Two years ago, The Professor expressed how the reserved list is a lie. Today, WOTC reprints 60 cards
Economics forum
Posted on Nov. 9, 2022, 8:30 a.m. by TypicalTimmy
In this video The Professor lays out why the reserved list is a lie. Something about two years later, WOTC releases their 30th anniversary packs with 60 reprints, including dual lands and Black Lotus as proxies.
So, is he right or wrong? And why?
Just to provide the exact language legendofa referenced above: “All policies described in this document apply only to tournament-legal Magic cards.”
Also, since legendofa mentioned digital cards, the RL specifically allows digital “reprintings” of RL cards.
I’m sure the professor is wrong about pretty much everything he says about the law as well, but I can’t be bothered to listen to him babble for fifteen minutes to see what legal arguments he might make.
November 9, 2022 1:53 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
All he talks about is the Promissory Estoppel and how the list has been altered over time with cards added, removed, and printed as Kaladesh Inventions / EDH Precon cards and the like
November 9, 2022 4:12 p.m.
Skipping to the part of the video where he discusses promissory estoppel and watching that part, and am seeing a valuable lesson on why Wizards of the Coast hires folks who hold a Juris Doctor and were licensed to practice law instead of some guy on YouTube who read a Wikipedia page once. His legal arguments betray an ignorance of the subject matter and his flippant dismissal of the threat of lawsuits clearly shows he does not really understand how suits actually work.
Here is the reality - there is absolutely no congruent caselaw on point anywhere in the United States, where Wizards is most likely to be sued given their presence here and the bulk of their players (and thus potential litigants) being U.S. residents.
What does that lack of caselaw mean? Caselaw provides courts and other actors guidance on how a case might be decided. You can look at congruent situations and argue why your situation is the same (if you like the outcome in the other case) or different (if you do not). What Wizards has is so different than any other case (I have done searches across a broad range of collectibles, including trading card games, baseball cards, and other limited time memorabilia) that there is nothing useful to argue by analogy. That means the court will be looking pretty heavily at the basic principals - well over a century old - of the doctrine, which really is not a great position for Wizards. After all, this was a principal created as a shield for the promisee, not the promisor, and there is a certain historical weight of using the doctrine to construe promises against the person who made the promise.
That means Wizards would have to fight an uphill battle to prove they did not break a binding promise. The professor talks about this, but his analysis is, frankly, stupid. That the RL changed? It has not removed cards since 2002, and, even then, it was to remove cards with such little value that Wizards took the risk of a lawsuit. 20 years of a promise is pretty damning evidence against Wizards, and a change two decades ago (that was probably the legally wrong decision at the time) is not going to be a saving grace.
He also talks about how some old cards do hold their value - but this is a dumb argument. Pointing out an Alpha Birds of Paradise’s high price ignores the fact that price very well could be higher if it were RL. That is his big flaw - if the cards do drop in price (and you can bet they will - the old card collector market is smaller than the “I just want to play the best cards and these printings are my only option” market), that is a legal detriment as a result of a breach of promise.
But, hey, let’s assume he actually knows what he is talking about and is correct that Wizards might be legally fine (a big and legally unsupported assumption) - he still ignores the fact that anyone can always file a lawsuit. This is not going to be a clear set of cases - potentially hundreds - where Wizards can say “you failed to state a claim” and have the case tossed. There are going to be legitimate factual disputes over the strength of the promise, reasonability of relying on it, and damages. Even if - and I cannot stress this enough, this is a big if - Wizards won the cases, they would still spend a considerable amount of money just defending themselves, not to mention the bad press of being in a lawsuit with your own players.
Wizards’ lawyers are really unlikely to let them reprint the RL cards. The entire affair is a blond gamble that can be really expensive if they lose - and still really expensive if they win. I would not let them do it if I were their attorney, despite personally finding the RL to be a pretty darn regrettable feature of this game.
All around, I feel fairly confident in saying the answer to your initial question is that the Professor is wrong, and should probably stick to talking about things he actually is qualified to opine upon.
November 9, 2022 4:52 p.m. Edited.
Gidgetimer says... #6
What RL cards were ever printed as Kaladesh inventions or EDH precon cards?
The closest thing I can find is an oversized Sliver Queen from Commander's Arsenal and that is the same thing as these 30th anniversary cards with being not tournament legal. It is even more obviously not legal with being double the size of a normal card.
November 9, 2022 5:11 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #7
With so much potential loss at stake, I would imagine it would quickly turn into a class action lawsuit. Correct me if I am wrong, please, but if potentially hundreds, perhaps several thousand, investors came forward to each individually sue for the detrimental loss in value, I could see a firm picking this up and making it class action.
I bring up Rudy from time to time on here, because he and I have exchanged messages back and forth and he assisted me with some investing in the card market, as well as books and resources for the stock market.
Rudy personally owns about 110 Black Lotus among their various editions. His binder has about 13 pages of just the Black Lotus cards, not to mention his graded stack.
Let's just say they are $100,000 each. It just makes the math nice and easy. That's $11,000,000 in value. If it drops even 2%, that's a loss of $220,000 on his end. That's just one card, out of all 570+ reserved list cards, out of just one investor.
So yes, I believe it would become class action, easily.
November 9, 2022 5:20 p.m.
Generally correct, and the nuances are not overly important to this discussion. There almost certainly would be a class action suit - likely purposefully brought in a jurisdiction that would be friendly to the plaintiffs (and, though it should go without saying, actually allows class actions - not every state does). To a certain degree that helps Wizards - they would only have to defend against that one case for those plaintiffs, not hundreds of individual cases - but it also means hundreds of cases are likely to be decided in the most favourable venue.
All told, no matter what might happen, the outcome is bad for Wizards.
November 9, 2022 5:33 p.m. Edited.
Well, and I know nothing about the legal issues involved here, but I don't think that wizards will straight up break the reserve list in the near future, just because they want to get into this market without devaluing reserve list cards. Printings like the 30th anniversary cards, while it will probably be overall successful (I mean, this is costing them next to nothing to make) sales like this directed to a high end collector market will never make the money that other products that appeal to a larger player base will. I think that the only way to offset the legal costs of breaking the reserve list would be to print reserve list cards in a way that's accessible to most if not all players, and at that point it would probably be a better decision to just make a new set with shocklands in it or something.
We may absolutely see more proxy-reprints like the 30th cards, but will wizards ever reprint them in a way that lets players actually get more play out of them? Nope, big nope. Neither wizards or collectors want more players to have reserve list cards, but now with the 30th loophole, they both are very interested in getting more players to want reserve list cards.
November 9, 2022 6:42 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #10
A nice possible way to circumvent the reserved list would be an unset that has "parody" cards.
Like how Elvish Mystic and Llanowar Elves are literally the same thing by another name. They could simply do that.
Of course it'll drive the power of decks through the roof, having two functional sets of dual lands, for example.
But that's why it should be a silver bordered unset. Then, they aren't legal in Legacy / Vintage, but you can still Rule 0 for Commander.
November 9, 2022 7:08 p.m.
Actually part of the RL promise was to not print functionally identical cards like your example. so they couldn't do that either. thats why Day's Undoing needed the 'end the turn' clause otherwise it would be Timetwister. how close they are willing to toe the line is another matter. could they print a Timetwister that only drew 6 cards? I think time twister investors might get mad about that, but I don't know for sure. And that's why it likely would never be printed. WOTC won't print something they think 'might' cause a lawsuit. so in order to really get RL cards we will have to accept Day's Undoing.
legendofa says... #2
The Reserved List prevents cards from being reprinted in a tournament-legal way. That last little rider gets overlooked; I didn't know about it until a few weeks ago. Several of the RL cards appeared in the digital Vintage Masters, and these M30 cards have nonstandard backs and gold borders, marking them as non-tournament cards. They're purely collector's items and have no legal functionality.
November 9, 2022 12:04 p.m.