Singles or sealed?

[RowanKeltizar]

So I used to purchase a lot more sealed product, but now I have to say i only purchase singles unless I'm drafting and even then, someone is going to have to twist my arm.

The most recent sealed product I purchased was 4 packs of baldurs gate. I think the most valuable card I pulled was a list card: Day's Undoing. I got a regular Kindred Discovery also but it was misprinted and I don't think I'll be throwing it in a deck for that reason alone. This has only reinforced my belief of SINGLES ONLY. These packs were kind of an exception because the guy I've been hiring wanted me to pay him in packs that day. :shrug:

Looking at double masters, I still feel singles are the best bet, even if I'm paying $60 for a single card. Sure, there some real chase cards, but at $17+ a pack, I just don't think the risk is worth it. There are too many bulk rares and mythics for me to feel like it's worth the chance.

The quality control issues are a huge part of feeling how I do. Even if I do pull something good, it might be curled foil or misprinted. I hate pringles and I am actually actively liquidating them from my collection. I'm very happy that we now have an etched foil version of a lot of cards. I wish they just phase out their regular foiling process completely.

But the foils are only the beginning when it comes to quality control. I've seen LOTS of miscut cards where the border is obscenely un-centered. The corners on some cards are also sloppily cut these days. Instead of being a nice rounded corner, we have sloppy bevel where someone might as well have used a pair of scissors to cut it. The Kindred Discovery I opened has this weird grainy appearance. If I hadn't just opened it from a pack I would have guessed it was a forgery.

The pack randomization is also really irksome. Some packs and boxes seem to be loaded, and some have absolutely no value. Why is the pull rates for the best cards from Baldur's gate so darn low?

Anyhow, I feel like we might be reaching a point where people are going to be a lot more leery opening packs and boxes after the Baldur's gate fiasco. You don't know how many times I've heard people saying they only buy singles now. Sealed just isn't worth the risk anymore with how much wizards is asking for it.

What bothers me most is that all of these issues should be so easy to fix. Wizards just wants to make money and will cut just about any corner to do so.

What are your thoughts?

[TheGildedGoose]

I only meet up with hot singles online or in my area.

Occasionally, I'll buy a pack, but that's only because it's more fun than buying a scratch off ticket. I fully expect to be lighting my money on fire.

[PrimevalCommander]

Singles only. Haven't bought sealed in years.
Well I did buy like 4 packs in the last 3 years, but haven't opened them in case I want to put a Booster Tutor in my cube, or use them as kitchen table prizes.

My good friend opened 2 sealed boxes of Baldur's gate and he will be lucky to offset the cost of 1 of them. He spent $200 on sealed boxes and pulled ~$100 worth of product, not adding up every common/uncommon, but looking at rares and cards worth much. He didn't pull any ancient dragons and only 5 of the rare lands out of both boxes combined.

[DirkGently]

I don't really consider any of those answers to apply to me.

I acquire most of my new cards from sealed product because I play a lot of limited (not as much as I used to, but still a significant amount). Outside of a limited tournament and the prizes thereof, I never buy sealed boosters. I do buy precons for the exclusives, dunno where that fits.

I trade and buy singles for the cards I've missed via limited. And years back I acquired all my old cards as singles. I guess monetarily most of my cards came as singles because of that, but on an ongoing basis a lot of them are from limited.

[folding_music]

I get a box or a bundle if I'm into the set. loved ZNR and the D&D stuff, dodged everything else these last few years. but I'm never thinking "this last booster has to have Lolth or I've made a huge mistake"... opening a nice cross-section of a set is really interesting especially if you're not overly spoiled on what's there ahead of time.

Grabbing expensive singles is something I'm more wary of... you might be looking at a card propped up by some format which then goes out of fashion and you could've gotten it for much less with patience, or it gets reprinted etc... buying cards individually is the thing that most quickly makes you the finance nerd =P inevitably you eventually start "needing" cards with unreplaceable effects for given commander themes but most expensive single-card purchases are just you being a big shot

[Serenade]

My buddy convinced me to get a prelease pack of MH2. First time I got packs in years. At first I thought it was all junk, but Endurance's value made it worthwhile.

I just get singles, and I don't pay for expensive ones. They'll get reprinted. Look at everything in 2x2!

[EonAon]

considering I suck at sealed or that all the times I get seated with people that are not technically a team but have sealed strategies of 4 players in the pod. Or if were talking sealed sealed my freaking luck in that respect tanks lower than draft in that I barely get anything good to construct my deck from. I admit I have very little actual sealed under my belt but when 5 times you dont get removal decent creatures or any decent rares it's hard to justify the money spent.

[duducrash]

I open some product. Almost all pre releases, some draft, a super sealed league and sometimes when I have store credit I'll open a random pack to gamble on it. But I'll mostly buy singles. Whenever a set is out I get all cheap cards I might maybe want in a deck. Then slowly trade for the more expensive ones.

Opening product its pretty nice imho, its a neat little gamble. You should treat as a gamble, and will probably lose.

[Dunharrow]

I am probably getting 75% of my cards from sealed? I buy booster boxes to draft with friends, prerelease kits to duel my cousin. I love limited.
Then the rest of my cards I get as singles.

[materpillar]

I basically only print proxies to "acquire" specific cards. I don't play often enough to warrant the price tag of any single card. I also primarily play on webcam and the difference between a printed proxy and a real card is effectively zero over camera.

I also go to pre-releases and draft occasionally with my brother. That's less to acquire cards and more $15-$40 for an evening of entertainment. I also occasionally buy a pack because, let's be honest, gambling is really really fun. $4 for a spike of adrenaline while cracking a pack once or so a year is a worthwhile investment.

[Mookie]

I recently bought a foreign-language set booster as a souvenir, but other than that, I can't remember the last time I bought sealed product for anything other than the occasional draft / prerelease, which I can at least budget as an evening of entertainment. I usually stick to buying singles. Gambling is a bit too stressful for me, so I prefer to just know what I'm getting.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

Singles only + limited spoils. I actively despise owning cards I never play these days, it's just wasted volume and potential.

I'd like to pare down to 3 edh decks, 1 legacy deck, and 500 cards to modify those 4 decks i.e. spare parts. So far I have 2 edh decks, a legacy deck, and 1100 aimless cards. As soon as I can find the right third commander, culling the rest should be academic.

[BaronCappuccino]

I have one commander deck and no collection at any given moment, so I only buy singles as needed.

[Gentle Giant]

Mostly singles and the occasional draft/prerelease (like a 95-5% split of singles vs. sealed). I do buy a set each of the commons and uncommons of a new non-reprint set, which is still singles but a tad different. Trying to complete those sets through boosters would be a horrible undertaking and I don't draft enough to fill it out that way, so yeah, singles ftw.

[Mergatroid_Jones]

Draft is my favorite format. But I do buy a booster pack for funzies from time to time. I have a pretty kickass collection despite not always getting to play. And my collection is absolutely worth more than was paid for it. But I'm not cashing out, so what do I care?

The fact of the matter is that sealed is almost always a good investment. It's just a long-term one. If you are thinking about today's values when you open a booster box, you are either a gambler or a rube (or most likely both). Hype rares are a fool's game.

Why do I have multiple copies of Rhystic Study? I opened them in packs. Or I thought "that's a pretty good common" while going through bulk boxes in a store years ago. So buy good commons and uncommons from bulk boxes. Which ones are good? Figure it out. Rhystic Study was not always an iconic card. That's not to say "I'm smart, nanny nanny booboo", it's just to say people don't respect bulk boxes.

Is it a good monetary investment to buy a box of Baldur's gate? Heck no! Are you nuts?? But if you like the cards, go for it. Wait ten years and suddenly it was a great investment. I don't like the set, so I only bought some commons and uncommons, but if you care about long-term value just speculate on obvious cards: sweet uncommons and cheap, unique rares. Rug of Smothering will go up. Ellyn Harbreeze, Busybody is very unique. Likely to go up. Horn of Valhalla is under a dollar. It won't be in five years. It's not hard. Heck, look at Nimbleclaw Adept. Sure looks like a $2.00 card to me even if it can't go infinite, yet currently at bulk value. You won't always be right, but you don't have to be. It's not really how I buy cards, since I'm not a speculator and don't really want to be, but it has held true for virtually every set I've seen in 20 years playing. Think that way during release and you WILL make money.

I remember making this same argument when Amonkhet came out and everybody was complaining about it. Guess what? Amonkhet follows the same trend as every other set. Throne of the God-Pharaoh, Soul-Scar Mage, Cascading Cataracts, Plague Belcher, etc.: all worth well over a dollar now. All very cheap soon after the set's release. Hazoret the Fervent, Harsh Mentor, and As Foretold? Not really great investments if you bought in early to the hype. Sandwurm Convergence and Drake Haven are still under a dollar. Did you lose anything if you bought a copy of each? No. The Throne of the God-Pharaoh you bought covers their price easily, and you still get to have those cards. The guy who cracked a box for Hazorets may have looked like an idiot at the time, but now that guy has the Bontu's Monuments everybody else has to pay a premium for, along with the rares that were jank at the time but no longer.

This is a tedious way to think about cards, but it's always effective if you are discerning.

If you care about value above other things, you MUST NOT think about the current state of affairs, or you are an absolute fool. You must always be working a few years in advance. If you don't care about value above other things, just buy what you like. It's a game for criminy's sake. Enjoy it. Ultimately, you should only buy cards if you want them, and that goes for both sealed and singles. If you don't want a whole bunch of commons and uncommons from the set, you probably don't need to buy the box.

So all that to say singles and sealed are both excellent ways to get cards. Sealed builds your collection as a whole over time, whereas singles go to a specific purpose. I buy both to moderation.

It's pretty easy to see a positive return on investment in Magic. Just forget the hype. You should probably forget the mythics altogether.

[Ruiner]

Single cards all the way.

The only time I buy any packs is if in a LGS and they have no singles I want, so I can at least buy something to support them while I use their table space. Its been a few years since I've played anywhere other than friends houses though, so I mainly just order singles online and occasionally snag a precon if it is a good value.

[toctheyounger]

Buy singles.

I haven't cracked a pack that wasn't gifted to me since commabder legends 1 and I won't again for some time yet. For the most part singles are far more affordable, it just comes down to timing your purchases around the market to make it affordable.

[5colorsrainbow]

Singles for 99% and I used to buy packs now and then as a treat out shopping. I used to like to try to get a bundle for each set but I've mostly stopped doing that. I also sometimes buy pre-con decks if they interest me.

[ISBPathfinder]

Singles are 100% the way to go but there is always the question of what your LGS provides locally for sale and how to support them. I am often in smaller shops that don't have big singles selections where buying packs is how I can support them and I do believe in supporting the store you are using to play the game.

If you are looking to be purely cost effective buy as little as you can get away with upfront as a set releases and focus on buying what you want 1-6 months after the set releases as a lot of stuff cools off given time. There will be cards that over perform and go up but most commander based stuff often drops unless its like the best card of the set used everywhere.

[Jemolk]

I buy sealed to support my LGS, because it doesn't really sell singles, and get a good chunk of my cards from it, but still heavily rely on singles to get specific things, because distribution of cards in packs is terrible. Were I not buying boxes and packs to support my LGS, I wouldn't be buying them at all. Particularly with the quite obvious heavy-duty short printing of desirable cards. I've gotten quite a lot of packs of MH2, for example, and gotten more Chatterfangs and Garths than most regular rares (from memory, six of each), and zero Ragavans. Over the number of packs I've opened of MH2 (off the top of my head, not even doing any real estimates, ~80 set packs at this point), you'd expect that to start to even out (not close completely, but close in a little) if we were talking simple randomness, but the gaps have only grown larger.

[RowanKeltizar]

So, it seems like everyone here is basically on the same page. I definitely get buying sealed to support your LGS. That's legit and I wish wizards would think the same way more often.

My next question to you all is: What would wizards have to do to make buying sealed product appealing/worth the money/worth the risk/etc to you personally?

For me it's pretty simple. Quality control and value.

It's a fact that sealed packs are lottery tickets where the house always wins and it has been that way for a long time. There's nothing inherently wrong with that if that's what people pay for and expect from the product. But if the value and quality isn't there I just can't get behind it.

I don't really mind paying more for sealed IF THE VALUE IS THERE and it usually isn't. Buy a whole box of packs and it seems like you will be lucky to get your investment returned. I don't think that's right. Wizards has a HUGE card pool to pull from, many valuable cards have only seen a couple of printings.

It would have been easy to make Double Feature worth opening for me. Just include the multitude of cards worth $20+ from previous innistraad sets in that specific treatment...

Baldur's gate could have had many more valuable reprints. Jeweled Lotus is absolutely due for a reprint. As is the cycle with Deflecting Swat and Fierce Guardianship . It doesn't take a genius to see that there is wasted potential in every single set for some quality cards and quality reprints. Drives me nuts, truly..... And no, I'm not in favor of printing cards to zero. There is an aspect to this game for a collector and investor that is appealing and I think there is a happy middle ground.

[3drinks]

I'll be buying a Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer since I own a Gauntlet of Might|leb and thus will always have a mono-r commander deck (and that looks like such a sweet commander game) here in a couple days to get me the LGS sol ring promo. Then after that I'll do a deck inventory and buy up any missing cards to make them all complete without sharing cards (using proxies so I'm not buying extra fetches and other high ticket cards I already own) and then from that point, I'm aiming to do a Magic no-buy for about a year with a re-evaluation then if the economy has improved.

But never will I buy randomized sealed product. It's never worthwhile, and I don't play limited for it (I'd cube before playing draft chaff limited, but that doesn't need any further expenditure).

[Mookie]

I don't really mind paying more for sealed IF THE VALUE IS THERE and it usually isn't. Buy a whole box of packs and it seems like you will be lucky to get your investment returned. I don't think that's right. Wizards has a HUGE card pool to pull from, many valuable cards have only seen a couple of printings.

Unfortunately, this is almost impossible, economically speaking - if the expected value of a pack (or box) is greater than the cost of the unopened item, then people will crack them in bulk... at which point supply and demand takes over, and the increased supply makes the price of singles fall. The total expected value of a box will thus tend to cap out at the cost to acquire the box in the first place, at least as long as there is an unlimited supply of boxes. This obviously changes for limited print run items (such as Masters sets) and out-of-print sets, but if you're talking about Standard-legal sets, I don't think it will ever be possible to expect a profit after prices normalize.

I'll call out that something similar happened when WotC was putting Masterpieces in sets - the Masterpieces were incredibly valuable, but to balance things out, most of the rares ended up dirt cheap, as did many of the mythics. Thus, the main appeal of high-value reprints (from a player's perspective) isn't to push up the expected value of packs - rather, it is to bring down the cost of singles in those packs (including the high-value ones).

[RowanKeltizar]

Unfortunately, this is almost impossible, economically speaking - if the expected value of a pack (or box) is greater than the cost of the unopened item, then people will crack them in bulk... at which point supply and demand takes over, and the increased supply makes the price of singles fall. The total expected value of a box will thus tend to cap out at the cost to acquire the box in the first place, at least as long as there is an unlimited supply of boxes. This obviously changes for limited print run items (such as Masters sets) and out-of-print sets, but if you're talking about Standard-legal sets, I don't think it will ever be possible to expect a profit after prices normalize.

That makes sense. I'm just saying I don't want to be spending 100$+ for a box with 20$ EV. I realize it's a fine line to walk, like you say EV can't be too high. No doubt this contributes a lot to the success of secret lair. I still don't buy them other than secondary market, but it's better to at least know what you are paying for.

[Sinis]

GENERALLY, I buy singles. I'll make a list of the stuff I want from new sets, and buy it. That list gets shorter and shorter with the pace of releases. Once upon a time, I would buy anything that struck my fancy; for art, for narrow gameplay reasons in deck I haven't (and may never) build. Nowadays, I'll buy a set of cards against the idea that they might spike later, but I'll let most of it just go.

I do buy sealed stuff on occasion, but usually not much. I like opening things, even though I know the EV does not typically match the price of sealed product. I tend to buy sealed things that thematically appeal to me. The last box I bought was from AFR because I like D&D, but before that it was Core 2019 (mostly because I was immediately entranced by Nexus of Fate), and before that Eldraine because King Arthur Kenrith, the Returned King|ELD, and also I loved the whole set (balance issues notwithstanding).

But, by and large, it's singles all the way down.