New Magic set has BLACK LOTUS and MOXES

Not a hoax - not an imaginary story!

Apparently packs of the latest set, Zendikar, randomly (and very infrequently) have old vintage cards in them, like Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, or dual lands.

No, really - it's been confirmed by a very high-level judge as well as pack-openers worldwide.

forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=186720

Yeah, some people are complaining...about possibly getting random extra large amounts of money in their booster packs. Oh, internet: you're so dependable.

WOW. That's crazy. I guess I'd be having a fit too if I were sitting on a set of Power Nine as an investment.

The alpha/beta/unlimited ones will still hold value, but this will likely drop that considerably.

Is this like a scratchies thing?
I once scratched $5. It was thrilling.

No, it won't, really. They haven't -printed- more of these cards. People are actually opening a getting, say, an EX- Beta Sinkhole in the pack. If WotC actually fired up a press and banged out another 100,000 Loti? Bodies would be hitting the streets. This is just incredibly savvy marketing.

jeb wrote:

No, it won't, really. They haven't -printed- more of these cards. People are actually opening a getting, say, an EX- Beta Sinkhole in the pack. If WotC actually fired up a press and banged out another 100,000 Loti? Bodies would be hitting the streets. This is just incredibly savvy marketing.

Where did the cards come from? Did they buy them from dealers? How can they release these rare cards without increasing the number in circulation?

Yes they bought them up from dealers. they haven't increased the number of these cards in the wild they are simply getting them out of the hands of dealers and into the hands of players.

This is very exciting stuff. Zendikar is going to sell like mad.

Aren't people just going to sell them straight back to the dealers though? I certainly would.

I don't think they really got them from dealers, I think they just got them out of their vault of old cards.

Why wouldn't they reprint them and make them ultra super chase rare. If they did that they could sell ten times the amount of a new set and claim some of the ridiculous amount of money the power nine go for these days. I think a black lotus costs about the same as a car these days. I remember when I played at school and a friend bought a mox ruby for £20 ($30 US). We all thought he was crazy. I think they will do it at some point. Perhaps when a black lotus costs as much as a house.

I doubt Wizards would have any reason to worry about what people hoarding old cards as an investment will think. It's not like they will make money from them selling those cards. They reprinted plenty of old favourites with Time Spiral. It would allow more people to be competitive in Type I, which talking to a friend of mine who plays at Pro Tour events is a way they hang on to the older players.

Oh, I think it'd be great if they did that, but they can't. They've PROMISED to those people hoarding old cards that they will never do that. All the most valuable old cards are all on the "reserve list", which means that they've promised they will never be reprinted so as not to devalue old cards. People were very, very upset when Chronicles came out, and the reserve list was made to mollify them. Everything in Time Spiral was NOT on the reserve list, nor was anything in the recent "From the Vault: Exiled" box set, which included classics like Berserk and Balance. The lead designer for Magic has said that the moment they reprint the Power Nine, Magic is dead.

dragonstout wrote:

The lead designer for Magic has said that the moment they reprint the Power Nine, Magic is dead.

That would only be true if they made them legal in Standard. They could make a Power Nine box set that can only be used in Vintage tournaments and sell it for $100. It would sell loads of copies.

All the cards on their reserve list represent money they could be making selling people cards themselves instead of just having vendors resell them. There will not be the same lead designer for ever. Eventually it will make business sense to reprint the power nine: to make money from card sales, to attract/keep older players and ensure Vintage is maintained as a viable tournament format. Over time the power nine will increasingly end up in the hands of investors and rich collectors who don't play in tournaments, which will kill Vintage.

The reprint policy is just a company policy and company policies change all the time. When the people they will piss off reprinting the power nine are predominantly people who do not make money for Wizards of the Coast, there will then be no reason not to reprint them. I think that time is approaching because the power nine are no longer easy to buy from dealers. The inclusion of the reserved cards in boosters packs is a herald to a reprint of those cards five years down the line, I'd guess.

They'd be much more likely to sanction 10-proxy tournies than they would re-print those cards. Vintage is all about the pimp anyway. Half the fun of playing Vintage is swinging your wallet around.

Wizards can't make money on the secondary market--it totally skews their business. They can acknowledge it, they can anticipate it, but they won't dip their toes directly in it.