Checking In With Vintage Magic

Magic is leading a bull market in the card world right now. 

Tarkir: Dragonstorm was one of the best selling sets of all time, as was its immediate successor, Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy. Edge of Eternities hasn’t earned such a title just yet, but the prices on its sealed product have shot through the roof as players and collectors alike clamor for Magic’s newest product just weeks into its release cycle. 

So, with all this attention on Magic, how are things going for some of the game’s oldest – and most expensive – assets? Let’s take a look.

The Concentration of Money

Getting straight to the point, there’s only so much money out there, and – as of now – that money is hyper concentrated in the contemporary sealed market, specifically Collector Booster Boxes. Recent Draft and Set Booster Boxes are also doing well – just short of every sealed product from Wilds of Eldraine onwards is – but by and large the real investment dollars are shooting towards Collector Booster Boxes.

This injection of cash is being driven by a couple of factors. For one, assets like cryptocurrency are once again hitting all-time highs, causing some to exit one market in exchange for purchasing other assets in another with their crypto-gains. The last time such an exit-and-enter pattern happened was with the Reserved List boom of 2020, before the unfortunate advent of Magic 30th Anniversary Edition.

Also, Magic’s product management has recently been doing incredibly well by the secondary market thanks to its reduction of print runs for Collector Booster Boxes, as well as its increasingly wide market thanks to Universes Beyond crossovers. 

By simultaneously lowering supply and increasing demand, Play and Collector Boxes alike have risen in price, garnering more and more fervor from the broader market.

Shadows Over Vintage

All of this modern-Magic success, however, has come at the cost of prices for vintage-era Magic cards. As Commander has risen in popularity and competitive Magic has walked away from Legacy (let alone actual Vintage), the play-based demand for Reserved List staples has dwindled significantly. Similarly, the “pizzaz” of Collector Booster Boxes – be it the inclusion of hyper-limited Serialized Cards or any of a number of specialty foiling processes – has cast a dark shadow over old sealed product. The contents of a Booster Box of The Dark just aren’t nearly as exciting to most people as a Collector Booster Box of Final Fantasy, and that has shown through in their price appreciation rates.

Vintage Magic is also still reeling from the damages of Magic 30th Anniversary Edition. Of the many factors contributing to the prices for old singles and their corresponding sealed product, perhaps none matters more than the Reserved List – the insulating shield against price attrition due to supply dilution. Magic 30th Anniversary Edition shattered the investment-market’s conception of the Reserved List, especially considering that Mark Rosewater (a lead employee of Wizards of the Coast) was on the public record as stating that such a product would never be produced. 

As such, market confidence in the stability of the Reserved List faltered and has since-then barely recovered.

Finally, the market supply for new-money has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. According to Hasbro’s most recent earnings report, new-player participation has surged by 40% since Magic ramped up the Universes Beyond crossovers, highlighting how much wider the Magic audience has become due to the appeal of out-of-house intellectual property. 

This, when contrasted against the weakness of vintage Magic among the Magic 30-spurned investor base, demonstrates that the current surge of spending isn’t just crypto gains or the like, but natural player demand from a booming audience as well. 

Sure, there may be some crossover into vintage Magic as people look to pick up their first dual lands or the like, but by and large that is a terribly rare phenomenon. More people want Collector Boxes than Underground Seas, and it shows.

Wrap Up

The vintage Magic bear market shows no signs of slowing down, but it doesn’t show signs of rapid erosion, either. All in all, it’s a stable, flat, altogether cheap environment. Prices certainly fell relative to their 2020 highs, but that happened years ago and isn’t reflective of active disdain for the market. If you ask me, I think that actually makes for a great buying opportunity. There’s no need to rush, but if you want dual lands, now is as good a time as any to pick some up. In a world where a sealed Collector Box of a Standard set is routinely $400+ by launch week, it certainly puts a $600 Volcanic Island into perspective.

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