So all my fellow eternal players I’m sure you’ve been hearing about the ridiculous buyouts that have been going on recently. Legacy is always the number one thing on my mind but between Eternal Masters, EE, GP Columbus and SCG Worcester it’s been even more in focus than ever. No matter what the haters say Legacy has been kicking a lot of ass lately but these buyouts are just another attempt to give Legacy (and Vintage) a big old kick in the ass.
Mtgprice did an interview with the man behind the buyouts, you can read the full thing here. In the article he went on to say that buying and selling magic cards is his full time job, his business, he’s trying to support his family and people who are complaining would never have bought those cards anyway. This last point is the one that made my blood boil, Aaron and I are people who own many of these cards, buy these cards and play with these cards. We’re very lucky that many of these cards Aaron traded into years ago before they got crazy expensive but we’ve bought some of these cards as recently as this week. We only got LED’s a few months ago and we got our Moat within the last year. If this buy out had occurred before then we would have never been able to get them.
I’m sure there are tons of people who have been slowly trying to work their way up to a Moat or LED’s like we were and now these purchases are completely out of their reach. I’m scared the holes in our collection will be impossible to fill if he buys out other cards we need but worse I’m scared that this will prevent people from playing Legacy.
There is a lot of drama regarding the Reserved list (which is one of the things this individual is trying to blame) with lots of different opinions on how it should be handled. I’ve spoken a little about it before, and it’s a problem I tend to shrug off. In areas where there is support for the game Legacy is thriving pretty well. I went to a weekly Legacy event on Tuesday that had over 40 people—which was high because of Saturday’s SCG—but is still normally at least 20 people.
Corbin Hosler, who interviewed Craig, had some really strong points that I feel can’t be reiterated enough. First off I know Craig is not the only person doing this and he isn’t solely to blame. I know he doesn’t look at himself like the bad guy but that seems like a cop out to me. Just because you aren’t the only person doing something wrong, that doesn’t make it okay. Also to be quite frank, I found him quite manipulative as he brought up personal issues throughout the interview. It felt like an attempt to make me pity him so I wouldn’t get mad about what he is doing. I found it grossly inappropriate to bring up his mother’s death in an MTG finance article—while it’s a tragic situation, it felt like he only did it to win sympathy points and to prevent his detractors from speaking out. It reminded me of a politician—don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
Corbin goes on to talk about how he sees people struggling to save up for that one last card they need, slowly working towards a deck. That’s something I see quite often at my work too, people trading in cards hoping to get enough store credit together to get that card that they need. Or listening to them talk at FNM about why they’re working so hard to win some store credit. I’m glad that Corbin pushed how important community is over business but I really wish that the community would push to help change. Stores and online retailers can’t decide who they sell to but we can decide who we buy from. Find people and stores to buy from that have a good reputation whenever you can.
Now Martin Shrekli has thrown his hat into this nonsense, apparently he is now saying it’s a joke but honestly I hope this makes Craig realize what he’s doing because while Shrekli might be joking (at least he hopefully he is, he’s already proven he’s a human tire fire) there will be others who aren’t. And it will definitely kill this game if this catches on. We’re already halfway there, between people like Craig and the bullshit that has been going on with people taking advantage of the way Pucatrade works I think we’ve all learned by now that we can’t trust people to be good in this community. And this nonsense isn’t limited to MTG finance, I’ve spoken before about run-ins I’ve had playing Magic and I’m not alone. Corbin pointed out in his article that this community has the potential to do great things but this is only true if we all support it and realize we have to be in this game together.
At the end of the day I don’t really care what Craig’s reasoning is—whether it be business, to stick it to Wizards, whatever. No matter how you spin this it’s bad for players and worse, it’s bad for Legacy and Vintage as a whole. He claims he’s a member of this community, that he’s friends with pros and a player himself, but I’m saying that’s bullshit. If he were a member of this community I’d hope he would at least pretend to care about it. You can’t make any money off Magic if you force it into extinction. As they say, don’t shit where you eat.
Kate hails from Worcester MA and also does a bit of Card Altering. Check her Stuff out on Facebook! She mainly plays legacy and modern though will occasionally find herself playing EDH.