Comments on: What happened with Legacy and the Reserved List?

By: Zak

Zak — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:41:11 +0000

I agree with almost everything you’ve said. I only wonder if “classic” as you’ve called it would need to be a recurring theme. For example, if in 5 years time, the price of something like Rishadan Port has increased in the same way as the legacy staples, would a new format have to be introduced? Although the fact that they could reprint these would be beneficial, but I’m not sure as to how best reprint older cards whose power make them unacceptable candidates for standard.

@wannabevintage I have nothing against players like you, and I think it’s great that Magic has so many dedicated fans. All I want is to be able to play Magic using some older cards. While I admit there are elitists out there who don’t want me playing Legacy, I would be more than happy to play with anyone who wanted if the card pool were simply more available. We have 1 Legacy tournament a month here in Edmonton, and we can’t get 8 people so that we can make it sanctioned. Of the 6 or so who do show, 2 people have tier 1 decks, I have a mediocre deck (I have 3 Forces and some other good legacy cards, but no duals), and the people who simply port extended/standard to legacy.

I’ve been following this story closely, and I’m very interested to watch how Legacy does over the next few years if nothing is done about it.

By: Adam Clare

Adam Clare — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:12:08 +0000

As a law student I can tell you that the reserve list had no legal significance. Wizards made a one sided promise which are generally unenforceable under contract law unless you can show reliance. In this case that would be almost impossible to prove as Wizards does not sell singles, all rares are equally likely to appear in a pack, and it does not determine the value of cards. There’s simply no way of showing you relied on the reserved list to purchase any particular product from Wizards. This is complicated by the fact that Wizards printed many of the reserved cards (and all of the important ones) prior to making the promise which would make reliance impossible as you can’t rely on a promise made after the original sale of goods occurred.

Even if a court somehow found the reserve list binding, the damages would be so small that it wouldn’t be worth pursuing. Wizards cannot be held liable for inflated secondary market prices on their products over which they have no control. The damages would be limited to the MSRP of the pack in which the reserved card was purchased because that’s all Wizards has ever sold and the hypothetical guarantee would apply only to products actually sold by Wizards.

By: MTGBattlefield

MTGBattlefield — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:08:01 +0000

What happened with Legacy and the Reserved List?…

Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…

By: Rob Jelf

Rob Jelf — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:00:28 +0000

@ Wannabevintage You are right in that there are some people who have the old cards just through having been around then. I once had a box full of a few fun old cards from the list back when I played in Tempest, but that box is lost to eternity. I’m not sure if my family lost it sold it or destroyed it when I left my collection behind to move to another city. That box a year ago would have been worth a couple hundred dollars. Now it’d be worth no less than one thousand, since the cards are in demand due to the supported format.

@ Nicholas I was concerned about that, but I have a hard time coining a new phrase that might be accepted. I also was under the impression (I don’t play MTGO) that they were canning “Classic” and turning it into Legacy now that all the needed cards are online. What would be a good alternative name? “Veteran”?

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:52:21 +0000

The Classic format could be an interesting idea, but please call it something different. Classic is already the Magic Online version of Vintage, so having a second eternal format with the same name would be very confusing.

By: wannabevintage

wannabevintage — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:34:05 +0000

I strongly sympathize with your position, though I own a lot of “reserved List” cards. I just wanted to add, that it’s NOT just the wealthy and well-connected, but also the older players that just happen to have the cards since 1995 or so. I don’t consider myself an elitist, although I can understand that this might appear this way. See, I remember acquiring Dual Lands for Type 2 staples when Mirrodin came out. I even remember trading for an played bb Underground Sea at the value of a Arcbound Ravager because it’s border had been recolored with black sharpie, and everyone in the room said, that even if it was a dual, it can’t be worth more than that ravager because the recoloring of the white spots with sharpie “takes down the value to mere 10$” Just take that into consideration, please

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:10:46 +0000

Amen brother Jones, I agree with everything you just said. Great article.