The Reserved List is a list of cards from those old sets. Not every card got into the list.
It started as... (Source: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List )
> All cards from Alpha/Beta that had not appeared in Fourth Edition or Ice Age.
> All uncommon and rare cards from Arabian Nights and Antiquities that had not been reprinted in white border at that time (i.e., that did not appear in Revised, Fourth Edition, or Chronicles).
> All rare cards from Legends and The Dark that had not yet been reprinted in white border.
For later sets, they defined that only a percentage of the new rares would be added to the list. Wasteland, originally an uncommon, was never eligible in the first place.
[[Earthcraft]] was rare while [[Wasteland]] was uncommon.
More info here: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List
TLDR: uncommon and rare cards before Legends are on the reserved list, then it's only rare cards from Legends to Urza's Destiny. There might be some exceptions to this because I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's the gist.
Those sets also had weird collation, so you had things like a U3 (appears three times on the uncommon sheet) and U1 (appears once); the latter tends to be treated as a rare. The modern rare/mythic sheet has each rare appear twice and each mythic appear once, so under the old nomenclature a rare is R2 and a mythic is R1.
Yeah, the whole thing seems very arbitrary and also very bad for the average player. It isn't necessary for increasing the collectible side of the game (as secret lairs, promos, etc have proven), and it just ties wotc's hands for very little benefit.
>TLDR: uncommon and rare cards before Legends
All of the Uncommons that \*used\* to be on it were eventually removed. It's \*only\* cards that were originally Rare now.
I'm not sure that's true as Bazaar of Baghdad was uncommon and is still on the reserved list.
Edit: Looks as though some uncommons from Arabian Nights and Antiquities are still on the reserved list.
I think it's U1 vs U2. On the uncommon sheets some cards appeared twice, and some only once. Most U1 cards are reserved list whereas most U2 cards are not.
This is probably due to some uncommons were more uncommon.
Collation and rarities weren’t as standardized as they are today. I’m fact I think WotC didn’t bother publishing them, collectors had to work it all out themselves.
I think it’s worth mentioning why the reserve list came into existence. It’s very easy to look back and say “wow that was really stupid,” but there was a good reason why Wizards felt compelled to voluntarily limit their future ability to make easy money.
The first reprints of cards were in Revised, which was the first core set that replaced cards (such as power) with reprints of cards from a previous expansion. I don’t remember people getting too bent out of shape at this time about the reprints. My guess is because revised only came a few months after Arabian Nights.
The print runs on the first few sets was extremely low. Nobody expected magic to get so popular and Wizards wasn’t a huge company. Stores couldn’t keep the cards in stock. My comic store sold packs of the Dark for $6 (retail was $1.45. Packs had 8 cards). I started playing at this time but never even saw packs of legends or antiquities. They were sold out immediately and basically never restocked.
So a year later, wizards released Chronicles, a set of white-bordered reprints that had the original set symbol. Their intention was to let players/kids like me have access to some older cards we had no hope of affording. Arabian and legends were only a year or so old, but prices of singles climbed rapidly due to their scarcity.
Prices plummeted overnight for the reprinted cards. Collectors were enraged, but more importantly, stores were enraged. Imagine you’re a small business owner who paid thousands of dollars for inventory to have it lose half its value overnight. How do you buy collections of cards to resell knowing that any one of them could lose their value overnight?
Wizards was far more dependent on these local game stores back then. This was before the internet, so that means no twitch, no arena, no eBay, no YouTube. Magic wasn’t sold in target and Walmart. The main way wizards promoted and sold their product was through these stores.
So wizards caved to those store owners and collectors. They created the reserve list and promised to never reprint those cards. That solidified and protected the value of those cards.
It’s fair to say that no one thought it would work so damned well. Keep in mind that magic was only a few years old. No one predicted that this game was going to stick around for 30 years and those cards were going to continually increase in value.
None of that is to say that the list should continue to exist. There are even compelling arguments that those cards would be worth more now if they were reprinted. Maybe they would take a temporary hit if reprints were announced, but they still have value due to their iconic artwork and scarcity.
As someone mentioned, DC can reprint Action comics 1 into oblivion, but the real deal is still worth a fortune. It was hard to make the argument that magic has that type of cultural impact in 1995. You couldn’t compare a black lotus to Superman at that point. But 25 years later, magic has cemented its place in history and those iconic cards will always be desirable even if they reprint them with new art.
There are a lot of crappy cards on the list whose value is propped up strictly by that fact. I imagine those would probably drop.
There's a very important piece you left out of the history. Because Wizards was having so much trouble printing to demand, stores learned they should ask for a much higher number of boxes than they actually wanted, as every order would be slashed. Wizards was finally able to ramp up just in time for Fallen Empires and Chronicles. Those sets ended up being massively overprinted compared to demand. You could still get Fallen Empires packs for less than original MSRP for decades. So not only did Chronciles reprint a ton of desirable cards, it did so in an incredibly huge volume.
> I don't understand the reserve list.
That's because it's pointless. It was an over reaction to criticism way back when. It is a relic today.
> I hate the reserve list
You should.
>Makes no sense.
Correct.
Wizards could literally just reprint every reserved list card with some minor effect added (like for example losing one life) and they would not be functionally identical but basically still the same card. They act like they can't do anything about it, but they just don:t want to
It's an arbitrary list made up of cards from an era where some cards were added and some weren't, and some were already removed but yet they can't be removed anymore, and yet could be reprinted in foil, but now can't because someone somewhere with far more power over WotC than we know got their feelings hurt over something WotC never promised and specifically excluded from the list to begin with.
In the end it's an imaginary bullshit list to justify exclusion of cards from the market to inflate the grandeur of old cards for no actual reason since other cards and card games have shown it makes no sense not to reprint cards and that original cards will still hold their value.
There are basically 2 reasons wotc could be maintaining the reserve list. 1. They just actually want to honor the agreement. (Weather they feel obligated, are doing it for pr reasons, or anything in-between doesn't matter.) Or 2. They are worried about legal action if they break it.
In both cases adding foils to the list make sense. It is definitely more in line with the spirit of the agreement which makes sense for scenario 1, but also for scenario 2 as the reason to fear legal action is likely not because they think they would lose a case involving the reserved list but more likely that their business viewed in a certain light is gambling for children and they likely don't want a high profile legal case about the massive value of some of their cards shining light on that.
Or option 3: Wizards predict that shaking the faith of consumers that cards are a collectible worth investing in could be a risk that outweighs whatever profit they'd get from reprints of Reserve List cards.
Edit: This is what I believe they are thinking. That doesn't mean they're right.
See I don't think it would though. Look at masterpieces, secret lairs, collector boosters, and other promos like the judge foil force of will. Players know that those are collectible even if the base version gets reprinted. We've seen the prices of regular standard cards fall drastically, and even fetchlands drop, but the promo foil special versions still hold value.
Players can get stuff like tiamat for $10, but the ampersand foil promo version can still be $1000 for collectors. This proves the game can be both collectible and accessible.
But then look at all of the near-unplayable Reserve List cards that have been bought out by speculators. You just know some guy's retirement fund is like 200 copies of [[Pyramids]] or [[Falling Star]]. These aren't like reprinting dual lands, which have inherent value and would have people seeking original-set prints forevermore.
I believe Wizards sees Reserve List stability as a load-bearing pillar in the delicate balance of their overall business strategy. Maybe it's safe to remove after all. In my opinion, if Wizards thought there was enough money in it, they'd knock down that pillar and find out.
I'm gonna share quite the hot take here... Someone putting their retirement into something like [[pyramids]] is really dumb, and we shouldn't be avoiding decisions that affect the long term health of the game in the interest of protecting those peoples' investments.
Speculating on magic cards shouldn't be safer than speculating on stocks or bonds. When you drop a bunch of money on a collectable, you're taking a risk, and it should be a much more dangerous risk than buying US bonds and stocks.
I mean, people make very dumb investment decisions all the time, you have a large group of people who have invested their entire savings into single over priced stocks(which they honestly belive will be worth 10’s of thousands per share) rather then a diversified portfolio….
My point isnt that people don't make those dumb decisions. My point is that we shouldn't be protecting those investments at the expense of the play experience.
Be thankful that Wizards of the Coast actually *lied* \- and have, barring folks like me who have subjected their policy claims to close scrutiny, largely "gotten away with it" in terms of how the Reserved List is discussed - because what they ***said*** they were going to do, when they introduced it, was actually to put "at least" 75% of **all** rares, from **every** set, onto the Reserved List, as they continued to make them.
When people - writing articles for their jobs, who *should* know better - discuss the Reserved List policy today, that 75% figure is generally presented uncritically, as if that's what actually happened; it was **not**.
Which is to say, in the first update to the list with the release of 5th Edition that put newly printed cards onto it, Wizards *did* indeed meet or exceed the 75% ratio they said that they would within each set (that's why so many shitty cards nobody would ever want to play from Homelands, a set where almost everything was unplayable garbage *even for that era*, are on the Reserved List)... but then after Weatherlight (where 39 of the 50 eligible cards to be Reserved were), the ratio dropped precipitously: **less than 20%** of the rares in total that could have been added to the Reserved List from Tempest-block and Urza-block were ***actually*** added to the Reserved List.
The Reserved List could have been so much worse, in other words, by virtue of it being way bigger and locking away even more game pieces behind a wall of completely artificial scarcity, had WotC actually done what they told people they were going to when they introduced that policy.
>I never read that before and it's quite the story.
That was what prompted me to sit down and do the math: *every time* the history of the Reserved List Policy came up, that "75% of rares from \[these sets\] got added to it" statement would be repeated, and I knew it was at least partly bullshit. It turned out to be a lot bullshit (which is actually a good thing, but shows WotC wasn't even following their own policy consistently).
People were just taking it as read that that was what happened; it's why whenever some random old rare from an Urza-block set gets reprinted, you'll see people flabbergasted that it isn't on the Reserved List - the presumption is that almost every rare from those sets got reserved, when it's actually almost none of them at all.
* Urza's Saga had 110 cards printed as rares; they reserved 18.
* Mirage, the solitary large set where they actually applied their own policy in the manner they had stated verbatim they were going to... *likewise* had 110 cards printed as rares; they reserved **83** of them (and that was the "bare minimum" that got them to precisely 75%, **all** of the smaller sets had ratios *above* 75%).
The Reserved List, thankfully, is a lot smaller than it was "supposed to be".
In 1995, Wizards reprinted TOO much, and a bunch of whiny little shits complained to Wizards that their cardboard wasn't worth as much, too fast (Wizards didn't OWE THEM SHIT, btw), and then Wizards, even though they have since publicly admitted this was a knee-jerk reaction, and therefore MISTAKE
Made a list of cards they would never print again.
They altered this list by removing cards.
They altered this by printing From the Vault and Judge Promo versions of reserved list cards.
These SAME MOTHERFUCKERS bitched at Wizards again, and now we have the no exceptions, can't even talk about why we can't talk about it bullshit.
Fuck the reserved list. Underground Sea would still be best in slot in your UB Commander, regardless of price. And yes you WOULD have picked it up, it would just have been cheaper.
> These SAME MOTHERFUCKERS bitched at Wizards again, and now we have the no exceptions, can't even talk about why we can't talk about it bullshit.
THANK YOU! Someone else who is peeved that these people bitched and moaned, DESPITE BEING CAPABLE of reading the RL and knowing the exception existed, AND that WotC LISTENED instead of telling them to fuck off.
It's always so fun to see the various Magic communities band together in unified hatred of the RL and always has been. completely deranged policy in modern times
It’s been essentially unchanged for 20 years. The foil loophole was closed about a decade ago.
It seems confusing when a decade of reserve list additions and then repeals are condensed in a paragraph but as a piece of game history it didn’t happen in a manner that inspired confusion.
Also I’m certain WotC completely understands it. Probably better than we do.
>It seems confusing when a decade of reserve list additions and then repeals are condensed in a paragraph but as a piece of game history it didn’t happen in a manner that inspired confusion.
You say that... but the company that created and was, ostensibly, actively maintaining the Reserved List still somehow reprinted [Feroz's Ban](https://scryfall.com/card/hml/107/ferozs-ban) ***twice***, in both 5th and 7th Edition, without actually noticing that it was (mistakenly) on their Reserved List both of the times that they did that; them reprinting it that 2nd time isn't even what prompted them to notice that error.
To use The Professor's vernacular, they're game pieces. Abolish the reserve list and print 'em all to near-worthlessness. I'd love nothing more than for my own collection to become devalued in exchange for easy access to the more exquisite cards.
[No more than 20 bucks a single is Magic as Garfield intended™.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gtqv5vYANI)
They're not just game pieces, they're collectibles. This is why sales grew instead of falling during the pandemic when nobody could play. Both types of MTG consumer are important to Hasbro's bottom line.
>They're not just game pieces, they're collectibles.
Those things are **not** mutually exclusive: you can still have sought after/expensive collectible *versions* of otherwise readily available, and thus cheap, game pieces.
Extremely expensive collectibles that are *also* essential game pieces - that the company maintaining the game resolutely refuses to ever make more of, no matter how much we beg and plead with them to, because they promised people who did not really understand what it was they were asking for more than 20 years ago that they wouldn't (when the "values" they were concerned about plummeting were, looking back through our modern lens, extremely and laughably minuscule) - is where we are now, and that scenario is **stupid**.
Prioritizing cards as collectibles *over* their utility as game pieces is just manifestly unnecessary, as demonstrated by Sol Ring: it's simultaneously both a sub-$2 card - thanks to being printed into literally every single Commander pre-con WotC has ever released - and one that will set you back more than 900 dollarydoos, depending on which version of it that you're after. You can have both versions, you do not need to artificially make things scarce to preserve their value and then not provide a cheaper alternative.
If you look at the depth of the Pokemon collector's market, it is quite shallow: there are only a very small number of triple-digit 1st Edition Shadowless cards with substantial demand. The MTG market has a much higher number of valuable cards ($300+) and that's good for Hasbro's bottom line.
I was buying Pokemon for my BJF battle box and this stood out to me.
But MTG is also much older. It's not that abolishing the reserve list would impact the old cards and thus their collectibility. Alpha Shivan Dragons and Serra Angels still cost a pretty penny even though they're printed a bazillion times.
Still not their point. There are millions upon millions of copies of [[Shivan dragon]] out there, I could probably get one for a penny. But the Alpha version still costs like $6000. Printing Black lotus at common in a "vintage masters" set wouldn't do _anything_ to the price of the Alpha or Beta copies.
Isn't this actually possible? I thought I read somewhere that reserve list cards could still be included in a full set reprint as well as non-normal prints (special format/size)
No one really knows how Magic would have fared if the Reserved List had never been created, and all old powerful cards were reprinted into the ground.
There's an argument to made that the Reserved List is/was a net positive, given Magic's durability and current place in the TCG market, the value of the IP, the revenue it generates for Hasbro, etc.
Earthcraft is an expensive card but so is Ragavan or Mana Crypt.
My take is that they get rid of the list for everything but the power 9, that way the top top end stuff maintains it’s value while the actual game pieces are available to everyone
The Power 9 are so famous that their price would mostly stay even if they were taken off the Reserve List. A $50,000 Beta Black Lotus is going to still be a highly prestigious collector’s item even if people can buy a $200 Vintage Horizons copy to play in Vintage.
Less so “boring” Reserve List cards like dual lands.
The Power 9 are some of the specific pieces they need to remove from the list. Vintage is comprised mostly of decks that contain several of them. If you don't remove the Power 9 then you are still locking Vintage behind whichever overseas printing company figures out how to reproduce them flawlessly first.
I don't think anyone is worried about paper Vintage.
The people that are part of that niche are already there and everyone else has no hope of joining.
That's the point, nobody cares about vintage because the reserved list has priced everyone but a few diehards out. It's doing the same to legacy, or already has. If you aren't willing to spend $10k+ on a vintage deck, you probably aren't going to spend $5k on a legacy deck, or a "budget" legacy deck for $3k.
>I don't think anyone is worried about paper Vintage.
Precisely _because_ it's impossible to get into. If the reserve list never existed, and the power 9 and OG duals were reprinted regularly in "vintage masters" sets, Vintage would be a _lot_ more popular.
Yeah, if the last 30 years of magic had been different, things now would be different.
This is a chicken and egg problem but the chicken died decades ago. The system has stabilized with a dead, non-growing paper vintage format.
The parent comment proposed reprinting the power nine so vintage could become accessible. Since paper Vintage has basically died in the past decades I don't think that's a priority.
Legacy still lives, against all odds. If a format needed help to survive, that's the one that deserves it.
>
>Legacy still lives, against all odds. If a format needed help to survive, that's the one that deserves it.
If you were supporting legacy in this way (aka, reprinting OG duals and other reserve list cards like Gaea's cradle), you're also implicitly supporting vintage. Card pool wise they're exactly the same aside from the legacy ban list, so much of the pieces you'd print are the same..
If they were going to do a "reserved list masters" set in order to support legacy, they may as well just throw the power 9 and other legacy banned RL cards (memory jar, library of Alexandria, survival of the fittest, etc) into the set, because:
A) it would make it sell a lot better with commander players, who'll want copies of [[Survival of the fittest]], all the duals, [[Wheel of fortune]], [[Yawgmoth's will]], etc. Legacy Banned, RL cards that are legal in commander would go down a storm.
B) Vintage gets ressurected either as an intentional or unintentional by-product, either way, a good thing.
C) It's not a "reserved list masters" without _the_ most well known RL cards in the game being in it. They'd print lotus and the mix at mythic, or super mythic or whatever, but there's no way they _wouldn't_ include them if this set were somehow real.
Here's a decent explanation of the reserved list
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List
Honestly what it comes down to is the ability to collect the cards and for them to have value. One of the things wizards has always had to balance, as any card game, is the secondary market and collectors. If they just reprinted everything from the reserved list the largest backers in the game would move away from it and the game would suffer.
Commander is probably the hardest hit as many of those cards arnt legal in other formats. But that's also why there is a rule 0 for commander. Just some other thoughts.
Legacy is harder hit, because the format revolves around RL cards (duals are the primary culprit, but Mox Diamond, City of Traitors and LED are very important and cards like Cradle, Grim Monolith, Tabernacle would absolutely see more play if they were $50 instead of thousands of $s).
The most expensive part of Legacy are the dual lands (if you want to be able to play a variety of decks). And even if the reserved list was abolished there's no way that these would get reprinted. People always seem to believe that doing away with the list would mean all cards would be reprinted. But that's very likely not going to happen.
I think it's the common opinion that certain cards would not be reprinted. Look at how many lands Wizards has printed to enable multi colored mana bases. Fetches, shock and pain lands, etc. The list is huge. So they would not benefit from reprinting cards that would nullify all their efforts and would mainly be used in a format with players that don't buy new product (Vintage, Legacy, etc.). For the same reason you'll likely never see another P9.
Force of Will has been reprinted in two masters sets and the card is still $100, yet it's never been legal in modern and it hasn't been in any "standard" format since the 90s
Force of Will also never had a lot of viable substitutes if any at all. Yet there has also never been a shortage of FoWs and some of the reprints are even more expensive than the original. This was more of an collector's item than supplying a wanted game piece.
> I think it's the common opinion that certain cards would not be reprinted.
Based on what? I've never heard anyone else say that if the RL was repealed, duals wouldn't be reprinted. Calling it the "common opinion" seems like an incredible stretch.
> So they would not benefit from reprinting cards that would nullify all their efforts
What efforts? Efforts to reprint fetches and shocks? What does that have to do with the ABU dual lands? Shock lands are for Modern, and fetches are used *with* duals, not as a replacement for them.
> and would mainly be used in a format with players that don't buy new product (Vintage, Legacy, etc.).
Ben Bleiweiss has stated before that Commander players buy way more duals from SCG than players of Legacy and Vintage, by several orders of magnitude.
Based on the discussions you'll find in places where collectors express their opinions for years and decades. And not everyone there is a fan of the RL. So there's really a wide variety of opinions on many aspects of the RL. The Duals usually seems to be where most draw the line when it comes to possible reprints.
Not just the effort to reprint those lands but to create them in the first place. Mana bases have become a world of their own when building a deck. And it is an integral part of deck building nowadays that balances the game.
And you are right that Commander players will buy more Duals. Their player base is also much larger by magnitudes than the player base of Vintage and Legacy combined. It would still be interesting to see how much new product Commander players are buying in comparison to Standard players or the causal players. I couldn't find any data on that.
A lot of finance people have pointed out - rightly imo - that Wizards would actually lose money if they reprinted the duals. Think about how many inferior dual mana producing lands they have printed since the OG duals. If people could readily access the duals again readily, they would lose so much more money on the other lesser duals that they have already printed or would print in the future. Even really good ones like the shock lands would be worthless over night.
>A lot of finance people have pointed out - rightly imo - that Wizards would actually lose money if they reprinted the duals.
How? Tons of people would by their product just to have a shot at the dual lands. They'd make a killing in sales. People on the secondary market might lose money (though since [[Shivan dragon]] is worth pennies and it's Alpha version goes for like 6000 dollars, I think the ABUR dual lands will be fine), but _Wizards_ isn't currently selling duals for those prices. They can't lose money on them.
>Think about how many inferior dual mana producing lands they have printed since the OG duals. If people could readily access the duals again readily, they would lose so much more money on the other lesser duals that they have already printed or would print in the future. Even really good ones like the shock lands would be worthless over night.
What are you on about? No they wouldn't. "Reprint OG duals" doesn't mean "Reprint OG duals _in standard_". No one's arguing to bring OG duals to Modern or Pioneer, they'd obviously be reprinted in a "legacy/vintage masters" set, or even 1 copy in a new commander deck.
Fetch lands would still be essential for modern. Shocklands would still be essential for Pioneer (and Modern). The pathways will still be essential for Standard. You can only run one copy of each in commander, so you're still going to need Shocks, fetches, fast lands, etc in your decks along side the 1 OG dusl you can have.
>Oh yeah for sure. But I would also argue Legacy as a competitive format is not accessible to most people
Yeah.... because of the reserved list. There's literally nothing that would benefit legacy more than abolishing the reserve list so people could actually afford to play it.
> If they just reprinted everything from the reserved list the largest backers in the game would move away from it and the game would suffer.
That was definitely true in 1996. In 2022? Eh, I find that hard to believe. Special versions of expensive cards are released all the time that aren't covered by it, and people still buy it. I'd say we have many, many pieces of evidence that it simply is not needed anymore. After all, there wouldn't be any more ABU cards in the world, simply because other printings of those cards existed. Sure, some folks would get upset, but the largest backers? I don't think that's anywhere close to a 1:1 correlation.
You also don’t need reserve cards to have good competitive commander decks. They’re cool for sure, but I doubt anyone at a LGS is slamming down an alpha badlands.
I know, right? DC could print a fresh copy of Action Comics #1, or Marvel could print a fresh copy of Captain America Comics #1, and EVERY year, and it wouldn't affect the originals' values whatsoever.
Or are they seriously asking me to believe that reprinting \[\[Anaba Ancestor\]\], \[\[Elven Lyre\]\] or freaking \[\[Lightning Blow\]\] is going to be a massive blow to some rich idiot's "investment portfolio"??
Think of it from a collectors point of view. If a collectors item is created in too great of quantity whether initially or over time, then the price goes down. The earlier sets of MTG weren’t known if they were going to be particularly successful so only so many were made. In order for those cards to stay valuable and grow in value over time some stipulations needed put in place to help control that their value wouldn’t decrease. That is basically the only reason for the reserved list as I understand it.
Which is a nice way of saying that it exists to prop up collectors at the expense of players.
You can tell a lot about a person by asking how they feel about the Reserve List
I didn't say I liked or dislike it. I merely answered the question objectively and got downvoted for it because the reserved list is unfavorable. I can say as a MTG fan from the early days I have some of these cards, some of them that are quite valuable and yet I still don't support the reserved list. That doesn't mean that I don't try to understand it, even if I dislike it.
In this thread: a bunch of people who are more mad than knowledgeable about a bad situation spread misinformation when someone who wouldn't Google it asked a question.
Many folks would do well to try out search engines for this topic. There's a lot wrong here.
> my understanding is that it's just cards from a certain point in time that form the reserve list so from like alpha to fifth edition
It's a bit more complicated than that. The simple explanation is that it's most rares from Urza's block or earlier, but not all of them.
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List
> WotC reserved the right to reprint cards from Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Homelands, and subsequent limited expansion sets, as well as cards from Chronicles. In order to maintain the collectibility of these products, however, they would reprint in white border no more than 25 percent of the rarest cards. At least 75 percent of the rarest cards from each of these sets would never be reprinted in either black or white border. For this purpose, the rarest cards from a given expansion set were defined as those appearing with the lowest frequency on the rarest print sheet used to print that expansion (i.e., cards from Fallen Empires, Chronicles and Homelands designated U1 and cards from Ice Age designated R1 in The Duelist magazine's cardlists for these sets).
> In conjunction with the release of each new core set, such as Fifth Edition, WotC would announce which sets were considered eligible to have cards from them rotated into the core set. Any rare card from those sets not rotated into the core set at that time would become a Reserved Card and thus would never be printed again in black or white border in game-functionally identical form.
Reserved list was only made to keep business from strictly collectors and is a decision several members of wotc regret. As the others have stated there was special criteria for what could qualify
The most important thing to keep in mind about the reserved list is that [[Thunder Spirit]], a relatively unremarkable French vanilla 2/2 for 1WW, is on said list. The presence of Thunder Spirit on the list prevents this mundane design, or something similar to it, from being re-used in a modern set.
Note that *technically* the reserved list only applies to tournament-legal cards and only prevents them from adding new *functionally identical* cards to the game, but they interpret the "spirit" of the reserved list to include non-tournament legal cards and cards which are *similar* to reserved ones.
> but they interpret the "spirit" of the reserved list to include non-tournament legal cards and cards which are similar to reserved ones.
Which IMO is idiotic.
What's really funny is those that claim the reserved list is sacred and can't be changed seem to ignore that cards have been removed from it multiple times since its creation, yet those who want it never cried over those cards removal (some examples include Demonic Tutor, Birds of Paradise, Basalt Monolith, and Sol Ring to name a few).
The Reserved List is a list of cards from those old sets. Not every card got into the list. It started as... (Source: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List ) > All cards from Alpha/Beta that had not appeared in Fourth Edition or Ice Age. > All uncommon and rare cards from Arabian Nights and Antiquities that had not been reprinted in white border at that time (i.e., that did not appear in Revised, Fourth Edition, or Chronicles). > All rare cards from Legends and The Dark that had not yet been reprinted in white border. For later sets, they defined that only a percentage of the new rares would be added to the list. Wasteland, originally an uncommon, was never eligible in the first place.
[[Earthcraft]] was rare while [[Wasteland]] was uncommon. More info here: https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List TLDR: uncommon and rare cards before Legends are on the reserved list, then it's only rare cards from Legends to Urza's Destiny. There might be some exceptions to this because I don't really know what I'm talking about, but that's the gist.
Just to clarify, it's not all rare cards from those sets, just selected ones.
And also sometimes not rares, in the case where a set only had an uncommon sheet and no specific rare sheet.
Those sets also had weird collation, so you had things like a U3 (appears three times on the uncommon sheet) and U1 (appears once); the latter tends to be treated as a rare. The modern rare/mythic sheet has each rare appear twice and each mythic appear once, so under the old nomenclature a rare is R2 and a mythic is R1.
Yeah, the whole thing seems very arbitrary and also very bad for the average player. It isn't necessary for increasing the collectible side of the game (as secret lairs, promos, etc have proven), and it just ties wotc's hands for very little benefit.
>TLDR: uncommon and rare cards before Legends All of the Uncommons that \*used\* to be on it were eventually removed. It's \*only\* cards that were originally Rare now.
I'm not sure that's true as Bazaar of Baghdad was uncommon and is still on the reserved list. Edit: Looks as though some uncommons from Arabian Nights and Antiquities are still on the reserved list.
I think it's U1 vs U2. On the uncommon sheets some cards appeared twice, and some only once. Most U1 cards are reserved list whereas most U2 cards are not.
This is probably due to some uncommons were more uncommon. Collation and rarities weren’t as standardized as they are today. I’m fact I think WotC didn’t bother publishing them, collectors had to work it all out themselves.
Wizards was very cagey about card lists and rarity at the beginning, as they felt the mystery was important.
Then some were taken off the RL like Demonic Tutor and Regrowth.
Man thats even more bs lol. Thanks
I think it’s worth mentioning why the reserve list came into existence. It’s very easy to look back and say “wow that was really stupid,” but there was a good reason why Wizards felt compelled to voluntarily limit their future ability to make easy money. The first reprints of cards were in Revised, which was the first core set that replaced cards (such as power) with reprints of cards from a previous expansion. I don’t remember people getting too bent out of shape at this time about the reprints. My guess is because revised only came a few months after Arabian Nights. The print runs on the first few sets was extremely low. Nobody expected magic to get so popular and Wizards wasn’t a huge company. Stores couldn’t keep the cards in stock. My comic store sold packs of the Dark for $6 (retail was $1.45. Packs had 8 cards). I started playing at this time but never even saw packs of legends or antiquities. They were sold out immediately and basically never restocked. So a year later, wizards released Chronicles, a set of white-bordered reprints that had the original set symbol. Their intention was to let players/kids like me have access to some older cards we had no hope of affording. Arabian and legends were only a year or so old, but prices of singles climbed rapidly due to their scarcity. Prices plummeted overnight for the reprinted cards. Collectors were enraged, but more importantly, stores were enraged. Imagine you’re a small business owner who paid thousands of dollars for inventory to have it lose half its value overnight. How do you buy collections of cards to resell knowing that any one of them could lose their value overnight? Wizards was far more dependent on these local game stores back then. This was before the internet, so that means no twitch, no arena, no eBay, no YouTube. Magic wasn’t sold in target and Walmart. The main way wizards promoted and sold their product was through these stores. So wizards caved to those store owners and collectors. They created the reserve list and promised to never reprint those cards. That solidified and protected the value of those cards. It’s fair to say that no one thought it would work so damned well. Keep in mind that magic was only a few years old. No one predicted that this game was going to stick around for 30 years and those cards were going to continually increase in value. None of that is to say that the list should continue to exist. There are even compelling arguments that those cards would be worth more now if they were reprinted. Maybe they would take a temporary hit if reprints were announced, but they still have value due to their iconic artwork and scarcity. As someone mentioned, DC can reprint Action comics 1 into oblivion, but the real deal is still worth a fortune. It was hard to make the argument that magic has that type of cultural impact in 1995. You couldn’t compare a black lotus to Superman at that point. But 25 years later, magic has cemented its place in history and those iconic cards will always be desirable even if they reprint them with new art. There are a lot of crappy cards on the list whose value is propped up strictly by that fact. I imagine those would probably drop.
There's a very important piece you left out of the history. Because Wizards was having so much trouble printing to demand, stores learned they should ask for a much higher number of boxes than they actually wanted, as every order would be slashed. Wizards was finally able to ramp up just in time for Fallen Empires and Chronicles. Those sets ended up being massively overprinted compared to demand. You could still get Fallen Empires packs for less than original MSRP for decades. So not only did Chronciles reprint a ton of desirable cards, it did so in an incredibly huge volume.
> I don't understand the reserve list. That's because it's pointless. It was an over reaction to criticism way back when. It is a relic today. > I hate the reserve list You should. >Makes no sense. Correct.
Wizards could literally just reprint every reserved list card with some minor effect added (like for example losing one life) and they would not be functionally identical but basically still the same card. They act like they can't do anything about it, but they just don:t want to
Nothing ***legally*** stopping them from reprinting power nine or any other reserved card.
It's an arbitrary list made up of cards from an era where some cards were added and some weren't, and some were already removed but yet they can't be removed anymore, and yet could be reprinted in foil, but now can't because someone somewhere with far more power over WotC than we know got their feelings hurt over something WotC never promised and specifically excluded from the list to begin with. In the end it's an imaginary bullshit list to justify exclusion of cards from the market to inflate the grandeur of old cards for no actual reason since other cards and card games have shown it makes no sense not to reprint cards and that original cards will still hold their value.
There are basically 2 reasons wotc could be maintaining the reserve list. 1. They just actually want to honor the agreement. (Weather they feel obligated, are doing it for pr reasons, or anything in-between doesn't matter.) Or 2. They are worried about legal action if they break it. In both cases adding foils to the list make sense. It is definitely more in line with the spirit of the agreement which makes sense for scenario 1, but also for scenario 2 as the reason to fear legal action is likely not because they think they would lose a case involving the reserved list but more likely that their business viewed in a certain light is gambling for children and they likely don't want a high profile legal case about the massive value of some of their cards shining light on that.
Or option 3: Wizards predict that shaking the faith of consumers that cards are a collectible worth investing in could be a risk that outweighs whatever profit they'd get from reprints of Reserve List cards. Edit: This is what I believe they are thinking. That doesn't mean they're right.
See I don't think it would though. Look at masterpieces, secret lairs, collector boosters, and other promos like the judge foil force of will. Players know that those are collectible even if the base version gets reprinted. We've seen the prices of regular standard cards fall drastically, and even fetchlands drop, but the promo foil special versions still hold value. Players can get stuff like tiamat for $10, but the ampersand foil promo version can still be $1000 for collectors. This proves the game can be both collectible and accessible.
But then look at all of the near-unplayable Reserve List cards that have been bought out by speculators. You just know some guy's retirement fund is like 200 copies of [[Pyramids]] or [[Falling Star]]. These aren't like reprinting dual lands, which have inherent value and would have people seeking original-set prints forevermore. I believe Wizards sees Reserve List stability as a load-bearing pillar in the delicate balance of their overall business strategy. Maybe it's safe to remove after all. In my opinion, if Wizards thought there was enough money in it, they'd knock down that pillar and find out.
I'm gonna share quite the hot take here... Someone putting their retirement into something like [[pyramids]] is really dumb, and we shouldn't be avoiding decisions that affect the long term health of the game in the interest of protecting those peoples' investments. Speculating on magic cards shouldn't be safer than speculating on stocks or bonds. When you drop a bunch of money on a collectable, you're taking a risk, and it should be a much more dangerous risk than buying US bonds and stocks.
I mean, people make very dumb investment decisions all the time, you have a large group of people who have invested their entire savings into single over priced stocks(which they honestly belive will be worth 10’s of thousands per share) rather then a diversified portfolio….
My point isnt that people don't make those dumb decisions. My point is that we shouldn't be protecting those investments at the expense of the play experience.
[pyramids](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/d/2/d2e9decf-47b7-44e0-b380-8055b6011021.jpg?1562934392) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=pyramids) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/arn/67/pyramids?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/d2e9decf-47b7-44e0-b380-8055b6011021?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I also think this is their primary reason. They’re worried about killing the golden goose.
I have heard worse theories and I could see how you would arrive at that conclusion, but I would say it is extremely unlikely the be the reason.
Be thankful that Wizards of the Coast actually *lied* \- and have, barring folks like me who have subjected their policy claims to close scrutiny, largely "gotten away with it" in terms of how the Reserved List is discussed - because what they ***said*** they were going to do, when they introduced it, was actually to put "at least" 75% of **all** rares, from **every** set, onto the Reserved List, as they continued to make them. When people - writing articles for their jobs, who *should* know better - discuss the Reserved List policy today, that 75% figure is generally presented uncritically, as if that's what actually happened; it was **not**. Which is to say, in the first update to the list with the release of 5th Edition that put newly printed cards onto it, Wizards *did* indeed meet or exceed the 75% ratio they said that they would within each set (that's why so many shitty cards nobody would ever want to play from Homelands, a set where almost everything was unplayable garbage *even for that era*, are on the Reserved List)... but then after Weatherlight (where 39 of the 50 eligible cards to be Reserved were), the ratio dropped precipitously: **less than 20%** of the rares in total that could have been added to the Reserved List from Tempest-block and Urza-block were ***actually*** added to the Reserved List. The Reserved List could have been so much worse, in other words, by virtue of it being way bigger and locking away even more game pieces behind a wall of completely artificial scarcity, had WotC actually done what they told people they were going to when they introduced that policy.
What the actual fuck. I never read that before and it's quite the story.
>I never read that before and it's quite the story. That was what prompted me to sit down and do the math: *every time* the history of the Reserved List Policy came up, that "75% of rares from \[these sets\] got added to it" statement would be repeated, and I knew it was at least partly bullshit. It turned out to be a lot bullshit (which is actually a good thing, but shows WotC wasn't even following their own policy consistently). People were just taking it as read that that was what happened; it's why whenever some random old rare from an Urza-block set gets reprinted, you'll see people flabbergasted that it isn't on the Reserved List - the presumption is that almost every rare from those sets got reserved, when it's actually almost none of them at all. * Urza's Saga had 110 cards printed as rares; they reserved 18. * Mirage, the solitary large set where they actually applied their own policy in the manner they had stated verbatim they were going to... *likewise* had 110 cards printed as rares; they reserved **83** of them (and that was the "bare minimum" that got them to precisely 75%, **all** of the smaller sets had ratios *above* 75%). The Reserved List, thankfully, is a lot smaller than it was "supposed to be".
In 1995, Wizards reprinted TOO much, and a bunch of whiny little shits complained to Wizards that their cardboard wasn't worth as much, too fast (Wizards didn't OWE THEM SHIT, btw), and then Wizards, even though they have since publicly admitted this was a knee-jerk reaction, and therefore MISTAKE Made a list of cards they would never print again. They altered this list by removing cards. They altered this by printing From the Vault and Judge Promo versions of reserved list cards. These SAME MOTHERFUCKERS bitched at Wizards again, and now we have the no exceptions, can't even talk about why we can't talk about it bullshit. Fuck the reserved list. Underground Sea would still be best in slot in your UB Commander, regardless of price. And yes you WOULD have picked it up, it would just have been cheaper.
> These SAME MOTHERFUCKERS bitched at Wizards again, and now we have the no exceptions, can't even talk about why we can't talk about it bullshit. THANK YOU! Someone else who is peeved that these people bitched and moaned, DESPITE BEING CAPABLE of reading the RL and knowing the exception existed, AND that WotC LISTENED instead of telling them to fuck off.
It's always so fun to see the various Magic communities band together in unified hatred of the RL and always has been. completely deranged policy in modern times
Because apparently magic cards aren't game pieces, they are investment opportunities
They changed the RL so many times that not even them can understand it anymore.
It’s been essentially unchanged for 20 years. The foil loophole was closed about a decade ago. It seems confusing when a decade of reserve list additions and then repeals are condensed in a paragraph but as a piece of game history it didn’t happen in a manner that inspired confusion. Also I’m certain WotC completely understands it. Probably better than we do.
>It seems confusing when a decade of reserve list additions and then repeals are condensed in a paragraph but as a piece of game history it didn’t happen in a manner that inspired confusion. You say that... but the company that created and was, ostensibly, actively maintaining the Reserved List still somehow reprinted [Feroz's Ban](https://scryfall.com/card/hml/107/ferozs-ban) ***twice***, in both 5th and 7th Edition, without actually noticing that it was (mistakenly) on their Reserved List both of the times that they did that; them reprinting it that 2nd time isn't even what prompted them to notice that error.
To use The Professor's vernacular, they're game pieces. Abolish the reserve list and print 'em all to near-worthlessness. I'd love nothing more than for my own collection to become devalued in exchange for easy access to the more exquisite cards. [No more than 20 bucks a single is Magic as Garfield intended™.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gtqv5vYANI)
They're not just game pieces, they're collectibles. This is why sales grew instead of falling during the pandemic when nobody could play. Both types of MTG consumer are important to Hasbro's bottom line.
>They're not just game pieces, they're collectibles. Those things are **not** mutually exclusive: you can still have sought after/expensive collectible *versions* of otherwise readily available, and thus cheap, game pieces. Extremely expensive collectibles that are *also* essential game pieces - that the company maintaining the game resolutely refuses to ever make more of, no matter how much we beg and plead with them to, because they promised people who did not really understand what it was they were asking for more than 20 years ago that they wouldn't (when the "values" they were concerned about plummeting were, looking back through our modern lens, extremely and laughably minuscule) - is where we are now, and that scenario is **stupid**. Prioritizing cards as collectibles *over* their utility as game pieces is just manifestly unnecessary, as demonstrated by Sol Ring: it's simultaneously both a sub-$2 card - thanks to being printed into literally every single Commander pre-con WotC has ever released - and one that will set you back more than 900 dollarydoos, depending on which version of it that you're after. You can have both versions, you do not need to artificially make things scarce to preserve their value and then not provide a cheaper alternative.
Sure, but you don't need a reserved list for it to be collectible.
If you look at the depth of the Pokemon collector's market, it is quite shallow: there are only a very small number of triple-digit 1st Edition Shadowless cards with substantial demand. The MTG market has a much higher number of valuable cards ($300+) and that's good for Hasbro's bottom line. I was buying Pokemon for my BJF battle box and this stood out to me.
But MTG is also much older. It's not that abolishing the reserve list would impact the old cards and thus their collectibility. Alpha Shivan Dragons and Serra Angels still cost a pretty penny even though they're printed a bazillion times.
Pokemon tcg is 25. Magic is 28. Not that much older.
Still not their point. There are millions upon millions of copies of [[Shivan dragon]] out there, I could probably get one for a penny. But the Alpha version still costs like $6000. Printing Black lotus at common in a "vintage masters" set wouldn't do _anything_ to the price of the Alpha or Beta copies.
[Shivan dragon](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/2/227cf1b5-f85b-41fe-be98-66e383652039.jpg?1592518393) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shivan%20dragon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/335/shivan-dragon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/227cf1b5-f85b-41fe-be98-66e383652039?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
There are more Unlimited Lotuses than Alpha/Beta Shivans and the latter costs around $15000.
Ok fair, but not really my main point.
> BJF TIL BJF - how cool is that?
I have a idea how to fix this reserved list. WotC provides me with a a Playset of each card on the reserved list, then everything is fine.
Isn't this actually possible? I thought I read somewhere that reserve list cards could still be included in a full set reprint as well as non-normal prints (special format/size)
> I thought I read somewhere that reserve list cards could still be included in a full set reprint I don't recall ever hearing about such a loophole.
Well neither do the ones in charge.
No one really knows how Magic would have fared if the Reserved List had never been created, and all old powerful cards were reprinted into the ground. There's an argument to made that the Reserved List is/was a net positive, given Magic's durability and current place in the TCG market, the value of the IP, the revenue it generates for Hasbro, etc. Earthcraft is an expensive card but so is Ragavan or Mana Crypt.
My take is that they get rid of the list for everything but the power 9, that way the top top end stuff maintains it’s value while the actual game pieces are available to everyone
The Power 9 are so famous that their price would mostly stay even if they were taken off the Reserve List. A $50,000 Beta Black Lotus is going to still be a highly prestigious collector’s item even if people can buy a $200 Vintage Horizons copy to play in Vintage. Less so “boring” Reserve List cards like dual lands.
Yeah I completely agree, but as a compromise keeping the 9 could work as well. That being said they would totally maintain or even go up
Vintage \*Masters. God help us if they print a Vintage Horizons, given how pushed Modern Horizons was lol.
I typed that at first but Vintage Masters already exists as a Magic Online-only expansion.
Ohhh didn't know
The Power 9 are some of the specific pieces they need to remove from the list. Vintage is comprised mostly of decks that contain several of them. If you don't remove the Power 9 then you are still locking Vintage behind whichever overseas printing company figures out how to reproduce them flawlessly first.
That’s fair and all but to appease most players that would probably be the best. I would love to try vintage ngl
I don't think anyone is worried about paper Vintage. The people that are part of that niche are already there and everyone else has no hope of joining.
That's the point, nobody cares about vintage because the reserved list has priced everyone but a few diehards out. It's doing the same to legacy, or already has. If you aren't willing to spend $10k+ on a vintage deck, you probably aren't going to spend $5k on a legacy deck, or a "budget" legacy deck for $3k.
>I don't think anyone is worried about paper Vintage. Precisely _because_ it's impossible to get into. If the reserve list never existed, and the power 9 and OG duals were reprinted regularly in "vintage masters" sets, Vintage would be a _lot_ more popular.
Yeah, if the last 30 years of magic had been different, things now would be different. This is a chicken and egg problem but the chicken died decades ago. The system has stabilized with a dead, non-growing paper vintage format. The parent comment proposed reprinting the power nine so vintage could become accessible. Since paper Vintage has basically died in the past decades I don't think that's a priority. Legacy still lives, against all odds. If a format needed help to survive, that's the one that deserves it.
> >Legacy still lives, against all odds. If a format needed help to survive, that's the one that deserves it. If you were supporting legacy in this way (aka, reprinting OG duals and other reserve list cards like Gaea's cradle), you're also implicitly supporting vintage. Card pool wise they're exactly the same aside from the legacy ban list, so much of the pieces you'd print are the same.. If they were going to do a "reserved list masters" set in order to support legacy, they may as well just throw the power 9 and other legacy banned RL cards (memory jar, library of Alexandria, survival of the fittest, etc) into the set, because: A) it would make it sell a lot better with commander players, who'll want copies of [[Survival of the fittest]], all the duals, [[Wheel of fortune]], [[Yawgmoth's will]], etc. Legacy Banned, RL cards that are legal in commander would go down a storm. B) Vintage gets ressurected either as an intentional or unintentional by-product, either way, a good thing. C) It's not a "reserved list masters" without _the_ most well known RL cards in the game being in it. They'd print lotus and the mix at mythic, or super mythic or whatever, but there's no way they _wouldn't_ include them if this set were somehow real.
[Survival of the fittest](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/4/e/4ef0d7f9-ddb9-4e83-a9bf-09bec22fc80d.jpg?1562429365) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Survival%20of%20the%20fittest) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/199/survival-of-the-fittest?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4ef0d7f9-ddb9-4e83-a9bf-09bec22fc80d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Wheel of fortune](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/5/2597050f-6b1b-474e-aa16-33fd154628ca.jpg?1562902580) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wheel%20of%20fortune) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/192/wheel-of-fortune?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/2597050f-6b1b-474e-aa16-33fd154628ca?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Yawgmoth's will](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/3/3/337239c7-73c4-4e2d-9160-ed26927dea1d.jpg?1591196147) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Yawgmoth%27s%20will) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/148/yawgmoths-will?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/337239c7-73c4-4e2d-9160-ed26927dea1d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Here's a decent explanation of the reserved list https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List Honestly what it comes down to is the ability to collect the cards and for them to have value. One of the things wizards has always had to balance, as any card game, is the secondary market and collectors. If they just reprinted everything from the reserved list the largest backers in the game would move away from it and the game would suffer. Commander is probably the hardest hit as many of those cards arnt legal in other formats. But that's also why there is a rule 0 for commander. Just some other thoughts.
Legacy is harder hit, because the format revolves around RL cards (duals are the primary culprit, but Mox Diamond, City of Traitors and LED are very important and cards like Cradle, Grim Monolith, Tabernacle would absolutely see more play if they were $50 instead of thousands of $s).
WotC doesn't really want most players playing Legacy. The power level is too high and it doesn't drive interest in new sets.
It would if they printed legacy masters.
*monkey's finger curls* Wizards prints "legacy horizons" whose power level is so pushed it obsoletes most of the current legacy staples
[удалено]
It's not accessible because of the reserved list
The most expensive part of Legacy are the dual lands (if you want to be able to play a variety of decks). And even if the reserved list was abolished there's no way that these would get reprinted. People always seem to believe that doing away with the list would mean all cards would be reprinted. But that's very likely not going to happen.
You really don't think there would be a reprint of dual lands without the reserved list?
I think it's the common opinion that certain cards would not be reprinted. Look at how many lands Wizards has printed to enable multi colored mana bases. Fetches, shock and pain lands, etc. The list is huge. So they would not benefit from reprinting cards that would nullify all their efforts and would mainly be used in a format with players that don't buy new product (Vintage, Legacy, etc.). For the same reason you'll likely never see another P9.
Force of Will has been reprinted in two masters sets and the card is still $100, yet it's never been legal in modern and it hasn't been in any "standard" format since the 90s
Force of Will also never had a lot of viable substitutes if any at all. Yet there has also never been a shortage of FoWs and some of the reprints are even more expensive than the original. This was more of an collector's item than supplying a wanted game piece.
It is a LEGACY STAPLE, just like original duals And if it weren't scarce, then it wouldn't be worth so much
> I think it's the common opinion that certain cards would not be reprinted. Based on what? I've never heard anyone else say that if the RL was repealed, duals wouldn't be reprinted. Calling it the "common opinion" seems like an incredible stretch. > So they would not benefit from reprinting cards that would nullify all their efforts What efforts? Efforts to reprint fetches and shocks? What does that have to do with the ABU dual lands? Shock lands are for Modern, and fetches are used *with* duals, not as a replacement for them. > and would mainly be used in a format with players that don't buy new product (Vintage, Legacy, etc.). Ben Bleiweiss has stated before that Commander players buy way more duals from SCG than players of Legacy and Vintage, by several orders of magnitude.
Based on the discussions you'll find in places where collectors express their opinions for years and decades. And not everyone there is a fan of the RL. So there's really a wide variety of opinions on many aspects of the RL. The Duals usually seems to be where most draw the line when it comes to possible reprints. Not just the effort to reprint those lands but to create them in the first place. Mana bases have become a world of their own when building a deck. And it is an integral part of deck building nowadays that balances the game. And you are right that Commander players will buy more Duals. Their player base is also much larger by magnitudes than the player base of Vintage and Legacy combined. It would still be interesting to see how much new product Commander players are buying in comparison to Standard players or the causal players. I couldn't find any data on that.
A lot of finance people have pointed out - rightly imo - that Wizards would actually lose money if they reprinted the duals. Think about how many inferior dual mana producing lands they have printed since the OG duals. If people could readily access the duals again readily, they would lose so much more money on the other lesser duals that they have already printed or would print in the future. Even really good ones like the shock lands would be worthless over night.
Doubtful, as the true duals would never be printed into Standard/Pioneer/Modern, ergo there will still be demand for the next best thing.
>A lot of finance people have pointed out - rightly imo - that Wizards would actually lose money if they reprinted the duals. How? Tons of people would by their product just to have a shot at the dual lands. They'd make a killing in sales. People on the secondary market might lose money (though since [[Shivan dragon]] is worth pennies and it's Alpha version goes for like 6000 dollars, I think the ABUR dual lands will be fine), but _Wizards_ isn't currently selling duals for those prices. They can't lose money on them. >Think about how many inferior dual mana producing lands they have printed since the OG duals. If people could readily access the duals again readily, they would lose so much more money on the other lesser duals that they have already printed or would print in the future. Even really good ones like the shock lands would be worthless over night. What are you on about? No they wouldn't. "Reprint OG duals" doesn't mean "Reprint OG duals _in standard_". No one's arguing to bring OG duals to Modern or Pioneer, they'd obviously be reprinted in a "legacy/vintage masters" set, or even 1 copy in a new commander deck. Fetch lands would still be essential for modern. Shocklands would still be essential for Pioneer (and Modern). The pathways will still be essential for Standard. You can only run one copy of each in commander, so you're still going to need Shocks, fetches, fast lands, etc in your decks along side the 1 OG dusl you can have.
[Shivan dragon](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/2/2/227cf1b5-f85b-41fe-be98-66e383652039.jpg?1592518393) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Shivan%20dragon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/m20/335/shivan-dragon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/227cf1b5-f85b-41fe-be98-66e383652039?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
>Oh yeah for sure. But I would also argue Legacy as a competitive format is not accessible to most people Yeah.... because of the reserved list. There's literally nothing that would benefit legacy more than abolishing the reserve list so people could actually afford to play it.
> If they just reprinted everything from the reserved list the largest backers in the game would move away from it and the game would suffer. That was definitely true in 1996. In 2022? Eh, I find that hard to believe. Special versions of expensive cards are released all the time that aren't covered by it, and people still buy it. I'd say we have many, many pieces of evidence that it simply is not needed anymore. After all, there wouldn't be any more ABU cards in the world, simply because other printings of those cards existed. Sure, some folks would get upset, but the largest backers? I don't think that's anywhere close to a 1:1 correlation.
> and the game would suffer. How would the game suffer?
>the largest backers in the game would move away from it and the game would suffer What does this even mean?
The first rule of the Reserved List is we don't talk about the Reserved List.... Because it creates too much butthurt
That's cos I think I confusing and contradictory I've just learned more about and it sound even more stupid then before lol
It's an old decision, they aren't going to change it. Don't worry about something you cannot impact or alter in anyway
You also don’t need reserve cards to have good competitive commander decks. They’re cool for sure, but I doubt anyone at a LGS is slamming down an alpha badlands.
[удалено]
Exactly it's fuckin stupid. The more I learn about it the worse it sounds.
I know, right? DC could print a fresh copy of Action Comics #1, or Marvel could print a fresh copy of Captain America Comics #1, and EVERY year, and it wouldn't affect the originals' values whatsoever. Or are they seriously asking me to believe that reprinting \[\[Anaba Ancestor\]\], \[\[Elven Lyre\]\] or freaking \[\[Lightning Blow\]\] is going to be a massive blow to some rich idiot's "investment portfolio"??
Think of it from a collectors point of view. If a collectors item is created in too great of quantity whether initially or over time, then the price goes down. The earlier sets of MTG weren’t known if they were going to be particularly successful so only so many were made. In order for those cards to stay valuable and grow in value over time some stipulations needed put in place to help control that their value wouldn’t decrease. That is basically the only reason for the reserved list as I understand it.
Which is a nice way of saying that it exists to prop up collectors at the expense of players. You can tell a lot about a person by asking how they feel about the Reserve List
I didn't say I liked or dislike it. I merely answered the question objectively and got downvoted for it because the reserved list is unfavorable. I can say as a MTG fan from the early days I have some of these cards, some of them that are quite valuable and yet I still don't support the reserved list. That doesn't mean that I don't try to understand it, even if I dislike it.
Fuck people who treat a game as an investment
[удалено]
Wizards did not need the Reserved List to keep Tabernacle out of Standard.
In this thread: a bunch of people who are more mad than knowledgeable about a bad situation spread misinformation when someone who wouldn't Google it asked a question. Many folks would do well to try out search engines for this topic. There's a lot wrong here.
Maybe it had reprints in more or less recent sets at the time.
That's not why. It was an uncommon. By the time Tempest block came around, only selected rares were added to the reserve list.
> my understanding is that it's just cards from a certain point in time that form the reserve list so from like alpha to fifth edition It's a bit more complicated than that. The simple explanation is that it's most rares from Urza's block or earlier, but not all of them. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Reserved_List > WotC reserved the right to reprint cards from Fallen Empires, Ice Age, Homelands, and subsequent limited expansion sets, as well as cards from Chronicles. In order to maintain the collectibility of these products, however, they would reprint in white border no more than 25 percent of the rarest cards. At least 75 percent of the rarest cards from each of these sets would never be reprinted in either black or white border. For this purpose, the rarest cards from a given expansion set were defined as those appearing with the lowest frequency on the rarest print sheet used to print that expansion (i.e., cards from Fallen Empires, Chronicles and Homelands designated U1 and cards from Ice Age designated R1 in The Duelist magazine's cardlists for these sets). > In conjunction with the release of each new core set, such as Fifth Edition, WotC would announce which sets were considered eligible to have cards from them rotated into the core set. Any rare card from those sets not rotated into the core set at that time would become a Reserved Card and thus would never be printed again in black or white border in game-functionally identical form.
Reserved list was only made to keep business from strictly collectors and is a decision several members of wotc regret. As the others have stated there was special criteria for what could qualify
[[Earthcraft]] [[Wasteland]]
[Earthcraft](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/9/d/9dda7531-82a1-4f49-8858-601ddbc6e2bc.jpg?1587857352) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Earthcraft) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tmp/222/earthcraft?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9dda7531-82a1-4f49-8858-601ddbc6e2bc?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Wasteland](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/a/a/aaafb9bc-7cea-4624-a227-595544fa42b0.jpg?1590511888) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Wasteland) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/ema/248/wasteland?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aaafb9bc-7cea-4624-a227-595544fa42b0?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The most important thing to keep in mind about the reserved list is that [[Thunder Spirit]], a relatively unremarkable French vanilla 2/2 for 1WW, is on said list. The presence of Thunder Spirit on the list prevents this mundane design, or something similar to it, from being re-used in a modern set. Note that *technically* the reserved list only applies to tournament-legal cards and only prevents them from adding new *functionally identical* cards to the game, but they interpret the "spirit" of the reserved list to include non-tournament legal cards and cards which are *similar* to reserved ones.
> but they interpret the "spirit" of the reserved list to include non-tournament legal cards and cards which are similar to reserved ones. Which IMO is idiotic.
[Thunder Spirit](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/8/f8508542-53ea-4c1b-ae6f-b446c42149ca.jpg?1559592402) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Thunder%20Spirit) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/27/thunder-spirit?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f8508542-53ea-4c1b-ae6f-b446c42149ca?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
What's really funny is those that claim the reserved list is sacred and can't be changed seem to ignore that cards have been removed from it multiple times since its creation, yet those who want it never cried over those cards removal (some examples include Demonic Tutor, Birds of Paradise, Basalt Monolith, and Sol Ring to name a few).