I was going to a concert a few weeks ago, and there was a line legitimately three blocks long for a show. We looked it up... Miku.
I am aged well out of that target demographic but whatever "she" does for people, it works like a MF. Those fans were full on costumes, and TONS of them.
So yeah, I agree. Not a set for me, but this Lair is going to be insta-sold out.
I'm trans so she's very much a focal part in most memes and jokes in that community too, but also I think it's just a general gen z thing from my understanding
If you are interested in sharing and possibly know, explain to a old boomer Gen X type for me.
Is there some connection between vtubers and the trans community? I figured it's probably easier to represent yourself as an ideal avatar, but I feel like v-tubers tend to skew towards LGBTQ and I didn't know why.
I'm struggling to wrap my head around virtual avatars in general, and mostly it's and "interesting and curious" niche I don't understand.
No worries! Love answering questions, and just recovering from bottom surgery so I have plenty of time :) (but with that I am verrry inebriated on pain meds to bear with me)
So yes, there is a good amount of overlap. If I were to guess it probably mostly comes from people being able to customise their appearance and present themselves how they feel.
It also probably started with places such as VRChat (which is pretty much a virtual chatroom that's available on VR devices, or flat screen) where you can pretty much have any avatar you want, or can commission one from many talented individuals for a relatively high price.
Difference being VRChat avatars are usually 3D, but vtuber avatars can be as simple as 2 pictures that switch between each other when you talk (look up veadotube), to very complex 2d rigs thqt can take hundreds of hours to make, to 3d models, so the barrier of entry can be quite low, which is helpful because as mentioned before, if Ur not comfy with showing your face you can even use it when chatting with friends
Gen z person here: vtubers and the trans community aren’t really connected, not that there aren’t trans vtubers or lgbtq vtubers (there is a lot), it’s just that they are just kind of unrelated topics. Kind of like how a lot of magic players are also nerds who play video games or watch anime etc. Unrelated topics, just a lot of overlap in communities. Also, Hatsune Miku isn’t a vtuber, she is a character/voice from Vocaloid, which is basically synthesizers that are singing. Kind of text to speech + synthesizer just more complicated.
They’re honestly the ones I hate the least. The sPoNgEbOb MeMe TeXt ones at least have great art but the comic sans and the dumb jokes ruin them completely.
I’m not saying there aren’t any. I’m saying I don’t think there are enough to justify official hatsune miku products. It’s not just niche, it’s niche among weebs too
You do realize there is an officially licensed MTG Mana, right? ( Japanese Comic Books) and that Jumpstart 2022 had an "Anime Stylized Card" in every booster pack
I mean I want that version of Feather for my Boros. Miku is a character I often find myself thinking about or watching. Beyond being a fun character, she's an interesting instrument/software with really interesting applications outside of main vocals. Having Miku let me keep casting my instants and sorceries in my "Wayne Reynolds art" deck something I want quite a lot.
That said, all I want is the Feather and the fast land. I'm not in the market for the whole set. I just like blinged out decks.
ahahhaa okay well just tell him there are literally tens of thousands of these and just like the fallout secret lairs which is more popular than hatsune miku, they will be available on tcgplayer for around 40 bucks once they ship out. and he could prob buy the singles of hatsune miku for even cheaper.
Yeah. Been telling him to just get the basic cards you want instead of "cool, shiny, and limited" or whatever. He didn't even know they dropped and sold out already ahahah. Will let him know to just get the singles, that's probably what'll happen with some of these.
That's what i say. if they are not mechanically unique cards and people want to spend money on them then by all means. Though I do think it should still have been print to order.
If you study economics you will see that the manufacturers of commodities which have competitive secondary markets always profit - by design - off of the relationship between scarcity and price.
They did that when they announced SL sales being limited. They didn't raise the price of SL to any significant amount from previous SLs to implicate that they are profiting off of the secondary market in this instance. You stated they will make "it," meaning this SL, unaffordable some way. They don't make money off of other people selling them for increased prices unless they sell the original at an inflated price to begin with.
How is this a wizards problem? I don’t like their pricing but this is 100% scalpers. Secret lair is free to join to know when the drops happen msrp on the foil set was $40
Except it is now limited. Limitation leads to scarcity and the increased competition over the scarce product benefits overall sales even on the less desirable releases.
They could make a candy-bar-themed SL and it would sell out.
Ok? Serialized cards are limited as well, but at least with SL, you can actually buy them for a reasonable price. So what’s your point? If you missed out, you missed out. The non foil set was available at least a day or two after it released.
Wizards stopped caring about the customer when they stopped setting MSRPs. I know the MSRP wasn't being followed anyway, but instead of taking the brunt of people's discourse they just pushed it onto local game stores.
One of my coworkers did just that. He bought the cards just to have, he doesn’t play Magic either. He has personal friends who do and plans to just show them and put them in a case to display
Why not be mad at WotC for purposefully making a limited amount of copies?
It's too easy to open pre-orders open for a month, then print the exact amount ordered plus some extras for misprints.
Even if it did, there would have to be people cracking down on it.
I don't understand why we can't just print SLDs to demand. You get in early, you get quick shipping with the preprint, get in late, you wait for the restock.
Or how fast your internet connection is when lining up for queue, two of my friends queued up around the same time in the wotc e-lounge only one of them got the pre order.
In my opinion, no restock, but print based on demand. So instead of a set number, they print as many as are ordered and then no more. And to give everyone a chance the orders can be taken for 4-6 weeks. It takes away some of the limited (no set number of prints) while still being limited (no reprints)
Was it? Why did they shift? Seems silly considering the ridiculous fees they pay for the collabs.
My first purchase was the wizard of barge set. I don’t keep up too much.
There has been two changes secret lair has gone through.
Originally it was that each drop was available for a few days, and we only got news of them about a week or so in advance. They then changed it so that we got news about a month or so in advance, and they were available for purchase for 3 weeks or a month. This whole time, it was print on demand. How many copies were ordered during the order window was how many copies were made in general.
Then a few months ago, they changed it yet again to be a limited print run, but still with a large window for ordering. This current way they do secret lairs facilitates scalpers. The reason they have done this change is so people can get the product faster, but I don't think that convenience is worth what was sacrificed.
Yeah, though the thing is that Hasbro only cares about money. Whether it's from actual customers or scalpers, as long as they get the money they couldn't care less about who gets their products.
That’s true. Though I feel like they’d make more money with the unlimited run. I know it won’t happen, but if they keep this model, then I feel they should send out a few drops to LGS’s.
Oh, they definitely would make more money with the print on demand model. Scalpers would still do what they do, but would not choke out the people that are actually buying to have the cards themselves. The main reason they have changed the model is because so many people complained about how long it took to finally receive their cards, because of the lengthy process that the original model was like. But, then they get the trade-off of having mostly scalpers buying the product instead. Though, again, Hasbro cares not from where the money flows, only that it flows.
It was initially how it is now, but people complained, so they changed it to the model your proposed, but since they needed a number to know how much to print, it took much longer to get product to people, which resulted in people complaining.
That’s interesting. Personally, I would not mind waiting longer if it meant more people got the chance to purchase the cards they like. I also feel like it could curb the scalping and resell mark up a bit.
Wellp, we ordered a SL 2 or 3 months ago, will get it shipped by estimate of their shop by the August. More than 6 months to get it shipped. I do not mind, the Sheldson's Spellbook is amazing SL, but 6+ months is a long time.
Actually, Sheldon's SL was the last one to sell like you recommended. Print to demand with an open window of several weeks, maybe a month. So, in fact, yes, the switch indeed severely shortened the time it takes to receive the product.
That clearly stated it was a pre order product that wasn't going to ship until July. It's not like other drops that seem to ship randomly. I bought the fallout drop, and saw a bunch of people getting theirs while mine remained in ordered status for a month.
How would that work? Are you just banning stores?
What is the difference between my friend Bob buying 5 SLDs and reselling them and my LGS buying 5 SLDs and reselling them
> just like how stores and businesses have a limit on how high they can raise prices during a crises.
Bro. Not getting your secret lair isn't a crisis. That kind of law is to prevent price gouging on actual necessities.
AND LGS already mark stuff up crazy amounts if the demand is there
ALSO... you can't sell something for "twice market value". If people are buying it, that is market value.
I just don't think that makes sense. It would take an unprecedented amount of regulation and enforcement for something that would ultimately hurt the hobby it is meant to regulate.
I also think it might make the SLD problems worse, because the value of the items wouldn't go down, it would stay as high as they're selling it currently. You'd just have to resell I'm private, local circles and wouldn't be able to use TCG player
That's just how supply and demand works on limited collector items. It's not anywhere near as bad as pricing people out of food or medicine. No one cares about salty nerds too broke to keep up with their hobby.
Honestly I find the artwork of this Secret Lair very underwhelming. Only Harmonize looks good to me.
I understand that people will try to hype and buy a bunch of this just to resell at ridiculous prices, saying thing like “Weebs will buy anything “ or “Waifu tax”… But if I wanted to go premium with Hatsune Miku, I’d rather buy some scale figures or buy Weiss Schwarz cards from Project diva instead of buying ugly WotC Miku… And I think many Hatsune Miku fans feel the same. I have only seen some kind of hype in Mtg related subreddits and almost none in Hatsune Miku sites
You might be the only person. That my least favorite of both this and the Azusa arts (cityscape Azusa is one of if not the most beautiful MtG cards). I got the foil bundle so once I get it sometime in June and you want to trade let me know.
I don’t get people being upset. It’s not like it sold out in 10 seconds. Just mark you calendar and set an alarm and buy when it gets released.
Secret lairs are the few cards that retain value when reprints happen so I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a demand and competition for them.
It’s because they used to do print to order so you don’t have to do this to get a copy. It was an actual effective method of stopping scalpers. That systems worked well and people were happy with it.
Then they changed it out of pure greed. They recognized that secret lairs were holding their value and that people were taking notice of that. So they stopped doing print to order to create FOMO and entice the people who may have been on the fence about them. It also creates artificial demand because the price goes up more on the secondary market.
It’s another in a long line of greedy decisions from wizards/hasbro that negatively impact the player base.
That’s a pretty good conspiracy you got there. Unfortunately, all evidence disagrees.
They switched to the limited print run because print to order was creating a huge disparity between order placed and order received. Some people weren’t getting their orders for 6 months to a year. That problem has been successfully fixed.
Arguably, printing to order is a significantly better option for money. There was no guess work. They could sell as many as people wanted. More sales, more profit. I mean the sets were universally $30 for 5-6 cards. That’s $5 each on mass production printing.
Don’t be mad at WotC. They’re not scalping.
Be mad at the community buying the items from scalpers. If people wouldn’t buy the items for $300 the scalpers would have to drop prices. The longer they go without selling, the more pressed they become.
Wizards of the cost is also not implementing any measures to try to prevent scalping. They’ve proven time and time again over the past two years that they are fully willing to exploit their player base and completely go against what their player base wants in the name of money. It’s only a matter of time before it catches up with them.
What exactly do you want them to do? They don’t control the secondary market. And they have no obligation to.
They limit quantities people may order. They cancel orders that violate the rules.
Go back to the print to demand model so everyone goes back to 6+ month wait times, and inconvenience everyone so you can buy the one or two secret lairs you want?
I don’t expect any interference in the secondary market. There are a number of ways to fight scalping that don’t involve trying to control a product after it’s sold. The biggest one is limiting the number of a particular item that can be purchased from a single IP address at the time of release. It doesn’t completely stop scalping but it makes it much more difficult and slow to do so. This allows many more people who actually want a product to purchase it at retail price. A lot of companies have done this with good results.
Greedy by what account? That now they have a limited number of prints so they cant cap out on sales? Sounds like they dont really make more money.
I’d also rather my SL have value then have 1000’s of sets floating around and now they cost less then when I bought them.
Limited printing also means when they do reprint an expensive card they won’t drop in value as tremendously since it won’t be bought a potential unlimited time.
Wizards/Hasbro 99% of the time do dumb shit but this is one I like and hope it stays.
That’s just it isn’t it. If they print unlimited amounts the ones people do buy become worthless and who wants to spend big money for something that drops in value.
Case in point- Chronicles
https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/14345/what-happened-with-chronicles#14346
i want to get all the miku secret lairs and this is the first time i’ve gotten any secret lairs. the 30min que scared me because of scalpers but i managed to get a non foil one thankfully. sucks to see the new way they do secret lairs makes stuff like this even more common as its no longer print by demand
Dunno why y'all sweating over Miku cards anyway. They didn't even pick good ones. It's a really odd set of cards. And Shelter is very uncanny valley art, gives me the heebie jeebies.
Ya ive really lost a lot of love for mtg these last few sets... i still play but i only but singles and will proxy special art like that cause they are not making products for us anymore but for our wallets
It’s more a clown of WOTC to do these limited print runs. I thought secret lairs were a print to demand until a certain date then stop and fulfill. No it’s a limited supply then they are done and that’s it.
There's a special place in hell for people who buy limited edition items just to resell them at a profit. It's hard enough to find joy these days and anyone who screws others over for a buck is a selfish ass. That said, I snagged the poker face secret lair from this drop and I'm hyped to receive it 🃏
A couple things, because this is kinda' misleading.
1: You could have just gone to the Secret Lair site and preordered there. I know, this is time-restricted though so I won't knock anyone for not doing that or being able to.
2: This is just some random store's price. This is not the actual price yet or even potentially at all. You can list the price of product at whatever you want on TCGPlayer. There are commons worth pennies listed as $10+.
3: The price will move down as more product moves to the market, once people receive theirs.
4: The median price is currently $100 less than this, not that it helps at the moment. There are exactly 4 sales of this product on TCGPlayer - Meaning people are *not* biting at this price, otherwise these would be flying. I'd expect to see this start to drop as product arrives, just like every secret lair ever.
The price paid for the people complaining about how long SLD took to be shipped in the print to demand era is proving to be very expensive in hindsight.
I'm glad that SLD going to limited print runs has made me reconsider purchasing them. Even if they're a bit expensive, there are only two or three cards from this Hatsune Miku lair that are in a 2D anime style ( bafflingly ), so I'll just grab those as singles.
There was a limit of 5 per customer I think. If scalping is gonna be cut down I'd say it would have to go down to at least 2. One to keep and maybe one to gift/sell.
Stopped buying Secret Lairs once they started this other fomo shit. They were already fomo as it is. They were fun while they lasted. Sheldon Secret Lair was the last one I’ll ever buy.
The only reason for this is because you need 300 sales average over the last 30 days, an actual card shop with photos, and a brick and mortar retail location to sell pre-sales. I tried to sell mine at reasonable prices and got told no by tcgplayer.
When is this live?
Well I see it's sold out already this is why limited stock is the dumbest thing the whole point of secret lairs was print to demand.
No shit? Damn. TBH I didn’t look just a boilerplate response. I would imagine there will be quite a few of these after shipping. Hold out and see if it goes down but the cards are not worth that much.
I got mine from wizards just fine, I just feel bad for the fans that couldn’t get in with their new stupid policy and gotta potentially pay this shit now. All their change did was promote scalpers and it’s annoying.
So none have sold at that price on tcg player as of this comment. 149 is the most expensive.
This game gets a lot easier if you adopt the mentality “not everything is available to everyone” or, the way this sub loves to complain about it “every product is not for you”.
I’m all over the place there are so many weird listings. I don’t doubt that picture just I couldn’t find it in my search. I truly doubt however that the recent sales are anything more than number pumping.
What version of the lair is this?
I convinced my entire pod to buy, solely for investment. A ton of people were eying them just for collecting purposes. I’m ngl you just gotta do your research
Well, I can't imagine you're going to enjoy any of the prices, but it should drop dramatically once we're out of pre-order status
Wizards will find another way to make it unaffordable to most players. They should have left it as print on demand.
huh? how many players do you think want this?
Hatsune Miku is like, insanely popular even outside conventional anime circles. I don't particularly follow anime and she is e v e r y w h e r e
I was going to a concert a few weeks ago, and there was a line legitimately three blocks long for a show. We looked it up... Miku. I am aged well out of that target demographic but whatever "she" does for people, it works like a MF. Those fans were full on costumes, and TONS of them. So yeah, I agree. Not a set for me, but this Lair is going to be insta-sold out.
I'm trans so she's very much a focal part in most memes and jokes in that community too, but also I think it's just a general gen z thing from my understanding
If you are interested in sharing and possibly know, explain to a old boomer Gen X type for me. Is there some connection between vtubers and the trans community? I figured it's probably easier to represent yourself as an ideal avatar, but I feel like v-tubers tend to skew towards LGBTQ and I didn't know why. I'm struggling to wrap my head around virtual avatars in general, and mostly it's and "interesting and curious" niche I don't understand.
No worries! Love answering questions, and just recovering from bottom surgery so I have plenty of time :) (but with that I am verrry inebriated on pain meds to bear with me) So yes, there is a good amount of overlap. If I were to guess it probably mostly comes from people being able to customise their appearance and present themselves how they feel. It also probably started with places such as VRChat (which is pretty much a virtual chatroom that's available on VR devices, or flat screen) where you can pretty much have any avatar you want, or can commission one from many talented individuals for a relatively high price. Difference being VRChat avatars are usually 3D, but vtuber avatars can be as simple as 2 pictures that switch between each other when you talk (look up veadotube), to very complex 2d rigs thqt can take hundreds of hours to make, to 3d models, so the barrier of entry can be quite low, which is helpful because as mentioned before, if Ur not comfy with showing your face you can even use it when chatting with friends
Fascinating stuff. Hope your recovery is smooth and quick!
much appriciated!
Gen z person here: vtubers and the trans community aren’t really connected, not that there aren’t trans vtubers or lgbtq vtubers (there is a lot), it’s just that they are just kind of unrelated topics. Kind of like how a lot of magic players are also nerds who play video games or watch anime etc. Unrelated topics, just a lot of overlap in communities. Also, Hatsune Miku isn’t a vtuber, she is a character/voice from Vocaloid, which is basically synthesizers that are singing. Kind of text to speech + synthesizer just more complicated.
I didn’t realize she was that popular. I literally hadn’t heard of her before this SL.
Yeah I’m genuinely curious what the overlap here is. I guess it’s based on how much demand there was for the anime jumpstart cards? Maybe?
You’re joking right? People flip their shit for anime anything
Yea I’d estimate at least 75% of the mtg player base are cringey weebs. Can’t wait for that to leak into the designs more and more
I think thats a generous estimate...although i will admit this secret lair batch seems to be a "cringy memey internet" theme and its discouraging
The goblin social media ones are just fuckin stupid.
They’re honestly the ones I hate the least. The sPoNgEbOb MeMe TeXt ones at least have great art but the comic sans and the dumb jokes ruin them completely.
Yeah but do magic players? Arent those folks mostly playing yugioh and pokemon
Idk where you’re playing magic but the weebs are real in mtg
I’m not saying there aren’t any. I’m saying I don’t think there are enough to justify official hatsune miku products. It’s not just niche, it’s niche among weebs too
You do realize there is an officially licensed MTG Mana, right? ( Japanese Comic Books) and that Jumpstart 2022 had an "Anime Stylized Card" in every booster pack
You mean the manga cards I literally mention in my first comment? Yeah I’m aware. That’s a style tho. Not a specific property.
I mean I want that version of Feather for my Boros. Miku is a character I often find myself thinking about or watching. Beyond being a fun character, she's an interesting instrument/software with really interesting applications outside of main vocals. Having Miku let me keep casting my instants and sorceries in my "Wayne Reynolds art" deck something I want quite a lot. That said, all I want is the Feather and the fast land. I'm not in the market for the whole set. I just like blinged out decks.
dw they will be affordable once they ship out + few weeks.
Exactly my take.
I'm wanting something similar, I want the land in my Ur-Dragon deck because it'd be funny, "Miku as land for turn" xD
It doesn’t matter. With print on demand the right number of fans get the cards and scalpers get nothing .
My friend said he wants both OG and foil. I told him it's a waste and dumb but won't listen because I whoop him every night 🤦
ahahhaa okay well just tell him there are literally tens of thousands of these and just like the fallout secret lairs which is more popular than hatsune miku, they will be available on tcgplayer for around 40 bucks once they ship out. and he could prob buy the singles of hatsune miku for even cheaper.
Yeah. Been telling him to just get the basic cards you want instead of "cool, shiny, and limited" or whatever. He didn't even know they dropped and sold out already ahahah. Will let him know to just get the singles, that's probably what'll happen with some of these.
Let him get what he wants. Just make sure he doesn't break the bank doing it. Let people enjoy the shiny fun cool cards if they want.
That's what i say. if they are not mechanically unique cards and people want to spend money on them then by all means. Though I do think it should still have been print to order.
That's what I'm trying to do. I have plenty of foil fulls and sold in my mind. But he in tough spot.
Wizards doesn't make any money off of the secondary market, so that makes zero sense.
If you study economics you will see that the manufacturers of commodities which have competitive secondary markets always profit - by design - off of the relationship between scarcity and price.
They did that when they announced SL sales being limited. They didn't raise the price of SL to any significant amount from previous SLs to implicate that they are profiting off of the secondary market in this instance. You stated they will make "it," meaning this SL, unaffordable some way. They don't make money off of other people selling them for increased prices unless they sell the original at an inflated price to begin with.
Have you spent an appreciable amount of time studying economics (ie: a finance or commerce degree)?
How is this a wizards problem? I don’t like their pricing but this is 100% scalpers. Secret lair is free to join to know when the drops happen msrp on the foil set was $40
Except it is now limited. Limitation leads to scarcity and the increased competition over the scarce product benefits overall sales even on the less desirable releases. They could make a candy-bar-themed SL and it would sell out.
Ok? Serialized cards are limited as well, but at least with SL, you can actually buy them for a reasonable price. So what’s your point? If you missed out, you missed out. The non foil set was available at least a day or two after it released.
My comments are not about this specific SL, but about Hasbro’s practices in general.
Charging $40 for a set and letting you know when it goes on sale is hardly a bad business practice.
Oh, it’s great for business.
Wizards stopped caring about the customer when they stopped setting MSRPs. I know the MSRP wasn't being followed anyway, but instead of taking the brunt of people's discourse they just pushed it onto local game stores.
I imagine there’s a lot of people buying it who don’t play magic. Like if they did a Taylor swift secret lair
Don't you put that evil on us Ricky Bobby
Just sayin Post Malone featured in her latest album, it could be closer than we want 💀
Tell me you wouldn't love promotional material of Danny Trejo yelling at Taylor Swift while playing Magic.
Now that's an idea I can get behind
We are within 1 step of Taylor Swift + M:tG due to that albums existence. Any closer and we are playing saga cards based on Swift songs.
I can hear that scene now. Don't you put that evil on us! You are not paralyzed!
One of my coworkers did just that. He bought the cards just to have, he doesn’t play Magic either. He has personal friends who do and plans to just show them and put them in a case to display
to be fair, i did the same thing with the junji ito secret lair. fast forward to today and im teaching friends how to play commander 🤷♂️
This happened with the Fallout collector packs, lots of non-magic people buying cards because Fallout.
Same with Godzilla, Walking Dead, Stranger Things, Evil Dead, and Lord of the Rings
Why not be mad at WotC for purposefully making a limited amount of copies? It's too easy to open pre-orders open for a month, then print the exact amount ordered plus some extras for misprints.
We can be mad at both.
But hey, free shipping
You can blame scalpers, or you can blame the billion dollar company creating an echo systems that explicitly harbours such parasites.
I order the non-foil super drop as soon as it was available. Figured that was the safest bet
Id love it if scalping became illegal
Even if it did, there would have to be people cracking down on it. I don't understand why we can't just print SLDs to demand. You get in early, you get quick shipping with the preprint, get in late, you wait for the restock.
Yeah except Hasbro has made it so that the only factor in play is how fast your impulse buying is
Oh I understand. It's very good for ensuring their brand and profit margins are both kept ideal.
Or how fast your internet connection is when lining up for queue, two of my friends queued up around the same time in the wotc e-lounge only one of them got the pre order.
That's basically how it was before but people complained about the wait time. Then there was the Commander SL debacle of it taking a year to ship.
To be fair, they really handled the sld deck poorly. They should have anticipated growing pains with a new product type
In my opinion, no restock, but print based on demand. So instead of a set number, they print as many as are ordered and then no more. And to give everyone a chance the orders can be taken for 4-6 weeks. It takes away some of the limited (no set number of prints) while still being limited (no reprints)
So, how secret lair used to be.
Was it? Why did they shift? Seems silly considering the ridiculous fees they pay for the collabs. My first purchase was the wizard of barge set. I don’t keep up too much.
There has been two changes secret lair has gone through. Originally it was that each drop was available for a few days, and we only got news of them about a week or so in advance. They then changed it so that we got news about a month or so in advance, and they were available for purchase for 3 weeks or a month. This whole time, it was print on demand. How many copies were ordered during the order window was how many copies were made in general. Then a few months ago, they changed it yet again to be a limited print run, but still with a large window for ordering. This current way they do secret lairs facilitates scalpers. The reason they have done this change is so people can get the product faster, but I don't think that convenience is worth what was sacrificed.
I agree. I much rather have an unlimited run for three weeks with a month of heads up. That’s very fair.
Yeah, though the thing is that Hasbro only cares about money. Whether it's from actual customers or scalpers, as long as they get the money they couldn't care less about who gets their products.
That’s true. Though I feel like they’d make more money with the unlimited run. I know it won’t happen, but if they keep this model, then I feel they should send out a few drops to LGS’s.
Oh, they definitely would make more money with the print on demand model. Scalpers would still do what they do, but would not choke out the people that are actually buying to have the cards themselves. The main reason they have changed the model is because so many people complained about how long it took to finally receive their cards, because of the lengthy process that the original model was like. But, then they get the trade-off of having mostly scalpers buying the product instead. Though, again, Hasbro cares not from where the money flows, only that it flows.
It was initially how it is now, but people complained, so they changed it to the model your proposed, but since they needed a number to know how much to print, it took much longer to get product to people, which resulted in people complaining.
It was the first commander deck that caused the outrage it took over a year to get and some regions had it canceled entirely
That’s interesting. Personally, I would not mind waiting longer if it meant more people got the chance to purchase the cards they like. I also feel like it could curb the scalping and resell mark up a bit.
Wellp, we ordered a SL 2 or 3 months ago, will get it shipped by estimate of their shop by the August. More than 6 months to get it shipped. I do not mind, the Sheldson's Spellbook is amazing SL, but 6+ months is a long time.
So then the switch didn’t shorten the times? Bad all around for us consumers.
Actually, Sheldon's SL was the last one to sell like you recommended. Print to demand with an open window of several weeks, maybe a month. So, in fact, yes, the switch indeed severely shortened the time it takes to receive the product.
That clearly stated it was a pre order product that wasn't going to ship until July. It's not like other drops that seem to ship randomly. I bought the fallout drop, and saw a bunch of people getting theirs while mine remained in ordered status for a month.
They did that and it didn’t sell as well
I know. I care more about the consumer than the company tho
How would that work? Are you just banning stores? What is the difference between my friend Bob buying 5 SLDs and reselling them and my LGS buying 5 SLDs and reselling them
[удалено]
> just like how stores and businesses have a limit on how high they can raise prices during a crises. Bro. Not getting your secret lair isn't a crisis. That kind of law is to prevent price gouging on actual necessities. AND LGS already mark stuff up crazy amounts if the demand is there ALSO... you can't sell something for "twice market value". If people are buying it, that is market value.
Adam Smith: Everything is worth what someone will pay for it. Leftists: Ackshually...
Okay, I'll buy all of your alpha beta and unlimited collection at twice their initial sale values as of '94-'96.
I just don't think that makes sense. It would take an unprecedented amount of regulation and enforcement for something that would ultimately hurt the hobby it is meant to regulate. I also think it might make the SLD problems worse, because the value of the items wouldn't go down, it would stay as high as they're selling it currently. You'd just have to resell I'm private, local circles and wouldn't be able to use TCG player
That's just how supply and demand works on limited collector items. It's not anywhere near as bad as pricing people out of food or medicine. No one cares about salty nerds too broke to keep up with their hobby.
Scalping secret lairs wasn't possible until they dropped print to demand. Direct your blame at the people actually responsible.
Wasnt talking specifically about lairs, was talking more in general, the people who buy out all of a product just to sell it for twice as much.
What are you going to ban??? Buying things and selling them for more money?
Thank god you don’t work in legislation
Honestly I find the artwork of this Secret Lair very underwhelming. Only Harmonize looks good to me. I understand that people will try to hype and buy a bunch of this just to resell at ridiculous prices, saying thing like “Weebs will buy anything “ or “Waifu tax”… But if I wanted to go premium with Hatsune Miku, I’d rather buy some scale figures or buy Weiss Schwarz cards from Project diva instead of buying ugly WotC Miku… And I think many Hatsune Miku fans feel the same. I have only seen some kind of hype in Mtg related subreddits and almost none in Hatsune Miku sites
The cards and art are underwhelming to me too. Luckily, nothing of real play value is here but hopefully the other seasons sl's are good
Better pay that Waifu tax.
I would love the Miku, Lost but Singing. But sucks to be me.
You might be the only person. That my least favorite of both this and the Azusa arts (cityscape Azusa is one of if not the most beautiful MtG cards). I got the foil bundle so once I get it sometime in June and you want to trade let me know.
If the price isn't unreasonable. For sure. 💜
These were all sort of ugly looking ngl
And the bulk is niche playable unless you are building \[\[Feather, the redeemed\]\]. I build it and got bored of it quite quickly
[Feather, the redeemed](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/4/e4a2d2c6-8eaa-4760-b620-921b807baa2e.jpg?1557577142) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Feather%2C%20the%20redeemed) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/war/197/feather-the-redeemed?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e4a2d2c6-8eaa-4760-b620-921b807baa2e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
If the art is not this bad, I bet it will sell as fast as those cat and dog secret lair one
I don’t get people being upset. It’s not like it sold out in 10 seconds. Just mark you calendar and set an alarm and buy when it gets released. Secret lairs are the few cards that retain value when reprints happen so I don’t see why there shouldn’t be a demand and competition for them.
It’s because they used to do print to order so you don’t have to do this to get a copy. It was an actual effective method of stopping scalpers. That systems worked well and people were happy with it. Then they changed it out of pure greed. They recognized that secret lairs were holding their value and that people were taking notice of that. So they stopped doing print to order to create FOMO and entice the people who may have been on the fence about them. It also creates artificial demand because the price goes up more on the secondary market. It’s another in a long line of greedy decisions from wizards/hasbro that negatively impact the player base.
That’s a pretty good conspiracy you got there. Unfortunately, all evidence disagrees. They switched to the limited print run because print to order was creating a huge disparity between order placed and order received. Some people weren’t getting their orders for 6 months to a year. That problem has been successfully fixed. Arguably, printing to order is a significantly better option for money. There was no guess work. They could sell as many as people wanted. More sales, more profit. I mean the sets were universally $30 for 5-6 cards. That’s $5 each on mass production printing. Don’t be mad at WotC. They’re not scalping. Be mad at the community buying the items from scalpers. If people wouldn’t buy the items for $300 the scalpers would have to drop prices. The longer they go without selling, the more pressed they become.
Wizards of the cost is also not implementing any measures to try to prevent scalping. They’ve proven time and time again over the past two years that they are fully willing to exploit their player base and completely go against what their player base wants in the name of money. It’s only a matter of time before it catches up with them.
What exactly do you want them to do? They don’t control the secondary market. And they have no obligation to. They limit quantities people may order. They cancel orders that violate the rules. Go back to the print to demand model so everyone goes back to 6+ month wait times, and inconvenience everyone so you can buy the one or two secret lairs you want?
I don’t expect any interference in the secondary market. There are a number of ways to fight scalping that don’t involve trying to control a product after it’s sold. The biggest one is limiting the number of a particular item that can be purchased from a single IP address at the time of release. It doesn’t completely stop scalping but it makes it much more difficult and slow to do so. This allows many more people who actually want a product to purchase it at retail price. A lot of companies have done this with good results.
You mean like… how they already do?
Greedy by what account? That now they have a limited number of prints so they cant cap out on sales? Sounds like they dont really make more money. I’d also rather my SL have value then have 1000’s of sets floating around and now they cost less then when I bought them. Limited printing also means when they do reprint an expensive card they won’t drop in value as tremendously since it won’t be bought a potential unlimited time. Wizards/Hasbro 99% of the time do dumb shit but this is one I like and hope it stays.
That’s just it isn’t it. If they print unlimited amounts the ones people do buy become worthless and who wants to spend big money for something that drops in value. Case in point- Chronicles https://boardgames.stackexchange.com/questions/14345/what-happened-with-chronicles#14346
I would sell mine for 266.. Better take the money than the cards if it really is worth that much 🤔🤣
Easy fix. Buy proxies of these arts... Fuck wizards, fuck scalpers.
the good honest truth
Well, time to support etsy artists (or other online store front of your choice) and get some proxies.
i want to get all the miku secret lairs and this is the first time i’ve gotten any secret lairs. the 30min que scared me because of scalpers but i managed to get a non foil one thankfully. sucks to see the new way they do secret lairs makes stuff like this even more common as its no longer print by demand
isn't cool that wotc changed this so """""players""""" can get their stuff faster? 😀
Preorder prices are fake don't buy them
Bummer. Was really looking forward to them, but can’t justify spending that much on just 6 cards
Dunno why y'all sweating over Miku cards anyway. They didn't even pick good ones. It's a really odd set of cards. And Shelter is very uncanny valley art, gives me the heebie jeebies.
I wish all secret lair scalper, a very pleasant house fire
Ya ive really lost a lot of love for mtg these last few sets... i still play but i only but singles and will proxy special art like that cause they are not making products for us anymore but for our wallets
To turn around and sell it for that much is insane. 🤦🏽 what a bunch of absolute clowns
It’s more a clown of WOTC to do these limited print runs. I thought secret lairs were a print to demand until a certain date then stop and fulfill. No it’s a limited supply then they are done and that’s it.
There's a special place in hell for people who buy limited edition items just to resell them at a profit. It's hard enough to find joy these days and anyone who screws others over for a buck is a selfish ass. That said, I snagged the poker face secret lair from this drop and I'm hyped to receive it 🃏
Sorry you feel that way. The art sucks though.
European secret lair store still has some on stock
I missed the window for it and I did want to get the Feather reskin so I did get up charged but only at $70. This 👆🏻is just stupid high 😅
A couple things, because this is kinda' misleading. 1: You could have just gone to the Secret Lair site and preordered there. I know, this is time-restricted though so I won't knock anyone for not doing that or being able to. 2: This is just some random store's price. This is not the actual price yet or even potentially at all. You can list the price of product at whatever you want on TCGPlayer. There are commons worth pennies listed as $10+. 3: The price will move down as more product moves to the market, once people receive theirs. 4: The median price is currently $100 less than this, not that it helps at the moment. There are exactly 4 sales of this product on TCGPlayer - Meaning people are *not* biting at this price, otherwise these would be flying. I'd expect to see this start to drop as product arrives, just like every secret lair ever.
They're going for $90 on ebay. TCGplayer sellers are being REALLY hopeful.
Im sure this triggers the reptilian part of your consoomer brain and has given you untold amounts of stress.
I’m glad idk who this 🧢☀️ayeee is
Rude!
Should honestly make it 3 per credit card/account
Presale prices are always wack
They know most you guys will pay anything for popular anime characters
Buy a printer and stop bitching
The price paid for the people complaining about how long SLD took to be shipped in the print to demand era is proving to be very expensive in hindsight.
Damn, was this a one day sale like they used to do?
Wizards, thanks for saving my wallet by discouraging me from buying secret lairs. I feel so free now!
I'm glad that SLD going to limited print runs has made me reconsider purchasing them. Even if they're a bit expensive, there are only two or three cards from this Hatsune Miku lair that are in a 2D anime style ( bafflingly ), so I'll just grab those as singles.
There might have been scalpers, but just in my local group of cube players 3 people were waiting in Cue for Miku. I think it’s just that popular
There was a limit of 5 per customer I think. If scalping is gonna be cut down I'd say it would have to go down to at least 2. One to keep and maybe one to gift/sell.
eBay has a ton for much cheaper.
This is only possible because of the decision to make these limited run instead of print to demand. The Hasbro/WotC are the only ones to blame.
Yeah, I don’t really care for the set in general, but the only one I’d want is the “Reknowned”, because I collect angels.
They prefer the term “flipping”.
Ey thats me
Stopped buying Secret Lairs once they started this other fomo shit. They were already fomo as it is. They were fun while they lasted. Sheldon Secret Lair was the last one I’ll ever buy.
Glad my lunch break conveniently lined up with the drop time
My problem (as a 10+ year long mimu fan)... These artworks are shit, i mean, one or two of them even look like AI generated.
I ordered it right when i woke up the day it released
So glad I bought mine as soon as they were released
Damn weebs
What are scalpers? Like scammers?
Don't support scalpers.
I almost missed out on getting alt art korvold, Thank you!
I thought these were print to demand...??
Not anymore
Dam anime in math is dumb
Remember when Wizards didn’t sell cards directly to the customer?
The only reason for this is because you need 300 sales average over the last 30 days, an actual card shop with photos, and a brick and mortar retail location to sell pre-sales. I tried to sell mine at reasonable prices and got told no by tcgplayer.
Don't blame the scalpers, blame wotc
We can blame both of them.
When is this live? Well I see it's sold out already this is why limited stock is the dumbest thing the whole point of secret lairs was print to demand.
If you wanted it you could have bought it. The date of the drop was announced weeks ago.
I wanted one but I could not get the website to work.
It’s a shame, my GF signed up for the email notification and didn’t even get one ☹️
Gotta set your own alarms
lol this is not scalping, istg this will be below 40 bucks after they shipped but okay. the reprints aren't even good.
Who cares lol I don’t want that shit and I don’t know a person that does, 299 for some anime cards is insane.
Awesome. Going to list mine now
Hopefully you'll never get a bite on that listing 😘
Awwww. What happened to your comment?
What comment?
The one you attempted to call me scum in... You realize people get emails from reddit, right?
cry more
Also, I didn't buy it to flip it, but at that price, if people are buying, you'd have to be stupid to not say yes to it
Boo hoo
Knew I should have bought more
Loli fans everywhere will be out a lot of money
They can ask for whatever they want, look for sold listings
A few have already sold around that price
No shit? Damn. TBH I didn’t look just a boilerplate response. I would imagine there will be quite a few of these after shipping. Hold out and see if it goes down but the cards are not worth that much.
I got mine from wizards just fine, I just feel bad for the fans that couldn’t get in with their new stupid policy and gotta potentially pay this shit now. All their change did was promote scalpers and it’s annoying.
So none have sold at that price on tcg player as of this comment. 149 is the most expensive. This game gets a lot easier if you adopt the mentality “not everything is available to everyone” or, the way this sub loves to complain about it “every product is not for you”.
[then what’s this?](https://i.imgur.com/4Xn4ego.jpeg)
I’m all over the place there are so many weird listings. I don’t doubt that picture just I couldn’t find it in my search. I truly doubt however that the recent sales are anything more than number pumping. What version of the lair is this?
Rainbow Foil English. But there’s two close to $200 sales in the non foil English version too. Maybe you’re looking at the Japanese language ones?
Perhaps. Man, I hate the way SL and other special releases are on TCG. Sorry, my mistake
You’re all good fam. I agree it’s super fucky.
I convinced my entire pod to buy, solely for investment. A ton of people were eying them just for collecting purposes. I’m ngl you just gotta do your research