From the moment it was announced, MTG players didn’t exactly love The Zeta Set. Even if it’s a one-off, selling booster packs via Secret Lair felt like a very slippery slope. Despite these concerns, however, the art and branding hit all of the right notes, as it paid homage to the earliest set in MTG’s history.
Thanks to this, it’s little wonder that a lot of MTG players were excited to buy their The Zeta Set packs. Unfortunately, doing this was a lot easier said than done, as the Chaos Vault sale was a complete clusterfuck. It might not be the fastest sellout in Secret Lair history, but it’s definitely in contention for being the worst…
The Zeta Set Sells Out
From the moment The Zeta Set sale went live at 9 am PT, it was clear it wouldn’t last long. Immediately, queue times reached the dreaded “more than an hour,” causing concerns that supply would run out quickly. Curiously, this technically didn’t happen, but that’s only because Wizards pulled the plug.
Roughly 30 minutes after the sale went live, Wizards of the Coast paused the Chaos Vault sale entirely. According to a message sent out on Bluesky, this was due to “technical issues” that, frustratingly, remain unexplained. This delay lasted around 90 minutes, which is already annoying, but supply seemed to decrease during that time.
Despite the queue being paused and no sales being allowed to happen during the delay, The Zeta Set was hit with a low stock warning. This led some MTG players to suspect that there was an issue with confirming sales, which Wizards had to sort out manually. Comically, even when the sale resumed, Wizards goofed and left an internal note on the queue page that read, “please publish this in the queue when it reopens.”
Sadly, even after the sale returned to normal, the supply of The Zeta Set lasted only another ten minutes before selling out everywhere. Unfortunately, as soon as this message hit the Secret Lair site, MTG players quickly vented their frustrations on social media. Considering The Zeta Set sale was delayed for longer than it was available for purchase, these frustrations feel entirely justified.
Scapers Win Again
While it’s entirely unsurprising that The Zeta Set sold out, having it be such a mess is appalling. Considering we’ve had multiple drops sell out at similar speed, you’d hope that Wizards knows how to handle sales like this by now. Hell, if nothing else, Wizards should have known to print more of this drop, or keep using print-to-demand as with the precons.
Annoyingly, regardless of any frustrations, there’s no way that The Zeta Set reprints aren’t now as rare as gold dust. This will be especially true for the Photocopy Negatives that are only in 10% of packs, and the Color Banding ones that are only in 5% of packs. If you’re after one of these cards, you’ll likely have to pay through the nose for it, and the same is true for the packs themselves.
As usual, Scalpers have been all over this Chaos Vault drop, with pre-orders being flipped on the site for massive profit. Packs are always being listed from anywhere between $49 and $109 a pop, and prices could easily increase as demand moves to the secondary market.
Ultimately, it’s hard to call the sale of The Zeta Set anything other than an utter failure. Considering this product should have felt like a blast of fun nostalgia, this sale going so poorly feels like salt in the wound. Ultimately, we can only hope that Wizards reassesses sales like this going forward and does much, much better in the future.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew, and our MTG Rocks Podcast!