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Editor: Michael Mason. Thursday 19 February 2004.
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At what cost?
Wizards of the Coast in the US are just about to raise the RRP of the Magic booster from $3.29 to $3.69 or roughly 10%. Prices of boosters on Magic Online will be similarly affected. If I am not mistaken, the original RRP for a booster was $2.49 less for Fallen Empires, so the price increases over the years have not been terribly dramatic.
After all, $3.69 seems innocuous enough we'll Austrlianise it now - $6. $6 seems to be the average booster price around Australia. Sometimes as low as $5 sometimes as high as $7, but $6 seems to fit overall. (as an aside, even $3.69US now equates to only about $4.75AUS...) Im not sure if the price increase for boosters in the US will have an adverse effect on the price of Australian boosters. I'd say given the exchange rate, I would be very surprised (and very disappointed) if it did
And what else can you get for $6, really. A small combo meal at Burger King. 40% of a movie ticket. 80% of a new release movie rental. 25% of a CD. 8% of a console game. Not much it would seem.
So why do people complain that Magic is too expensive then? Let's have a quick look at some numbers take the average tournament playing Magic player. Let's say they have only keep/trade for one competitive deck at any one time
if they want to play Beasts, they'll trade away their Eternals for Baloths and vice versa. In other words, they don't keep a stock of playable rares. Now let's say this person enters one $10 tourney every two weeks, and on the other week they do a draft so one Magic event per week. Not terribly excessive, compared to some (ahem).
Now what does it cost this average magic player to keep up with his magic hobby? Let's say the average competitive Type 2 deck costs $200. If you quickly analyse the popular decks you will find this number to be quite low, even just looking at the expensive cards we have:
Affinity 4 x Chrome Mox - $90 4 x Glimmervoid - $50 4 x Broodstar - $40 Total - $180 W/x 4 x Exalted Angel- $90 4 x Eternal Dragon - $75 4 x Decree of Justice - $50 4 x Wrath of God - $60 2 x Vengeance - $20 4 x Flooded Strand - $40 Total - $325 Goblins 4 x Piledriver - $50 4 x Sharpshooter - $30 4 x Siege Gang - $30 8 x Fetch Lands - $80 Total - $190 Even with these rough number, it is easy to see that $200 for a competitive Type II deck is not much at all. Now that we have that as a base, we will need to add $100 for the year to fix up decks and keep up with the metagame as the deck changes. New sideboard cards, etc. Next we have the tournament entry fees. For Type II in Sydney this is generally $10 (unless it's FNM). We said one tourney every 2 weeks so that's $260 for the year. The alternate weeks are draft at $17/draft, which equates to $442/year for drafting. There are, of course, many extraneous expenses to playing magic that we'll just leave out drinks, Public Transport or Petrol to get to the places, etc. So we have:
T2 Deck: $200 Yearly total: $1,000 $1,000! How many people do you know that play that much Magic? How many 14 year old kids do you know that play that much Magic? Of course I have totally left out any recovery of costs... prizes gained at the tournaments or cards received in the drafts. Obviously these amounts will differ from person to person depending on skill level, but I have also left out the propensity for the average magic player to want to "crack" boosters. "Crack, crack, crack" is a mantra often heard at the local shop. (usually started by the shopkeep...) A lot of players will buy a box of each set or more to open. One box of each set costs roughly an additional $500/year. Now for the interesting bit. I know a lot of Magic devotee's. They play fairly seriously and quite often. They generally go for 4 of every playable Type II cards, and play in all the Sunday T2 tournies. They draft 2 or 3 times a week on average. They may play Magic Online. They may also collect some aspect of Magic... foils, sets, etc. What is the yearly cost for one of these people? This may be a bit harder to calculate, as the cost of keeping 4 of all the playable cards in a set dramatically varies from set to set. If you look at Mirrodin, there are currently only a handful of cards that would be over the $7 mark:
Chrome Mox If you look back at Onslaught, however, there are heaps of cards over the $7 mark it's been one of the more expensive sets in recent memory. It is not unreasonable to assume that to obtain playsets of all the playable T2 cards in a block, you would need to dish out $1,000. So we have: Serious Magic player:
Singles cost: $1,000 Yearly total: $4,530 That's a heck of a lot of money for a hobby, even by a gainfully employed adult. Again, this is offset a fair bit by recycling of cards/packs won at the tournaments, but the outlay is still incredible. Then there are the hardcore magic players. I draft 5-6 times a week. 6 drafts a week is $5,304/year alone. That's 1/3 of a new small car. That's 2% of a unit/house. That's more than some people pay in rent for the year. That's more than the average person spends on food in a year. $6 a pack may seem insignificant... but the aggregate is quite another story! Hasbro has just recently had a press release where they reported a significant increase in profits in international sales. They have specifically mentioned Magic: The Gathering as being highly attributable to those results. You're Welcome Hasbro. [ Email the Author | Discuss this Article ]
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