How far out is Hasbro from bypassing all middle"men" and offering direct ordering from them? I mean a web store by which shoppers can order singles, sets, draft boosters, etc. I could imagine such a site enabling print to order fulfillments.
So for example, you could go to their site and custom order X draft booster packs of any set ever (sans reserve cards) for $N a pack so you and your friends can draft old school.
Or maybe the site could have a menu that would allow shoppers to customize the appearance of a card. Choices could include various stock art or imported images, foils, retro, PC & FS borders, modern, borderless, playtest, (pretty much every border ever), any written language, custom flavor text, artist signature, and so-on. Allowing shoppers to order and Ken cards that look the way they want.
I hope it's sooner than later because I'd really like for all of my cards to look like Beta and Unlimited cards.
What other possibilities are there?
How do you think this kind of thing would effect secondary market prices?
Magic Direct from Hasbro Web Store
“Comboing in Commander is like dunking on a seven foot hoop.” – Dana Roach
“Making a deck that other people want to play against – that’s Commander.” – Gavin Duggan
"I want my brain to win games, not my cards." – Sheldon Menery
“Making a deck that other people want to play against – that’s Commander.” – Gavin Duggan
"I want my brain to win games, not my cards." – Sheldon Menery
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wildfire393
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When will Hasbro sell stuff directly? They basically already are, though they use Amazon for fulfillment because why reinvent the wheel?
But that's just for selling in-print sets. Secret Lairs are their first real crack at print to demand stuff, and I doubt they can get much more granular than that. Remember that the actual printing takes place at other companies, Hasbro doesn't run their own card printers.
The rest of this seems like it is unlikely to ever happen. I can't see them ever making their entire back-catalog available (excluding RL), nor making individual singles available, as both of those would undermine the collectibility model of their game. The temporary nature of sets being in-print helps keep them "collectible" and gives incentive to buy boxes to hold long-term. And the artificial scarcity of singles further drives pack sales. Why would I ever buy a pack of a Masters set when I can directly order the singles being reprinted in it?
The other stuff about customizability is a complete pipe dream. It's not as easy as all that to generate these cards, there's a cost to every single variation. This is why The List/Mystery Boosters use "pickups" rather than updated printings of cards, because it would cost that much more to template all of these. Many of the frames (especially borderless) can't be directly swapped without other adjustments, text changes require specific templating updates so they look right, translations requires a ton of resources to be correct, and there's absolutely zero way that custom arts wouldn't be a total %$#% of IP infrigement and inappropriate images.
I can certainly understand a lot of where you're coming from. I'd love to be able to buy complete sets direct from my LGS or even from Amazon (rather than having to jump through hoops to get them third hand through eBay sellers who did MTGO Redemptions). But even that would cannibalize a lot of their business model.
But that's just for selling in-print sets. Secret Lairs are their first real crack at print to demand stuff, and I doubt they can get much more granular than that. Remember that the actual printing takes place at other companies, Hasbro doesn't run their own card printers.
The rest of this seems like it is unlikely to ever happen. I can't see them ever making their entire back-catalog available (excluding RL), nor making individual singles available, as both of those would undermine the collectibility model of their game. The temporary nature of sets being in-print helps keep them "collectible" and gives incentive to buy boxes to hold long-term. And the artificial scarcity of singles further drives pack sales. Why would I ever buy a pack of a Masters set when I can directly order the singles being reprinted in it?
The other stuff about customizability is a complete pipe dream. It's not as easy as all that to generate these cards, there's a cost to every single variation. This is why The List/Mystery Boosters use "pickups" rather than updated printings of cards, because it would cost that much more to template all of these. Many of the frames (especially borderless) can't be directly swapped without other adjustments, text changes require specific templating updates so they look right, translations requires a ton of resources to be correct, and there's absolutely zero way that custom arts wouldn't be a total %$#% of IP infrigement and inappropriate images.
I can certainly understand a lot of where you're coming from. I'd love to be able to buy complete sets direct from my LGS or even from Amazon (rather than having to jump through hoops to get them third hand through eBay sellers who did MTGO Redemptions). But even that would cannibalize a lot of their business model.
