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writerkitSome of you may recall my previous discussion of Magic pricing. And yes, I still haven't followed it up with the various other things that Wizards has done that make all of this especially egregious and frustrating. But now they've gone and done something new, which I am again going to try to explain for people who don't have context for this:
The VIP booster packs for Double Masters are $100 each.
Now, VIP boosters at *all* are a new product that are pretty much seen as a blatant cash grab-- and because their contents are different from draft boosters, some people have been pointing out recently that there's also no way to avoid the "these are loot boxes" accusation. There's no *game* there; you can't pick some number of them up and play the way you can with a draft booster. The only reason to buy them is that you're hoping to hit that fancy rare. (Previous products in the category of "fewer better cards for more money" mostly had a lower price tag-- certain Secret Lairs being the notable exceptions-- and *all* of them had non-randomized contents.) They contain 33 cards where a regular draft booster contains 15-- but 12 of the VIP booster cards are basic lands with special art and some that are foil, so it actually only contains 21 cards. Admittedly four of them are are rares (two of those rares with fancy art), and everything is foil-- but a normal Double Masters booster pack has two rares, and a booster box of 24 is the $300 set I was complaining about.
Double Masters is *already* explicitly a Premium Product that's horribly expensive--more expensive than any previous Masters set, expensive enough that most people can't buy it and lots of people were upset by it. This is a product that shouldn't exist in conjunction with it, one that more than anything else illustrates that Wizards is past caring whether anyone can actually afford their products.
The VIP booster packs for Double Masters are $100 each.
Now, VIP boosters at *all* are a new product that are pretty much seen as a blatant cash grab-- and because their contents are different from draft boosters, some people have been pointing out recently that there's also no way to avoid the "these are loot boxes" accusation. There's no *game* there; you can't pick some number of them up and play the way you can with a draft booster. The only reason to buy them is that you're hoping to hit that fancy rare. (Previous products in the category of "fewer better cards for more money" mostly had a lower price tag-- certain Secret Lairs being the notable exceptions-- and *all* of them had non-randomized contents.) They contain 33 cards where a regular draft booster contains 15-- but 12 of the VIP booster cards are basic lands with special art and some that are foil, so it actually only contains 21 cards. Admittedly four of them are are rares (two of those rares with fancy art), and everything is foil-- but a normal Double Masters booster pack has two rares, and a booster box of 24 is the $300 set I was complaining about.
Double Masters is *already* explicitly a Premium Product that's horribly expensive--more expensive than any previous Masters set, expensive enough that most people can't buy it and lots of people were upset by it. This is a product that shouldn't exist in conjunction with it, one that more than anything else illustrates that Wizards is past caring whether anyone can actually afford their products.
