MTG Discounts Are Making Products More Expensive?

The new December Superdrop Secret Lair series is officially available for purchase. There are some hidden gems among the myriad of new products being offered, so players have taken off to get some expensive staples for cheap. If you’re interested in trying to figure out which Secret Lairs are the best bang for your buck, we wrote an extensive review. Alongside these Secret Lairs are some discount bundles. Suppose you’re a Transformers fan, for example. You have the option of getting all the Transformers Secret Lairs at once for a discount. Well, according to reports from MTG fans, it looks like these MTG discounts may actually be making your Secret Lairs more expensive.

What’s the Point?

The minuscule Secret Lair discount didn’t take long to reach all corners of the MTG internet. Needless to say, when offered a discount on a combo or bundle deal, one would hope that the discount is more… substantial. If you purchase a Secret Lair bundle that is a part of the December Superdrop, you can expect about a 92-cent discount. This varies by currency, but the discount seems to remain between 90 cents and a dollar for products worth hundreds of dollars. As you may expect, players aren’t exactly thrilled with such a small discount:

“Wow, a whole dollar? If you buy 1,000 bundles, you’d save enough to buy 4 packs of proxies!” – cloudy_skies547

Is This Discount Making Secret Lairs More Expensive?

While this discount may seem somewhat obsolete, Reddit quickly pointed out that these seemingly irrelevant MTG discounts actually, though potentially unintentionally, are making Secret Lair bundles more expensive. Shipping Secret Lair product to many outside the U.S. is incredibly expensive. A lot of the time, shipping costs more than the actual product, making accessing these cards challenging to access abroad. We wrote about that more here.

As pointed out in the picture above, the very slight discount offered by Wizards of the Coast puts some bundles below their free shipping mark for orders over 89 Euros. Without the dollar discount, this product would be eligible for free shipping. Notably, the same cannot be said for the US Secret Lairs, where this product is still $10 under the free shipping marker of $99.

Whether this was intended or not, the dollar discount actually making products more expensive in some countries has only added to the insult of such a bizarre deal:

“Lol is THAT why they were giving this pathetic discount? And they were so proud of it too.” – Digita1Boy

“This free shipping is not for you” – jaOfwiw

“Most places I know if you’re that close to free shipping, they’ll just give it to you anyway. I wouldn’t expect that here, though.” – joshfong

Another Threshold Barely Missed

This problem appears with multiple price thresholds offered with the latest Secret Lair products. Also pointed out on Reddit, the $200 threshold for the Secret Lair exclusive ‘Box Topper’ card is getting the label of ‘predatory’ by some of the MTG community. Because each Secret Lair is priced at $39.99 instead of a flat $40, five Foil Edition Secret Lair products stack up to an unfortunate $199.95, only five cents short of the illustrious Scarab God Bonus Card.

Many in the comments claim that this was the exact reason why The Scarab God bonus card got implemented in the first place:

“that’s not a problem, that’s intentional design. they tell you what you’ll read as “i get a bonus from 5”, you talk yourself up to 5 when you only really want 4 “oh oops i need 6” well it’s just one more” – docvalentine

“Yeah 100%. Not so much poorly thought out as it is the opposite really: very specifically and deliberately thought out. Even though it sucks for the customers.” – Lofty_The_Walrus

The Scarab God

If you look at the financial applications of this card, this may be more of a buy five get one free deal as long as you intend to sell The Scarab God. The cheapest copy of The Scarab God on the market right now is about $30. With a $200 barrier to entry, it’s safe to say that this Scarab God will have a premium price associated with it. It is, therefore, likely to cost $40 or more on the secondary market, essentially refunding your extra Secret Lair in cardboard form.

Once again, this five-cent miss only applies with the foil Secret Lair drops. If you were to do this with the $30 non-foil Secret Lairs, you would end up $10(ish) over the $200 mark. While players are upset about the look that this creates, the deal itself, as long as you’re actually willing to spend $200, is not a bad one.

Is the December Superdrop Worth it?

Should you want to get a deal on shipping, or if The Scarab God is your penultimate target with this drop, I would recommend thinking a bit about how your numbers line up. We did an in-depth financial review on each Secret Lair being released with this product, and a few are worth the money. Some singles in here rival the price of the whole Secret Lair drop, and if you’re after those cards, this is just a cheaper way to purchase them. Some exclusive foil cards have never been printed before being offered in this product. If the bundles line up with your interests, great! Otherwise, you may be better off purchasing Secret Lairs separately since these MTG discounts don’t seem worth chasing.