As expected, the Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair drop didn’t go entirely according to plan. Following the rather disastrous Final Fantasy Secret Lairs that were released recently, this definitely isn’t a surprise. What is unusual, however, is that this sale wasn’t entirely terrible.
While far from perfect, many MTG players actually managed to get their hands on the Sonic drops they wanted. On top of this, several of the Sonic Secret Lairs are still available for sale. That said, this drop definitely experienced problems, which Wizards may have arguably made worse.
Going Going Gone
As of writing this article, it’s not even been five hours since the Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair drops were released. Right now, both foil and non-foil versions of the Secret Lair x Sonic: Chasing Adventure drop have sold out. As usual, this means all of the bundles that include this Secret Lair drop have also sold out.
Notably, at the moment, the Secret Lair x Sonic: Turbo Gear drop also has a low stock warning. This warning is now present across both foil and non-foil variants of the drop, so supply appears to be draining fast. For better or worse, there’s no way to tell how many copies are left and how much pre-printed supply Wizards made.
Somewhat Surprising
The Chasing Adventure drop is no means a bad Secret Lair. We knew going into this sale that anything with Sonic the Hedgehog attached to it was going to be popular. That said, this drop doesn’t offer a ton of financial value. Not including the Treasure Token, this drop only offers around $13 of value on the surface.
In comparison, the Turbo Gear drop contains almost $30 of cards, making it the clear value-for-money choice. That said, the aforementioned token could end up being surprisingly valuable on the secondary market. Thanks to the ubiquity of Treasures in Commander and new legendary Sonic-themed cards, these could have a lot of demand.
Even with that in mind, however, we definitely didn’t expect Chasing Adventure to sell out first. Due to including seven mechanically unique cards, the Friends & Foes drop seemed like the obvious first choice. That said, just because this drop didn’t sell out first doesn’t mean it’s not the most popular.
Since this drop includes mechanically unique cards, Wizards of the Coast may have significantly upped print numbers. The same may also be true for the Turbo Gear drop, thanks to its high reprint value. Sadly, Wizards isn’t in the habit of publishing print numbers, so we’ll never know if this prediction is accurate.
For now, all we know is that Chasing Adventure is gone, and the cards inside will likely end up being rather scarce. The Treasure Token and Sol Ring, in particular, could end up being seriously expensive. Whether or not that will actually be the case, however, remains to be seen.
A Total Mess
While low-value reprints selling out first is already surprising, the sale itself was even more baffling. Thanks to the high demand beforehand, we knew it was going to be terrible; however, it wasn’t all awful. Right now, the queues have mostly died down, and there are still some drops, but not all, drops available for purchase.
The big problem with this was the queue times that players experienced. Many MTG players report waiting in line for well over two hours before finally being able to check out. Thankfully, unlike previous sales, everything hadn’t sold out by the time players were able to buy.
Wizards recently announced a strict buy limit for the Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair drops. This is likely the cause and solution to the queue problem, at the same time. For this drop, MTG players, Sonic fans, and scalpers could only buy two copies of each drop and bundle. This seemingly resulted in a lot more people queuing up in order to secure copies.
This horde of would-be players unsurprisingly put additional strain on the servers, causing immense wait times. According to some players, these wait times allowed unscrupulous buyers to skip the queue using an exploit that’s yet to be fixed. Obviously, this issue is far from ideal; however, thankfully, it didn’t ruin the sale too much this time.
Not Good Enough
Secret Lair drops are in a very sorry state if we think this sale is a good thing. Five hours might not be the fastest Secret Lair sellout of all time, but it’s still far too fast for a lot of players. As we’ve mentioned time and time again, this repeated issue is completely needless, and arguably harms Wizards.
Essentially, any Secret Lair drop that sells out is a Secret Lair drop that could have sold more copies. This means that money was left on the table by Wizards, and MTG players were left disappointed. The only upside of this lose-lose situation is that buyers get their drops a lot sooner than before.
Once again, there are many solutions to this problem, the most ideal of which is a hybrid printing model. Sadly, Wizards hasn’t chosen to adopt this yet, and it’s unclear if they ever will. Unfortunately, even the strict buy limit solution wasn’t perfect, as it was announced beforehand, which allowed scalpers to prepare.
Ultimately, it’s clear that something needs to be done about Secret Lair sales, sooner rather than later. As much as Wizards have been better about how much they pre-print this time around, mistakes can happen. We can only hope that Wizards continues to accurately predict demand so drops don’t sell out so fast in the future.
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