Finally got around to listening to this.
A couple thoughts, firstly I own an FLGS and ~45% of my sales are Magic. I have owned a shop for 6+ years.
Comparing the current prices of collector booster boxes is a really bad way to judge, UB products cost shops more than IU (In Universe) products. IU Collector Booster boxes are 2/3rds the cost of UB CBB (collector booster boxes). Even if I charge over double what I pay for IU CBB from my distributor it is still less than what Spider-Man CBB are going for on TCG.
I have had a few Dark Nights with Magic since I started playing (I purchased my first pack the week that Alpha was released, and it had an Underground Sea in it). My first was white bordered cards. I quit sometime after Revised was released. Then got back into the game in college around Ice Age, but was back out with my next Dark Night and Magic’s next set, Homelands. I really thought Homelands, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Alliances were the end of Magic.
2025 was the start of my third Dark Night and seeing the set list for 2026 has reaffirmed it. As I said initially, my shop’s biggest seller is Magic… but those sales are waning. I cannot keep putting the energy into all of these sets. There were sets an average of every 8 1/2 (8.6667) weeks this year, next year it Will be less than every 7 1/2 weeks (7.428).
I am exhausted from Magic. I hardly play any longer. When I would get home from the shop my son end I used to play multiple two player games of EDH and theory craft new decks. The last time we played a game was in May or June.
Thanks for the behind the scenes info about collector booster boxes.
Yeah, one of the worst things about UB is how much it has accelerated the product cycle. Or maybe they were always going to make this many sets and UB is actually a blessing in disguise since they’re not trying to rush out 6-7 in-universe sets each year. Either way I’ve just resigned myself to only paying attention to the UW sets and not stressing about missing anything. Granted this means I have to give up on Standard, but I sort of lost track of that anyways the past few years
That’s just any game, you can’t play a game forever. except chess.
I find chess extremely boring and mundane, now Knightmare Chess, now that is a real game.
Is it? I think they just made an assload of money on the FF stuff.
I think it is largely a demographics thing. Final Fantasy probably has a lot more overlap with Magic in terms of fan base than Spider Man does. We’ll see about stuff like Avatar and TMNT, but I’d hazard a guess that Marvel next year will perform similarly to Spider Man.
I feel like the spidey failure will offset that success a bit
I think they’re probably going to be fine, but it’s a lot. I didn’t even know there was the avatar set and it’s going to be standard legal. I need a break.
