As popular as Secret Lairs are, the sales process for more popular releases has been a consistent problem. It’s incredibly common for anticipated Secret Lairs to sell out in a matter of hours. Factor in the amount of time it takes to line up in the queue, and players may only have minutes to actually purchase a Secret Lair.
Festival in a Box products have, generally, been an exception to this rule. These products routinely offer some absolutely incredible value, but they rarely sell out on the first day. While the value in the recent Festival in a Box: Atlanta 2025 bundle matched the previous ones, it sold out way quicker. To make matters worse, just a day later, there are over 100 listings for the box on secondary market sites, asking for an average of $350, a massive increase from the $200 sales price.
A Bizarre Sellout
While it’s not unusual for more popular Universes Beyond-based Secret Lairs to sell out quickly, Festival in a Box products usually stick around a bit longer. Despite a two-product-per-order limit, the Atlanta 2025 edition sold out in an hour and nine minutes in US and EU stores. This is fast for any Secret Lair product, but even more unusual for a Festival in a Box.
As has become normal for popular Secret Lair sales like this one, the beginning of the sale was met with absurdly long lines that deterred many players from attempting to purchase the product. Hour-long lines were commonplace as things went live, and players who lined up a half hour after the sale started reportedly had mixed results. Some managed to get the product, while others missed the chance. This was all accompanied by disgusting hour-long wait times for the majority of customers.
From a value perspective, this Festival in a Box was absolutely excellent. Multiple $40 promos plus a Mystery Booster box means that this product has about $329 in value. That’s an absolute steal for $200, but it is no longer worth the asking prices from scalpers on secondary market sites.
eBay, at the time of writing, has 107 different listings for the product at an average of $350. Another 56 listings related to the Festival in a Box have already sold. Not only are players furious about the blatant scalping issue, but at this price, the Secret Lair isn’t even worth buying from a reprint value perspective anymore. In practice, you’ll still likely get out ahead since these Secret Lair promos should have a slight premium, but not to the extent where this is a financially satisfying purpose.
Low Supply Could be a Problem
The act of Scalping being a negative for MTG fans is an unquestionable truth, but in the case of this particular sale, it may not be as big a problem as players are making it seem. 163 listings for any product scalp is a lot, but it shouldn’t significantly impact the product’s supply.
It’s not unusual for Festival in a Box products to see extreme demand at the beginning of a sale, either. Many Festival in a Box products offer comparable value, but despite the initial surge of demand, many past Festival in a Box products remained in stock.
This all means that there’s a chance that the supply for this Festival in a Box was significantly smaller than expected. Considering that some Festival in a Box products have sat on digital store shelves in the past, this could make a lot of sense. The demand for this product, while heavy, also doesn’t seem quite as steep as some recent Secret Lair products, either. Players were able to grab one of these products a half hour after the sale went live. While this wasn’t a universal experience, this rarely happens at all with in-demand Secret Lair sales.
Compare this to the recent Sonic: the Hedgehog Secret Lair sale. While the two reprint-focused Secret Lairs sold out aggressively, the mechanically unique Secret Lair took a surprising amount of time to sell out. Thanks to offering multiple powerful cards exclusively available there, the demand for that Secret Lair should have been much higher than the others, suggesting that a high amount of supply was created for it.
Sadly, because the numbers for these sales are never released, we won’t truly know whether this was a supply or a demand issue. Regardless of the reasoning, this Secret Lair sale was another resounding failure. While it’s too late to change the past, we can only hope that Wizards creates more Festival in a Box products in the future.
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