Following the quick and odd 30th Anniversary Edition sale from Wizards of the Coast, Scalpers were quick to repost their loot for a markup. MTG has been, to the detriment of players, a fantastic source of revenue for those who choose to participate in flipping collectibles. Wizards of the Coast loves their “limited quantity” sales, and they tend to sell out very quickly. It’s pretty common, as a result, that interested parties miss out on the opportunity to buy a product that they’re interested in. This phenomenon creates an opportunity for scalpers to flip the product for a profit. Even though the 30th Anniversary Edition is now ‘out of stock’ players aren’t entirely sure if the product sold out. However, early successful resales of the 30th Anniversary Edition suggest that there is still some lingering interest.
Successful 30th Anniversary Markup Sales
The whole reason why the 30th Anniversary Edition was so controversial mainly fell to its price point. Reprinting some of the most sought-after MTG cards in the entire game, even if it’s just a collectible item, is a fantastic idea. The issue, for many, came from pricing players out of participating in the product. This led to a bizarre situation best summarized by a quote from MTG personality The Professor featured on Philip DeFranco’s news show:
“The product is without a doubt an unmitigated disaster, and who it’s for is – no one that actually plays MTG. Interestingly enough, not even most people who collect MTG, well certainly, there’s always gonna be someone somewhere that’s gonna buy it and try and find some value that they can flip it for later, even though it’s not even cards you can play with. It really is a product for no one, and the fact that this is hailed by Wizards of the Coast as their anniversary edition – something to celebrate 30 years of the game, of the community of the players, and it’s as much as some people make in a month for 60 fake MTG cards that are not even real. It’s astonishing that they would do this, and think it was a good idea.”
To summarize the ideas presented above, the only issue that the majority of the MTG community has with this product is its price. This is a cute collector’s idea that Wizards of the Coast could have easily charged a couple hundred dollars for, but $1000 seemed to price too many people out.
The Professor did mention that “someone somewhere” is going to “try and find some value that they can flip it for later,” and it seems those interested customers are already starting to succeed. Four 30th Anniversary Editions have successfully resold.
We know that two of them resold for a higher price than the original $999 price tag. The crossed-out values mean that a ‘best offer’ was accepted, but we can use sites like 130point.com to figure out some best offers. For example, the pictured item above sold for a best offer of $1600 USD. The prices of the resold product that we do know sold for $1499.99, a 50% markup on the original price, and $1550 Euros, which ends up being about $1600 USD. This seems to be what most resold 30th Anniversary Edition product is currently going for.
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Players Aren’t Worried
As is the case with anything related to the 30th Anniversary Edition sales, this did not take long to circulate around Reddit. This particular thread, highlighting a successful resale five hours after the 30th Anniversary Edition went ‘Out of Stock,’ features a bunch of Reddit users that aren’t really worried about the successful resale of the product:
“Cool. The same 1000 people can trade them between each other forever, slowly wasting away their money.” – KarnSilverArchon
“Ah yes, the NFT business model.” – SoloWing1
“Ah, the old Tulip trade” – JangSavarem
Most players now seem happy to watch from the sidelines since the 30th Anniversary’s successful sales have been questioned. There’s a lot of content already out there discussing this, and we plan on writing a deeper dive into the controversy soon. That said, those who have history are pointing out how big of an opportunity these have been for the sellers who successfully moved them so quickly:
“The people in this sub are desperate to find a way to spin this in a way that doesn’t make it a smashing success for wotc, people are just denying reality
a month ago “it’s never gonna sell, it’s just proxies, nobody wants them”
a few hours ago “it sold out because they printed a small number”
“it’s only scalpers that care anyway, they’ll never gonna resell them”
“ok they resold it, but like, they made only 200 bucks, it doesn’t even count”
the simple truth is that many magic players are ok with spending thousands of bucks for a couple of cards, they always have been.” – dIoIIoIb
A Lot has Yet to be Decided
Sales for the 30th Anniversary Edition only ended yesterday. A lot has remained undecided because of how Wizards has been handling the post-sale events. All we know at this point is that there was some interest in MTG’s most controversial product ever, and any who want to get it now will have to pay even more than they could previously. Because of Wizards’ odd advertising strategy involving this product, a significant spotlight is currently hovering over MTG. As the internet straps in to see where this ends up going, we can only hope that the destination is a good one.
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