Today, the War of the Spark Mythic Edition went on sale at 3pm Eastern on the Hasbro Toy Shop’s Ebay store. All 12,000 units sold out within five minutes.
Or so we thought. Shortly after 3:05pm, customers began reporting that their orders had been cancelled by Ebay with the message saying, “Your payment didn’t go through, so the order was cancelled.” A few minutes later, War of the Spark Mythic Edition appeared to be back in stock and customers whose original orders were cancelled were able to successfully place orders and received purchase confirmations from Ebay.
However, as people continued to place successful orders, Ebay’s count of items sold continued to climb to nearly 43,000. By 3:50pm, that number stalled—and actually began to decrease—at which time Hasbro made a second listing with just over 5,000 units of War of the Spark Mythic Edition available, which sold out in less than 10 minutes.
These numbers have caused widespread confusion among those who purchased copies of War of the Spark Mythic Edition as to whether their order confirmations will actually result in any product being delivered. When the War of the Spark Mythic Edition was announced two weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast explicitly stated that only 12,000 copies were printed and that it would not be reprinted once those were all sold. It is unclear if Ebay’s count of items sold is accurate or if it includes cancelled orders, but the site reports that nearly 48,000 units of War of the Spark Mythic Edition were sold between the two listings.
After both listings had sold out, Wizards acknowledged on Twitter that there were issues with War of the Spark Mythic Edition orders. They said that they were investigating and would provide updates as soon as they are available.
UPDATE (5/1/19): Ebay said on Twitter that Wizards only offered 12,000 units of War of the Spark Mythic Edition. They also said that the 12,000 completed orders would be fulfilled and any orders beyond the 12,000th would be cancelled. Wizards confirmed that Ebay would be handling the process of contacting customers whose orders will be cancelled.
UPDATE (5/3/19): Ebay emailed customers whose War of the Spark Mythic Edition orders were cancelled saying that “technical issues resulted in the set being oversold beyond the limited quantity available.” Ebay will give all customers with cancelled orders an Ebay gift card and Wizards of the Coast will be sending “something special to every person whose order was canceled.”
Email from Ebay informing customers that their orders were cancelled.
UPDATE (5/9/19): Wizards of the Coast announced that it would be giving uncut foil Rare and Mythic sheets from War of the Spark to customers whose Mythic Edition orders were cancelled.
Meanwhile, War of the Spark Mythic Editions are currently selling for over $500 on the secondary market.
The Second Mythic Edition Beset by Ordering Issues
The War of the Spark Mythic Edition is the third Mythic Edition released by Wizards of the Coast, following both the Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance Mythic Editions.
The very first Mythic Mythic Edition, for Guilds of Ravnica, was announced on September 4, 2019 to a wave of excitement. It was put up for sale a month later on the Hasbro Toy Shop website, with a limit of two per customer. Unfortunately, the site was unable to cope with the amount of incoming traffic from people who wanted to buy the product, becoming mostly unresponsive and eventually crashing. Some customers were able to place orders, but Hasbro emailed those customers a week later, informing them that they would have to repurchase the Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition through a different Hasbro site and would be limited to one copy per customer.
As an apology for the errors processing Guilds of Ravnica Mythic Edition orders, Wizards sent customers Ultimate Masters Box Topper promos ahead of the product’s announcement.
Hasbro took a different approach with the second Mythic Edition for Ravnica Allegiance. In the product’s announcement on January 10, 2019, Wizards of the Coast said that Hasbro would move the product’s release off of the Hasbro Toy Shop website to an Ebay storefront, which could better handle the high volume of traffic the product’s release would bring. Hasbro’s Ebay store didn’t have any issues when the Ravnica Allegiance Mythic Edition was released on January 24, though only 50% of the product’s stock was sold in the first hour.
When the War of the Spark Mythic Edition was announced on April 18, 2019, Wizards said that it would be sold on the Hasbro Toy Shop’s Ebay store, just like the Ravnica Allegiance Mythic Edition had been.
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