Premium Products

"Wizards of the coast isn't selling a game, they are selling a lifestyle."--Alvin Mason.

"The only noble card game is poker. The only noble wargame is chess"--Anonymous ca/tg/uy

Premium products are nothing new in gaming, whether it be electronic games, or table top. Things like first editions, collector editions, alternative arts, promo's, and exclusive content all plague and riddled these two similar mediums, and have for at least the last twenty years.

However I'm not here to discuss video games, but card games. Magic: the Gathering has been beseeched by an endless slew of not supplement product (which it also has had a problem with), but of premium product.

So what is premium product? Premium products are a product that isn't required to play the game, but its existence adds prestige. Things like alternative art, foils, alternative foils, and until rather recently promo's, all fall under this category.

In contrast, supplement products increase the card pool, with decks, expansions, and so forth. Admittedly, these two lines blur many times in the past, and it can be hard to distinguish them apart.

So where to begin? Well, I guess in the beginning. In the first few years of the games history there were no true premium products, sure beta was more desirable then Unl/Revised, but that was more of a flux.

Instead in the earliest days of Magic, you had promo's. Six promo's exist that originally weren't available in packs. Arena, Sewers of Estark, Windseeker Centaur, Giant Badger, Mana Crypt, and the big one, Nalanthi Dragon.

Nalanthi Dragon was originally given away as a door prize to guests of Dragon Con '94. Its art was drawn by Michael Whelan, who has famously done a number of classic album arts, and was hyped on that fact alone, at least on the cover of Duelist #3. You see, there was so much of a fan backlash over this card, and how exclusive it was, that WotC gave a second copy of it out in the issue. The argument was, that if exclusive cards like that became common, it was only a matter of time before an exclusive tournament staple was printed, that could have dire consequences. Their fears were right, Mana Crypt was a long time favorite for eternal formats, but the true side effect of ignoring this wisdom wouldn't come until the modern era.


So WotC promised this, and for the majority of the 90's, promo's were sort of a weird situation in Magic. It should be noted every other tcg/ccg of the 90's/00's had exclusive promos, but Magic remained one of the few that didn't. Sure alternative art promo's were occasionally giving out, and eventually foils.

Duelist alt art promo

Which leads us to arguably the first premium product, pack/fnm/judge foils. This made way with prerelease foils as well. Prerelease promos (and eventually release promos) are promos that have the date on them of the release stamped in gold lettering. For a long time, they were typically a powerful card in the set, a history that includes such power houses as Emrakul, Wurmcoil Engine, Shelly, Revenant, the kaldra pieces, and False Prophet. Eventually this was changed to much weaker cards, because it "had conflicting interests", before finally being completely randomized among rares (and occasionally uncommons) in the set.

The earliest Pre-release promos weren't foil.

Not that this bothered anyone at the time. They were largely just considered aspects of the game, and pulling a nice foil out of a pack was always a pleasant surprise. As long as you were getting some useful cards, it was no big deal, judges worked hard for their promo's, and getting good cards as a door prize was an awesome incentive. How much things can change in just a decade.

In that decade judge foils went from spontaneous gifts to a major business, pre-release promo's became a joke, fnm promo's even worse (at one point they were tokens). 

However, I'm losing track of myself. The first actual premium collector product you paid money for was none other then the from the vault series. These boxsets were a limited amount of time product, originally released at Gen Con, and would typically contain 15 premium/foil cards loosely following a theme, some following the theme better than others. Eventually, as time moved on, the MSRP got high on them, even before release, fueled entirely on hype and speculation, and they stopped releasing them directly to the customers at Gen Con after the third one. 

However, this was rather tame, the first time WotC attempted a play at the secondary market and forced scarcity was Commander's Arsenal. 

It came with everything a casual player could want. A neat life counter, tons of top shelf premium foils, many for the first time ever, and a fairly coated MSRP. They then sent two to every store in America and told the stores "do whatever". I remember getting into a heated argument with a LGS I frequently attended because of the absurd price he set on his copy. 

"That's what they are going for on ebay"

The other product they started pushing around this time (admittedly probably a year sooner) was the Buy-a-Box promo, which again, was simply an alternative art version of a card that already existed in the set. This eventually gave way to "buy a box premium boosters" for Ixalan block, before WotC changing a 20 year old policy. 

The set Dominaria launched with much hype. With Garfield himself at the helm, it came out with much fanfare, even from otherwise would be critics, and is probably, in my personal opinion, the best set in recent memory. It also had that boy up there, but he could only be purchased if you buy a booster box. Yes, he is literally, a booster box exclusive. However, he had a look warm reception, no the card that broke the proverbial back was this: 

This card saw major play in both type2/standard, and modern, and was only available in the Buy-a-Box promotion. With it's amazing resiliency, and the fact it was an instant, there was little that could be done against it. With it's now legitimate scarcity, it could command quite a bit of money to even pick up one, and while pocket change compared to many OS prices, for what's supposed to be the entry level format, it commanded alot. 

I forgot during this they tried their hands at "Ultra rares" (as we called them), premium cards that weren't even standard legal, but were draft able. These were "invocations" "master pieces" and "expeditions". They came with so much backlash, that they were discontinued almost as soon as they came out, and the Amonkhet ones are still some of the ugliest cards ever printed by WotC. 

However, this wasn't it. In the last two years so much product has dropped, its literally impossible to keep up with them all. Game Night, Modern Horizons, Holiday boxsets. Two "un" sets, annual commander decks, My Little Pony and other Hasbro cards, Mystery Boosters, in addition to the normal set releases for standard, and an introduction to another new format. Its honestly like WotC is trying to throw it all at the wall in an attempt to see what sticks. Almost like WotC isn't doing as well as they like to seem, of course this is just speculation and rumor except...

Yeah that's right. Between over the top 10 dollar premium packs, they drop these, the literal drop series. Each of these are sold directly to the customer, and since their introduction in November, each one is only more expensive on Hasbros online store.

The most recent features a number of fetches, and costs, at least what I'm told, around 100.00 for what amount to five fetches lands. Imagine the profit margin on that one. 

These products have come out flash sale style so quickly, its impossible for them to not be profitable. In fact so many of these have been released so fast I can't find a comprehensive list of cards for it. Seven initial drops, international women's day, year of the rat, and 9 Theros Star Gazing sets. Combine "ultimate", and that will be 19 drops in just a few months. Besides for undercutting their lifeblood of the LGS, they also lie on the honesty of their product doing well. Since these obviously have a huge profit margin, they can say "oh look, we are still growing", though few actual players are buying these products, and instead are being bought by the likes of resellers and speculators. 

The Yugioh-ification of Magic is a term that is often used to describe Magic getting to look more like YuGiOh on how it was when it launched. At that time, Magic thrived as being the best game possible, prided itself on being a thinking man's game, and not staying afloat through cheap gimmicks, and shiny cardboard, the opposite of YGO. 

YGO now prides itself as being a thin Mking man's game with a somewhat level playing field, that's chaotic in it's own constantly changing meta, while Magic survives on it's own cheap gimmicks...

Its starting to look like the later days of the comic book bubble more and more...

Editor note: I forgot about the Comic Con premium planeswalker products. Those exist I guess.