Sunday, February 10, 2013

Redeem fee change

"Magic Online was released in June of 2002. There was no roadmap of previous success and certainly no guarantee that players would want to collect digital versions of Magic cards. Wizards wanted to find a way to build player confidence in the digital version and reinforce that Magic Online is just an extension of Magic in general. Thus the Redemption Program was born. Fast forward to 2013 and we see Magic: The Gathering continuing to grow in global popularity. With this growth, however, the costs associated with printing, processing, shipping, and the general administration of the Magic Online Redemption Program have increased to the point at which we must make a change. Starting with the Gatecrash redemption release in March, and for every redemption release thereafter, the handling cost for set redemption will be increasing to from $5 to $25 per set redeemed. We will not be changing the redemption rates for Return to Ravnica or older sets, nor will we be changing the current shipping rates."

My personal feelings:
Wizards changed its politicy because they make most of its money in Magic through booster sales to casual players. Such five-fold increase in the costs of redemption will dispirit some players to redeem. This means that fewer cards are redeemed or removed from the system, remembering the demand stays relatively the same. As a result a larger supply of cards online should reduce the prices of cards. Especially Mythic cards which are right now not reflecting the real value of card. I mean particularly the bulk mythics worth over 1 event ticket. The difference in price between bulk rare or bulk mythic will be lessened. And what are your feelings about it?



1 comment:

  1. Will also decrease the value of the top cards.

    Fullonline set + Redemption prices always been near the fullpaper set prices. This will remain.
    Bulk will still be bulk, so top mythics should end up being 10-20% cheaper online than paper.

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