Modern Black Lotus
Economics forum
Posted on Sept. 16, 2021, 8:33 p.m. by Stardragon
So we all Black Lotus is both a power nine and on the reserved list and it's like $100,000 or so, but my question is IF it printed in a MEANINGFUL way like for example printing in a standard set today and not a special set like Modern Master or the like how expensive would actually be? Would it get cheaper, stay the same? My PERSONAL thoughts are that the Alpha would still fetch the 100 grand, But the newly printed one would run as such
Basic non-foil: $2500 Basic-Foil: $4000 Date Stamped Foil:$6000 Promo Foil: $8200-10,000 Extended Art non foil: $5000 Extended Art Foil: $8400 Mastercraft-$25,000+
Since this wizard does thing now and you can't convince me that if they did reprint this card they wouldn't do all these styles cause that what they do
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The fact that they removed the reserve list in your hypothetical would have a massive effect on the final price. Folks (other than collectors where the age and originality matters) are just not going to pay the same amount for a card they know can get reprinted.
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Your data is flawed--only the Alpha Lotuses are above $100,000; the other printings still run $10,000 or more, but that is still a massive drop and really should have been mentioned in your post.
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There are huge numbers of cards printed in a Standard set. Even the best Standard cards ever printed in the modern era are unlikely to top $100.00 simply due to the size of the printings.
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As Scytec mentioned, the card isn't all that useful. It can be played in Vintage and CanLander, but that's really it for popular formats. The modern run cards that get rather pricey are those where Vintage, Modern, Standard, Legacy, and Commander all want copies of the card.
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Your question doesn't really make sense, since you do not really take into account how much time has elapsed since your hypothetical set run.
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Black Lotus is not expensive because of its power level (power level means nothing if you can't play the card)--it is expensive because of its rarity, notoriety, and reputation as a collector's item.
All around it is impossible to predict the answer to your question--too many variables at play. That said, we can fairly definitively say your estimates are way too high--such numbers would be unprecedented for a modern-era set.
September 17, 2021 12:18 a.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
To touch a little bit on Caerwyn's comment, I'd like to offer some insight from a different perspective.
I know that the MTG community is torn very heavily on the person Rudy, with Alpha Investments in Florida. Many people call him a scam artist. Many people says he loads booster packs for his videos. I've read stories of people claiming that they have bought cards from him that turned out to be fakes. That he corners markets, pushes hype, drives prices, etc, etc.
There is an employee in one of the LGS in my town who claims a member of his staff groped her at a convention. After hearing her story, I went to Rudy and asked him about it. Together, he and I were able to figure out based on her recollection of events who actually did it, based on the description she gave.
I've worked personally with him for a few years now. I've bought product and sold product. He's teachings have helped me earn around $4,300 on the secondary market. I would still be doing it today, but Dominaria is when everything went to shit with the alternate printings of all the cards; It's too difficult to keep up with all of the print variations for a side-gig now. At least, if I recall, Dominaria was when I stepped out of resale.
Anyway, according to Rudy there are 1,100 Alpha Black Lotuses. He himself owns several dozen, which is a MASSIVE chunk of the market when you consider that, if there are 1,100 in the market and he owns 12, that is roughly 1%. So when he owns SEVERAL dozen, that's several percent.
Now plop it into a Standard-like set where potentially several hundred thousand are printed and distributed in the US alone, and you can see why the value would tank. Not on Alpha cards, but on the set they were printed in. Look at Jeweled Lotus as an example. Upon initial spoiling, I watched it skyrocket up to around $270 for an extended art foil. Now it's what... $180? Still really good retention, but -$100 is nothing to scoff at, either.
- I am extremely tired and sick so forgive me if something seems off or whatever by a little bit.
September 17, 2021 1:18 a.m. Edited.
Grubbernaut says... #5
The only realistic outcomes are that it doesn't happen at all (which is most likely, for the time being), or that the reserved list being revoked causes massive shifts in pricing for everything. That being said, nobody will play vintage even if that were to happen; they'd need to print so many copies that prices were low enough so as to be accessible to relatively normal players for demand to meaningfully increase.
The only way it would "matter" in a way that could be interesting is if they made some sort of new format where the cards were more easily usable, which seems incredibly unlikely.
All things considered, doesn't seem worth the thought to play out in our heads.
Scytec says... #2
If it was a full print run as a rare/mythic in draft boosters like they do for any other set, the alpha price would stay the sameish, drop a little. Beta and unlimited would drop considerably, and the new ones would settle at less than $200. No matter what set it was, even if every other card sucked, it would be the most opened set in the history of magic. The card is still banned basically everywhere, so it isnt playable in anything but Vintage i think? That many packs cracked over that period of time would cause the price to be quite low just from sheer availability. In my opinion.
September 16, 2021 8:54 p.m. Edited.