In my opinion (must always preface with that), one of the biggest reasons why VS does not do well is because of its poor secondary market value.

Because there are not that many "premium" single cards in VS, booster product does not demand a premium price. You can currently buy almost any VS product online (or at Frank's) for wholesale or less... and this was even the case BEFORE the OP announcements. That is prohibitive to store owners carrying VS because they cannot compete with selling product at the same or lower price than what they bought it for... despite the added value of providing game space.

What led to this problem:

1. Infinite Color Wheel:
When I first played VS, I thought that by having unlimited teams was a huge advantage over other games. You basically had an unending pallete of mechanics and archetypes to explore. But because of this, team-stamped cards were confined to that archetype and if that deck wasn't viable in tournament play, those cards had no value. Basically, this led to generic cards only having high-value which pretty much made the rest of the set worthless. Examples: Savage Beatdown, Enemy of my Enemy and Mobilize.

2. 4 Sets Per Year:
While I enjoy having a new set every 3 months, this also compounds the obsolescence problem. If the new set has teams that are better than the older sets, it devalues all those other team cards.

3. Viability of Teams:
So, if each set introduces at least 4 teams, what are the chances of those teams being competitive? Most cases, 1 out of 4. Only a few sets like Avengers have been able to give us Tier 1 teams out of the majority of its contents (Avengers, Squad, Faces etc). This further decreases the value of team-stamped cards.

4. Familiarity of Property:
Even if someone really doesn't play the game competitively, there are tons of comic book collectors out there who want to just buy cards for the characters. But if the sets contain characters that they really don't care for... why even buy them? We see good effects on unknown characters (who is Ahmed again?), we see bad effects on well-known characters (name a good Superman rare).

Solutions?

UDE has already moved in that direction:

1. Refeature of teams:
We've seen Brotherhood, X-Men, Doom, Skrull, Spiderman, Syndicate, Underworld revamps. They were slow with DC, because 2 Marvel revamp sets have already released and only 2 DC teams has been redone (Teen Titans and Darkseid).

2. Rehash of mechanics:
If you want to keep different teams, you should at least have them share mechanics for natural team ups and cross-team stamping. Reservist, Evasion and Cosmic are getting this type of treatment. But they should take it a step farther and have other teams share archetypes like the no-hand strategy or the hand-flood strategy. Instead of trying to make new archetypes, concentrate on making old archetypes more competitive (and bring those old team-stamped rares out of the quarter bin).

3. Concentration on Familiar Properties:
Marvel Team-Up, World's Finest, Marvel Legends and DC Legends. 'nuff said.

So as a community, we've been described as being too negative. Let's prove otherwise. If the cards have more value, the sealed product will have more value and more people will buy it and more stores will carry it.

Even if we turn out in droves to attend our City Championships... that alone is not going to help the value of the VS singles market.

What do you suggest that can be done to improve the secondary market?

Wow. I really like what you said in your post. Lots of good points.

What I think really needs to be done is that people need to be bringing their friends in to the game. When I started playing VS, it was just me and my buddy. Within a month, I'd found eight more of my buddies who were interested, and all of the sudden, I had my own little play-group running with my buddies. A couple of them brought in a couple of their friends, and all of the sudden we had fourteen guys who were interested in playing VS at least a few times a week. I would say that at least a third to half of these guys hadn't touched trading cards since Pokemon first came out, which is sayin something.

It's going to be really hard to change the singles market for older sets... I mean, honestly, I've purchased about twelve boxes each of Webs of Spider-Man, Marvel Knights, and The Avengers because of their low cost, and I'm planning on doing the same with Green Lantern Corps, Justice League, and Superman. I'm sorry, but if the average VS player has eighteen copies of a particular rare, it's value is never going to be that high, because no matter how good the card is, people only need so many copies of it unless it's a generic card (IE Savage Beatdown, EomE, etc).

I think you're right about re-hashing the teams. That's a big part of making VS more sucessful. I also think that new teams have to have a large amount of exciting cards, especially if they hope to make an appearence in Golden Age play, simply because of my previous point... why would I spend $400 to play a new team in Golden Age, when I can buy ten boxes of Marvel Origins for $200 bucks and have a couple viable decks as a result. It's ridculous.

UDE has a lot of work to do, but I think the biggest thing is getting your friends to play, and attempting to draw in more casual players. MTG has a huge tournament scene, but the reason the game continues to survive is because of those guys out there who just have to have ten copies of Shivan Dragon and Akroma, along with those who might buy fifty or so packs of every release that comes out, just to check out the new cards and bust up their friends in casual play...

That's my two cents.

Well, from what I've seen, if people build decks with cards that weren't used before, and are SUCCESSFUL (ie, winning PCs, $10ks, PCQs), then people will go and buy the "new hotness." Examples: Rama-Tut (who?), Devil's Due, Mojoworld (back in PC:NY), and Meltdown (darn artifacts). These cards were previously viewed as trash, but when certain decks had these cards in it and did well on a grand stage, people were scooping it up by the handful. Unfortunately, since there are no more high-level events, people don't have that information anymore (it's going to be purely local now).

Just for reference how does VS stack up against Magic in this regard? I have never played MTG so I am curious.

For instance how many "money rares" are there in a given MTG expansion and what constitutes a "money rare" 10 dollars, 20 dollars?

It seems to me that a VS set will produce 1-2 big dollar cards i.e. SttG,EOME,Mobilize,etc. Then the search cards will all fetch around 10 bucks and there will be a handful of 5-7 dollar rares with the majority going for a buck.

I mean, most things you say are right... they need at least one "A" team in each set, and they need to have the good cards be rares. MTU, at least locally, has by far outsold the last 3 sets because there are rares that you want to build decks.

I do think they're taking a few wrong steps in making sub-teams... cards on sub-teams are never going to be expensive, and they'll never be able to legacy support these teams. Teams like "Birds of Prey" and "Wildpack" should be regulated to version, possibly with bonuses for version (Sable could be "Recruit only if you control a character with the version Wildpack), but still maintain their core affiliation.

If they refeature more often, and print staple generics and good characters into the rare slots (as happened in MTU), I think we'll begin to see a good secondary market for this game.

When did this happen? Last I heard, it was announced that there were still going to be Pro Circuits. Well, last I heard from UDE. I hear people shouting about no more high-level events all the time on these forums, but nobody ever seems to be able to back that statement up.

Erick, good points. The singles market is definitely atrocious... If I want Mobilize, EoME, etc... I have to pay a ton. But if I want a Checkmate rare, I'm looking at a buck or two tops. While I like that because I'm casual in nature, like you said, it does bomb the booster market, except in the case of those sets that contain the money rares. I'm willing to bet MXM has outsold all the other sets.

As long as the new sets continue to follow the example that MTU has set, I think we'll be fine soon.

Not that your points don't have validity, because they do, but IMO the secondary market of VS is weak primarily because of the set size and rarity breakdown. 110-55-55 creates a pretty easy collectability scenario. For very little (subjective I know) cash investment, one can flat out purchase enough sealed product and have a majority of what they need or want. At right around the 3 box mark, you have a complete set of all your commons and uncommons and at least one (and sometimes 4) of a large majority of the rares. Almost everyone I know that plays the game buys boxes in some quantitiy or another and I would say that probably pretty much the norm. Since the average age of the players of this game is generally higher than other games, I'd make an educated guess that the expendable cash possessed by these individuals is also higher than other games. Since it is easier to just purchase the sealed product than it is to try and trade for it, this creates much less of a need for a secondary market.

For a good example, look at Magic and compare prices for rares from their "base" 360ish-card expansion sets with prices for rares from their 165-card expansion sets. It is generally unheard of for a rare from the 165 set to top $8-$10 dollars. And then only if it ridiculous.

There are a few other things that I believe factor in, but that's the gist of it. I truly believe for every 20 cards you added to a set, you would see the secondary market exponentially increase. The harder it is to get the cards from just buying packs, the much more likely it is that a gamer will prefer to just go out an buy the specific cards they are looking for.

This is a great point... like what they did with Freedom Force in MXM.

I think we VS is on the right path to fixing the game and the secondary market
As long as we find a way to save some kind of OP (OP drives the secondary market i believe)

Reprint powerful cards.

While this may seem counterintuitive, if you want to prop up the secondary market, reprinting cards that have previously been high $ cards in new sets would help.

Garth <> Tempest, Fizzle, and Savage Beatdown are all cards that have had significant price tags in the past, but all of dropped dramatically since the advent of Silver Age (which made Golden Age rarely played).

If World's Finest included reprints of Alfred Pennyworth, Fizzle, Two Face, Split Personality wouldn't those prices spike upwards again as they became legal for Silver and Modern Age.

I believe the UDE print sheet has 110 cards, thus the multiples of 55 per card rarity. In order to reprint cards without devaluing the currently released copies of the same card, UDE could move to 50 new rares with 2 copies per sheet and 10 reprinted rares with 1 copy per print sheet.

You could do the same for uncommons and commons.

-Mike

Very valid and I agree in most part.

The only problem, is that even if the rarity factor were to change, if the playability factor remained the same, the increase would not be significant.

At my other store, I could crack open boxes of MtG when it first came out and make the money back quickly. Because there are only 5 main colors, there was something for everyone. With VS... it's a slow burn... people have to wait to see how certain teams do before they commit to buying team-stamped singles... and even then... they don't want to pay a high price for them. And if teams suck, all those singles just die. I understand it's a hard balance for UDE design-wise but I think by confining their scope to the mechanics and archetypes they already have in place and increasing their playability, it helps quite a bit. Look at MTU... they just rehashed older mechanics and added a semi-new one in Pay ATK/DEF... this is a good example.

Agreed. I have said since Marvel Knights that the "New teams every set!" would be bad. I suggested that MK be a version, refeaturing a variety of Marvel Heroes, and give them the versions of Marvel Knight. But it didn't happen. Now I think a lot of people are starting to see the effect of it (and thankfully, UDE seems to have also).

With an unlimited supply of teams, you will quickly find some relegated to the trash bins. Then, because so many people think you can't build a good Manhunter deck, they will not buy Green Lantern boosters for fear of getting useless cards.

Obviously not every card can be the best, but in Magic you are getting at least 2 or 3 cards you can use per pack. And you will ALWAYS be able to use them (casually, at least). In VS, if you gamble on a Lantern, you may get nothing noteworthy, and may abandon the GLC entirely once a "cooler" (from your point of view) team comes out.

VS needs to (and needed to) cut down to a core set of teams (and a core set).

I disagree here, other than it fuels the other problem of too many teams. Also, it would be eliminated, I believe, if VS simply adopted a CORE SET. But I don't think more cards hurts the singles market on its own.

Again, purely based on the introduction of new teams constantly. Each color in Magic becomes viable or not with a new set. But all 5 are clearly competative. VS abandons and picks up teams so quickly that there is no way to make every team viable (and why I have long been against new teams).

Agreed again. The big name guys should be the most powerful. There's NOTHING wrong with that, UDE!

1. Refeature of teams:
2. Rehash of mechanics:
3. Concentration on Familiar Properties:
...What do you suggest that can be done to improve the secondary market?[/quote]

A CORE SET. UDE, you need to understand how important a core set of cards is to a game such as VS. It simply MUST exist for the long-term health of the game.

I don't really buy the "familiarity of property" argument. Here are a couple of reasons why:

1) The biggest TCG of all has no discernible property. It is a generic mishmash of a number of different fantasy elements. Magic vastly outsells VS without it.

2) No name properties if done well become familiar properties in the VS community. I am a long time comic collector and I did not know who Ahmed Samsarra was. At this point there are very few people on this site who could not tell you he's from Checkmate.

I didn't mean to say they shouldn't do 4 sets a year... but 4 sets a year of different teams each set is problematic.

I like their current release schedule, they just need to alter the contents of the sets so that they foster more playability and value as stated in all the previous posts on this thread.

I used to not favor a core set or reprints, but the arguments for them... especially if Silver Age is going to be the prominent format, is very valid.

They know what the card does and what team he's on... but do they know anything else?

I understand this works for Magic... but UDE is trying to use the property they pay so much for in licensing fees to their potential... and that means leveraging the big names.

I don't think we'll see a Hollywood movie starring Ahmed Samsarra anytime soon.