How This Card Game Accidentally Became a Stock Market

[@stigmaoftherose]

The 3 million dollar sale for that black lotus was considered a fraudulent sale. It was a new grading company "selling" it to someone else in the company to falsely legitimize their grading service.

[@Leyrann]

So what you're saying is it's basically art?

[@MultiKbarry]

@@Leyrann It even has the same issues if you try stealing art and selling it.

[@PrincessFelicie]

Ah, right out of the NFT techbro's playbook.

[@arcticthehunter7099]

That would never happen in a real stock market, of course

[@lordhosk]

The same thing is true of the previous high value Black Lotus. There are three card stores that have sold the same grade 10 Alpha Black lotus to each other 6 times, each time increasing the sale price by 200-500% each time. then 30 months later like clockwork, they sell it to the next store in the triangle and announce the price has increased yet again! getting the two stores names in all the blogs and search results, calls from Daytime TV doing special interest stories for about 6 months... then they wait... and "Sell" it again A sells to B B sells to C C sells back to A. Its unlikely any money has ever changed hands between the stores.

[@MujaffaElAchmedAlSharif]

I imagine Sam sounds like he does because he has been yelling at Ben and Adam. Not in a negative sense, just "Look at that!"

[@sirBrouwer]

no he is just entering puberty. he is becoming a big boy.

[@fndjfgsdk]

@@sirBrouwerBearded Sam when?

[@andyburchette3545]

Black Lotus very much can you win you a game; a tournament game at that. In 2019 there was a Vintage Champs top 8 game won by a player who turned black lotus into a 3/3 elk with Oko and swung for game.

[@TreetopCanopy]

That's probably the funniest way to win with a Black Lotus

[@alexanderf8451]

Oko is truly a menace.

[@accountid9681]

I remember the summer of oko, twas funny as hell

[@zimbu_]

Finally a thing AI can't beat humans at: cheating at shuffling.

[@gm2407]

Step 1 research cards worth having for a nice set of decks for you and your friends to play. Step 2 print off unofficial cards for home use only. No artwork. Stated unofficial on the back. All the fun, minimal expense. No profit intended.

[@predoarantes4641]

You don't even have to print the good cards. I have a set of 10 decks made entirely of cards that are less than $2 and we have fun all the same, every week. And I still get to build decks around a fun restriction

[@wi11yum7]

As an avid MTG and commander player : Just Proxy the expensive stuff, nobody cares. Cardboard was never meant to be this expensive.

[@zwojack7285]

proxy?

[@AlKohaiMusic]

​@@zwojack7285proxy is just taking a blank or cheap card and sharpie-ing the name and effects of an expensive or missing card for deck

[@caltheuntitled8021]

@@zwojack7285Print them out yourself

[@dapperpotatoes8473]

@@zwojack7285a home-made substitute for a card, it represents what the card does in every way without actually being it physically. Most are regular printed versions of cards, some people like to make custom artwork for them.

[@stokeseta7107]

@@zwojack7285think quality copies

[@sentientwaffle535]

Small correction, the Commander RC isn't 30 years old, the game itself is. Commander is about that old, but the RC is only ~18 years old

[@andrewrockwell1282]

Me reading the comments to find this correction before I comment myself. 😊

[@jakegunning61]

Commander Is not almost 30 years old

[@jakegunning61]

It was early 2000s for commander

[@sentientwaffle535]

Wikipedia tells me '1996' for the recorded date, but that does sound fishy. Commander is, if I would hazard a guess, *maybe* 20 years old

[@xLochNessie]

the one ring is a huge advantage in most formats it's legal in other than legacy or vintage.(and vintage has black lotus legal)

[@aliens858]

The one ring is still heavily played in vintage

[@Anonlyso]

Yeah one ring mightve been one of the worst examples cuz it is both "generically good in everything" and also limited via collaboration premium. Pretty much any secret lair would've been a better example of "paying extra just for bling" minus the obvious part that many already expensive stuff is planted alongside foiled out draft chaff

[@Shadow1patin]

Even the cheapest One Ring printing is $120. The card is likely getting banned in one or more formats come December. That card is nuts not mediocre like you make it sound lol.

[@re2pect470]

It’s going for 60 for the promo version right now, 95 at its peak like a month ago

[@soasertsus]

the one ring is broken actually it's very heavily played in every format its legal in and people regularly ask for it to be banned

[@Scienceboy0]

As a player of Magic the Gathering, this is a pretty good quick introduction to the market! I think the key thing here is to highlight that the prices only get so high because the game itself if really well made and designed. If people stop playing because the game is bad, the card prices would obviously tank because no one's playing anymore. There are also many formats like Pauper that you can play well in with only cheap cards, because they revolve around playing only the cards that have been printed into the ground with hundreds of thousands of copies out there.

[@justfrankjustdank2538]

oh god, this video is going to take up a big part of the mistakes video for this year

[@kenroth8857]

People ask me how I ended up getting such a large collection. Was it having owned a game store in the past? Nah. It was starting to play in 1993 and just being a hoarder. If you don't get rid of cards, you'll always be able to build any deck you want! Oh and accidentally be able to buy a house with them or some silliness.

[@pharynx007]

I bought a friends entire collection. He set the price at 500. He had several revised dual lands, and on card that at the time, was worth ~300. That card is now worth anywhere from 600-2000.

[@GospelOfIHM]

amy should have done some deep digging in that 25 cent bin. i used to scavenge those for deals, and i found an italian copy of hazezon tamar (worth maybe around 100ish, more if it had been english) i can't wait for there to be a challenge on jet lag where you have to play magic the gathering

[@deathkitty23]

Calling the one ring "not that big of an advantage" is a pretty hot take as it's the most played cards in Modern (with a 43% share of the metagame) and has a pricetag of $100 a pop.

[@dimethylhexane]

i am very sorry but 7:44 oh no he turned into a bird

[@Tris_muc]

Sounds like he’s sick

[@gargravarr2]

Meanwhile, in Yu-Gi-Oh, Konami of America has adopted a simple, effective strategy. 1. Design a super powerful new card every competitive deck absolutely has to run 3 of. 2. Make it a shortprint secret rare that is found, on average, once in 30 packs. 3. Now, you are guaranteed to sell 90 packs per competitive player. Assuming 5000 competitive players and a price of $5 per pack, that's a guaranteed $2.25 million in revenue. 4. Of course, most players will buy the card on the secondary market for a price of $130 per card. Lower than the expected $150+overhead because some of the pack filler cards can still be sold for some money.

[@RickyRister]

5. Ban the card, but only after it already made the format unplayable for a year and there's a new busted archetype that they want to push

[@Sirdinosaur1104]

Half as Interesting: “This card game became a stock market!” MTG Players: “Always has been”

[@EATMOBAKON]

Hai is lowkey the most versatile channel I know. They cover my favorite game ever mtg as well as covering stuff like ports in Idaho.

[@Feynman981]

I played MtG quite a lot with friends. It's a fun game, we even expanded it to 5vs5 team matches where you not only had to think of cards, but team strategies, diplomacy, and negotiation.

[@gibsoand]

I'm dying at the face tattoos on smeagol post malone XD

[@CrystalStearOfTheCas]

We had a pretty fun way to avoid all these issues with my group of friends back in the day. Buy each a few boosters(around 5 most of the time). You open one, take the card you want then pass it to your left. You then pick a pile of cards from your previous sessions (land cards excluded), shuffle and draw 20 cards. You then draw 15 land cards at random from a separate pile. You have 15 minutes to build a deck. You have a vague idea of what your opponents might play because you saw 75% of the cards during the drafting rounds. You still collect cards at the end of the day but each session is fresh and (kinda) balanced

[@yumyum366]

3:18 Packs usually sell for $4, they raised the price in 2013 with I think Theros. They've since moved away from one booster pack to multiple types of booster packs, but draft boosters are usually a bit more than $4. 4:14 Thank your editor.

[@danielemery906]

12y old me opening a pack of 4thEdition and IceAge "These cards suck"

[@danielemery906]

And YES the Reserved List is bullshyt

[@dmacpher]

@@danielemery906winter orb deck slapped though 😂

[@kenroth8857]

To be fair, those two sets did, mostly, suck.

[@mishkamcivor409]

I've got tons of 4th edition cards I inherited from my dad and none of them are worth anything lol, about the most valuable thing I ended up with was a Tempest Ancient Tomb lol

[@dmacpher]

@@mishkamcivor409 well I feel old now

[@AaronGeo]

Pikachu! Use Economic Crash!

[@Chaotic_Pixie]

Commander was originally called EDH, or Elder Dragon Highlander and wasn’t a sanctioned format for most of its existence. So I have no idea how an official rules body could be that old. Commander didn’t become a sanctioned format until the 20teens. Also, Type 2/Standard and Commander aren’t the only formats played in sanctioned competitions. I’m most familiar with hands-on MTG played at local gaming shops, but these are all the formats I remember off the top of my head from playing. In addition to the two previously mentioned… there’s also Modern, Limited/Sealed Deck (played at pre-release events), Booster Draft (also common at pre-release events and some shops hold special nights where this is all they do but you don’t earn points for this format though it is sanctioned with rules), Type 1/Vintage (Black Lotus is a staple card for this format), Pauper, Legacy, Conspiracy, Two Headed Giant, & Planechase. Planechase is unique because it uses special plane cards put out by WotC but it also doesn’t earn points like drafting and it’s a group format more like Commander/EDH. In a similar vein, there’s an unsanctioned format called Cube Draft which is played as a group and has really unique rules. All players pull from the same giant deck in the middle. It’s really fun… but an effective Cube costs as much as a down payment on a house. There are also other unsanctioned formats that use cards otherwise banned in other formats. Also, just because a card is banned in one format, doesn’t mean it’s banned in other formats, sanctioned or not. I guess what I’m trying to say is there is an economy for all cards. Those willing to spend on individual cards are more likely to also have decks just because they have fun gimmicks or because they like to play an unsanctioned/casual format with their friends.

[@DeathInTheSnow]

Dude, that Black Lotus sale was an auction house scam. The card isn't actually worth that much, but auction houses do fake, overexaggerated rarity marks, that _only they can verify,_ and artificially inflate the price, usually by selling to somebody connected to the auction house. They did the same thing with baseball cards and they tried doing it with video games, like selling a "Mint in box Grade 1 SSS Rank" copy of NES Mario Bros. You know, one of the most commonly sold games of all time, for $2,000,000. They do it to generate fake hype for something that could previously be bought cheaply, then the sale makes the news, so they sell shed loads of gear at a higher price. It's been covered loads of times before.

[@GoatTheGoat]

"Mario Bros." and "Super Mario Bros." are different games. The expensive sale of "Super Mario Bros." is legitimate. It is from a test market before the NES was sold nationwide. It was sold separately from the NES (not a pack in title). All the games sold in that test market had a different style box compared to the general release NES games. The sealed test market box is what makes that copy of Super Mario Bros. valuable.

[@Lybrel]

Amy's foil land for $0.25 is a fantastic choice (foil lands help you cheat if you shuffle with top scratches facing you)

[@kv4648]

Did you get a cold? Hope you get better!

[@wwhattt]

You can blame the Wendover guy for making him sick.

[@CSDragon]

There are a LOT of mistakes here. Too many for me to go over. A lot of mixing information from the 90s with info from the 2020s.

[@joeym5243]

Its not a stock market, its a card stock market (because the cards are made of card stock lol)

[@commentinglife6175]

Yeah, think you got scammed by WotC on this one! (Did they contact you for the free PR? Asking for a friend.) Are there people paying money for cards? Absolutely! Will it kill the game? Well, figuring OG Magic the Gathering is 30 years old and this has been going on since the beginning, umm...shouldn't it have already happened? As others have said, if you are playing for fun, you don't need the actual cards; just get a plastic sleeve protector, throw a random cheapo card in there, and then write the fancy card text on a piece of paper placed on the face up side. As for "professional" players, well, that's part of the deal. Of course, that's also why the original Magic tournaments would shuffle in banned card lists every so often. This new Commander version was a way to give folks another way to play but sounds like greed killed that - greed enabled, it should be added, not by the third-party card sellers but Wizards of the Coast themselves!

[@tarickw]

It's interesting being on the other side of a story for once where you see all the mistakes a hyped outsider makes when covering a topic. For example: The Commander's Quaters isn't about MTG finance, it's about commander (the mtg format) related things. Mostly news, decks and strategies. And if we're talking mtg finance big shots then Alpha Investments is a big one. Also the one ring is powerful and currently ~46% of modern decks run it, so no it is not just a collectible because of the limited numbered versions. Also on the topic of 'not making another black lotus', no they are doing the opposite. Dockside extortionist, jeweled lotus and the one ring are designed to be powerful and partially to gain value. There is active discussion in the mtg community about wizards using 'reprint equity' to drive interest for products because chase cards are printed in limited forms in their products. Dockside extortionist is one such card where the banning felt bad to players because it was a pricey card that was pricey because it wasn't reprinted.

[@nickwaters9869]

That Amy set is money.

[@IfEnjoinder]

Is my sound messed up or should a certain someone rather be in bed with a hot tea instead of shipping out another great piece to us greedy content gremlins hungry for ever more?! :*

[@Mowntandewey]

Ha! jokes on all my exes who called me a loser for collecting Magic! I'm basically a stock bro!

[@Atmapalazzo]

3:45 Sam's attacking the vintage players hard lol.

[@Pug8]

Yeah I'm not used to such a low effort shit post without facts from half as interesting. It's pretty embarrassing.

[@XSpImmaLion]

Back in early 2000s I went on a trip for an anime convention that is also where the biggest MTG event happened. One guy that I knew from said events took his entire MTG card collection to sell, because he finally came to the realization that his addiction to it was ruining his life. xD He sold it all through the week of the event... boxes and boxes full of cards. For not a whole ton of money too... don't think he had any super rare cards, and the market for it wasn't as developed as it is nowadays. But you know, I think it was a smart choice. When it comes to stuff like that, we already tend to think "I should've held out more, look at how much money I could've made". But we don't think about the negative consequences of keeping at it, nor what it'd take to get into speculative market stuff.

[@dotmashrc]

I am pretty sure Sam had a cold, while he was recording the video. I can't be alone.

[@deleted-something]

Every single card game ever know be like :

[@JosephtheCanuck]

Never expected this in an HAI video! Fun! It’s important to remember, though, that the vast majority of Magic players don’t spend that much, and especially the recent bans were only a big issue for serious whales. Also, ban decisions are usually focused on power level than price. Powerful cards are usually expensive, but lots of expensive cards aren’t powerful at all and will never get banned. Wizards isn’t even supposed to acknowledge the secondary market at all in their decisions since doing so would mean admitting that their game is basically gambling🙃

[@Nagol93]

The whole part about WOTC printing and maintaining pack prices at $3..... umm.... what? The price of packs has gradually increased over the years. New set packs cost about $4-5 a piece, and there's special collector packs that go for around $30. Back in like 2016 sure, you could get new packs for $3. But today its close to double that. Also WOTC recently removed MSRP for a lot of their products, meaning stores have to kinda guess how much to sell it for.

[@LinkEX]

2:29 Great way to make your point with that visual (end etymological) contrast.

[@Ravenclawed07]

Now talk about what cards the Pokemon community want banned, but probably won’t be until they rotate out of standard in 2026-2027.

[@RandoTheRando]

4:22 bro went from being SkyDoesMinecraft's roommate to OWNING THE ONE RING

[@OmneAurumNon]

Very brave of HAI to make an MTG video considering their audience. :p so many things to nitpick. Small correction, the One Ring is pretty busted. It gets played in almost half of all modern decks, making it the single most played card in modern.

[@petersmythe6462]

Wizards doesn't really have control over the cost of old cards like that. Reprinting black lotus today wouldn't affect the value of the old ones much because it's not a playable card in and popular formats (it's much too strong for a 0 cost card). The main reason it's value is tied to Magic at all is that while it's banned in everything, it is probably the most iconic card ever printed.

[@oriontigley5089]

-Makes game pay 2 win -players pay to win -"oh no! How could this happen!?!"

[@SirJeremy6020]

earliest i've ever been to a HAI vid lpl

[@raycapetillo5569]

I started playing Magic when Beta was out and I enjoyed the hell out of the game. I sold most of my high value cards, made a bunch of $$$, and kept a bunch of cards to be used only for playing and not collecting. I enjoyed that much more because i knew WoTC would start to ban and control the "collectible" cards and market. I didnt want to be lured into spending a ton of money for a card and then have the rug swept under from me. I am so glad. Still, i love the game as long as its for fun. I like playing all common/uncommon cards with friends. It's about strategy, luck, and fun :). Who would have thought MTG would become a stock market??

[@SirAinlistor]

I appreciate the fact that Sam still voiced the video despite his voice is dying.

[@monster3339]

man. im so glad i play pokemon tcg. as much as the cards have a reputation for insane prices for the rare classics, the price of cards that are actually legal in the "standard" format (ptcg rotates cards out of regulation after theyve been legal for a while) really dont break the bank. the most ive ever spent on a single card was $25 (prime catcher, if youre curious. bought it the day the set dropped cuz i desperately wanted it for my chien pao deck... ive pulled 2 since then. oops.)

[@itchylol742]

Sounds like a great opportunity for counterfeiters

[@LenaKomarova-md9ke]

This collab is pure gold!

[@ltjgambrose]

A note from someone who plays a lot of MTG: Some players invest a lot of money into speculating on card value. The other 99.8% of players think they are loud, whiny idiots that should *stop making death threats* to the company's employees.

[@iTzDritte]

I love this crossover. The Daily Show did a piece of Magic today as well. Magic is really hitting the mainstream.

[@comlitbeta7532]

Quick, buy basic mountain before they get too expensive!!!

[@jwangcap]

1:00 - player on the left's life total was unchanged even though they were attacking with a creature with lifelink. Unwatchable! Just kidding; but amazing work bringing light about such a niche topic!

[@dannymac6368]

The only card (aside from the famous Time & Mox group banned in ‘94) I can remember from the late 90’s is Serra Avatar. Wonder if it’s worth more than the cardboard these days. 🤔

[@VanAleph]

Commodity speculators always act like they're providing some sort of valuable service to the end user, but as a Magic player I can say with confidence that this is not the case

[@Dragoninja26]

When I clicked I knew it'd be MtG (Idk if thumbnail made it obvious, I saw HaI, read title just in case, sounded good so I clicked without paying much attention to details of the picture that contained the yellow H and classic yellow on purple text

[@AnonymousMaykr]

Not a lot of commander players really give a plop, proxying (the practice of printing or scribbling expensive cards) is widely accepted (or at least tolerated)

[@TheNotSoMysteriousG]

Hey! A video Im actually an expert in! WotC and its players need to start treating it like the game it is, not stocks. Not only is it better for the game as a whole, as this video demonstrates, its got to be the most volatile market possible.

[@turtledude123]

4:57 "uncommon, but not rare card" and yet Internet Dweeb has a rare expansion symbol 🤔

[@beretperson]

As a Magic lover and Magic Finance hater, I did the gamer focus move when I got the notification for this video.

[@doq]

Ah yes, Wild Draw 4 is my favorite Magic the Gathering card.

[@elijahwhite2624]

The crossover I didn't know I needed!

[@rajamicitrenti1374]

If WotC had not created the Reserved List, this never would have become a problem. If they ever decided to reprint in-demand cards in meaningful quantities, it would stop being a problem for anything other than the cards on the Reserved List. But WotC wants this, because it creates an incentive for people/businesses to buy and open packs of cards, chasing after the 1 or 2 overpowered cards in each set.

[@Parth-Jain-04]

Hope you feel better soon Sam

[@maximilianschug6271]

The best possible mtg Crossover. If they ever did a jet lag themed set I might just have to get into that shitty Game.

[@decktechsandspecs]

Holy shit holy shit Sam covered MTG!

[@vitalepitts]

I can’t wait to find a video pedantically correcting this video for an hour

[@SurvivorsQuest1]

Did Amy go to The Brookly Strategist? That's a great store!

[@Aidanmcfar]

My dumb ass thought it was Marjory Taylor Green Economics.

[@CeeJMantis]

She has single-handedly ruined the MTG initialism... And considering some of the stuff that WotC has done, that's saying something

[@GoatTheGoat]

I had a Black Lotus card back in the day. It was from Unlimited revision. So not valuable enough to retire on. But still it would be worth five figures today.

[@gcm_0]

Holy shit brooklyn strategist mentioned

[@orsonzedd]

Wotc should print a 20 dollar box of all the most expensive cards

[@xaviotesharris891]

I feel like with a bit of vocab change and some different graphics, this could also explain crypto.

[@jimmyyu2184]

And Amy put it on the "Business Expense" credit card.

[@TheGeographyNerd]

Nah make one on sports cards. It's even wilder.

[@JephLewis]

The reason it became a stock market is because finance bros ruin everything. Because who's stupid enough to use a children's card game as an investment tool? That's asinine. I say that as a long time magic player. Your cards are not worth anything and if you think that they are and your banking on them for your retirement, you need to get your brain examined for worms or something.

[@commentinglife6175]

I played the old Star Wars card game and while I still have them, only two will I ever consider actual investment items. Of course, I got both signed at a convention so that pulled it out of the card realm and into the autograph arena. (I have a Lando signed by Billy Dee Williams and an R2-D2 signed by Kenny Baker; I could have gotten a Warwick Davis autograph too but his Wicket card hadn't been released yet the year he was at my local convention.)

[@Pug8]

The people stupid enough to make it into investment are idiot content creators, especially ones who are feeling light on their content release schedule or drama. Social media has made hobbies worse.

[@ToxicAtom]

You forgot the part about how people who actually play the game abhor MTGFinance and people who actively partake in it

[@uss_04]

MTG now has a connotation in both economics and politics

[@cedarbobedar7223]

Nadu might well bounce back with enough time - it's still legal in some of the most powerful formats, and that card is legitimately broken (strong)

[@Yunas_Jet]

"The One Ring card isn't even that big of an advantage" Oh Oh honey someone's never played Modern have they :P

[@Herbrax212]

Yugioh players : Crying in Mulcharmys

[@goldie819]

I propose that, much like Bigger Luke, there is a second Sam. Bass Heavy Sam

[@jimsvideos7201]

…tied up in binders, huh?

[@Hankathan]

Can't wait for the price of Mountain to spike. My collection might finally be worth something.

[@thegreenwood001]

Because the only reason why Wizzards are printing more sets than ever before is to make the cards and packs cheaper. Right Hasbro?

[@DeltaDemon1]

Wow. Prices have gone up.

[@unknownusername9335]

Who needs insider trading when you can just create your own bubble / pump up the value. You go Amy!

[@ldac]

Get well soon Sam! Your voice sounds like you caught a cold ❤ Nice video!

[@captainraptor21]

thank you for doing a video on MTG I hope you do some more, its really interesting. love the video!

[@hamza-chaudhry]

6:21 Where is that plane landing?

[@HolyPire]

Fun fact: its a card game, you can make your house rules to play....

[@bullzebub]

no mention of the Pinkertons?!

[@RealTal.]

I can't believe sam made a video about magic. i knew it i just KNEW it! you even wrote it. a true nerd inside

[@le_nopeman8997]

Sounds like you got a cold. Hope you get better soon!