From the sort of~ average consumer, I’m seeing that unless you are drafting, these day’s play booster boxes are NOT worth it. It’s either hit or miss-HARD. For the same price of a box, I could just buy the chase variant of the 6-7 cards that I actually want from the set. Maybe I don’t even have to spend as much as a box to do so. So, that’s what I’m going to be doing from this point forth, unless they bring back MSRP or do something about the variance of these booster boxes. They say you have a chance to pull more rares per pack, but when it happens, statistically speaking, it’s going to be bulk anyway.
@@DVS57REBEL it has never been more true as the prices keep rising. It's been probably 5+ years since opening a box made financial sense. Unless you plan on drafting with friends it is just a waste of money.
I find myself buy older set boxes more so then the new play boxes. Them also removing the list cards and reducing the chances of finding a special guest was also a major disappointment.
I'd like to add as someone who just recently started playing MTG there are so much sets being released and I can't quite keep up with all of them. We just got Duskmourn and we're already talking death race while I'm still putting together bloomburrow commander decks. I got in just before Karlov and I've opened like 3 set boosters before play boosters (got a couple LCI boosters from a few friends which got me hooked up on the gacha), so this is kinda all I've known. I don't quite like the quantity over quality approach, as quality cards are spiking in price rapidly and in turn making them less accessible, but I think that FOMO is playing a big part on the sales of the play boosters.
Play boxes are scam that raised the floor price from draft for players across the board through a series of debaucheries, and not enough people are talking about this.
Well, who could've seen this happening? I'll tell you who: Every single player. WotC has lost grasp of reality. Too many products with very pushed prices, the large majority of players can't keep up because real life issues are a priority. No one will ever stop paying bills, or whatever, just to be able to buy a box. So, their "policy" return to bite them hard in the ass. Good.
Something that I'd also argue is player burnout finally reaching the sales. Too many sets and products in too short a time, scalpers buying the now limited number of Secret Lairs, and the shrinkflation of the Play boosters is leading many to save their money on sealed product.
The Play Booster boxes are too expensive and Wizards is giving you even less value out of them. I would get so many more mythics and rares out of a Set Booster box for $99.99. Wizards formula of charging more and giving less is clearly not working. Wizards thrives on screwing over the LGS and the players. I think the players are tired of getting ripped off. Unfortunately, Wizards will not change. I know I am jumping ahead but, Innistrad Remastered will be another OVERPRICED EXPENSIVE reprint set just like Ravnica Remastered, Dominaria Remastered, and Commander Masters. I dread the 2025 price increases. Thank you for the video Mox Man. RAMBLE JAMBLE...ramble jamble....RAMBLE JAMBLE! Like I said before, my sons and I have cut back so much on buying sealed boxes. I wonder how much fudging Hasbro will be doing on there 3rd & 4th quarter reports......
9:18 I have not bought ANY PlayBoosters or Collector boosters! No wonder Magic is crashing because I used to spend 100s of thousands of dollars…….I know I single handedly kept Wizards afloat!
This was my impression also. Karlov and bloom were totally fine imo and idk what others are complaining about. I didn't like the aesthetics of duskmorn so I didn't buy it.
Karlov play boosters felt solid as far as rarity pulls. Each plsy boosters set has felt progressively more and more stingy w more than just a rare in the pull.
@@pme1967 I’ve been saying this since MKM came out. Shitty theming but not the bad set people said it was. I was picking up a ton when it bottomed at $85-90 a box
The first set to introduce play boosters was MKM which was lackluster to begin with, then at Bloomburrow they already reduced the amount of rares in the set. The jumpstart sales are interesting, but it makes sense, it's actually a product you can open and enjoy with friends for a decent price while you have a small chance to hit at the good card lottery.
I walked into the LGS and tried to get a box…. Had myself talked out of it by the time I hit the counter. 😅 bought an Ice Age Starter deck instead! 😂❤ #Boomstick #MoxManiacs
I think they should up the chance of getting special guest cards. That you at least get 1 per box. Add boxtoppers or add another cheat of borderless stuff to up the chance again in boosters and stop cutting even more stuff from them. They cut the list. With bloomburrow they cut the nonfoil critters ... that usually where found in set boxes ... I mean special sheats we got foils only in collectors but base versions in set/playboosters ... now that seems to be gone ... What i actually like, is less of random weird card treatment cards you pull ... But for some people thats a negative aswell.
What this tells me is my playgroup isn't going to draft the current sets any more, but look at some of these older sets. We paid... $415 for MH3. It was fun to draft, but it was so much because the LGS was too small to get any sort of deal and we were paying their markup. We did it for the health of the store, but I think going forward, we are going to look at Baulder's Gate or Lord of the Rings since that's around $100. Until this video, I hadn't know it had dropped so low. Thanks MoxMan!
Didn't we used to have a list slot in set and play boosters? They took it out. Didn't we used to have alternate arts for commons and uncommons? What happened to those? Aside from getting an occasional second rare card and a guaranteed foil card, play boosters are starting to feel more and more like regular draft boosters. I'm curious to find out, are we buying less Magic products than 5 years ago (before the pandemic), or are we buying the same amount, just less of each new product, because there's so many!
The thing is the physical cards are not being played on streams and in tournaments that people can watch. Check sales on cards from the recent Pioneer tournament this past weekend Oct 5-6/2024 and see if the sales on boxes and singles goes up. When we had live major events playing more often on streams and in more cities, cards and boxes moved. Now there is less and too many sets coming out at a time. Cost of living has also played a major factor in being able to afford frivolous purchases. Cards don’t pay and sometimes lose value quickly.
I don't know about you guys but I'm sick of not getting enough time to play these sets. Back in the day it used to be couple months before releasing sets, now it feels like every couple weeks. Product fatigue long with revision of product base is killing the game. I don't look forward to anymore new releases. Infact, after Duskmorne, I'm probably going to be looking at other hobbies and take a nice long break from the game. There is such a thing as "Too much New" and we are finding out first hand.
They won't if they just drop mtg and focus on building other communities , mtg is not the only tcg Have you been to lgs's mtg players be cheap and broke and the true spenders seldom enter a store. But when I see parents walk in any store they spend. And I'm a parent when my kids wanted pokemon or other idc get what ya want
Whatever happened with that cheaper booster pack that was supposed to come out with Bloomburrow and have mostly commons? I don’t remember hearing about them since they were announced.
@@scotttrogers thanks for the response, I’ve never seen them and they’re not on TCGplayer. Did they come out for Duskmourn or Foundations? Have they been a complete failure? I could see them as cheap packs to give out for Halloween or stocking stuffers.
I bought some loose play booster packs, which I know isn’t a good sample size, but I only got one rare in each pack. I feel like I averaged 1.5 rares per set booster. I’m not interested in paying more for less.
To put it into perspective. I used to buy set booster boxes. Id get between 40-45 rares and mythics. Plus you would get list cards which one always end up netting you one to two more rares and mythics. Compare that to the dusmore play booster box I bought during pre-release. Where I got 45 rares and mythics including three foil rare and mythics. Now when you're getting 30 cards in a box 45 rare some mythics isn't a terrible deal. But when you're getting 36 packs and you're netting about the same and receiving no list cards it feels like you're losing. Now my box happened to be pretty decent I would be able to sell those rare sub mythics and had come out about 20 to $30 on top. But that seems to be an outlier from what I've seen. And result is wizards giving zero reason to purchase seal product because there's no value in it. The only thing I play booster box is good for is if you want to do a draft night with friends. Other than that buy singles
Original Jumpstart is creeping up, about $85 shipped. Now check the top 10 cards by value from that set ....years later. Jumpstart 2022 has slightly less EV at the same price. 🤗
Even without any of this more direct info, I have preferred set booster boxes over play. The things I've bought since buying anything are a set box of Kami neo, then a fallout collector (It was an experiment and I was excited, should have kept it sealed) and then another kami neo set box and then 2 wilds of Eldrain set boxes. this is over a time coming up on about a year.
People buy singles, because there's no time to do anything else. I'm one of the last morons still buying a box of each set, I sell the doubles through Cardmarket in Europe, and I've noted that my singles sale rate has definitely increased. To be perfectly clear, aside of 1 Commander Masters box I bought at around half the price and 2 more with a serious discount, I don't turn a profit on anything else I buy, but my singles sales pay for my next box and a bundle over time. I don't do this for the money (obviously), but I get why people don't buy as much play boxes. It's simply not worth it. My last (and only) draft was with Urza's Legacy, and as broke highschoolers, the price of the box was steep. I can only imagine how it should be for current young players.
I just got into magic. I looked at which theme I liked the most and bought a set booster box of Kaldheim for 120 bucks. No buyers remorse. Got tons of cool fancy cards. 2 vorinclexes were the big pulls but I also got a lot of other good cards. I got like one cool card in my bloomburrow box and switched to buying singles.
I wait to see what the set looks like. If there aren't enough cards I'm interested in, I don't buy a box, I just buy the singles. Bloomburrow was the last box I bought. I never buy collectors boxes. No to karlov manor, thunder junction, and no to duskbourne. I'll just buy singles.
Lost caverns of ixalan has been my favorite of the sets recently. I really enjoyed bloomburrow, but it just didn't have the same hits. As a new player, I can see that play boosters just don't have the same value. I would rather get another Ixalan set box compared to our newest sets.
The number of times I’ve looked at their sales listings and thought “this can’t be right” and I had to reset the listings. Frustrating as this seems to be a relatively new bug.
The problem is collector boosters. They priced them prohibitively high. I'd like to see set and collector combine into one booster and draft return to normal.
Play boosters didn't really change much for me because I already had these problems with set boosters. MTG just doesn't have that premium experience that other card games have. When I open a magic booster, the best card I'm going to get is just going to be an ugly, incongruous frame over the top of either the normal artwork or some ugly anime-eyed deer, with a plain blanket foil effect. I've opened cards before that I later found out had significant value, but that didn't excite me at all.
Historian noted it a while back (I think with Bloomburrow?) but that the odds of pulling multiple rare+ cards in play boosters has also been reduced with subsequent releases. WoTC keeps relating rarity to value to justify the prices of their product lines while making these silent changes (making less desirable rares, making mythics and multiple rares in packs less common, etc..) and buyers aren't getting the feeling that their money was well spent. #BOOMSTICK
This isn't new. Wizards introduced the Mythic rarity like fifteen years or so after the game started. Their "reasoning," aka bullshit excuse, was that they needed to add Mythics to keep up with other card games on the market, like Yu-Gi-Oh!. They also used the excuse that Mythics wouldn't be overpowered cards, because they were also using them as higher power Draft bombs, but not Constructed chase cards. They clearly lied then. Money. Money. Money. That's all that any corporation cares about.
I was going to buy 2-3 packs, and they were $7 each. $3-4 a pack it was worth having fun, but no one wants to pay $7 to have a strong chance of getting kicked in-between the legs.
Not just lazy but also greedy. They are absolutely worse because ther's no Lists slot and there less extra rares. This is based off actual experience so I'm not just saying this
@@xeper9458 I had this experience too. I had exactly one good play booster and that was because it had Three Tree City in it. I put it in my Sliver/Phyrexian tribal deck, but the rest have been terrible.
my remake for the play booster would be to drop to 24 packs (and drop the price by 1/3) also put in a box topper (only rare or mythic) to be the prize for winning a draft
Bought a case of Duskmourn play boosters and after opening 2 boxes I stopped. I liked the art but the packs were boring just bulk and no value, I don’t expect to make money but when you know you are losing hundreds of dollars an hour opening packs with nothing to show for it, it ain’t fun. I put the remaining 4 boxes up for sale for 15% discount and none have sold, this confirms the lack of value.
Maybe they should do a 20 card booster pack consisting of: 15 common/uncommon cards, 3 rare/mythic cards, 1 foil card, and 1 art/ad card. Then make a booster box 20 packs. That would give you 300 common/uncommon cards, 60 rare/mythic cards, 20 foils, and 20 art/ad cards in a box. Make it simple and call it a booster box. Sell the packs for 5$. Then maybe make a collectors box where the packs have more foils and rare/mythic cards, so 10 common/uncommon cards, 5 rare/mythic, and 5 foils. That's 200 common/uncommon cards, 100 rare/mythic cards, and 100 foil cards. Yes, you could get a foil and non foil version of the same card in a pack, including rares and mythics. Sell these packs for 10$. Go back to blocks. Q1 set is a core/foundation set consisting of cards that are legal for tournament play in the various formats along with a selection of cards related to the main theme of that year's story. Q2/3/4 are the main release of that year's theme set. That's 3 months between main timeline MTG sets/expansions. Release 2 commander decks each time, that's 8 commander decks a year for the main storyline. Do Universes Beyond releases every 3 months. Make them smaller. Instead of commander decks, maybe have 2 starter type decks, 60 cards each to introduce the gameplay to people who bought the cards because they like the theme.
So, my take on play boosters. Set boosters were great. A couple less cards but better chances for more rares and mythics. Great for the basic set collector. Enter play boosters. Yay, back to 36 packs per box! A 20% increase. 1 less card than draft boosters. Initially the odds for rare and mythic pulls were pretty decent. At least for the first two sets. Then Bloomburrow. A fun set. Great idea. But the pull odds were quietly decreased significantly! What the heck? So now we are paying set booster prices for a barely better draft booster. 😕 Not cool. And add in a new set of some sort every 6-8 weeks, there is no time to get used to the set before you have to set it aside for the next set. IMO, go back draft and set, OR the odds of the initisl play boosters. 36 packs/box. Shoot for the middle on pricing. Lastly, push spacing between releases back to 10-12 weeks. Give LGSes time to sell the current set and folks to buy up everything before the next release. My two cents.
I agree that play boosters suck, there is very little chance of a good pull and with the list discontinued it is not worth the money. I won't buy a play booster box unless wizards fix the percentage chance for multiple rares or mythic rares.
I only recently got back into Magic during Bloomburrow, after not playing for 20 years, so I came in with pretty much zero familiarity to how things were going and how theyve recently changed. That being said, I know from personal experience I get a LOT more excited when opening set boosters versus play boosters. Id say 7/10 set boosters, I am genuinely stoked on either the utility or the variety of the pulls. Id say Play boosters sit at about 3/10 for that experience, more times than not I'd rather have just spent that money on a good single that I need
Unless your drafting play boosters are pretty disappointing on avg I think you can pull 5 mythics from a box (36 packs) where as with set boosters there were less packs and an avg of like 8 mythics. Play boosters do not scratch the itch that set boosters used to scratch and collector boosters are just too expensive, getting a dud collector pack is a bad feeling. there is just no happy medium for people who just want to crack packs and get cool cards
normal art doesnt sell and since we only get the expensive cards in coollectors and play boosters are just more bulk ppl wont buy it anymore. Im done with them and with duskmourn i bought my last play boosters display just to finish "collecting" mtg cards. For next yeahr singles + a Fat pack with bunch of full art lands it is for me
If they actually have desirable bonus sheets like Thunder Junction, they'd do just fine. After bloomburrow and duskmourn however, they're basically almost the same as draft boosters with a vastly different price. I guess WotC should have gone *back* to just not having set boosters to push people to get collectors because at least draft players would be happier, this is just bad for draft, bad for constructed formats and bad for commander: just flat out terrible for everyone for the price they're asking: *It really is just a draft booster price increase and very little more*
Last set I loved was Ikoria. I haven't bought anything since OTJ. The setting was cool, but I have never been a big fan of Set boosters. Collector and Set boosters destroyed the point of Draft boosters outside of an actual draft, which is so hard to find anyone that even wants to draft. With little to no value and no chase cards in draft, very little point. Set boosters had the same problem. Not really sure who those were for. I hate Collector boxes. Overpriced, poor quality all around, Magic foils are so unimpressive though they're kind of getting better. The introduction of both Collector boosters and Set boxes drove me away from buying and playing every set. Play boosters and Value boosters got me to stop buying anything.
Sadly as I expected this was a bad decision (for us). Prices that keep increasing, watered down boosters with lower chances of hitting 2 rares/mythics. And even when you do rares are so watered down nowadays that you rerely make the value to cover the pack/box set. This has been the case for years and keeps getting worse.
I haven't bought a box of packs in 5 years. Three factors are in play. First was COVID, which disrupted my chance to play. Second, inflation. Prices are 50% higher, but my income is not. Third, I am buying more Commander products.
Don't think will buy any more booster boxes from new sets until they wow with the full package aka good lore original art non AI compelling realms Ballanced set design with a few Ballanced wow cards amazing card stalk and a decent non greedy price.
I miss Setboosters...it was a nice experience. So for now on we'll share 1 Collector Display between 3 People, those Playboosters are annoying and scam. We celebrate the opening of Collector Boosters like 5 Minutes per Pack😂😅
Instead of paying for booster/play boxes, I am going on ebay and buying random bulk cards. Wayyyy cheaper for tons of variety, and then I just buy the chase cards I want. For me and my wife, it's perfect, as we just play casually and like building decks.
Hot take: the dynamic between set and draft boosters was highly problematic, and the game's economy would be healthier today if we had stayed with one kind of booster like before Throne of Eldraine.
And this video proves that Magic The Gathering is absolutely an investment, even to people who say that it’s not an investment. Nobody is interested in a set that does not have cards with significant value. As soon as a set appears where there’s not great value and at least a Decent number of cards, the sales on that set plummet. And when there is a set that has great value at the top echelon of the card design, all of a sudden those boxes fly off the shelf. So I really wish people would sit down and shut up who are saying that Magic the Gathering is not an investment. All of the data Says otherwise.
The fact that we have a Play Booster box is the main reason I'm skipping Duskmourne... second reason is I don't like the theme. I tried them, but it just looks like a bunch of commons and an art cart and an commercial/token and a basic land... pfff
Normal boosters already felt like a scam most rares were like 1/10 of the value of a booster but now it's more like 1/15, sealed is just to expensive for the potential pulls and after a couple weeks the prices for most cards in a set hit rock bottom it's better to just buy singles cause even the most expensive card in a set is a fraction the cost of a box.
I think I will buy maybe 1-2 fat pack now. I’m not buying play set anymore. Nothing worst then having 4-6 basic useless cards that just taking up space and maybe ONE HIT!!!! A pack.
From the sort of~ average consumer, I’m seeing that unless you are drafting, these day’s play booster boxes are NOT worth it. It’s either hit or miss-HARD. For the same price of a box, I could just buy the chase variant of the 6-7 cards that I actually want from the set. Maybe I don’t even have to spend as much as a box to do so. So, that’s what I’m going to be doing from this point forth, unless they bring back MSRP or do something about the variance of these booster boxes.
They say you have a chance to pull more rares per pack, but when it happens, statistically speaking, it’s going to be bulk anyway.
Great comments been hearing this alot
Sadly they are miss or rarely break even, maybe for a few days before the prices crash.
💯 brother I been telling folks an 80 card plus other singles u want in a set is cheaper than chasing via packs
@@DVS57REBEL it has never been more true as the prices keep rising. It's been probably 5+ years since opening a box made financial sense. Unless you plan on drafting with friends it is just a waste of money.
I’m just gonna proxy em lol
Give me back my set boxes!!!!! 📦
Boomstick
At this point they'd prolly make set boosters cost like 180
I find myself buy older set boxes more so then the new play boxes. Them also removing the list cards and reducing the chances of finding a special guest was also a major disappointment.
Cheaper and great cards
I'd like to add as someone who just recently started playing MTG there are so much sets being released and I can't quite keep up with all of them. We just got Duskmourn and we're already talking death race while I'm still putting together bloomburrow commander decks. I got in just before Karlov and I've opened like 3 set boosters before play boosters (got a couple LCI boosters from a few friends which got me hooked up on the gacha), so this is kinda all I've known. I don't quite like the quantity over quality approach, as quality cards are spiking in price rapidly and in turn making them less accessible, but I think that FOMO is playing a big part on the sales of the play boosters.
Play boxes are scam that raised the floor price from draft for players across the board through a series of debaucheries, and not enough people are talking about this.
Well, who could've seen this happening? I'll tell you who: Every single player. WotC has lost grasp of reality. Too many products with very pushed prices, the large majority of players can't keep up because real life issues are a priority. No one will ever stop paying bills, or whatever, just to be able to buy a box.
So, their "policy" return to bite them hard in the ass. Good.
Yeah I think it is coming around and they can see the headlights of the oncoming car
@@jorgenorberto293 saw what happening?
@@chim007azo I don't know, perhaps the subject in discussion in this video? Maybe? Use your brain and think.
@@jorgenorberto293 🤣
Something that I'd also argue is player burnout finally reaching the sales. Too many sets and products in too short a time, scalpers buying the now limited number of Secret Lairs, and the shrinkflation of the Play boosters is leading many to save their money on sealed product.
At this point playboosters are just draft boosters that are 30 percent more expensive and have like 1% more value ... Sold only with powercreep.
The Play Booster boxes are too expensive and Wizards is giving you even less value out of them. I would get so many more mythics and rares out of a Set Booster box for $99.99. Wizards formula of charging more and giving less is clearly not working. Wizards thrives on screwing over the LGS and the players. I think the players are tired of getting ripped off. Unfortunately, Wizards will not change. I know I am jumping ahead but, Innistrad Remastered will be another OVERPRICED EXPENSIVE reprint set just like Ravnica Remastered, Dominaria Remastered, and Commander Masters. I dread the 2025 price increases. Thank you for the video Mox Man. RAMBLE JAMBLE...ramble jamble....RAMBLE JAMBLE! Like I said before, my sons and I have cut back so much on buying sealed boxes. I wonder how much fudging Hasbro will be doing on there 3rd & 4th quarter reports......
Shrinkflation comes to mind when I think of play boosters. They are a rip off unless you buy a collector box.
YEP!!!!
9:18 I have not bought ANY PlayBoosters or Collector boosters! No wonder Magic is crashing because I used to spend 100s of thousands of dollars…….I know I single handedly kept Wizards afloat!
lol
Same here for many years I purchased a case plus per set. Now just singles
another point regarding play boosters. on release they were something like 30-40% chance to get double rare. now its down to 24.5%
I have no desire for play boosters. I’d take some set boosters tho. Collector packs are too much, but I see a ton of those opened on whatnot.
MoxManiacs, I haven’t ever opened a Play box. I have no desire to either. I got a DSK Prerelease, but the most recent box I opened before that was CMM
BOOMSTICK
Dude I'm a limited player for life. And the issue for me is that is destroying limited gameplay and new players don't understand that.
I know Karlov Manor was not highly thought of for many reasons, but the value is there unless one cracks a bad box but that goes for any box.
This was my impression also. Karlov and bloom were totally fine imo and idk what others are complaining about. I didn't like the aesthetics of duskmorn so I didn't buy it.
The lands can be great
Karlov play boosters felt solid as far as rarity pulls. Each plsy boosters set has felt progressively more and more stingy w more than just a rare in the pull.
@@pme1967 I’ve been saying this since MKM came out. Shitty theming but not the bad set people said it was. I was picking up a ton when it bottomed at $85-90 a box
The first set to introduce play boosters was MKM which was lackluster to begin with, then at Bloomburrow they already reduced the amount of rares in the set.
The jumpstart sales are interesting, but it makes sense, it's actually a product you can open and enjoy with friends for a decent price while you have a small chance to hit at the good card lottery.
MoxMan!!!!!
WOOT MICHAEL!
I walked into the LGS and tried to get a box…. Had myself talked out of it by the time I hit the counter. 😅 bought an Ice Age Starter deck instead! 😂❤ #Boomstick #MoxManiacs
I think they should up the chance of getting special guest cards. That you at least get 1 per box. Add boxtoppers or add another cheat of borderless stuff to up the chance again in boosters and stop cutting even more stuff from them.
They cut the list. With bloomburrow they cut the nonfoil critters ... that usually where found in set boxes ... I mean special sheats we got foils only in collectors but base versions in set/playboosters ... now that seems to be gone ...
What i actually like, is less of random weird card treatment cards you pull ... But for some people thats a negative aswell.
Good discussion today and I agree with ya it’s a mess! Have a super weekend Mox!
Glorified draft packs for the elevated prices of set packs
What could possibly go wrong?
What this tells me is my playgroup isn't going to draft the current sets any more, but look at some of these older sets. We paid... $415 for MH3. It was fun to draft, but it was so much because the LGS was too small to get any sort of deal and we were paying their markup. We did it for the health of the store, but I think going forward, we are going to look at Baulder's Gate or Lord of the Rings since that's around $100. Until this video, I hadn't know it had dropped so low. Thanks MoxMan!
@@nerdaccount boomstick
Play boosters are just garbage
Didn't we used to have a list slot in set and play boosters? They took it out. Didn't we used to have alternate arts for commons and uncommons? What happened to those? Aside from getting an occasional second rare card and a guaranteed foil card, play boosters are starting to feel more and more like regular draft boosters.
I'm curious to find out, are we buying less Magic products than 5 years ago (before the pandemic), or are we buying the same amount, just less of each new product, because there's so many!
The thing is the physical cards are not being played on streams and in tournaments that people can watch. Check sales on cards from the recent Pioneer tournament this past weekend Oct 5-6/2024 and see if the sales on boxes and singles goes up. When we had live major events playing more often on streams and in more cities, cards and boxes moved. Now there is less and too many sets coming out at a time.
Cost of living has also played a major factor in being able to afford frivolous purchases. Cards don’t pay and sometimes lose value quickly.
I definitely miss the set boosters.
I don't know about you guys but I'm sick of not getting enough time to play these sets. Back in the day it used to be couple months before releasing sets, now it feels like every couple weeks. Product fatigue long with revision of product base is killing the game. I don't look forward to anymore new releases. Infact, after Duskmorne, I'm probably going to be looking at other hobbies and take a nice long break from the game. There is such a thing as "Too much New" and we are finding out first hand.
Hasbro is going to put LGSs out of business
They won't if they just drop mtg and focus on building other communities , mtg is not the only tcg
Have you been to lgs's mtg players be cheap and broke and the true spenders seldom enter a store.
But when I see parents walk in any store they spend. And I'm a parent when my kids wanted pokemon or other idc get what ya want
Whatever happened with that cheaper booster pack that was supposed to come out with Bloomburrow and have mostly commons? I don’t remember hearing about them since they were announced.
Value boosters. Walmart in the US has them for something like $3. I don't see the point of them, myself.
@@scotttrogers thanks for the response, I’ve never seen them and they’re not on TCGplayer. Did they come out for Duskmourn or Foundations? Have they been a complete failure? I could see them as cheap packs to give out for Halloween or stocking stuffers.
They simply aren't fun to open at that price point. That paired with the fact that they devalue what's inside via reprint's in the future.
I bought some loose play booster packs, which I know isn’t a good sample size, but I only got one rare in each pack. I feel like I averaged 1.5 rares per set booster. I’m not interested in paying more for less.
I cracked a duskmourn box on prerelease day. Got 45 rares and mythics including 3 foil rare and mythics. So ya its not really worth it.
I have yet to pull a foil rare out of a play booster. It’s ridiculous.
What they get for wanting to have a draft product but at a price of a set booster. They wanted their cake and eat it too.
To put it into perspective. I used to buy set booster boxes. Id get between 40-45 rares and mythics. Plus you would get list cards which one always end up netting you one to two more rares and mythics. Compare that to the dusmore play booster box I bought during pre-release. Where I got 45 rares and mythics including three foil rare and mythics. Now when you're getting 30 cards in a box 45 rare some mythics isn't a terrible deal. But when you're getting 36 packs and you're netting about the same and receiving no list cards it feels like you're losing. Now my box happened to be pretty decent I would be able to sell those rare sub mythics and had come out about 20 to $30 on top. But that seems to be an outlier from what I've seen. And result is wizards giving zero reason to purchase seal product because there's no value in it. The only thing I play booster box is good for is if you want to do a draft night with friends. Other than that buy singles
Original Jumpstart is creeping up, about $85 shipped. Now check the top 10 cards by value from that set ....years later. Jumpstart 2022 has slightly less EV at the same price. 🤗
OTJ had rates worth buying. I recommend: Put in a bonus sheet. Put a token and full art land in each pack. Stop lowering the rare mythic rate.
Great video
Even without any of this more direct info, I have preferred set booster boxes over play. The things I've bought since buying anything are a set box of Kami neo, then a fallout collector (It was an experiment and I was excited, should have kept it sealed) and then another kami neo set box and then 2 wilds of Eldrain set boxes. this is over a time coming up on about a year.
People buy singles, because there's no time to do anything else.
I'm one of the last morons still buying a box of each set, I sell the doubles through Cardmarket in Europe, and I've noted that my singles sale rate has definitely increased.
To be perfectly clear, aside of 1 Commander Masters box I bought at around half the price and 2 more with a serious discount, I don't turn a profit on anything else I buy, but my singles sales pay for my next box and a bundle over time.
I don't do this for the money (obviously), but I get why people don't buy as much play boxes. It's simply not worth it.
My last (and only) draft was with Urza's Legacy, and as broke highschoolers, the price of the box was steep. I can only imagine how it should be for current young players.
Chris Cox would sell you sand in a broken glass jar if he could.
I just got into magic. I looked at which theme I liked the most and bought a set booster box of Kaldheim for 120 bucks. No buyers remorse. Got tons of cool fancy cards. 2 vorinclexes were the big pulls but I also got a lot of other good cards. I got like one cool card in my bloomburrow box and switched to buying singles.
I have an unopened box of Karlov Manor. I can open it and provide the results for science.
I cracked my first good Play Booster this week. Had 3 rares and 1 was a foil Abhorrent Occulus which is money right now.
Oh the humanity!
For World Peace ! 🤘🦁🤘
BOOMSTICK
I wait to see what the set looks like. If there aren't enough cards I'm interested in, I don't buy a box, I just buy the singles. Bloomburrow was the last box I bought. I never buy collectors boxes. No to karlov manor, thunder junction, and no to duskbourne. I'll just buy singles.
Lost caverns of ixalan has been my favorite of the sets recently. I really enjoyed bloomburrow, but it just didn't have the same hits. As a new player, I can see that play boosters just don't have the same value. I would rather get another Ixalan set box compared to our newest sets.
Over priced boxes compared to what we had, and price increases always hurt, MTG had to pay the price, I buy singles as I need
@@tacklebox917 nope, price per pack hasn’t changed much
Play boosters are now on the same level draft boosters were value wise but at a higher price. Sad state of affairs.
I sell a lot of cards and it’s been collectors only for me unless I can get a good deal on play (Karlov manor for example @109)
MOXMAN you got a refresh the sales listings you showed the same sales for MKM for OTJ
The number of times I’ve looked at their sales listings and thought “this can’t be right” and I had to reset the listings. Frustrating as this seems to be a relatively new bug.
The problem is collector boosters. They priced them prohibitively high. I'd like to see set and collector combine into one booster and draft return to normal.
BOOMSTICK
Play boosters didn't really change much for me because I already had these problems with set boosters. MTG just doesn't have that premium experience that other card games have. When I open a magic booster, the best card I'm going to get is just going to be an ugly, incongruous frame over the top of either the normal artwork or some ugly anime-eyed deer, with a plain blanket foil effect. I've opened cards before that I later found out had significant value, but that didn't excite me at all.
Historian noted it a while back (I think with Bloomburrow?) but that the odds of pulling multiple rare+ cards in play boosters has also been reduced with subsequent releases. WoTC keeps relating rarity to value to justify the prices of their product lines while making these silent changes (making less desirable rares, making mythics and multiple rares in packs less common, etc..) and buyers aren't getting the feeling that their money was well spent.
#BOOMSTICK
This isn't new. Wizards introduced the Mythic rarity like fifteen years or so after the game started. Their "reasoning," aka bullshit excuse, was that they needed to add Mythics to keep up with other card games on the market, like Yu-Gi-Oh!. They also used the excuse that Mythics wouldn't be overpowered cards, because they were also using them as higher power Draft bombs, but not Constructed chase cards. They clearly lied then.
Money. Money. Money. That's all that any corporation cares about.
I was going to buy 2-3 packs, and they were $7 each. $3-4 a pack it was worth having fun, but no one wants to pay $7 to have a strong chance of getting kicked in-between the legs.
I personally liked the draft and set booster boxes.. making them be all in one was lazy, wished they would go back.
Boomstick
Not just lazy but also greedy. They are absolutely worse because ther's no Lists slot and there less extra rares. This is based off actual experience so I'm not just saying this
@@xeper9458 I had this experience too. I had exactly one good play booster and that was because it had Three Tree City in it. I put it in my Sliver/Phyrexian tribal deck, but the rest have been terrible.
my remake for the play booster would be to drop to 24 packs (and drop the price by 1/3) also put in a box topper (only rare or mythic) to be the prize for winning a draft
Everyone, I know won’t come near a play booster and that news has spread like wildfire. Now we just buy singles or precons only.
Drafting with Set Boosters is fun
Bought a case of Duskmourn play boosters and after opening 2 boxes I stopped. I liked the art but the packs were boring just bulk and no value, I don’t expect to make money but when you know you are losing hundreds of dollars an hour opening packs with nothing to show for it, it ain’t fun. I put the remaining 4 boxes up for sale for 15% discount and none have sold, this confirms the lack of value.
Maybe they should do a 20 card booster pack consisting of: 15 common/uncommon cards, 3 rare/mythic cards, 1 foil card, and 1 art/ad card. Then make a booster box 20 packs. That would give you 300 common/uncommon cards, 60 rare/mythic cards, 20 foils, and 20 art/ad cards in a box. Make it simple and call it a booster box. Sell the packs for 5$.
Then maybe make a collectors box where the packs have more foils and rare/mythic cards, so 10 common/uncommon cards, 5 rare/mythic, and 5 foils. That's 200 common/uncommon cards, 100 rare/mythic cards, and 100 foil cards. Yes, you could get a foil and non foil version of the same card in a pack, including rares and mythics. Sell these packs for 10$.
Go back to blocks. Q1 set is a core/foundation set consisting of cards that are legal for tournament play in the various formats along with a selection of cards related to the main theme of that year's story. Q2/3/4 are the main release of that year's theme set. That's 3 months between main timeline MTG sets/expansions. Release 2 commander decks each time, that's 8 commander decks a year for the main storyline.
Do Universes Beyond releases every 3 months. Make them smaller. Instead of commander decks, maybe have 2 starter type decks, 60 cards each to introduce the gameplay to people who bought the cards because they like the theme.
So, my take on play boosters. Set boosters were great. A couple less cards but better chances for more rares and mythics. Great for the basic set collector.
Enter play boosters. Yay, back to 36 packs per box! A 20% increase. 1 less card than draft boosters. Initially the odds for rare and mythic pulls were pretty decent. At least for the first two sets. Then Bloomburrow. A fun set. Great idea. But the pull odds were quietly decreased significantly! What the heck? So now we are paying set booster prices for a barely better draft booster. 😕 Not cool.
And add in a new set of some sort every 6-8 weeks, there is no time to get used to the set before you have to set it aside for the next set.
IMO, go back draft and set, OR the odds of the initisl play boosters. 36 packs/box. Shoot for the middle on pricing. Lastly, push spacing between releases back to 10-12 weeks. Give LGSes time to sell the current set and folks to buy up everything before the next release.
My two cents.
I agree that play boosters suck, there is very little chance of a good pull and with the list discontinued it is not worth the money. I won't buy a play booster box unless wizards fix the percentage chance for multiple rares or mythic rares.
Inflation could push prices. Personally I think the push is to MTGA with cardboard being phased to collecting first and foremost.
I only recently got back into Magic during Bloomburrow, after not playing for 20 years, so I came in with pretty much zero familiarity to how things were going and how theyve recently changed. That being said, I know from personal experience I get a LOT more excited when opening set boosters versus play boosters. Id say 7/10 set boosters, I am genuinely stoked on either the utility or the variety of the pulls. Id say Play boosters sit at about 3/10 for that experience, more times than not I'd rather have just spent that money on a good single that I need
Unless your drafting play boosters are pretty disappointing on avg I think you can pull 5 mythics from a box (36 packs) where as with set boosters there were less packs and an avg of like 8 mythics. Play boosters do not scratch the itch that set boosters used to scratch and collector boosters are just too expensive, getting a dud collector pack is a bad feeling. there is just no happy medium for people who just want to crack packs and get cool cards
1:30 Dear God! 😮 Sounds like you have to be a millionaire if you want to buy Magic Cards as a Canadian 🇨🇦 🍁 citizen! 😮
30-40% tax on products and than 13% sales tax hehe and 30% conversation lol
normal art doesnt sell and since we only get the expensive cards in coollectors and play boosters are just more bulk ppl wont buy it anymore. Im done with them and with duskmourn i bought my last play boosters display just to finish "collecting" mtg cards.
For next yeahr singles + a Fat pack with bunch of full art lands it is for me
It's crazy that $100 boxes are being called "rock bottom prices". Like, that's the most they should cost. $69-$89 are rock bottom prices.
Set boosters were fun to crack. These are fun for drafting but I don't see the value. Especially at this price in Canada.
MTG needs to go back to blocks and simplify the product line. WoTC is going the route of MetaZoo. Next up, Secret Liar underwear.
If they actually have desirable bonus sheets like Thunder Junction, they'd do just fine. After bloomburrow and duskmourn however, they're basically almost the same as draft boosters with a vastly different price.
I guess WotC should have gone *back* to just not having set boosters to push people to get collectors because at least draft players would be happier, this is just bad for draft, bad for constructed formats and bad for commander: just flat out terrible for everyone for the price they're asking: *It really is just a draft booster price increase and very little more*
That's a good point.
You are the kamala harris of youtube mtg channels.
Last set I loved was Ikoria. I haven't bought anything since OTJ. The setting was cool, but I have never been a big fan of Set boosters. Collector and Set boosters destroyed the point of Draft boosters outside of an actual draft, which is so hard to find anyone that even wants to draft. With little to no value and no chase cards in draft, very little point. Set boosters had the same problem. Not really sure who those were for. I hate Collector boxes. Overpriced, poor quality all around, Magic foils are so unimpressive though they're kind of getting better. The introduction of both Collector boosters and Set boxes drove me away from buying and playing every set. Play boosters and Value boosters got me to stop buying anything.
I think they should make more sets maybe every month that’ll help
draft boosters were perfect. should have never changed
Sadly as I expected this was a bad decision (for us). Prices that keep increasing, watered down boosters with lower chances of hitting 2 rares/mythics. And even when you do rares are so watered down nowadays that you rerely make the value to cover the pack/box set. This has been the case for years and keeps getting worse.
Boomstick great comments
They should make Plinko boxes and have randomly inserted cash inside.
lol
I haven't bought a box of packs in 5 years. Three factors are in play. First was COVID, which disrupted my chance to play. Second, inflation. Prices are 50% higher, but my income is not. Third, I am buying more Commander products.
I miss draft boxes
Haven’t bought a single play booster box and will stay that way until hasbros grimey hands stops brrring cards and destroying equity
Singles only. I have made a complaint to the FTC about everything going on. I've been in local government for a while, not some random dude.
Don't think will buy any more booster boxes from new sets until they wow with the full package aka good lore original art non AI compelling realms Ballanced set design with a few Ballanced wow cards amazing card stalk and a decent non greedy price.
F Play Boosters
I m not interested in limited or gambling in paper. I'll play a prerelase and buy some singles
I miss Setboosters...it was a nice experience.
So for now on we'll share 1 Collector Display between 3 People, those Playboosters are annoying and scam.
We celebrate the opening of Collector Boosters like 5 Minutes per Pack😂😅
Instead of paying for booster/play boxes, I am going on ebay and buying random bulk cards. Wayyyy cheaper for tons of variety, and then I just buy the chase cards I want. For me and my wife, it's perfect, as we just play casually and like building decks.
But Rudy says they're selling like hotcakes! 😂
Im not a fan of the play boosters.
I liked when you were doing the bloomburrow videos and took the time to set up the nice backgrounds.
Hot take: the dynamic between set and draft boosters was highly problematic, and the game's economy would be healthier today if we had stayed with one kind of booster like before Throne of Eldraine.
Boomstick 💥
you get like 5 mythic per BOX, what else do they expect XD
And this video proves that Magic The Gathering is absolutely an investment, even to people who say that it’s not an investment. Nobody is interested in a set that does not have cards with significant value. As soon as a set appears where there’s not great value and at least a Decent number of cards, the sales on that set plummet. And when there is a set that has great value at the top echelon of the card design, all of a sudden those boxes fly off the shelf. So I really wish people would sit down and shut up who are saying that Magic the Gathering is not an investment. All of the data Says otherwise.
The fact that we have a Play Booster box is the main reason I'm skipping Duskmourne... second reason is I don't like the theme. I tried them, but it just looks like a bunch of commons and an art cart and an commercial/token and a basic land... pfff
Draft Draft only Draft! Draft Draft only Draft!
Normal boosters already felt like a scam most rares were like 1/10 of the value of a booster but now it's more like 1/15, sealed is just to expensive for the potential pulls and after a couple weeks the prices for most cards in a set hit rock bottom it's better to just buy singles cause even the most expensive card in a set is a fraction the cost of a box.
The play booster experience sucks.
This set doesn’t feel good opening a pack.
I think I will buy maybe 1-2 fat pack now. I’m not buying play set anymore. Nothing worst then having 4-6 basic useless cards that just taking up space and maybe ONE HIT!!!! A pack.
I am never going to buy a collector booster again.