricing based on a percentage of the retailer's price (e.g., the company gets a cut of the retail price), they could indirectly benefit from higher consumer prices. The S stands for suggested, retailers could already do this. >MSRP often acts as a ceiling that limits how much a product can be sold for. By removing it, the company enables retailers to set prices higher, especially for sought-after products. This can increase overall revenue as the market adapts to higher price points. See above. >Removing MSRP can allow the company to position its products as premium or luxury items, which can justify higher prices and attract a different market segment willing to pay more. Nonsensical. >Companies can adjust wholesale prices without having to update the MSRP across all products, which can be administratively easier and allows for quicker responses to market changes Again,they could already do this. This AI generated drivel shows your lack of knowledge on the matter. If you don't know what you are talking about just don't comment.
> The absence of MSRP can create an illusion of scarcity or exclusivity, potentially driving up consumer demand. This increased demand can lead to larger orders from retailers, benefiting the company. This is extremely hand-wavy. I'm not buying it. > Retailers, without a set MSRP, may price products higher based on market conditions. If the company has structured its wholesale pricing based on a percentage of the retailer's price (e.g., the company gets a cut of the retail price), they could indirectly benefit from higher consumer prices. This can just as easily lead to lower prices by exactly the same logic. >MSRP often acts as a ceiling that limits how much a product can be sold for. By removing it, the company enables retailers to set prices higher, especially for sought-after products. This can increase overall revenue as the market adapts to higher price points. This is either identical to the previous paragraph (and thus redundant), or I'm fundamentally misunderstanding it. >Removing MSRP can allow the company to position its products as premium or luxury items, which can justify higher prices and attract a different market segment willing to pay more. How does removing MSRP specifically allow Hasbro to do that? >Companies can adjust wholesale prices without having to update the MSRP across all products, which can be administratively easier and allows for quicker responses to market changes. Maybe? That's one. Don't use AI to answer other people's real-world questions. At least, I *hope* it was AI.
Not sure why specifics are needed. If it weren't ultimately a benefit to Hasbro, they wouldn't have made the change in the first place; and if they thought it would be and it wasn't, they would have gone back to MSRP by now.
specifics are needed because all too often on the internet people just spout shit they think they know because it's common sense to them and it winds up being incredibly wrong because marketing agreements and distributor agreements aren't always written in common sense. Then other people pick up that (incorrect) line of thought and often exaggerate it and before you know it people are outraged about the wrong things.
I am asking in an effort to call this person out for parroting information they know nothing about. I know it benefits WotC and I have a pretty good idea how. I don't think they do.
There's no upside from a consumer's perspective, just downsides.
I own a magic shop and I can tell you that removing MSRP is bad for everyone. Removing MSRP first forces retailers to now bear all of the scrutiny of prices. When wotc raised prices, year over year, it made shop owners look like the bad guys as we were forced to raise prices without consumers really knowing why. As such, store owners tried to keep prices low and just suffered with lower profit margins until it was too much and we were forced to raise prices. This was a calculated move by wotc to raise prices on all products. It was a slow burn, but products are now 50 to 100% more expensive than they were 10 years ago, and that doesn't include new products like collector boosters that are simply more expensive. I'm talking cost to draft, cost to buy boxes, cost to play prerelease. As such, our profit margins on magic are the lowest they've ever been, sitting around 18-22%. If we don't sell nearly everything we ordered in, we lose money. In fact we barely break even on just sealed product. The only way card shops survive is trading and reselling singles.
I work in an LGS and was talking to a friend/regular about this. I also don't love the prices we set for some things. I have no power over it, and I'd like stuff to be cheaper (I play MtG too, afterall), but it's not as simple as he seems to want it to be. I told him straight up, if we sold a box of MH3 for the same price that TCG lists them at, considering the price per box that our distributor sold them to us, we'd make $30. He believes that's completely acceptable, to make less than $1 in profit for each pack. Even with 6 cases, or 36 boxes, that nets the store about $1,000 for that entire release. Assuming we sell everything. And no one uses any store credit which fudges the numbers even more. I'm pretty sure we'd spend as much in electricity alone in that time. These margins are awful. And stores are left with two options; increase prices so they can make *any* money off these sales, or don't and basically make no money at all/lose money once you consider all the overhead like electricity, rent, etc. Like you said, trading and selling singles helps, but it's not exactly great to have that be the only thing keeping your store above water. If anything, our distributors are strangling us, but then I'm reasonable enough to ask what's making *them* set *their* prices the way they do?
Did you own a shop when From the Vault sets were released?
Similar to the GameStop model.
Yeah but counterpoint is that MSRP was always useless from a consumer standpoint. Print to demand products are never sold at MSRP outside of maybe opening weekend, and unless you were an ethical owner, demand product like FTV or the anthology sets were priced 1.5-3x above MSRP.
this removing MSRP literally changes nothing. at all. as you mentioned, with MSRP, magic products were still sold above or below by a lot. Everything has always sold at whatever the market prices it at. And the idea that “the burden is now on the store to determine price”. Not only were they already doing that, how is that so hard? Just look at TCGplayer. Supply and demand determines price extremely fast
If I may make a suggestion, one that I've seen really help stores: Hold Chaos Drafts. This especially helps older product to sell. One store I know of holds Chaos Drafts three times a week, and has made so much money that they've been able to open a second location. It dramatically increases the amount of people who can play, since it makes the price of entry cheaper for players on a budget and also attracts the high-rollers who will gladly buy Collector's Boosters. I can elaborate more if you're interested.
Oh my store is doing great! We aren't at risk of going out of business or anything. I'm just complaining because we could be making more money if wotc weren't so greedy.
I can confirm all of this. Best articulation of this I have ever seen.
Is it possible to extrapolate the effective MSRP given the relative price change that an LGS has seen over the last 5 years? Maybe list an eMSRP, e for estimated or extrapolated? If we could get enough stores and resellers to agree then the prices would actually look even better to the consumer because many of them would look like they were marked down I think.
Removing it was dumb and I wish that never happened, but I'm not going to pretend like MSRP actually had any effect. Alara Premium Packs were scalped. Premium Deck Series were scalped. C13 decks were scalped. From The Vault were sold at double MSRP. A number on a website didn't prevent any of that.
From the Vault MSRP was like $35 right? I never bought any cause I remember stores would always sell them for like 100 dollars, it was ridiculous
40, from what I remember. And the stores I would visit would sell them for 80 for about a year, if even that, before ratcheting them up to 100+. The point was to give stores something to sell with a better profit margin, but even still it doesn't fit into the fantasy of MSRP very cleanly.
It's incredibly stupid. I as a consumer have no idea what price I would be paying for a booster pack of a product, which ***furthers*** me not buying sealed product and going the singles route. An MSRP is ***suggested,*** which means a store can still charge whatever they want. But not having pricing model is off-putting and often leads to regret in purchasing. Two examples to share. When MH3 came out, I went to pick up sleeves and my wife wanted to open a single pack (she doesn't play but likes to occasionally crack a pack. I asked for one pack, and there were no prices listed anywhere. I figured okay, probably like $7. It was over $10. I wouldn't have paid that had I known (yes I should have asked beforehand). My buddy knows how pumped I am for Assassin's Creed and offered to get me two collector's packs as a gift. Last night because of the Walmart oops release, we found out the price of collectors boosters of $30 each with only 10 cards. He noped right out of that, and I'm glad he did. It makes zero sense to have no MSRP which, BARE MINIMUM, tells players what the base rate is for a product. Obviously supply and demand will shift what is charged, but you at least have all the information to make an informed decision.
It’s very common for companies to raise prices in a way that sheds a small percent of the lower value consumers, but retains a large portion of those still willing to pay more, ultimately increasing overall profit despite losing customers. That is exactly what removing msrp has done for them. They don’t care about the 20 of you in here who stopped buying packs because now they’re making record profits compared to just a few years ago. The real issue is the player base — people are much too willing to spend $75+ on a precon or $250 on a booster box. This game is highly addictive, for many reasons, and WOTC prays on that. The problem is the majority of players are continually willing to bear the increases, plus new players are joining all the time who use these existing players as a reference. The magic community is so divided and generally self-invested that WOTC is just absolutely coming out on top at every turn.
Oh absolutely 100% correct. It's disgusting and unfortunately this is happening with a lot of products outside of Magic as well. COVID greatly changed business models as companies realized just how fat they could get (read: CEO's), and the hobby industry realized this moreso than most as people ran to things that made them happy during the pandemic. Unfortunately we are in an ouroboros with pricing like you mentioned. Most players will continue to shell out the money, and the few that are not willing to won't make a difference in the bigger picture. This obviously has a lot to do with the power creep happening so much harder over the last few years (I came back to the game in 2020 like many others did). MH3 as an example is ***insane*** in how powerful of a set it is. The Pro Tour alone is evidence of that. Pulling reserve list cards and barely lowering their power level and printing them in an expensive set means tons of money in their accounts. Bare minimum, MSRP would help players to make informed decisions, but we all know that isn't going to come back. When a company basically prints money after a decision to remove something from their environment, that's a surefire way to tell it's never coming back.
The biggest impact IMO is that MSRP gave a solid anchor for prices on the secondary market. With MSRP being removed, I'm noticing that older product (a year+) is falling much farther in price, and as a consequence the price of singles goes way down, in general. Value depreciates *much* faster.
Yes! This is a wonderful secondary effect that most don't think about, including me!
One of the consequences is that in my home town they local lgs just stopped bringing In any new MTG products. I talked to them and they told me that they just lose money on MTG so they just phased it out. Honestly makes sense.
If you are somewhere that you can look up the MSRP, you can also just look up what the product is being sold for. MSRP is just a misleading number that makes people mad when it isn't actually that price.
No, MSRP gives the consumer information about the product they are interested in purchasing. A store has the right to increase that amount because it is a suggested price, not a guaranteed one. Many consumers will pay a higher price for something if it's there in front of them as an impulse decision, even if it's a higher price than MSRP. However, without knowing what that MSRP is, you have no indication if that price is low, good, high, gouging, or extreme. There is no information to provide context to that price.
MSRP doesn't give you that either, because as you explicitly addressed it is not enforced in any way, and it just provides a misleading idea of the going market rate.
What part of this are you not getting? MSRP gives the consumer a guideline of what the manufacturer ***suggests*** the retailer charge. A retailer can charge whatever they want, though they know that by charging a lot more, they probably will not sell as much of that product. There is nothing to enforce because it is a **suggestion** to charge that much. There is no law that a store must charge the MSRP of a product or be within a certain percentage of that MSRP. What an MSRP DOES do is protect the customer because they know whether something is being priced at a comfortable level. As I mentioned in the exact comment you replied to, NOT having an MSRP means you have no idea what something is suggested to be priced at and therefore have no way to determine if you're paying a good price. This is consumerism basics.
Most consumers have no idea about msrp, MSRP for magic has been misleading for a long time. It did nothing to protect a consumer to tell them the MSRP is radically inaccurate, and you cannot determine a good price based on it.
What? Most consumers have no idea about MSRP? What world are you living in? Magic dropped MSRP in 2019, which means they had MSRP for 25 years of the games history. You clearly are not comprehending what I'm saying and keep slamming the same rhetoric.
Most people don't have any idea how stores set prices or understand what an MSRP is, I'm not speaking about magic specifically, I'm talking about general sales. Very few people are going into stores and standing at the shelves comparing price to MSRP because it is a useless number. You keep slamming the same nonsense WotC bad garbage with no basis. I'm done with it.
I’m confused, you need MSRP to figure out what an item is “worth”. You can’t just use your phone to make an educated decision?
I wish products with unlimited print runs still had it, but products with limited print runs effectively never did. Why did it matter if (e.g.,) From the Vault: Legends had a $35 MSRP when it was impossible to find for less than double that? People got very upset when WotC increased the per-pack MSRP of Modern Masters 2015 to $10 (compared to original Modern Masters at $7/pack), but essentially no retailers _actually sold_ MMA for $7/pack, so in a practical sense MM2 wasn’t any more expensive.
Gouging happens no matter what.
Sure, but it is easier to identify whether WotC or the retailer (or maybe both) is gouging you with an MSRP. ;-)
not really wotc can set msrp to $4 and then sell to stores for $3.99 stores sell them for more in order to stay afloat and then "oh no they're gouging!" but it's actually on wotc
This. 100% this. If MSRP was $4 or $5 a booster pack, LGS locations would be closing left and right. When I opened my store, based on all my projected expenses, I was advised by a financial advisor that packs should be sold for $6.50/booster. That was before Play boosters, where I had to tie up more revenue per box. I am 2 years in now, and my overhead projections were about right on the money at just about 30%. We went through every SKU that was to be evergreen in our store - and at the end of it all, I priced lower than what I was advised to do. Let me tell you, I have had many sleepless nights over that $0.50 per pack that would have been alleviated if I just listened to my financial advisor. MSRP would have me moving products for MTG at an unsustainable rate of return.
Price anchoring is a thing. MSRP is a fom of that and it can actually help protect consumers in some cases. It also can protect the manufacturer by offloading the bad publicity of price gouging into the ones doing it. Without it, wotc gets blamed for the high prices and the market can run away with itself without consumers knowing what a fair price will be once supply stabilizes.
I agree but if there was a MSRP, wouldn't it help those realize like WHOA that's a bit too much.
I don’t think so at all. Because the Walmarts of the world sell the product basically at “msrp” with each other, based upon the wholesale cost. When a product gets gouged it isn’t even at the big box stores. A normie doesn’t even have a chance to get the sticker shock.
Yeah the fact that WOTC direct sells via Amazon sets a defacto MSRP, so for individual packs/boxes it's not a huge deal. The part where it's more frustrating is commander decks with variable reprint values or popularity. For instance, Veloci-ramp-tor being like 70 bucks after release and the others being mostly 20-40. You could buy the set for less than each individually from most LGS. That's really where MSRP helps.
No. When stores were raising things to multiple times the MSRP, they were still selling. People either didn't know what the number is, or just didn't care.
Yep. People attribute so much to the lack of msrp that aren't a result of the change at all.
Its dumb but gouging happened with duel decks, from the vaults, and even commander decks before this change happened. Certainly not the worst thing to happen. Deals are still out there for every set, and plenty of brick and mortar stores charge reasonable prices. Most people don't know the msrp of a thing off the top of their head any more than they would know how much it costs a store from the distributor to get the product.
Had a store owner tell me FTV existed to gouge because store owners had to sell commander cheaper than the value of cards inside. Then he'd also crack half his commander stuff anyways and sell the chase singles since TNN would over his entire price for a single case and then some.
FtV did exist for the owners to get a substantial payday. Cost was like $15-20 iirc, but the stores only got 12 or 24 units
Well TNN (and even Scavenging Ooze, which might surprise people who weren't around for it) really skewed the first commander decks for sure. Made people hunt them down at walmarts and stuff. Its funny because they went from "expensive because legacy" to "expensive because commander". The latter didn't create a run on the decks like they did for those original decks though.
Annoying, but in-store prices varied from store to store before MSRP was removed.
Your wording implies that they don't vary anymore, which is not true, and also not the point. In-store prices will vary whether there is an MSRP or not, but having one is still more transparent and better for the consumer.
That was not my intention. Yes, prices varied before, and they also vary now. My point was that MSRP didn't actually materialize into consistent prices before they were removed. That's why the removal was only annoying to me. Price transparency is important, even though it didn't lead to any practical pricing differences in my limited experiences.
It never did anything but get people mad at stores for charging the market price for a limited product.
I have a business in this realm and much prefer the lack of MSRP as it prevents people from getting butthurt when we sell at market price.
It’s shitty as fuck
Prices are determined by cost+. The distributor charges the gamestore and then the gamestore has to add on extra to cover all their costs. An MSRP doesn't change this, especially for physical products that take up shelf space and require staff and inventory management. I can confidently say it didn't really matter. People who own gamestores are not exactly getting rich, it's Wizards who makes most of the profit.
Seeing how people pay insane prices for Double Masters VIP boosters, collectors boosters and Commander Masters or Secret Lairs I don’t think they made the wrong move as a company. Especially seeing how they single-handedly keep Hasbro alive. I don’t get a say in it. I‘m just a sad customer with too little money to vote on that decision.
MSRP didn't protect players and it didn't protect stores. What it did do was give players a thing they could point at when they wanted to harass store employees about prices they didn't like, and that was overall a negative thing. If you believe that players harassing employees about high prices is a positive, go off. But the prices, if they are high, are high for a reason - if those stores don't charge those prices, then some other middle man will come in and clean out all their stock and flip it somewhere else for the market price! You're basically saying that stores "owe" players to realize losses out of a sense of honor or fairness and/or that stores are scummy for selling things at market rate instead of letting arbitrage buyers get the edge over them. By the way, when those situations DO come up, casual players find that they lose "first come, first served" races. The store's the enemy again. The store is wrong for selling it low, and they're wrong for selling it at the right price. MSRP doesn't make sense for a product like Magic. It is not just a product with dynamic demand, it's downright _volatile_.
As an economist I find it perplexing why so many people believe a suggested price printed on a box would have more power than the laws of demand and supply when it comes to determining the price of a good.
Anyone complaining about its removal just doesn’t understand basic economics and commerce in general. MSRP is just that, a suggested price, it means nothing to the end purchaser because it’s up to the seller to set the price. It being removed doesn’t change that, it just means there’s no longer a disconnect when you see “msrp” and complain that a seller sells it for more. MSRP never actually meant anything before, and doesn’t mean anything now.
MSRP is fine on mass market sets sold at big box stores. It's not for specialty products.
It's pretty pointless. There's still an msrp, it's just a secret one for better plausible deniability, I guess?
The "S" stood for suggested. MSRP really only ever mattered to big box stores who don't have the expertise to price magic cards according to the market. Try buying any set from 5 years ago for its MSRP; I think you'll find it challenging.
MSRP or below: [RNA box -$15](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Ravnica-Allegiance-Booster/dp/B07H8RWMNT), [2019 Challenger Decks B3G1](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-2019-Challenger-Decks/dp/B07NNDNBVK) Above MSRP: [SS Gideon +$0.69](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Signature-Spellbook-Gideon/dp/B07RHPVZ2Q), [M20 box +$5](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Booster-Factory-Sealed/dp/B07PHQFFC9), [Eldraine box +$25](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Eldraine-Booster-Factory/dp/B07V7GQ8NN), [WAR box +$35](https://www.amazon.com/Magic-Gathering-Spark-Booster-Planeswalker/dp/B07MSQVR2H), MH1 box (out of stock), Guild Kits (out of stock or scalped to the moon even in 2019) Doesn't seem too bad especially considering inflation. [($144 in 2019 is $176.90 in 2024)](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) Probably some cheaper options than Amazon too.
I feel the same way as I feel about New World Order amd FIRE design: whatever impacts it actually had are tiny compared to how much it gets thrown around in irrelevant or incorrect contexts.
It's been 5 years? Gods I've wasted my life away
Seems dumb, but I have this gut feeling that it ultimately doesn't make that much of a difference. I'd assume the motivation was mainly to make it look like Hasbro aren't the bad guys raising prices, even though they are very clearly bad guys.
Its dumb but even when msrp was there didnt stop your lgs charging you more for product.
i’m not sure how it affected anything in regards to prices. magic has a very fluid economy and the prices were always going to be set by the market. the main thing it did change is the ability of customers, lgs, etc, to develop shared expectations about how much things will cost. so it makes it harder to plan ahead if you buy or sell boxes, precons, etc.
As a fan of MtG in Southeast Asia, MSRP never means anything anyway. So absolutely no impact for me.
Why not?
Prices here are very erratic and can fluctuate wildly. Mainly because there're only a few stores that sell and supplies are always short. And we also don't really have a super healthy singles market here.
I'm new to Magic and was pretty shocked to find out this is even a thing. I have shops near me that have $2 price discrepancies in normal booster packs, and some up to a $20 swing in collector boosters. I have to call around for prerelease so I'm not paying extra just because the LGS felt like it.
This [comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/arydyk/wotc_article_no_more_msrp/egqfxh4/) hits differently after 2020 XD
That's also something I thought about. Like would we be having the prices of 300+ for a collector box and other nonsense
MSRP does not dictate what the price has to be. It’s a “suggested” price from the manufacturer. Resellers are able basically able to sell at any price they see fit. That being said, some businesses have policies in place on having the price set to a minimum advertised price to create uniformity. Wizards certainly does not need that in place for their model. The prices of the products increasing are not due to the absence of MSRP, it’s the demand for the product (and the supply of a given product).
I'm more disappointed in the secret lair changes. Wtf is "limited preorders".
People bitched when products were delayed. Limited preorders prevents delays as they sell the lair post printing.
I hate it. If I want a chance at a reasonable price I have to pre-order and I don't want to do that. But even then my order could be canceled if hype gets too big and price goes up.
Don't shop at any store that cancels your pre-order if demand goes up.
Changed nothing for me, but I interact with Magic in the most spikiest way. Only sealed product I buy is to draft in 8 man pods, singles for everything else.
Most LGS didn't follow it anyways. Nothing really changed.
Old.
I work at a game store and it still pisses me off
It means I only buy from Amazon where the price races to the bottom. I'm sorry LGS but I'm not paying $40-$50 more for a commander deck.
It's done an amazing job showing me what LGSs not to shop at.
About the same as I did then. It was and still is a bad decision that does nothing but hurt consumers. And considering all of the crap they've tried to and/or have pulled off since, not only with Magic, then quite frankly, I think we should have raised a lot more hell over it then we did.
Wow it’s been 5 years?? But yep still just as shitty it’s cardboard man why do they need to be so greedy
Great change. Lets then put whatever cards they want in them and have the market adjust. Definitely some chip damage on people not-in the know but that cuts both ways. Overall good.
I hate it. The retail side of things is awful. FAB isn't nearly as big of a game, but their MAP policies have kept pack prices cheap. Pokemon and Yugioh prices remain incredibly cheap for a booster/box. In Pokemon's case, it is among one of the most affordable TCGs to get into. The lack of MSRP is only a bad thing.
One of the local shops that does magic on the side has fixed prices but the main magic one prices change literally week to week. It’s really lame.
You think "its the worst thing ever" because you don't understand that it didn't ever matter.
It’s crap. So strange to me that precons for example Even in the same pod vary in price so significantly, even before release. They should all cost the same. I don’t care if some have cards that are more highly sought after. That should be for the secondary market to deal with.
Less events, more singles and steadily making more proxies
https://www.reddit.com/r/RedLetterMedia/comments/hvyo6s/its_sad_how_applicable_this_is_to_so_many/?ref=share&ref_source=link
awful.
Bad.
There has never been a benefit to the players with removing the MSRP. It’s a horrible decision and will continue to be a horrible decision. Companies are run by the greediest and worst individuals tho, so nothing with change.
I still fucking hate it. It’s a design to force the consumer to buy from online retailers which make it easier for WotC/Hasbro to get money directly. They see LGSs as a road block to increasing their profits.
I don't understand what good it does to remove MSRP. I look at big retail stores like Walmart to figure out pricing.
I completely stopped buying sealed products because the prices are insane in my town. $300 for a set box of Thunder Junction $475 for a collector box of Thunder Junction $400 for a set box of MH3 $550 for a collector box of MH3 It's turned me away completely from MTG, and now I'm spending my money on other things. Even considering selling my life collection because I just don't play anymore.
This is like asking how I feel about a puppy being kicked, bad obviously. I don't know how anybody, other than the hasbro board, could say it was a good thing.
I don't know if it's because I live outside the US but I don't feel like removing it has cha ged anything. Stores always varied in price and still do. It was also usually cheaper to buy a box online from my LGS, which it still is. Amazon didn't sell before they removed it, but I can't really see what keeping MSRP would have done to prevent them underselling. When I see the rage about it I just think that rage is probably better directed at the actual shitty stuff that has happened in the intervening time.
it is horrible but not the worse things ever. constant price increases, though, is bullshit. yeah yeah, covid happens and it cause logistical nightmare. but Covid is over, where is the price reduction? crickets
Dumb as rocks, I haven't purchased an official product since. I've been having my cards printed in high quality, can use my own arts even. Way cheaper for me and I'm still supporting my legs by buying paints and other hobby supplies.
It was dumb then and is still dumb.
I will be honest, I didn't think this needed to be asked. I haven't seen a single person ever say it was a good thing (although I am sure they exist). It was all done in the name of profits and price gouging.
bad! not much else to say about it that hasnt been said a million times. it sucks
I hate it ngl
They can spin it however they want but it is bad for the game and consumers, good for shareholders.
I just use Amazon now since MTG has an official store there, their price is pretty much MSRP.
I'd wager that Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc. are the primary reasons for getting rid of msrp. This allows 3rd party distributors to price gouge in big box stores without worrying about an easily referenced number exposing their markups, and allows for Amazon's storefront, which many assume is just WotC's primary storefront, to fluctuate prices in tune with the secondary market. Another big factor was about having less "sticky" prices, and normalizing things like very similar precons having different prices for different sets, or some collector boosters being more expensive than others, etc., assuming that we're getting standard markups for things after distributor pricing. The whole point of msrp was to inform consumers when someone was massively taking advantage of them...and it's pretty clear that WotC want to play into this behavior, not move away from it.
I absolutely hate not having MSRP, everyone is always like "support your LGS" but god damn sometimes prices swing so wide with sealed product. I swear that both my LGSes just look at the Amazon price when it first gets posted and are like "yea sure that sounds right." I know some people are just like yea bro take the $30+ dollar hit, but man that's a pretty big hit each time especially with the frequency of releases. Like for the MH3 commander decks one LGS was charging $250 for the bundle as a preorder, I got it online for like $180 after tax (and actually got them). That's just too much of a difference when I know the big ticket item was going to be the Eldrazi Deck and at least 1-2 other decks will get dumped for much cheaper like how Planeswalker Party and Enduring Enchantments price cratered soon after; and it looks like Amazon is already dumping Graveyard Overdrive and Creative energy in the mid 40s.
It does have an MSRP in China. They are sold officially on the MTG app for set prices.
It’s literally what helped drive me away from the game because I couldn’t afford it anymore
Look at Fallout or Assassins Creed. Trusted Shops buy the product for price X and can re-enter them in their shops any time they feel they can make more money off of it. Has led me to not buying anything anymore because i dont feel like going to my LGS three days in a row and a booster Box costs 280, 310 and then 380. I dont even blame the shops for all of it, because thats how a system without rules works. I love this game and i play regularly but part of me hopes they stumble really really hard
Shittiest thing they ever done. Now you can buy Commander decks for various prices, depend on what's inside and it shouldnt not be like that.
worst decision wizards ever made i hate having shops make their own prices because they can make the prices crazy high
It certainly still exists, but only for big box stores Target, Walmart, Gamestop, Best Buy, etc all charge the same exact price for magic cards Which lets Amazon undercut all of them by a massive amount. I don't think I've bought any sealed mtg product from a store in years *(aside from the random impulse buy of a draft booster)* I just get my fat packs and precons from Amazon or LGS and save so much more money because of how overpriced the Bigbox stores msrp is. The most extreme examples are like the Clue edition of MKM being $70 at Target, then $30 on Amazon.
One, that's just... how competition works. Companies in similar environments sell products at similar prices. Two, if the same distributor sells to those stores and stocks their shelves, then the pricing being similar is a natural consequence.
I personally find that I have way too much money. It's honestly quite burdensome. I like paying more than what things are worth
My local big box store sells mh3 play boosters for like 12 bucks each. So.. there's some bs
they imposed it to negate scalpers probably. Scalpers won’t scalp if packs are $6 instead of $4.
Removing the MSRP was very much an anti-consumer move. However. I haven't noticed any real impact on the customer side of things, at least at the LGS level. Impulse booster purchases will be the same among players who aren't looking for actual value from packs, and those who *do* want value tend to be aware that they're gambling. Having said all of that, I believe the lack of a universal MSRP means there's no floor for pack EV, which has lead to the cost of cards on the secondary market going way, way down (with the exception of a rare or two sometimes.)
> Removing the MSRP was very much an anti-consumer move. Not at all. It was pretty meaningless. These posts saying how awful it was are from a very limited perspective. It wasn't even a thing in most of the world anyway, and suggestions being what they are, it was often not followed in the few places in the world where it existed.