Legend wrote: ↑4 years ago
Over the previous 2-3 years, prices of reserve list cards were artificially inflated due to greedy buyouts rather than actual demand. Earlier this year, the hype plateaued for most cards and has since been declining for many. Many, if not most players (especially new players), simply don't value old (reserve list) cards because:
A. In most cases, more affordable, reprintable cards outclass reserved cards.
B. Reserved cards are often viewed as historic novelties rather than contemporary necessities - "dad's cards".
C. Some players boycott reserved cards because they resent the reserve list.
D. Many playable reserved cards are banned in the formats that would otherwise permit them.
E. There isn't enough [play value : monetary value] in many reserved cards due to the resulting lack of players of the formats that permit them. In other words, what good is it if you're the only person in town with a set of dual lands and power nine?
This seems at least a bit disingenuous to me. You have some valid points but there's definitely some correction needed.
A) That's very much untrue. Yes, there are some new cards that are better than RL cards. However, there are some cards that are simply irreplaceable.
Growing Rites of Itlimoc is not a good replacement for
Gaea's Cradle. Rasputin in particular (since we're talking about him here) has no modern analogue - his effect is entirely unique.
B) I've never encountered this view, but I'm willing to admit that it might be out there.
C) This one, absolutely. I definitely know some of these people.
D) This point is entirely incorrect. I'm going to ask for examples here. Sure, a bunch of RL cards are banned in Legacy, but that's to differentiate it from Vintage. And other than Power and a couple dexterity cards, there are only about three RL cards banned in EDH. This is, in fact,
THE ENTIRE RL PROBLEM - people want to play with these cards. They want to jam
Tundras into their EDH decks and
Mox Diamonds into their Legacy decks. Please, what cards are you referencing that are "playable reserved cards banned in the formats that would otherwise permit them"?
E) I'm not really sure where to start here. Again, while Legacy may be a relatively small scene, EDH is definitely not. We're discussing a unique EDH general in this thread, and I'm sure that the OP could walk into ANY lgs anywhere, plop down a deck with Rasputin on top, and be able to get a game in.
While you are correct that calculated buyouts were the cause of many RL cards rising sharply in price, and that the market is correcting for it, that's not always the case. Look at the most recent spike - that's right around the time that we got the C18 announcement. We were told that we were getting an Esper flicker deck - well, Rasputin loves to be flickered. We see this effect a lot - new Commander decks are announced/cards are released, and a bunch of older cards spike because they work well with the new cards/decks.
Varchild's War-Riders went from nowhere to $20 because of the printing of General Varchild. Now it's on a long coast back to obscurity because it's not really that good and doesn't work too well with other generals. It's most likely that the same thing happened with Rasputin - WOTC announced a flicker deck and everyone bought him out. Then the deck showed up and people decided "Eh, I don't really want to run this card" and gradually offloaded copies, depressing the price.
Your thesis seems to be "Many, if not most players (especially new players), simply don't value old (reserve list) cards", and that's just demonstrably false. Yes, there are "joke" RL cards like
Marjhan that everyone recognizes hold no actual value, but to say that RL cards hold no value to most players is a dangerous assertion that needs correction.