Today’s MagicCon is one of the biggest news drops that Magic has seen in some time. Standard rotation is changing, Spider-Man is a Standard-legal set, and Wizards of the Coast is officially reinstating MSRP. That last bit of news may actually be the biggest deal of everything announced, but many players may not understand why.
Magic: The Gathering did have MSRP for their products for quite some time. Six years ago, Wizards of the Coast decided to do away with MSRP because many parts of the world simply did not have it. As Magic was growing into a global phenomenon, MSRP was eliminated to “communicate better to our players and the places where those players shop.” This decision was made right before the release of War of the Spark.
What is MTG MSRP?
MSRP is an abbreviation for the phrase ‘manufacturer’s suggested retail price.’ This means that every product that Wizards of the Coast releases from now on is going to have a ‘list price’ that the product is recommended to sell for. This is not the suggested price between distributors to your LGS but between your LGS, or wholesale store, and you.
MSRP will, basically, help steer the final price of a product. Instead of products being determined solely by each entity as it changes hands, Wizards of the Coast themselves will have a recommended price that customers should be buying their products for. This grounds the price of MTG goods a bit and allows players to judge for themselves whether or not they should be buying from a particular entity depending on how they interact with MSRP in their prices.
While there will be a recommended price from Wizards of the Coast, stores don’t necessarily need to honor that price. Should they need to clear inventory, stores can choose to list their products below the MSRP for that product. Alternatively, if demand for a product outweighs the available supply, stores can list their products for above the recommended MSRP. MSRP is rarely followed on many products, but this does strengthen communication between Wizards of the Coast and their players, which can only be a good thing.
What Does it Mean for Players?
The return of MSRP to Magic: The Gathering grants the players a lot more clarity on the suggested value of an MTG product. If there are entities selling products for way over or under MSRP as a sort of outlier, it could send a stronger flag to buyers that something is up. The ability to become a more informed shopper can help you make more precise decisions when buying MTG products. This grounding in price should hopefully help prevent any bad-acting entities from gouging product prices as it changes hands before making its way to the customer.
Notably, Magic is a lot more expensive now than it was six years ago, and many players ironically predicted that a planned increase in price was the real reason why MSRP left Magic: The Gathering for so many years. Collector Boosters and other premium products are now a more widely accepted reality in the MTG community, so creating a new-shiny gold-laced pack for double the price is unlikely to surprise people as much. The return of MSRP could simply suggest that Wizards of the Coast doesn’t expect the price of goods to suddenly jump again. That said, the consumer mindset has changed so much that a jump would likely be accepted with less resistance anyway.
All of that said, players are really excited for the return of MSRP to MTG. Having an anchor on the price of a product makes it much harder for bad actors to gouge values. It will happen anyway when prices are inflated by scarcity, but it is a positive change nonetheless.