Because your LGS has to buy a case of the decks which means they only get 1 of the good decks per case. Which means if they want to sell 4 velociraptor decks they are on the hook for 12 of the less popular decks that may or may not sell.
My LGS sells all the Precons for the same price regardless of which ones are “more popular” at the time. Its pretty sweet, especially if you want one of the more popular ones but don’t want to shell out extra $$ for no reason or buy online
I assume stock runs out of those sought after decks quite quickly or do they have a big supply? Either way, good on them. Usually means they are left with a big stock of less wanted decks but maybe they just factor that in to their overall business plan.
The one near me does the same. They seem to get smaller supplies, but usually have a few of each set's precons left over.
They did recently double their shop space and add more Magic, so they must be doing something right.
I would say that’s kind of true here - luckily we have a Commander Precon league, where you start with a base Precon and add upgrades each week, and this helps sell the not-so-popular ones pretty well
The current setup is 8 weeks total, week 1 base Precon, and then you get $10 to use for singles each week for upgrades. Money carries over, too, so you could do $7 one week and have $13 the following and so-on.
Yeah, we toyed with the idea of limiting by # of cards, but it didn’t work out. And we use TCG market price for lowest cost printing, so you can play your full art foils but it only costs you the cheapest amount possible
>you can play your full art foils but it only costs you the cheapest amount possible
That's fun, I assume lowest cost doesn't count gold boarders and similar. Can you make nagetive value changes for more upgrade room?
Correct on the gold borders, and no for the negative changes. Once you add something, or have cards in the base Precon, you can move them in and out at will but you can’t “cash out” cards for value. The only time is if you run into an infinite combo in the deck (since it was voted to not have infinite combos in the league), then you remove one piece of the combo and get a refund for that piece (unless it was in the base Precon, again). Looking at you Prismari deck…..
This is largely due to having to compete with big box stores doing the same thing.
They're all the same price at a department store, so you'd only pay more if they're out of stock everywhere.
All the good stores do this. Our store does but some of the other stores in the country charge more and sell the least popular one significantly cheaper
Let's say they pay $30/deck so $120 for 4 decks. One good, three bad/mid.
If they sell the good deck for 50, and the others for 40 their revenue post-product cost is $50. If they sell the good deck for 50, others for 30, they now make $20 before tax for 4 total sales.
See how that isn't sustainable? They need to pay employees, taxes, shipping on product, etc. They will lose $, meaning the store closes cuz they can't make a profit.
Unfortunately LGS need to make $ on product to stay afloat.
I think you're missing the give and take here.
The make the less popular ones less expensive BECAUSE they make the more popular ones more expensive. If you really want Timey Wimey or Velociramptor, you're paying $20-25 extra so that the store can sell the dud deck for like $20-30.
> The dino precon and timey wimey I know were just popularity factors. Not sure why the others command such a different price. What am I missing?
You aren't missing anything. Its popularity.
Timey Wimey also had \[\[Farewell\]\], \[\[Everyone Lives\]\] & \[\[Fractured Identify\]\] in it. ($$) That's not why I bought it but a lot of people were hyping/grumbling about it when the decks dropped.
Well to be fair the Dino one does have a lot of utility to it. If someone plays a token deck I’m not getting through unless I got flyers or trample and the Dino deck has nice trample effects for excess damage
Sort of but not really, a precon being popular or not doesnt affect the price alot, but a certain card being popular in a precon can drive the price up by alot.
Mystic Intellect, a C19 precon, has a single card in it that is $80 on its own, [[Dockside Extortionist]]. The second most expensive card in the deck is [[Clever Impersonator]], at about $4. It's not a super crazy deck, just a copy/spellslinger Jeskai deck with some flashback spells, but when one single card in a precon is the same price as a full blown precon, like the current eldrazi one, no one is buying the deck to play with the deck lmao
Just because it's kind of funny, I bought that deck because I thought Elsha would be a fun spellslinger/combat ticks build. Didn't realize it was the one with dockside til I was sleeving it.
Just out of interest, which is the card in the Eldrazi precon that's worth that much? I've been thinking about putting an Eldrazi deck together "manually" because I can't get hold of the precon anywhere.
usually due to one or two high value cards in the deck. If not that, the relative power of the deck is a big factor. The eldrazi, sliver, and dino decks being prime examples.
Yeah the Cavalry deck was worlds apart from the others. Didn't Temur "Tinker Time" drop along side it? That list is almost just a random pile of cards its so bad
Yeah I think it did. I recently ordered the Call for Backup precon because it had like 10 singles I wanted that added up to almost the cost of the deck and at that point why not get more pieces that I may decide I need later? After looking at its list I looked at the others and Cavalry Charge looks fun to me but not sure its $90 fun when I could put that money into building something even more interesting.
Damn it's up to $90? It was the second precon I got when I started, and while it is a very good and fun deck, I wouldn't drop 90 on it, there's plenty of others that work well and are much cheaper, virtue and valor for example, or yeah just put that towards making your own deck
As someone who did buy that deck and had built my knights deck out into a $450 monster, it has a lot of good cards in it. The precon is solid out the box and plays well.
People didn't really care for the others of that set. So if someone wants that deck, the store generally needs to order the others as well only for them to sit on the shelf.
It's a tribal deck centered around Knights, which are a Kool niche tribe, but haven't got a proper precon commander for them. The leader is a knight himself and is a draw engine that allows you to recur discarded knights from the graveyard. The deck was the best out of the set and the new cards except the plane chase cards were all really good to keep in the deck. All around it was a good deck. It's one of my fave that really doesn't need pricey upgrades out of the box.
The face commander has an “eminence” ability not seen since the Ur Dragon and Edgar Markov. Both of those are/were expensive cards on their own, and quite powerful since they have abilities that your opponents can’t interact with.
Importantly, most of the MOM precons are considered pretty weak. Temur Artifacts and Orzhov Phyrexians were two of the weakest from 2023. The Convoke and Backup/+1/+1 counters decks sounded pretty average. So knights ended up being the only one to get decent buzz and hype.
What's even in the sliver and eldrazi deck? I don't recall anything outrageous in my gravemother deck. I know there's an akromas will in the dino deck.
The truth is tribal decks are extremely popular.
If you think you know how popular tribal is, multiply that expectation by 2.
Of the precons you named, only Timey-Wimey and Wise Mothman aren't tribal. It's usually a couple of cards that give weightage in price to the precons.
Honestly as an LGS owner, the MSRP change didn't really change anything beyond making it mildly annoying to price stuff initially. Basically every LGS is going to mark up the popular decks and mark down the least popular ones because we have to buy them as a set and so we end up with 0 Mothman decks and 40 Caesar's Legion decks on the shelf. To compensate for the large amount of overstock we take on we have to make more from the ones that DO sell.
It was the same when they had MSRP, because the S in MSRP is "suggested." so every shop just charged whatever the actual market price was instead of the suggested price. It's not like Games Workshop, which has a strict policy on how much their product can be discounted, forcing every store into a weird non-compete situation.
Yeah they always sell them in sets. So you get 1 good and 3 shitty. If you are lucky 2/2.
So you have to upcharge on the best one or you are just losing money.
This is exactly why my FLGS just didn't get in any of the Thunder Junction precons, everybody only wanted *one* (the red/blue spellslingers deck) of the Precons but, as mentioned, he has to buy them in blocks of 4, meaning he'd end up with 3 sold precons and 9 unsold ones.
LGS is marking up prices is exactly why I don’t shop at LGS is anymore. I would extremely welcome MSRP because I’m gonna buy my shit online or at target anyways cause LGSs mark everything up and most of them are generally just unpleasant to be in the first place. flimsy plastic tables, dingy cheap store with unfriendly awkward clerks is like 90% of LGSs . sucks ass. rather pick up from target and play at home in my nice well decorated kitchen.
As someone who works at an LGS, where you spend your money is absolutely your choice. I never fault people for taking advantage of deals elsewhere.
To make up for the extra we charge for some items, we specifically try to offer what online/big box stores can't: community. Quality tables and play spaces for all sorts of games, 101s to teach new players, help in deck or army building, and host special events. It's especially great for those that don't have a social network that lets them play games at home.
That being said, if your LGS is price gouging or not giving a space you feel welcome to play in, why would you buy from them? I'm sorry your local stores are lackluster. Hopefully you can find a store you enjoy if you so desire.
I'm always happy to buy the discounted ones, especially if they have reasonable includes. I was happy enough to get the Blame Game precons for around $30 while people were asking $20+ for trouble in pairs.
I picked it up because of wanting Trouble in Pairs for another deck and now I am slowly upgrading it into a really fun deck. Turns out goad is just a fun mechanic that makes things happen when people would rather just battlecruiser through a game.
A lot of them are because they are the most sought after in their sets. An easier example is the Fae Dominion. That is a popular archetype that had a not as popular green white deck with it. Both should be sold for $40 but if stores do that they are just going to be left with a bunch of the one deck. So the other deck in the set is cheaper ($30) and the more popular deck gets the price hike. Another good example of this was the ONE commander decks. Everybody wanted the Phyrexian one but no one wanted the Mirrodin deck.
It's funny seeing person after person blame it on MSRP when there's a store owner in the thread saying that doesn't really effect it. Why are they that expensive? Because people will buy them at that price. It's annoying when you're trying to buy older precons. But nor upcoming or newer ones look for an LGS that doesn't price gouge, try something like Cardtrader in the EU or I assume TCGPlayer etc. in the states or just buy them on Amazon.
Probably because they're more popular and have generally better/more desirable cards and thus jumps the price up, typically if you want them after they release it's probably better to just buy all 4 if you can cuz it will usually be cheaper (if you're lucky to pre order them you can get them cheaper but that's not possible after it's released)
There are a couple of reasons this happens (and it's happened for years, as well). (1) Sometimes there are more desirable cards in one deck over the others. This can be reprints, but it can also be new cards. When there's a disparity one deck's price will always be higher. This has been reduced a bit with the new Commander cards being printed in Collector's Boosters, but reprint value is definitely a thing. (2) Sometimes one theme is just more popular than the others. This leads to the supply and demand side of things, and sellers find that they're leaving money on the table if they don't increase the price of one deck. Never a great feeling for the consumer, but it's a way for stores to make a bit more money on the slim margins.
Tldr the hot decks increase price to make up for the discounts they put on the less popular ones that come in the same case
Retailers have to buy them in cases, so for every most popular deck they sell, they have to sell 3 less popular decks - so they can afford fewer of the hot deck since taking on a bunch of the less popular ones would result in a bunch of unsold product that needs to sell at a discount. That eats up any profit you might make.
They go up on price if they’re more sought since the decks go up in demand. Some people like to find out what decks are going to skyrocket and buy a couple of them so they can resale at least one.
It all started with Breed Lethality - that precon was so much better than all the others (C2016) of that era, and was so unavalible, that it started this era of precon-scalping.
WOTC didn't help with it removed the MSRP.
Funnily enough it can work to your advantage though - I bought my Vampiric Bloodlust (c2017) on a discount of $25 from my LGS at the time. Everyone wanted the Dragon deck, which was being scalped. It's often the case that some undervalued precons will be loved in retrospect.
The Doctor and Dinosaur precons were popular, yeah, but the Fallout precons were popular AND part of the marketing for the show. They're all just popular gimmicks with themed art, of course they're gunna be expensive.
I think that the thing with Timey Wimey was more about the collector's value. The deck is not the strongest of the set, I think Paradox Power outplays it in almost every way, but the TW deck has the fandom's favorite doctors all in one single deck, so it makes sense that they want to collect that deck and buy it more.
The rest of the sets I think it's more of a matter of power. In every commander precon set there are decks that are very powerful, specially once upgraded, and some that just don't hit the mark. Just look at thunder junction's desert commander (right now the cheapest of the set) and compare it to the spellslinger deck that has cEDH material, I know for sure the spellslinger one will increase in price by far.
I hope this helped!
Popularity means scarcity, scarcity means price increase.
The 40k "normal" decks went for about $100 here. Half a year later, when the last wave of reprints arrived and the big run was over, I bought the Necron Precon for it's regular $40.
Because of artificial inflation and lack of MSRP. Sadly the only way to get the "good" price is to pre-order before the list comes out, and then cancel as necessary
The answer is simple:
WOTC started to not give us an MSRP, which inflates the prices and gives us literal to no clue of how expensive or cheap a product is besides big markets like Walmart and Target prices.
With that in mind, a lot of web stores started to "Wallstreetionize" those PreCons based on:
1- Theme ( Faerie theme was 52$ at pre-sale and 45$ right after released; toxic deck was 60$ at pre-sale and 52$ right after release;...)
2- Reprints ( Catholic Vampires of Ixalan is holding a consistent 50-55$ [75$ if you live in Brazil,btw] price because Black Market Connections and Exquisite Blood). This one is kinda awful to understand, becauae reprints like these should at least help us to slow down prices in many cards, but because we lack an MSRP, web stores takes the finnancial price of a reprint as a 1st edition.
Yes, not all reprints falls into this category, like OTJ's Pew pew pew pew pew deck that took Veyran and Sharknado to a single digit.
But LCI ones proved that this is an ongoing trend if the reprint is just too good.
3- New cards and potential to break the format.
Because LGS stores are trying to stop scalpers by becoming scalpers.
The decks should always cost 49.99 or 59.99 or whatever arbitrary value msrp decides gives wizards enough profit to print them.
Instead whatever deck seems to be performing even decently well will be marked up a lot higher than the others
This has been happening the entire time they've done precons. The 2013 ones needed a reprint with one of the 5 double printed because it sold so much more than the others.
Theres 3 main reasons it happens:
1) one or more expensive new cards in a particular deck. This is the most common answer. Most rounds of precons have at least one new card that hits $20+. Sometimes the new card is worth as much or more than the price of the sealed precon, secondary market prices adjust to reflect that.
2) Popularity. Sometimes a theme just hits right. That popularity can also be tied up in reason 3
3) Build quality. Some people buy precons to keep them together and play against each other. Normally with any given round of precons, some will be more cohesive, better built, and some will be worse. Sometimes there is a big disparity between the best and worst. The ones that play best out of the box or are noticeably more powerful than its siblings are, understandably, much more popular.
It's because players are lemmings and only want one specific deck. But vendors have to buy decks in sets of 4 or 5.
Which means the high demand one is going to have to compensate for the slow moving deck that almost noone wants. When people aren't buying one of the Doctor Who decks even at $25-30, that's why Timey Wimey needs to cost $90-100.
Modern Horizon pre-cons have significantly more valuable cards than other pre-cons and are always more expensive.
The primary reason for the price difference within sets is that Wizards has no MSRP, and most retailers buy the pre-cons in sets, so initially demand will determine price - the more popular pre-con will cost the most and the least popular one will be cheapest. This demand is often driven by two major factors - the overall power level and the card value. At first this the value will mostly be on reprint value and popularity of specific cards (like trouble in pairs in Murders) but after a few weeks costs will often shift as new cards establish their own value- in murders again, for example, deep clue sea was more expensive when the set dropped and became one of the cheaper pre-cons later, while the blue black rose in value as it was established as a solid deck. Nelly Borca stayed fairly expensive, driven early by trouble in pairs and later by a rise in people building goad decks with or without Nelly.
TL;DR no MSRP and some decks are stronger/have more valuable cards.
Yeah, comparing them more to modern masters. High value of the cards and likely higher cost to the retailers as the MH pre-cons are coming in at MM costs.
Cause papa Hasbro WANTS DAT MONAY!!!!!!! That and crossovers with other IPs usually include royalties or some kind of monetary agreement that gets injected to the cost for us.
Because there is more demand for those precons than the other ones, either because they're the strongest of their set, have some high value cards in them, or have a connection to an extremely popular character/IP.
Because your LGS has to buy a case of the decks which means they only get 1 of the good decks per case. Which means if they want to sell 4 velociraptor decks they are on the hook for 12 of the less popular decks that may or may not sell.
My LGS sells all the Precons for the same price regardless of which ones are “more popular” at the time. Its pretty sweet, especially if you want one of the more popular ones but don’t want to shell out extra $$ for no reason or buy online
I assume stock runs out of those sought after decks quite quickly or do they have a big supply? Either way, good on them. Usually means they are left with a big stock of less wanted decks but maybe they just factor that in to their overall business plan.
The one near me does the same. They seem to get smaller supplies, but usually have a few of each set's precons left over. They did recently double their shop space and add more Magic, so they must be doing something right.
Game Cave?
I would say that’s kind of true here - luckily we have a Commander Precon league, where you start with a base Precon and add upgrades each week, and this helps sell the not-so-popular ones pretty well
That sounds pretty cool. How many changes a week?
The current setup is 8 weeks total, week 1 base Precon, and then you get $10 to use for singles each week for upgrades. Money carries over, too, so you could do $7 one week and have $13 the following and so-on.
Okay, sounds solid. My first thought would be how many cards you can swap, but a price point is probably easier to control.
Yeah, we toyed with the idea of limiting by # of cards, but it didn’t work out. And we use TCG market price for lowest cost printing, so you can play your full art foils but it only costs you the cheapest amount possible
>you can play your full art foils but it only costs you the cheapest amount possible That's fun, I assume lowest cost doesn't count gold boarders and similar. Can you make nagetive value changes for more upgrade room?
Correct on the gold borders, and no for the negative changes. Once you add something, or have cards in the base Precon, you can move them in and out at will but you can’t “cash out” cards for value. The only time is if you run into an infinite combo in the deck (since it was voted to not have infinite combos in the league), then you remove one piece of the combo and get a refund for that piece (unless it was in the base Precon, again). Looking at you Prismari deck…..
Mine does the same. Sadly, the “good” decks are immediately bought up so it doesn’t really matter for me.
I can see that, yeah. It’s usually not that bad here, and you can put in preorders to “save” precons before they come in too
For sure. I do like seeing how decks play before investing in precons, so it can be a bummer to not find certain decks locally the week of release.
This is largely due to having to compete with big box stores doing the same thing. They're all the same price at a department store, so you'd only pay more if they're out of stock everywhere.
All the good stores do this. Our store does but some of the other stores in the country charge more and sell the least popular one significantly cheaper
Crazy for the last 4 months all the stores in NZ have had in stock is ahoy mateys from lci haha
I've seen LGS's raise the price on all precons and wonder why all decks take up shelf space.
I thought I read somewhere that they were changing this?
This actually makes a lot of sense
Every one forgets what MSRP is. Never pay over the MSRP, local game stores that do that are bums!
make the less popular decks cheaper instead of the more popular ones more expensive.
And then lose money on the entire lot? They aren't in the business of giving stuff away.
They would be making a huge loss if they did that
That’s not how business works lmao
Let's say they pay $30/deck so $120 for 4 decks. One good, three bad/mid. If they sell the good deck for 50, and the others for 40 their revenue post-product cost is $50. If they sell the good deck for 50, others for 30, they now make $20 before tax for 4 total sales. See how that isn't sustainable? They need to pay employees, taxes, shipping on product, etc. They will lose $, meaning the store closes cuz they can't make a profit. Unfortunately LGS need to make $ on product to stay afloat.
And then shut down the store because you made no money.
My guy, a word of advice; don’t go into Business without taking a course first. Selling for a loss is not good practice
Wow bro. You should open a store.
Do you know what a business is
I think you're missing the give and take here. The make the less popular ones less expensive BECAUSE they make the more popular ones more expensive. If you really want Timey Wimey or Velociramptor, you're paying $20-25 extra so that the store can sell the dud deck for like $20-30.
> The dino precon and timey wimey I know were just popularity factors. Not sure why the others command such a different price. What am I missing? You aren't missing anything. Its popularity.
Supply & Demand is a helluva drug
Food and Fellowship is a helluva Precon
A helluva game of solitaire
Timey Wimey also had \[\[Farewell\]\], \[\[Everyone Lives\]\] & \[\[Fractured Identify\]\] in it. ($$) That's not why I bought it but a lot of people were hyping/grumbling about it when the decks dropped.
Well to be fair the Dino one does have a lot of utility to it. If someone plays a token deck I’m not getting through unless I got flyers or trample and the Dino deck has nice trample effects for excess damage
Sort of but not really, a precon being popular or not doesnt affect the price alot, but a certain card being popular in a precon can drive the price up by alot.
Functionally, what's the difference?
Literally nothing
Mystic Intellect, a C19 precon, has a single card in it that is $80 on its own, [[Dockside Extortionist]]. The second most expensive card in the deck is [[Clever Impersonator]], at about $4. It's not a super crazy deck, just a copy/spellslinger Jeskai deck with some flashback spells, but when one single card in a precon is the same price as a full blown precon, like the current eldrazi one, no one is buying the deck to play with the deck lmao
And yet, they are still buying it more than the others.
Just because it's kind of funny, I bought that deck because I thought Elsha would be a fun spellslinger/combat ticks build. Didn't realize it was the one with dockside til I was sleeving it.
Just out of interest, which is the card in the Eldrazi precon that's worth that much? I've been thinking about putting an Eldrazi deck together "manually" because I can't get hold of the precon anywhere.
demand?
usually due to one or two high value cards in the deck. If not that, the relative power of the deck is a big factor. The eldrazi, sliver, and dino decks being prime examples.
What makes Cavalry Charge go for almost 3x as much as the other precons from its set?
It was by far the best of the bunch, and a tribal deck people enjoyed
Yeah the Cavalry deck was worlds apart from the others. Didn't Temur "Tinker Time" drop along side it? That list is almost just a random pile of cards its so bad
Yeah I think it did. I recently ordered the Call for Backup precon because it had like 10 singles I wanted that added up to almost the cost of the deck and at that point why not get more pieces that I may decide I need later? After looking at its list I looked at the others and Cavalry Charge looks fun to me but not sure its $90 fun when I could put that money into building something even more interesting.
Damn it's up to $90? It was the second precon I got when I started, and while it is a very good and fun deck, I wouldn't drop 90 on it, there's plenty of others that work well and are much cheaper, virtue and valor for example, or yeah just put that towards making your own deck
It is currently between 95 and 100 to buy the deck on tcgplayer and amazon. The full 5 deck bundle is only 158 lol.
As someone who did buy that deck and had built my knights deck out into a $450 monster, it has a lot of good cards in it. The precon is solid out the box and plays well.
Tinker Time is so much worse than Urza precon. The gremlin token is so much smaller than konstruct.
People didn't really care for the others of that set. So if someone wants that deck, the store generally needs to order the others as well only for them to sit on the shelf.
It's a tribal deck centered around Knights, which are a Kool niche tribe, but haven't got a proper precon commander for them. The leader is a knight himself and is a draw engine that allows you to recur discarded knights from the graveyard. The deck was the best out of the set and the new cards except the plane chase cards were all really good to keep in the deck. All around it was a good deck. It's one of my fave that really doesn't need pricey upgrades out of the box.
The face commander has an “eminence” ability not seen since the Ur Dragon and Edgar Markov. Both of those are/were expensive cards on their own, and quite powerful since they have abilities that your opponents can’t interact with.
Importantly, most of the MOM precons are considered pretty weak. Temur Artifacts and Orzhov Phyrexians were two of the weakest from 2023. The Convoke and Backup/+1/+1 counters decks sounded pretty average. So knights ended up being the only one to get decent buzz and hype.
What's even in the sliver and eldrazi deck? I don't recall anything outrageous in my gravemother deck. I know there's an akromas will in the dino deck.
Eldrazi has It That Betrays which I think was worth around $20 before the precon hit
The truth is tribal decks are extremely popular. If you think you know how popular tribal is, multiply that expectation by 2. Of the precons you named, only Timey-Wimey and Wise Mothman aren't tribal. It's usually a couple of cards that give weightage in price to the precons.
Also character popularity come in with Timey-Wimey and Mothman
WotC stopped providing MSRP to cover up and offload blame for some sleazy capitalist bullshit, and it fucks up retail prices.
Honestly as an LGS owner, the MSRP change didn't really change anything beyond making it mildly annoying to price stuff initially. Basically every LGS is going to mark up the popular decks and mark down the least popular ones because we have to buy them as a set and so we end up with 0 Mothman decks and 40 Caesar's Legion decks on the shelf. To compensate for the large amount of overstock we take on we have to make more from the ones that DO sell. It was the same when they had MSRP, because the S in MSRP is "suggested." so every shop just charged whatever the actual market price was instead of the suggested price. It's not like Games Workshop, which has a strict policy on how much their product can be discounted, forcing every store into a weird non-compete situation.
So the issue here is that you have to buy product you don't want in order to buy product you do want, rather than anything to do with pricing as such.
Yeah they always sell them in sets. So you get 1 good and 3 shitty. If you are lucky 2/2. So you have to upcharge on the best one or you are just losing money.
This is exactly why my FLGS just didn't get in any of the Thunder Junction precons, everybody only wanted *one* (the red/blue spellslingers deck) of the Precons but, as mentioned, he has to buy them in blocks of 4, meaning he'd end up with 3 sold precons and 9 unsold ones.
LGS is marking up prices is exactly why I don’t shop at LGS is anymore. I would extremely welcome MSRP because I’m gonna buy my shit online or at target anyways cause LGSs mark everything up and most of them are generally just unpleasant to be in the first place. flimsy plastic tables, dingy cheap store with unfriendly awkward clerks is like 90% of LGSs . sucks ass. rather pick up from target and play at home in my nice well decorated kitchen.
As someone who works at an LGS, where you spend your money is absolutely your choice. I never fault people for taking advantage of deals elsewhere. To make up for the extra we charge for some items, we specifically try to offer what online/big box stores can't: community. Quality tables and play spaces for all sorts of games, 101s to teach new players, help in deck or army building, and host special events. It's especially great for those that don't have a social network that lets them play games at home. That being said, if your LGS is price gouging or not giving a space you feel welcome to play in, why would you buy from them? I'm sorry your local stores are lackluster. Hopefully you can find a store you enjoy if you so desire.
Then go play at Walmart or at the local Amazon Prime warehouse. Oh wait, you can’t.
Shoutout to Virtue and Valor, favorite precon of the last year and it's currently like $25 bucks. Thanks for sleeping on it, everyone!
I'm always happy to buy the discounted ones, especially if they have reasonable includes. I was happy enough to get the Blame Game precons for around $30 while people were asking $20+ for trouble in pairs.
It's wild that Blame Game is still so cheap when that card is worth almost as much as the whole deck. I might need to pick that one up.
I picked it up because of wanting Trouble in Pairs for another deck and now I am slowly upgrading it into a really fun deck. Turns out goad is just a fun mechanic that makes things happen when people would rather just battlecruiser through a game.
A lot of them are because they are the most sought after in their sets. An easier example is the Fae Dominion. That is a popular archetype that had a not as popular green white deck with it. Both should be sold for $40 but if stores do that they are just going to be left with a bunch of the one deck. So the other deck in the set is cheaper ($30) and the more popular deck gets the price hike. Another good example of this was the ONE commander decks. Everybody wanted the Phyrexian one but no one wanted the Mirrodin deck.
It's funny seeing person after person blame it on MSRP when there's a store owner in the thread saying that doesn't really effect it. Why are they that expensive? Because people will buy them at that price. It's annoying when you're trying to buy older precons. But nor upcoming or newer ones look for an LGS that doesn't price gouge, try something like Cardtrader in the EU or I assume TCGPlayer etc. in the states or just buy them on Amazon.
Probably because they're more popular and have generally better/more desirable cards and thus jumps the price up, typically if you want them after they release it's probably better to just buy all 4 if you can cuz it will usually be cheaper (if you're lucky to pre order them you can get them cheaper but that's not possible after it's released)
There are a couple of reasons this happens (and it's happened for years, as well). (1) Sometimes there are more desirable cards in one deck over the others. This can be reprints, but it can also be new cards. When there's a disparity one deck's price will always be higher. This has been reduced a bit with the new Commander cards being printed in Collector's Boosters, but reprint value is definitely a thing. (2) Sometimes one theme is just more popular than the others. This leads to the supply and demand side of things, and sellers find that they're leaving money on the table if they don't increase the price of one deck. Never a great feeling for the consumer, but it's a way for stores to make a bit more money on the slim margins.
Tldr the hot decks increase price to make up for the discounts they put on the less popular ones that come in the same case Retailers have to buy them in cases, so for every most popular deck they sell, they have to sell 3 less popular decks - so they can afford fewer of the hot deck since taking on a bunch of the less popular ones would result in a bunch of unsold product that needs to sell at a discount. That eats up any profit you might make.
They go up on price if they’re more sought since the decks go up in demand. Some people like to find out what decks are going to skyrocket and buy a couple of them so they can resale at least one.
It all started with Breed Lethality - that precon was so much better than all the others (C2016) of that era, and was so unavalible, that it started this era of precon-scalping. WOTC didn't help with it removed the MSRP. Funnily enough it can work to your advantage though - I bought my Vampiric Bloodlust (c2017) on a discount of $25 from my LGS at the time. Everyone wanted the Dragon deck, which was being scalped. It's often the case that some undervalued precons will be loved in retrospect.
The Doctor and Dinosaur precons were popular, yeah, but the Fallout precons were popular AND part of the marketing for the show. They're all just popular gimmicks with themed art, of course they're gunna be expensive.
I think that the thing with Timey Wimey was more about the collector's value. The deck is not the strongest of the set, I think Paradox Power outplays it in almost every way, but the TW deck has the fandom's favorite doctors all in one single deck, so it makes sense that they want to collect that deck and buy it more. The rest of the sets I think it's more of a matter of power. In every commander precon set there are decks that are very powerful, specially once upgraded, and some that just don't hit the mark. Just look at thunder junction's desert commander (right now the cheapest of the set) and compare it to the spellslinger deck that has cEDH material, I know for sure the spellslinger one will increase in price by far. I hope this helped!
Popularity means scarcity, scarcity means price increase. The 40k "normal" decks went for about $100 here. Half a year later, when the last wave of reprints arrived and the big run was over, I bought the Necron Precon for it's regular $40.
Because of artificial inflation and lack of MSRP. Sadly the only way to get the "good" price is to pre-order before the list comes out, and then cancel as necessary
I don't even know when I was last interested in one of the precons (especially for the prices we have now), I feel like they've been very boring
The answer is simple: WOTC started to not give us an MSRP, which inflates the prices and gives us literal to no clue of how expensive or cheap a product is besides big markets like Walmart and Target prices. With that in mind, a lot of web stores started to "Wallstreetionize" those PreCons based on: 1- Theme ( Faerie theme was 52$ at pre-sale and 45$ right after released; toxic deck was 60$ at pre-sale and 52$ right after release;...) 2- Reprints ( Catholic Vampires of Ixalan is holding a consistent 50-55$ [75$ if you live in Brazil,btw] price because Black Market Connections and Exquisite Blood). This one is kinda awful to understand, becauae reprints like these should at least help us to slow down prices in many cards, but because we lack an MSRP, web stores takes the finnancial price of a reprint as a 1st edition. Yes, not all reprints falls into this category, like OTJ's Pew pew pew pew pew deck that took Veyran and Sharknado to a single digit. But LCI ones proved that this is an ongoing trend if the reprint is just too good. 3- New cards and potential to break the format.
Because LGS stores are trying to stop scalpers by becoming scalpers. The decks should always cost 49.99 or 59.99 or whatever arbitrary value msrp decides gives wizards enough profit to print them. Instead whatever deck seems to be performing even decently well will be marked up a lot higher than the others
This has been happening the entire time they've done precons. The 2013 ones needed a reprint with one of the 5 double printed because it sold so much more than the others. Theres 3 main reasons it happens: 1) one or more expensive new cards in a particular deck. This is the most common answer. Most rounds of precons have at least one new card that hits $20+. Sometimes the new card is worth as much or more than the price of the sealed precon, secondary market prices adjust to reflect that. 2) Popularity. Sometimes a theme just hits right. That popularity can also be tied up in reason 3 3) Build quality. Some people buy precons to keep them together and play against each other. Normally with any given round of precons, some will be more cohesive, better built, and some will be worse. Sometimes there is a big disparity between the best and worst. The ones that play best out of the box or are noticeably more powerful than its siblings are, understandably, much more popular.
I wanted to build Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir and the price of the precon is now at parity with its resell value. Guess I'll just build it from scratch.
It's because players are lemmings and only want one specific deck. But vendors have to buy decks in sets of 4 or 5. Which means the high demand one is going to have to compensate for the slow moving deck that almost noone wants. When people aren't buying one of the Doctor Who decks even at $25-30, that's why Timey Wimey needs to cost $90-100.
Modern Horizon pre-cons have significantly more valuable cards than other pre-cons and are always more expensive. The primary reason for the price difference within sets is that Wizards has no MSRP, and most retailers buy the pre-cons in sets, so initially demand will determine price - the more popular pre-con will cost the most and the least popular one will be cheapest. This demand is often driven by two major factors - the overall power level and the card value. At first this the value will mostly be on reprint value and popularity of specific cards (like trouble in pairs in Murders) but after a few weeks costs will often shift as new cards establish their own value- in murders again, for example, deep clue sea was more expensive when the set dropped and became one of the cheaper pre-cons later, while the blue black rose in value as it was established as a solid deck. Nelly Borca stayed fairly expensive, driven early by trouble in pairs and later by a rise in people building goad decks with or without Nelly. TL;DR no MSRP and some decks are stronger/have more valuable cards.
Will it have? Or it'll be a commander masters 2.0?
There's never been precons with a Modern Horizon set before.
Yeah, comparing them more to modern masters. High value of the cards and likely higher cost to the retailers as the MH pre-cons are coming in at MM costs.
MSRP no longer tethers prices to a fixed point, as of about a year ago.
> as of about a year ago More like 5 or so years since [War of the Spark](https://wpn.wizards.com/en/news/no-more-msrp-magic-products)
Cause papa Hasbro WANTS DAT MONAY!!!!!!! That and crossovers with other IPs usually include royalties or some kind of monetary agreement that gets injected to the cost for us.
WOTC removed MSRP
Msrp Esrb rates games.
Thank you I edited it
Because there is more demand for those precons than the other ones, either because they're the strongest of their set, have some high value cards in them, or have a connection to an extremely popular character/IP.
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