A recently released report suggests that Hasbro indeed is mismanaging its property Magic: The Gathering, MTG, all in the name of short-term profits to make their books look better.
The analyst has spoken to a lot of actors in the MTG scene. Players, collectors, distributors as well as local games stores. And all of them echo the same sentiment:
the primary concern is that Hasbro has been overproducing Magic cards which has propped up Hasbro’s recent results but is destroying the long-term value of the brand.
Just to give an example of how seemingly desperate Hasbro has been with padding their short-term gains. They have broken promises and have released cards they said they never would release again. Top of that list is hands down the most famous MTG card, The Black Lotus.
The card has made its return in what can only be described as a cash grab. The card is part of MTG´s 30-anniversary set. And that set will cost you $999. And then you get 4 boosters with cards from the 30th anniversary. And keeping with tradition the cards are of course random. This means you might very well end up with let's call them "not so sought after"-cards.
This reprinting has led to prices crashing on the secondary market. And Hasbro is still churning out cards like there is no tomorrow. And collectors of the rare cards have started to worry if they will diminish the value of their original card. Which might very well be the case.
Hasbro has even tried to snake its way out of breaking its 25-year-old promise to never reprint The Black Lotus card. They did this by saying that the 30th-anniversary cards are not tournament legal. This does very little to ease the mine of the collectors.
What are your thought on this, is Hasbro slowly turning MTG? Or is simply what is good for Hasbro good for MTG? Please sound off in the comment section. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.
See you on the interwebs!
Picture provided by: MTG Media
Resources
