Rip off or not, there are people that want to buy only First Ed boxes and packs. Who want 1st ed cards, and when they trade, want a little more for 1st ed than unlimited. It adds something Collectable to a Collectable Card Game. (As much as people like to forget TCG and CCG stand for Collectable and Tradable card game)

Face it, some people buy these cards just to have Superhero stuff, not because it's a game. Some people want "harder to get" cards, which 1st ed takes care of. 1st ed foil cards sell for more than non foil unlimited for a reason. And this thread is about pushing the secondary market. Higher Prices on cards, means more people want to buy packs either for resell or put in a case and show off.

Agreed.

No, you're thinking of this wrong.

The core set exists to ensure that a good stockpile of popular teams is always available for players. Then the people who either don't care about comics or want a lesser known team will eventually have a set of it released.

At the current time, you don't need to buy two core sets to get into VS. You need to buy EVERY set. Or only the set you care about (X-men, JLA). The Core set is the exact same thing, only constant. The JLA set is no longer printed (I believe). The Core set would ensure JLA cards were always available.

We don't know what licensing dictates. What is the difference between what you say above and the current release schedule? Your use of "core" is meaningless as far as I can tell.

Pardon?

And that would be wrong of them. The core teams need to be great. Then press the envelope on other cards.

Or limit the game to 10 teams total, and dual affiliate in all these other random little teams.

You could, as Magic adds and removes cards from the core set each release.

Ah, the store owner (are you an owner?) is advocating ripping off kids and other customers to make a profit?

Who likes to forget that? And you collect a set and trade cards without First Edition exisiting...I'm really not seeing your point here other than, "I can rip off kids with 1st ed cards!"



And correct me if I'm wrong, but Magic has no 1st Ed for every set, right? They're doing pretty well, I hear.

Where they do have editions is in [FANFARE]A CORE SET! That gets a new edition (they're up to Tenth, I think). But the expansions don't.

So tell us, how is it a rip off? To have a card that is more collectable to those that want to collect them, and are no different than any other card for those that do not care? Say like when a comic has two covers..one is a short print and just worth more.

And trust me, as far as ripping people off, you wont find a better store owner than I, for taking care of the people that shop with me. I just happen to have customers, and they just happen to want 1st ed cards more than other cards, because of resell.

If people want the secondary market to be better, they need to be ready to spend more for cards. A bad market for the sell of singles, means low prices. You have to have one way or the other, you can make money off of your cards, or you can buy them cheap.

I personally hate 1st edition for the same way I sorta dislike foils. If I'm running a card. Every version of the card I'm running I want to be the same. Foils and first edition throw my consistency off.

I believe the above posters problem with "1st edition" is the store owners can just crack it and sell it as singles. Then not offer packs till standard edition comes out. Its an easily exploitable system by store owners to make money off players in an unfair manner.

The problem is core sets aren't permanent in any game, they all get redone periodcially. Also, core sets also take up a release for most games so a core set would take up a release of one game, but remain in print for a period of time.

It is has been strongly rumored and hinted at that the license agreements with Marvel and DC require that each license have the same number of releases in a year. If this is the case, squeezing six sets into the year is rather difficult, and thus the suggestion of a two-year window in which the core set is alternated between the license every other year makes sense.

Going partly by what you said: "Rip off or not, there are people that want to buy only First Ed boxes and packs." You imply whether or not you're ripping them off, you will sell them something they "want."

I assume you have numbers on how many people quit VS because there was no first edition? Or did no one quit because of that?

What about Magic? No "first edition" there. But I hear that still sell better than most CCGs.

It's a rip off because the only reason it exists is for greedy store owners to charge more. There is no other purpose to "first edition" in all expansions.

You can see Athrex's post above mine for a way store owners can manipulate the market to make a buck.

Erick was hardly saying he wanted shop keepers to be able to rip off others (well, maybe he was, but I didn't see that). He was explaining how to make cards more desireable. 1st edition, even by the incorrect way you describe it, won't help, because people who don't care about it won't pay more.

What WILL help is making rares more desireable for players, through most of the ways Erick described.

That's not a problem, that's fine! You can redo the core, but keep it mostly intact.

How does Magic's release schedule currently look? I'm not sure.

You wouldn't have 6 sets every year, you'd have 4 sets a year, and a new core printed every 3 or so. The core is mostly reprints of cards, so there's only the incentive to buy it for the newest players, or if a player missed a card in an expansion.

By your suggestion, every year the core set would change (which is very fast). That doesn't really provide a stable base.

And not just the rares... but commons and uncommons too.

That's the problem with infinite teams... if one team is not viable... there goes the value of 1/4 the set. But by concentrating on existing archetypes and making teams that work on that to produce natural synergy not only increases the value of the set but also of the sets before that use that same archetype.

Make teams that share an archetype work better together. Dual-Aff characters help with that. Characters that search for Team-Ups help with that. Team-Ups that can't be targeted help with that. Enemy of my Enemy helps with that (oh wait... that card is supposed to be banned).

I understand the need to push for mono-decks but at this point in time, when you have over 50 teams available... you need to start consolidating archetypes to increase the value of cards.

I think instead of a core set... each set or every other set should have reprints of staple cards they want to keep in the format.

They are doing that with the Starters and Essential Collections... and quite a few people are asking for reprints... so why not?

Quoted in Really Big Letters for Truth.

An excellent point.

+1 for a few reprints in new sets.

MTU helps with the secondary market due to retreads of decent teams and great dual affiliated characters encouraging multiple archetypes for a team. Marvel sets also help the secondary market.

I am not suggesting a core set to change every year, but every other year isn't unreasonable. 2-3 years resets of the core set is pretty standard in the ccg industry.

I was speaking directly to the timing of when core sets would be released. Lets assume the following axioms are true as these are based on strong rumors regarding the licenses or the actual scheduling & expenditure of resources required to produce a set (core or expansion):
1. UDE must release the same number of sets for Marvel and DC within the same calendar year
2. Scheduling an additional set in a calendar year may very likely exceed the capability of the printer currently used by UDE, especially with Yu-gi-oh and WoW (this is a very important factor as a change in printer will create variations in the cards)
3. UDE has a goal of making the core set desirable to existing players (new art, corrected test, including hard to find existing cards, etc.), so putting out too many cards in a short period will reduce the sales of the sets

So, if #1 is true that means that you either bump up the sets released in a year from 4 to 6 in order to keep the same flow of new cards or you replace a new set with a core set. I doubt moving to 6 sets in a year is really feasible if UDE doesn't want to overwhelm their existing base of players. Having 2 reprint sets in the same year may also be unfeasible given UDE's desire to sell as many cards as possible.

My suggestion was the following:
Year 1 - Marvel core set, DC expansion, Marvel expansion, DC expansion
Year 2 - Marvel expansion, DC expansion, Marvel expansion, DC core set
Repeat 2 year cycle and align so that Silver Age seasons are aligned to the period just before a DC core set.

I don't think core sets should necessarily always have the same teams, but rather be the foundation for the next three expansions of each license.

-Mike

Any good set helps the secondary market. DCR is probably the second best secondary market set (after MHG) that was produced since the Origins sets because it had a number of cards that went in the $10+ range.