How do you feel on the return of fetchlands?

Should they have reprinted fetches?


  • Total voters
    6
C

Child of Gaea

Guest
I woke this morning to the news of Onslaught fetches being reprinted in Khans. I quit at Torment and returned about 6 months ago so didn't have the chance to "cheaply" pick up these cards so I think its great! What do you that already own them think? Are values going to plummet? I don't think so, id still always rather have originals and these will be an immediate 4x. I'd love to hear your opinions!
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Yes, and if you vote no, I'll cut you...

Full disclosure: I do not currently own full playsets of all five original Onslaught fetchlands. I do not own any Bloodstained Mires or Flooded Strands, and I think I might not have any more Windswept Heaths either—I forget. I've mainly used my Polluted Deltas and the Zendikar fetchlands lately anyway. I could have completed playsets of all ten fetchlands months ago, but I chose to focus on getting Revised dual lands instead. I'll soon have full playsets of all of those, and they're generally more expensive than the fetchlands. So I'm someone who probably has/had hundreds of dollars worth of fetchlands and was going to spend hundreds more to complete full playsets of them. Despite all of this, I think I can reasonably assert that I'm not motivated by my own personal finances. I have a track record of vehemently opposing the Reserved list and the reprint policy in general. Even if I were to spend a lot of money on old card and then they were reprinted so much that the market value of the originals dropped, I wouldn't care. It's not about that.

Anyway, to elaborate on market values, the originals might not go down at all in this case, and here's why...

The original Onslaught fetchlands are part of a class of old card that I'll call "inflated." This group includes the Revised dual lands, Wasteland, Force of Will, Lion's Eye Diamond, Grim Tutor, and some other cards, but the fetchlands and dual lands are the biggest culprits. Many, many cards have high secondary market values, but inflated cards aren't like most of those.

With valuable old cards, especially ones printed before 1995, high price tags are associated with value to collectors. For example, the card Lich from Unlimited Edition is worth around $25 despite being a white-bordered reprint. It's a card that has essentially no tournament presence and that is arguably inferior to Nefarious Lich from Odyssey, which isn't even worth $0.50 on the secondary market. So why is a card that no one uses worth more money than many tournament staples are right now? It's because that printing of Lich was the last one ever, and this iconic rare has perceived value as a collector's item. It's part of the game's history. Very old, very rare cards are worth money because they're old and rare, not because they're good cards to actually use in decks. This principle is also why my Alpha Farmstead is worth more money than Jace, the Mind Sculptor (yes, really). For similar reasons, foil versions of cards can be worth a lot.

Back when the Revised dual lands had left Extended and were only tournament-legal in Type 1 and Type 1.5, they were worth less money than a lot of newer rares were. I remember buying some duals for $10 a piece. That's because Revised Edition had a huge print run compared to previous core sets, and collectors were only interested in the older, rarer versions of those cards. Two things changed that. Firstly, Legacy was established and became a successful tournament format, so there was a competitive environment in which those cards had utility. Secondly, the player base grew tremendously, and the previously more saturated market for dual lands introduced too much demand for the older prices. An Underground Sea from Beta is worth thousands of dollars, and no amount of hypothetical reprinting of the card (it's on the Reserved List anyway, but whatever) would change that. It's worth that money because of collectors, not because of tournament players. But the Revised reprint was never viewed as a collector's item, except maybe by budget-minded collectors who wanted full sets of old cards but couldn't dream of going for the really expensive versions. The price increase from $12 or so up to the $300 that Underground Sea is now worth has nothing to do with collecting and everything to do with tournament play. The manabases for the best decks in Legacy demand dual lands, and because Legacy grew so much, the demand inflated the price of the card. Force of Will wasn't even a rare. It was an uncommon. But it's so valued for its tournament presence in Eternal formats that it single-handedly makes Alliances booster packs worth more money than other booster packs from that era. It's a card that was printed as an uncommon and that is now worth over $90 because the print runs back then were so small and the card is so good in tournament decks that it's a staple wherever it's legal.

Anyway, a Beta Underground Sea would not drop in value if the card were reprinted in a new set. But a Revised version of the same card? People who want to spend large sums of money on the older, rarer versions aren't interested in the Revised version. It's only worth hundreds of dollars because it's a tournament staple and it's scarce. I see no reason why the secondary market value wouldn't drop if a new set (with a much bigger print run) reprinted the card.

But what about fetchlands? Well, they're a special case. The Onslaught fetchlands were still circulating as tournament staples in Constructed formats back when Legacy was established as a format, and they stuck around in Legacy and Vintage as Eternal format staples. When Legacy became more popular and the demand increased, the values of these lands increased as well. So they're kind of like the other inflated cards. But then WotC invented Modern, a format that didn't have access to the Onslaught fetchlands, but did have access to the Zendikar fetchlands. Due to a combination of factors, most of which can be attributed to WotC, Modern has become much more popular than Legacy. Even though Zendikar had a much higher print run than Onslaught, the fetchlands from Zendikar are nearly equally inflated, as there remains such a massive demand for them in Modern tournament decks. But when Khans of Tarkir becomes tournament-legal, the Onslaught fetchlands will be legal in Modern. The original versions of these cards may have some perceived collector's value, being older and rarer, and many Modern players, as well as Eternal players, might create enough demand for the original versions that they actually go up in value, rather than down. Or perhaps the gulf between the size of the print runs of Onslaught and Khans of Tarkir will suffice to make the demand for the inflated Onslaught fetchlands drop. I can't say for sure, but it seems clear that the popularity of Modern, where these lands will now be legal, is a new variable that makes this an unsual case compared to most previous reprints.
 

turgy22

Nothing Special
I had absolutely no opinion on this, but after reading Oversoul's post, I voted "No" just to spite him.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
A surprising number of newer players do not understand the hype. One might think that the Zendikar fetchlands would have given them an introduction, but I guess it is the case that a ton of people didn't join the game until well after Zendikar block. I've seen a lot of amusing comparisons to Evolving Wilds. Poor kids don't know what they're in for.
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
So tell me Oversoul, Shoul I sell my Onslaught fetch lands now or hold on to them? (If I can even find them) :D
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
So tell me Oversoul, Shoul I sell my Onslaught fetch lands now or hold on to them? (If I can even find them) :D
I have no idea! I'm holding onto mine, but I got mine back when I was in high school. If the prices of the old versions crashed and they became $20 cards or whatever, I'd still be coming out way ahead, assuming that I cared. I just checked, though, and the prices on the Onslaught fetchlands did dip pretty strongly around the time that the reprints were announced. You know, if I tried to pretend to be someone with some sense for business or markets, I'd probably wait until Khans of Tarkir was going to rotate out of Standard, lowering the value of its cards (the older versions are always going to be worth more than the reprints). Then I'd buy the original Onslaught versions before they could climb again. But in actuality, I'll probably just complete my playsets of Onslaught fetchlands once I have the spending money to do so and don't need any more dual lands.
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
I was being sarcastic, but you are more knowledgeable of the cycles of sets and stuff.....
I couldn't sell my fetch lands, until I actually find them in the mishmash of my collection.
Heck I can't find the deckbox of all my Judge foils that I never opened...... it's here somewhere....
 

Melkor

Well-known member
The prices on the secondary market just boggle my mind. I feel like the old man reminiscing about when you could take the trolley for a nickel and still have enough left over for a butterscotch. Obviously I'm in favor of reprinting everything, especially those things that were printed while I wasn't playing or buying cards.
 

Mooseman

Isengar Tussle
The prices on the secondary market just boggle my mind.
You're telling me... I got the new basic lands judge foils and was offered $250 for 5 basic lands.......... and then was told that I should only take $300+
Strange, but true.
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
The prices on the secondary market just boggle my mind. I feel like the old man reminiscing about when you could take the trolley for a nickel and still have enough left over for a butterscotch.
I feel like that a lot! It's kind of unnerving.

Obviously I'm in favor of reprinting everything, especially those things that were printed while I wasn't playing or buying cards.
I'm strongly in favor of reprints, but until now, I've been able to claim that the cards I particularly want to see reprinted are ones that I already own anyway, so I'm not motivated by my own petty greed or whatever. Most notably, I've been using Force of Will in my decks since the card was worth less than a dollar. Now I have to check myself when new players ask me for deck advice because I keep thinking, "Force of Will would go well in your blue deck and would go a long way toward shoring up your deck's weaknesses." But if I were to say that, it wouldn't go over very well because these newer players are trying to play a game and aren't really keen on shelling out $360 for a mere four cards. But I was just looking at the numbers and the fetchland reprints actually do stand to benefit me personally...

I'm trying to collect full playsets of cards I'd use for ideal manabases in my decks, which includes duals and fetches. This sounds pretty exorbitant, but I already had a lot of cards before I even set out to do this. Picked up a few duals earlier this year, and now I'm seven cards away from having full playsets of all ten dual lands (I'm missing two copies of Scrubland, two copies of Plateau, one copy of Savannah, one copy of Badlands, and one copy of Taiga). It will cost me over $500 to actually get those cards, but I'm going to do it eventually. I was just looking at prices on fetches, though. Yikes! I only need three cards out of the Zendikar fetches (I'm missing three copies of Verdant Catacombs), and that's not so bad. But I really don't have many of the older, more expensive, Onslaught fetchlands. I would need four copies of Flooded Strand, three copies of Windswept Heath, four copies of Bloodstained Mire, and four copies of Wooded Foothills. That's something like $600 more and would have been even worse before the reprint announcement. So yeah, Khans of Tarkir is going to make cards that I wanted to buy more accessible.
 

Melkor

Well-known member
I had a box of decks stolen out of my car a few years back and didn't even notice (I wasn't really playing at the time); now looking at current prices, that box was worth over a thousand dollars. Pretty amazing, if I went back in time to 1999, would I be better off buying Wastelands or Apple stock?
 

Melkor

Well-known member
Actually, I had a detachable face to my car stereo, which they did take, but they managed to snap it off rather than just take it (there's a button that just makes it come off). They also took my tire chains (only used once, I don't have much call for them in my part of California).

Not the most intelligent of thieves, though I do hope they actually sold those cards for something, I'd hate to think my dual lands/Force of Wills/etc. just ended up in a dumpster somewhere.
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Well, they must have known something about Magic because just taking them seems kind of odd. Weird...
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Well, they must have known something about Magic because just taking them seems kind of odd. Weird...
That this seems even remotely weird to you leads me to believe that there are no drugs in Baltimore. That can't be right...
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
Really? That you would think an average person/thief would think Magic cards are somehow valuable is weird to me...
 
C

Child of Gaea

Guest
Really? That you would think an average person/thief would think Magic cards are somehow valuable is weird to me...
Ive seen where crackheads have stolen old socks and tried to trade them for a hit. If they were in a box or a binder that alone would symbolize a desperate hope for $5 to get through the next hour. Rational, coherent thought is not something that's happening. Take it as a blessing that you cannot rationalize it in your head!
 
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