The last months I have been fascinated by the world of Magic The Gathering.
The plan was to get a bit of financial exposure to the market and go from there.
Really quickly I became attached to the cards and the nostalgic value they hold for me and my new refound passion even spread to some friends who used to play back in the days as well.
So pretty quickly I noticed that I will not be able to just be an investor in the space but also can`t help it to play the game, enjoy sorting my tiny collection but also follow the market and learn about it.
Since then I did spend quite some time at the local game store. I played some pre release events, bought boxes and singles and was asking the owner and other players a lot of questions.
If you follow the Mtg world a bit you notice a change. Pimped cards and more expensive product are hitting the market and I wanted to know what the players who spend time playing in the LGS ( local game store )are thinking about that.
The answer was usually always the same
"As long as I can play the game as I used to and some needed cards are not only in the more expensive product, I don`t give a shit"
While I enjoy the collectable and financial aspect of the game a lot and it is an important part of the Magic eco-system, the big difference to baseball / basketball / whatever ball cards is that it is a game and the power of the cards determine if I want this in my deck or not. Rarity will set the price for the card and the rarer the card the higher the price.
Of course there are some different factors, like condition, how often did the card get reprinted and how much worse are the budget alternatives.
Like every market it all comes back to supply and demand.
Saying I know my way around in the collectable world of semi numistatic coins might be a little far stretched but at the same time I was able to learn a lot in this world as well which transfers well to the world of magic finance.
It is hard to believe but the Magic finance world seems more established than the coin world or better said it has way better resources one can use.
At the end of the day though it is "just" paper with a sometimes nice and sometimes awful picture printed on it while silver will still be silver if nobody would collect anything.
But in reality those cards mean a lot for some people and I am starting to see more and more why.