The Magic the Gathering Reserved List- How It Affects Mtg
Image credit- Wizards of the Coast 1993-2022
Hey everybody, I just wanted to provide some more stories from my time playing, collecting and selling Magic the gathering cards. Magic is a game that I'm extremely passionate about. Before I begin, I'd like to give credit for the art in this post to Wizards of the Coast 1993 to present. These images have been taken by myself I photograph them for these posts and the credit is at the bottom of each card.
All right, so I wanted to speak today about what's called the "Reserved List" and this does relate to gaming I'm going to go ahead and draw everything back to the origins of the game in 1993. As a 10,000 foot view, the Reserved List is a list of cards made by Wizards of the Coast (the company that makes Magic Cards) that can never be reprinted. Essentially, the Reserved List cards are limited in that all the cards printed of each card on the Reserved List are limited in supply. To understand how this is going to play Magic the gathering comes in packs of 15 cards and one pack is about $3. Throughout Magic's history there have been many extremely powerful rares and there have been some really underpowered rares, many of the underpowered rares were bummers to get in packs. Many have ended up on what's called the "Reserved List" and I'm going to post a link to that list here at Mtg Stocks:
https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/1 my
Origins of the Reserved List
Chronicles was a set that came out in Magic's early history early in the game roundabouts 1995. Chronicles was a white bordered set that was 100% reprinted from earlier sets. Many of the cards reprinted in Chronicles were the famous cards were designed to be somewhat of an investment, and that had players in investors shook. We were concerned that cards including the power 9, Time Vault, The Abyss and a lot of other cards including Killer Bees and Carrion Ants amazingly these were all cards were designed to be investments and extremely powerful in gameplay. Wizards of the Coast set up a system called the Reserved List after Chronicles reprinted a lot of these really cool cards to assure people their investment would be worth the risk. When Chronicles came out many of the cards from legends were reprinted and a lot of us were very nervous could they reprint our Abyss. Could they reprint my Time Vault? The uncertainty of what was going to happen was eased by the advent of the Reserved List.
The Reserved List was largely unnoticed after this. We took a giant sigh of relief and Wizards put cards onto this list many of the cards from further sets including Homelands, Alliances, Mirage and Tempest ended up on the list and I never really paid attention. A lot of these cards were unique and many were underpowered a lot of them you know were just cards that I would never play with. We called these unplayable cards "crap rares" or "bulk rares". Many of these cards had mechanics that just didn't work out and if you ended up on the Reserved List sometimes it was a blessing but often times it was just not even noticed by us players. A pro of reprinting cards for the game of Magic the Gathering is that these cards are more available to all players, and new players who constantly enter the game are exposed to cool cards that can hook them into the game and organized play. A con is that investors in collectibles see their collection worth less every time the supply of cool cards increases.
Forward to 2019. I am someone who has bought many many packs in my day I have a philosophy that if I spend $3 on a pack I want to keep the rare. I've had many crappers many bulkers and I keep them. I have thousands of them, and many ended up being on the Reserved List. Cards including Pale Bears, Fyndhorn Pollen, Purgatory, etc. When the pandemic hit money flowed from the stimulus payments in a Magic the Gathering cards, Pokemon cards and Yu-Gi-Oh. How this impacted gameplay- a lot of the staples became very expensive so people spent more money on the cards. Another thing to notice was the Reserved List was seen as being a good investment so a lot of the crappers in the bulk rares became valuable. Below is a link to an MTG investment site that I use to track all of my Reserved List cards:
https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists/1
Now it's really important to note that the Reserved List is seen as being a good investment because these cards can never be reprinted by Wizards of the Coast.
There is an issue though Wizards recently released legends cards into their most recent expansion dominaria. In theory this is actually re-releasing some of the Reserved List cards but if you believe Wizards they actually found these boxes of Legends and so they're just being released for the first time.
As long as Wizards of the Coast keeps the Reserved List and does not reprint these cards it is a good investment opportunity. I have many of these crappers that have seen $100 or 300% increase in value these are cards I would never play competitively. Whenever we restrict supply of a card we're going to impact gameplay and we are going to also impact the investibility of these cards themselves. Websites like mtgstocks.com actively track this investment and in essence Magic the Gathering cards have become like their own asset like a stock market asset. Large retailers like tcgplayer.com have stepped up and have really increased liquidity for the game as a whole. This is really different from the early game where magazines like Inquest set the price and we never really looked at magic cards as being an investment at all we crack packs and basically play with what we had we trade with each other inside of the shops and liquidity was provided there usually card shops would charge a fee to trade so in essence they function similar to their own OTC exchanges.
I enjoy playing cards and selling cards and this has impacted both aspects of the game. As a gamer of Magic the gathering, a lot of the cards that I enjoy including the dual lands have really skyrocketed in value, so as I saw this happening I was forced to buy many of my favorite staples and put them on ice so to say. It's really important to note that as a player of classic Magic the gathering formats T1 and T1.5 that now is probably a time to watch these reserve cards as money comes out of the economy and people sell them. Only time will tell if the Reserved List will remain in place for perpetuity.
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