On mythics and money

Max McCall recently wrote an article about mythics here. His argument, as a whole, is sound, but I have a few points I want to add.

Firstly, cards are worth whatever people are willing to pay for them. This has always been, and always will be true. But, mythics mess with the standard dynamic.

We are all aware of the standard dynamic - a new set is released, certain cards get hyped, and thus their prices rise. Other cards are not perceived to be as strong and thus languish in dollar bins. Usually, in a couple months, the tournament scene plays itself out, and that assists in helping cards settle into more stable values. There have been examples of card that have held their value well (Umezawa's Jitte), sleeper hits (here's looking at you, Tarmogoyf), and over-hyped cards that ended up not doing much (sadly, Mr. Finkel, this applies to you).

The problem is mythics mess with the price fluctuations by artificially inflating demand. Consider the following scenario - your buddy and you crack a case of boosters. Let us further suppose the two of you open eight copies of a money rare and four copies of a money mythic between the two of you (the statistical 2:1 ratio of rares:mythics).



The problem arises with the artificially inflated supply of rares, which drives down their price (exactly as wizards wanted). You both end up with two money mythics, but if this is, for example, Jace 2.0, you need 4 for your deck. This means you have to trade for two more. So what happens when you run into someone else with 2 Jaces, or 2 other people with one Jace? None of those people will be inclined to trade their Jaces, even for a stack of rares with similar price point, because in addition to the natural aversion of trading one card for a stack of cards, they know how hard it is to pull the card in packs. They also are aware that there is only a certain local supply of Jaces, and thus the card will be difficult to re-acquire.

Consider how this is different for Raging Ravine. This is a card that is extremely easy to acquire, and thus everyone is willing to trade them away, as they can easily just trade for them again, since there is such a high supply.

The problem with mythic is not that their natural supply is low, rather it that supply is artificially depressed by the fact that the people who open them are, in general, unwilling to trade them away, thus further restricting supply. This in effect, makes eBay your trading market. Basic economics would say that this drives the price up. The problem is, this is a self-catalyzing cycle. Because the price goes up, people want to hold onto their mythics, and thus don't trade/sell them, and the process repeats itself.

This also messes with the natural devaluation of a card that happens when it proves to be weaker than hyped. Because people understand that mythics are hard to acquire and have the potential to appreciate, they hold onto them longer, which artificially maintains a higher price than would be suggested by simple supply/demand economics.

That's not to say that you can't have well-priced mythics, but only that the mythic rarity itself serves as a natural barrier to price deflation. Consider two recent mythics - Lotus Cobra and Vengevine.

Lotus Cobra is now priced at around $15, despite starting at $25 or greater. The hype machine, in particular Mike Flores, said that Lotus Cobra was going to be amazing. Everyone seemed to agree, pointing at the explosive plays that were possible with rainbow snake. The problem was, they were all wrong. Lotus Cobra never proved itself among the big boys, causing only a small blip in Zvi's Mythic deck at Pro Tour San Diego. That deck quickly fell off the map though, and Lotus Cobra with it. The card fell to around the $10 mark, which is reasonable for a mythic with decent casual appeal. It wasn't until the release of Rise of the Eldrazi that the little snake came back with a vengeance. Now Lotus Cobra sees play in three major archetypes, but yet it has only gone up to $15 dollars. Why? Because people got used to $10 Cobras, and were thus unwilling to pay that much more for the card, even when it became successful.

Consider, on the flip side, Vengevine. This card also generated a significant amount of hype around its initial release, as many will recall. This hype hasn't really played out though. Vengevine has not really adjusted much in the Mythic/UW/Jund metagame. Naya may feel like an up and coming deck, but it still hasn't proven that it can consistently play with the big boys. Some Jund builds have adopted the 4 mana beater, but this is not universal.

So why is Vengevine $50? Is this really a card that is worth more than three times a Lotus Cobra, which sees more play? I would think not. The reason is because Vengevine was not given the period to deflate its own price. The supply problems associated with all hype mythics never had the time to work themselves out. The hype machine hyped Vengevine, and the price went up, then the card saw some tournament play, and the price went up some more. This is where we are at right now. Vengevine is cresting. Whether or not it will hold its value remains unknown, but the fact that it even commands $50 at the moment is absurd. Lotus Cobra and Vengevine have the same rarity. Lotus Cobra sees more play, and yet it is 1/3 of the value.

The second problem with mythics is the price gap they generate. In general, players have an aversion to trading one card for a large stack of cards. This problem is only exacerbated by mythics. Mythics make normal "chase" rares easier to get by increasing their supply. They make themselves scarcer simply by printing numbers. This makes mythics harder to trade for, even if you are trading those aforementioned "chase" rares to get them. The reason is that it is now easy to acquire those "chase" rares and not easy to acquire mythics.

Worldwake man-lands versus Jace, TMS is an excellent example of this. Because Jace was so obviously powerful and the cornerstone of blue control decks for the next two years, people wanted him. They also wanted the Worldwake man-lands though. Thus they opened lots of Worldwake. This put a huge number of man-lands into circulation, leading to their current price point in the $5 range. This is VERY low for cards of this power level. Their price is deflated by the presence of Jace in the set, because people had to open Worldwake to open Jace. Jace, on the other hand, continues to climb. Instead of having 5 $10 cards and 1 $30 card we have 5 $5 and 1 $80 card. This is terrible for trading.

Mythics as a whole only exacerbate the supply problem they create for themselves, because the wide price gap makes people unwilling to trade them, thus keeping them off the secondary market. This is the core problem with mythics. As a whole, the idea of a new, more uniform system of rarities was not a bad idea. It was also not a bad idea to have four rarities. Even so, Wizards needs to come up with a way to close the price gap between the money rares and money mythics.

The idea to create a new rarity to depress the value of cards like fetchlands was good. I don't hear anyone complaining about $10 fetches. Those only exist because of mythic rarity. They would all be $20, maybe more if they were normal rares. Thus, wizards did achieve their goal of making certain utility staples (lands are the biggest culprit here), cheaper. This is a GOOD thing.

But, in the process, the created the monster prices of cards like Jace 2.0 and his friends. This is, regardless of any deflection by writers such as Max, a problem. Is there some way to accomplish the price reduction of cards such as fetchlands without creating monster mythics? I don't know. This is a problem for Wizards to look at. They aren't perfect, and maybe we should give them some time to work things out.

I'm just throwing an idea out, but perhaps we need to re-institute the "uncommon 2" rarity and change the pack distribution to something like so:

8 common
3 uncommon
2 uncommon 2
1 rare

with "uncommon 2" being equivalent to modern rares and foils taking the spot of an "uncommon 2."

Easier tweaks could include things such as tweaking the frequency of mythics by either decreasing the number of mythics per set or increasing the frequency at which they occur. Wizards could also restrict the card types that are printed at mythic, limiting them to Legendary permanents and Planeswalkers. Once again, these are just ideas. I do not know if they will work, but it is clear something has to be done.