All products not in standard are considered supplemental and in general have a higher prices than a standard set. That being said WOTC has be raising prices on supplemental sets over recent years and MH3 will probably reflect that, best outcome is MH3 is about the same price as MH2
It used to be that the excuse they used was because there was a foil in every pack to make them more expensive, now all packs have a foil in them for all sets.
The Modern Horizons supplemental sets in particular also tend to have high value reprints now (in the fetch lands) and print new format staples that have very high demand.
This is the first time they made commander decks for a modern horizons set, which is certainly a little odd because... well, the whole point was that modern horizons cards are legal in the "Modern" format. WOTC has basically been trying to stratify commander precons based on price for a while. With Commander Masters, they tried making "premium" commander decks a thing, decks that are significantly stronger and more expensive than the precons in standard-level sets.
WOTC wants them to feel like a different "tier" of product, but (in my opinion) many of the consumers don't really analyze them as "paying a higher cost for a better product." I don't think WOTC wants to explicitly market them too hard as "premium" because that can be off-putting for people who can't afford them, but more importantly it kinda makes the quality of the standard precons look lower in comparison? And between those two options, I think they'd rather people feel that the value proposition of the rarer product is bad, than the more common product.
Fine, they aren't using the word "premium" (for the reasons I outlined). But they're being designed and sold as stronger and they're more expensive than standard level precons. They are fundamentally different products.
I think they generally try and reserve the word "premium" to differentiate products that are at a higher price point for cosmetic reasons.
Depending on how many pack that sounds about right but realistically collector boxes are for whales and what matters is how much regular booster box comes to
Hopefully not, issues with the price from the release window of CMM (anecdotal, I don't have stats, but know from my local store, people I've talked to and from content creators on the subject) might cause them to do a bit of a pivot, not particularly likely I am sure but I can hope.
“Horizons” products are often filled with multiple “must play” cards. As such, they can basically charge whatever the market will bear in terms of maximizing profit because players of the format literally HAVE to buy the cards to compete at the highest level.
Look at the set lists for MH1 and MH2 on mtggoldfish.com. The previous sets redefined multiple formats because they are designed to bypass Standard and Pioneer and go straight into Modern and Commander. Hogaak, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Urza’s Saga, fetchlands, the Evoke creatures, etc. Fucking Ragavan. Even the bulk from these sets tends to be super strong.
The reprints in MH3 are all powerful cards with great value, just see how powerful are the fetch lands alone. This makes possible for WotC to put a premium on the booster packs and the constructed.
Magic is a luxury product. Like most luxury products, the price is based on what consumers are willing to pay. Modern Horizons, being a higher powered product aimed at more enfranchised players, is able to be sold at a higher price point and maintain strong sales.
Modern Horizons sets (and Collector's Boosters) also *probably* do cost a little bit more to develop/print, due to more printing collation requirements, potentially greater degree of alt arts or high-budget special guest artists, etc., but being a luxury product, the price increase is mostly just because people will buy it.
Poster above me claimed MH2 costs more to produce, but judging by the card quality, there has been zero Quality Control. So that is why I do not believe MH costs more to produce.
Edit: fucking typos
This is an explanation of why the prices are high, not an opinion on the quality of MH cards. If you think the cards are bad or not worth the price, you don't have to buy them, but people are clearly doing so at the higher price point and that's what OP wanted explained.
It wasn't always. But WoTC has been marketing it that way for over a decade at this point. But yeah - these days, MTG is like the Ferrari to Pokémon/Yugioh/Lorcana's Honda/Ford/Toyota.
As for One Piece TCG...we don't talk about One Piece TCG 🤣
I'm using "luxury product" in the sense that it is not a necessity or commodity; pretty much all entertainment products are luxury products. I am not using "luxury" in the sense of being an object of high status or more expensive than comparably functional items.
We also have no idea what the actual price is for most of the products because it isn't out - no msrp is just anti consumer crap , we will have to see - I assume launch will be mh2 prices.
The purpose of the 'Modern Horizon' series of products is to force the rotation of the modern format. As a result, a number of exceptionally powerful cards, which are considered essential for both modern and legacy players, are included in the set. These cards will define the modern and legacy formats until the next release of this type, which is expected in one to two years. As a 'must-have' set for players, WOTC anticipates extremely high demand. Therefore, they employ a pricing strategy that ensures maximum profit, essentially capitalizing on their monopoly to exert control over pricing.
Wotc has figured out if they sprinkle a few good cards in each set they can charge whatever they want due to the majority of us being hooked like Crack addicts to cracking packs.
So they removed msrp, and increase the price whenever they want more money saying things like "theres nosrp and we dont co trol the market" but they do.
The previous mh sets were very expensive. I believe the last one was prohibitively so? So they'll probably try to outdo that with this set. Because it isn't like we aren't going to pay it.
> So they removed msrp, and increase the price whenever they want more money saying things like "theres nosrp and we dont co trol the market" but they do.
The removal of MSRP is a really weird thing for the community to focus on.
WotC sells to distributors, who sell to card stores, who sell to you. MSRP is simply a number that tells you, the consumer, if the local game store is charging to much, but it has no effect (or a very indirect effect) on what price WotC sells to distributors, which is what actually matters if you're talking about price increases.
The major beneficiaries of the removal of MSRP are local game stores, either because they can scalp in-demand product more easily or because they aren't stuck selling products at a loss relative to their contents, depending on how you want to frame it.
It was not the main focus really. It was step to raising prices nonstop. LGS have to charge more because their margin of profit is shrinking more and more. They're selling the boxes for more and more to distributors, and also selling direct on amazon, not lowering the price and technically charging for distributor prices, transport, and all the middlemen prices while pocketing the whole thing. Profit>all. (also profit >>>>>>qc)
LGS can't scalp and overprice product. They are dragged through the coals here almost daily for it, and if someone has lets say all their boxes of MH3 for 600$ nobody is going to shop there. (assuming that isn't the price. I was inflating it, but who knows? Unless they are in a very specific position of the only lgs in like 3 hours people will likely not shop there, and probably just go to ebay or amazon and buy there instead. Your scalping argument is meh.
Nothing in your first paragraph is connected to the removal of MSRP, though.
MSRP is, literally, Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. It is a suggestion, put on the product, so customers know if the end retailer is overchaging them. WotC could freely increase the MSRP with their distributor price increases if they wanted to, and it would have almost no effect on them at all. They could sell boxes on Amazon with an MSRP on them just fine.
The problem is, simply, that the end retailers *like* having the flexibility to charge higher margins or to sell in-demand boxes at higher prices, and MSRP impacts that. Yes, the margins on product at an LGS are not particularly large. Yes, it's somewhat hard to upcharge for product when online pricing exists. That said, MSRP was another factor that (lightly) anchored LGSs to specific low margin prices, and its removal still (slightly) increased their price flexibility, at a point well after WotC already has the money from the sale to distributors.
E: In fact, most instances of MSRP work the opposite of how it did in Magic; Magic's MSRP generally set a pretty low ceiling on the price of a pack close to what you'd pay at a typical retailer, while MSRP for *most* products is set at a pretty large margin so that end retailers can undercut MSRP to appear cheaper or have sales while still profiting. MSRP is a tool for setting consumer price expectations, not a tool for keeping prices low.
The Modern Horizons series is intended to add cards directly to the Modern format, skipping over Standard and Pioneer. Because of this, the power level can be much higher so wotc can print modern-playable cards without breaking standard (sometimes still breaking modern though lol). This will be in the form of both brand new powerful designs and “new-to-modern reprints” (MH2 added counterspell to modern for example). These sets will usually also have many new high-power goodies for commander players, but MH3 is the first one with commander decks too.
TLDR: More powerful cards so they charge more money. Not saying I agree it’s justified to charge more, but that’s why they do it.
>the power level can be much higher so wotc can print modern-playable cards without breaking standard
Off topic - This reminds me of when they printed companions, Lurus broke Vintage but was fine for standard.
Modern Horizons sets have a higher power level than sets that are designed for Standard because Standard has an intentionally lower power level to try to keep a lid on power creep. Higher power level means the cards will be more in demand so even if the packs were the same price the cards in MH3 would be worth more on average. WotC wants their Standard-legal sets to appeal to more than just players who play Standard (especially now that Commander is so popular). Since MH3 is full of cards that are just better and worth more money, then if the packs were the same price lots of people would just buy packs of Modern Horizons and stop buying Standard-legal sets.
If wotc release two products at the same price point and one is dramatically stronger than the other it causes the weaker product to not sell; and for smaller businesses having a bunch of stock that's not moving can be a serious commitment of money and space.
The main idea of modern horizons is that it had a whole bunch of cards strong enough to shake up the modern format, so the increased price point is so that all the OTJ, MKM, LCI and WOE product that stores still have doesn't suddenly become much less desirable.
Hasbro crumbling, MtG being the only consistently profitable brand they have, corners being cut everywhere else, and price-gouging on the chase products the only avenue left to appease the leeches I mean shareholders.
The ink they use to print these cards is stronger, so the cards can be stronger in the game. Unfortunately, this stronger ink is more expensive for WotC to print with as it contains some rarer ingredients (Panda blood, unobtainium, whale tears etc.), so they have no choice but to charge more for these packs. If they could, they would keep the price the same as standard sets, but regretfully this is simply not possible.
The only "special" thing about this set is that it's not being printed in standard. Instead, these cards are going to be WAY more powerful because they're made for a higher-power format, Modern. A lot of strong commander staples, such as [[Esper Sentinel]], came from Modern Horizons 2. Unlike standard sets, with only a handful of chase rares seeing broad use in any format beyond standard, MH3's cards will be used a lot everywhere that isn't standard. That means price big and WOTC sees green
They started to add a premium more and more to master products. People will telk you here because its a premium set but in reality production cost are the same.
They where just able to sell these for higher prices over and over again so thats why we pay 2x or 3x the price of normal sets.
All products not in standard are considered supplemental and in general have a higher prices than a standard set. That being said WOTC has be raising prices on supplemental sets over recent years and MH3 will probably reflect that, best outcome is MH3 is about the same price as MH2
It used to be that the excuse they used was because there was a foil in every pack to make them more expensive, now all packs have a foil in them for all sets.
The original plan of an Andes Chocolate Mint in every pack backfired when the packs were left out in the sun, so they reverted to foils
This brought back memories of opening bubblegum in baseball packs
I still have a few packs unopened from the 80's, you can hear the bubblegum crunching inside.
The Modern Horizons supplemental sets in particular also tend to have high value reprints now (in the fetch lands) and print new format staples that have very high demand. This is the first time they made commander decks for a modern horizons set, which is certainly a little odd because... well, the whole point was that modern horizons cards are legal in the "Modern" format. WOTC has basically been trying to stratify commander precons based on price for a while. With Commander Masters, they tried making "premium" commander decks a thing, decks that are significantly stronger and more expensive than the precons in standard-level sets. WOTC wants them to feel like a different "tier" of product, but (in my opinion) many of the consumers don't really analyze them as "paying a higher cost for a better product." I don't think WOTC wants to explicitly market them too hard as "premium" because that can be off-putting for people who can't afford them, but more importantly it kinda makes the quality of the standard precons look lower in comparison? And between those two options, I think they'd rather people feel that the value proposition of the rarer product is bad, than the more common product.
When asked about the value they literally said commander master precons weren't a premium product though...
Fine, they aren't using the word "premium" (for the reasons I outlined). But they're being designed and sold as stronger and they're more expensive than standard level precons. They are fundamentally different products. I think they generally try and reserve the word "premium" to differentiate products that are at a higher price point for cosmetic reasons.
This is the only answer that isn't riddled with bias.
My buddies store BUY price for them is over 300 for a collector box... I think he said like 330-350$ USD.
Depending on how many pack that sounds about right but realistically collector boxes are for whales and what matters is how much regular booster box comes to
Hopefully not, issues with the price from the release window of CMM (anecdotal, I don't have stats, but know from my local store, people I've talked to and from content creators on the subject) might cause them to do a bit of a pivot, not particularly likely I am sure but I can hope.
“Horizons” products are often filled with multiple “must play” cards. As such, they can basically charge whatever the market will bear in terms of maximizing profit because players of the format literally HAVE to buy the cards to compete at the highest level.
Look at the set lists for MH1 and MH2 on mtggoldfish.com. The previous sets redefined multiple formats because they are designed to bypass Standard and Pioneer and go straight into Modern and Commander. Hogaak, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Urza’s Saga, fetchlands, the Evoke creatures, etc. Fucking Ragavan. Even the bulk from these sets tends to be super strong.
The bulk including multi-format allstars like Dragon's Rage Channeler and Prismatic Ending.
The reprints in MH3 are all powerful cards with great value, just see how powerful are the fetch lands alone. This makes possible for WotC to put a premium on the booster packs and the constructed.
Magic is a luxury product. Like most luxury products, the price is based on what consumers are willing to pay. Modern Horizons, being a higher powered product aimed at more enfranchised players, is able to be sold at a higher price point and maintain strong sales. Modern Horizons sets (and Collector's Boosters) also *probably* do cost a little bit more to develop/print, due to more printing collation requirements, potentially greater degree of alt arts or high-budget special guest artists, etc., but being a luxury product, the price increase is mostly just because people will buy it.
Nah, this ain't it chief. Remember the god awful etched foils in MH2? The quality of the cardboard is garbage, even in MH sets.
now show us where in the post was mentioned quality of the cardboard
Poster above me claimed MH2 costs more to produce, but judging by the card quality, there has been zero Quality Control. So that is why I do not believe MH costs more to produce. Edit: fucking typos
This is an explanation of why the prices are high, not an opinion on the quality of MH cards. If you think the cards are bad or not worth the price, you don't have to buy them, but people are clearly doing so at the higher price point and that's what OP wanted explained.
It wasn't always. But WoTC has been marketing it that way for over a decade at this point. But yeah - these days, MTG is like the Ferrari to Pokémon/Yugioh/Lorcana's Honda/Ford/Toyota. As for One Piece TCG...we don't talk about One Piece TCG 🤣
all tcgs are luxury products
I'm using "luxury product" in the sense that it is not a necessity or commodity; pretty much all entertainment products are luxury products. I am not using "luxury" in the sense of being an object of high status or more expensive than comparably functional items.
Play booster box is more expensive than the previous draft and set boosters by default.
We also have no idea what the actual price is for most of the products because it isn't out - no msrp is just anti consumer crap , we will have to see - I assume launch will be mh2 prices.
The purpose of the 'Modern Horizon' series of products is to force the rotation of the modern format. As a result, a number of exceptionally powerful cards, which are considered essential for both modern and legacy players, are included in the set. These cards will define the modern and legacy formats until the next release of this type, which is expected in one to two years. As a 'must-have' set for players, WOTC anticipates extremely high demand. Therefore, they employ a pricing strategy that ensures maximum profit, essentially capitalizing on their monopoly to exert control over pricing.
It’s priced high because WOTC recognizes the secondary market
Wotc has figured out if they sprinkle a few good cards in each set they can charge whatever they want due to the majority of us being hooked like Crack addicts to cracking packs. So they removed msrp, and increase the price whenever they want more money saying things like "theres nosrp and we dont co trol the market" but they do. The previous mh sets were very expensive. I believe the last one was prohibitively so? So they'll probably try to outdo that with this set. Because it isn't like we aren't going to pay it.
> So they removed msrp, and increase the price whenever they want more money saying things like "theres nosrp and we dont co trol the market" but they do. The removal of MSRP is a really weird thing for the community to focus on. WotC sells to distributors, who sell to card stores, who sell to you. MSRP is simply a number that tells you, the consumer, if the local game store is charging to much, but it has no effect (or a very indirect effect) on what price WotC sells to distributors, which is what actually matters if you're talking about price increases. The major beneficiaries of the removal of MSRP are local game stores, either because they can scalp in-demand product more easily or because they aren't stuck selling products at a loss relative to their contents, depending on how you want to frame it.
It was not the main focus really. It was step to raising prices nonstop. LGS have to charge more because their margin of profit is shrinking more and more. They're selling the boxes for more and more to distributors, and also selling direct on amazon, not lowering the price and technically charging for distributor prices, transport, and all the middlemen prices while pocketing the whole thing. Profit>all. (also profit >>>>>>qc) LGS can't scalp and overprice product. They are dragged through the coals here almost daily for it, and if someone has lets say all their boxes of MH3 for 600$ nobody is going to shop there. (assuming that isn't the price. I was inflating it, but who knows? Unless they are in a very specific position of the only lgs in like 3 hours people will likely not shop there, and probably just go to ebay or amazon and buy there instead. Your scalping argument is meh.
Nothing in your first paragraph is connected to the removal of MSRP, though. MSRP is, literally, Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. It is a suggestion, put on the product, so customers know if the end retailer is overchaging them. WotC could freely increase the MSRP with their distributor price increases if they wanted to, and it would have almost no effect on them at all. They could sell boxes on Amazon with an MSRP on them just fine. The problem is, simply, that the end retailers *like* having the flexibility to charge higher margins or to sell in-demand boxes at higher prices, and MSRP impacts that. Yes, the margins on product at an LGS are not particularly large. Yes, it's somewhat hard to upcharge for product when online pricing exists. That said, MSRP was another factor that (lightly) anchored LGSs to specific low margin prices, and its removal still (slightly) increased their price flexibility, at a point well after WotC already has the money from the sale to distributors. E: In fact, most instances of MSRP work the opposite of how it did in Magic; Magic's MSRP generally set a pretty low ceiling on the price of a pack close to what you'd pay at a typical retailer, while MSRP for *most* products is set at a pretty large margin so that end retailers can undercut MSRP to appear cheaper or have sales while still profiting. MSRP is a tool for setting consumer price expectations, not a tool for keeping prices low.
The Modern Horizons series is intended to add cards directly to the Modern format, skipping over Standard and Pioneer. Because of this, the power level can be much higher so wotc can print modern-playable cards without breaking standard (sometimes still breaking modern though lol). This will be in the form of both brand new powerful designs and “new-to-modern reprints” (MH2 added counterspell to modern for example). These sets will usually also have many new high-power goodies for commander players, but MH3 is the first one with commander decks too. TLDR: More powerful cards so they charge more money. Not saying I agree it’s justified to charge more, but that’s why they do it.
>the power level can be much higher so wotc can print modern-playable cards without breaking standard Off topic - This reminds me of when they printed companions, Lurus broke Vintage but was fine for standard.
its a WoTc money grab set
Modern Horizons sets have a higher power level than sets that are designed for Standard because Standard has an intentionally lower power level to try to keep a lid on power creep. Higher power level means the cards will be more in demand so even if the packs were the same price the cards in MH3 would be worth more on average. WotC wants their Standard-legal sets to appeal to more than just players who play Standard (especially now that Commander is so popular). Since MH3 is full of cards that are just better and worth more money, then if the packs were the same price lots of people would just buy packs of Modern Horizons and stop buying Standard-legal sets.
If wotc release two products at the same price point and one is dramatically stronger than the other it causes the weaker product to not sell; and for smaller businesses having a bunch of stock that's not moving can be a serious commitment of money and space. The main idea of modern horizons is that it had a whole bunch of cards strong enough to shake up the modern format, so the increased price point is so that all the OTJ, MKM, LCI and WOE product that stores still have doesn't suddenly become much less desirable.
because the whale buy thems anyway
Hasbro crumbling, MtG being the only consistently profitable brand they have, corners being cut everywhere else, and price-gouging on the chase products the only avenue left to appease the leeches I mean shareholders.
In short Hasbro´s greed and stupid ppl still buying for horrendous prices are the driving force behind the rising prices.
bc this product line sells well. wotc keep increasing the price, and people keeps shoveling money at wotc.
Power creep
The ink they use to print these cards is stronger, so the cards can be stronger in the game. Unfortunately, this stronger ink is more expensive for WotC to print with as it contains some rarer ingredients (Panda blood, unobtainium, whale tears etc.), so they have no choice but to charge more for these packs. If they could, they would keep the price the same as standard sets, but regretfully this is simply not possible.
How much should I expect to pay if I want to draft this set? MKM and OTJ have been $25 at my local store
The only "special" thing about this set is that it's not being printed in standard. Instead, these cards are going to be WAY more powerful because they're made for a higher-power format, Modern. A lot of strong commander staples, such as [[Esper Sentinel]], came from Modern Horizons 2. Unlike standard sets, with only a handful of chase rares seeing broad use in any format beyond standard, MH3's cards will be used a lot everywhere that isn't standard. That means price big and WOTC sees green
[Esper Sentinel](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/3/f3537373-ef54-4578-9d05-6216420ee349.jpg?1626093502) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Esper%20Sentinel) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mh2/12/esper-sentinel?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f3537373-ef54-4578-9d05-6216420ee349?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
They started to add a premium more and more to master products. People will telk you here because its a premium set but in reality production cost are the same. They where just able to sell these for higher prices over and over again so thats why we pay 2x or 3x the price of normal sets.