In anticipation of a new batch of awesome boxed sets from WotC, some discussion has begun in regards to their pricing. As a store owner, financial columnist, and a runner up for "most interesting man in the world" title, the historical pricing of these boxed sets is of great interest to me. Rather than speculating - quietly or not - about their prices, I decided to go all Chris McNutt on you guys and actually crunch the numbers.

I know, I'm shocked too.

I'm more of a theory guy than a number cruncher, to be honest. I really love the work that people like Chris do. I recently spoke about the importance of accuracy in one's work, and we could all be so much more accurate. In that spirit, I'm going to try to put some data behind my theories today by looking at the pricing of some Duel Decks in a little timeline format.

Elves vs Goblins Released 11/16/07 ~$70-80

The first Duel Deck in the series was pretty popular, as Siege-Gang Commander's alternate art was highly desirable at the time. It didn't really contain any chase rares, although it hurt the value of some uncommons like Goblin Ringleader and Goblin Warchief. The Elf side of things didn't really bring much to the table, since Ambush Commander wasn't a huge card. The Siege-Gang Commander typically sells for $5 or so, making the deck itself rather worthless as cards go. Despite this, we can see that sealed copies go for anywhere from $60 to $100. That gives us our first indicator of how to price these sets. A 3 year old set with almost no valuable cards sells for 3x-5x MSRP! Let's move on.

Jace vs Chandra Released 11/7/2008 ~$80-$100

The introduction of Planeswalkers was a natural fit for the new Duel Decks series. This was the first indicator that Wizards were going to push the Planeswalkers hard, both in terms of playability and in terms of marketing. They realized what a powerful asset they had; characters that could span blocks and reappear for years gave the game a high level of cohesion that it lacked between blocks, and from a business standpoint, was a stroke of creative marketing genius. The cards have been amazingly popular, especially among newer players who can't get crochety about "the good old days' when we used a crooked T for the tap symbol and artifacts came in one color: artifacts. This should indicate what a powerful emotional presence the Planeswalkers bring, marketing-wise.

Although the way Wizards market their products fascinate me, we can learn a lot more from this release. Jace Beleren was never more than a $10 card, and Chandra Nalaar was never really hot either. Sorry baby, not even when you were fresh from the pack. The deck did contain Fact or Fiction and a few other decent cards, but there's no way it was worth more than its MSRP by any significant amount at any time. Once again, we see sealed copies retailing for at least 3x their MSRP, and much like the inaugural Duel Deck, is almost impossible to find, period. This tells us a lot more, so let's draw a few conclusions that we can then try to verify with the rest of the series.

We see again that there is very little correlation between the value of the cards and the MSRP and the after-market value of the sealed product. Given that there are NO unknown cards in the decks, we can rule out any kind of "risk-based pricing", which would be modeled on some sort of mathematics. That is something to consider when pricing older sealed product, but these are neither old nor random. Thus, we can make the following hypothesis:

An insufficient of sealed Duel Decks are being retained to meet the desires of the "pure collectors".

Now, we need to specify a little more. What is a sealed product? One that has its intact factory wrapping and is "mint" condition. Collectors care, players do not. Thus, we should probably assume that some combination of the print run size, the player demand, and the collector demand are the factors. Print run size is not currently available, but we can just use a given number X to talk about it, since it is both unknowable and unchanging. Collector demand is probably fixed as well, since a "pure collector" isn't too concerned with the contents, only completeness of collection. Thus, if [X] sets are being printed, and [Y] are being wanted by collectors, then [X] - [Y] = [Z] are available to players. There's a problem with that math though; collectors are not usually the fastest players to act. It's the casual players, who absolutely love the Duel Decks, that snatch them up fast. Thus, there are often far more copies busted open, played, loved and used than there are copies sequestered away under glass. The line should look more like this: That's what is pushing the secondary market value very high down the road. So far, it seems like anyone who just bought and held either Duel Deck, and hoarded them en masse, could have very easily had a big fat payday. So let's find out how likely this is to happen with the next batch and fast-forward to April '09.

Divine vs Demonic Released 4/10/2009 ~$40

Here's where we see divergence from the pattern. The very interesting Divine vs Demonic set is currently selling for only twice the MSRP and widely available. What we don't know is which variable changed. If we assume no change in the collector "catch 'em all" mentality since we have absolutely no basis, we can assume that either player demand was lower for some reason or we can assume that the print run was larger. Either way, we need at least one stable variable and it seems that collector desire is mostly irrelevant of what's inside, having a fixed rate against the variability of print run and player popularity.

DvD was amusing, because it seemed like Akroma, Angel of Wrath was an unstoppable force against the black deck. It's actually a great way to train newer players in mechanics. There are multiple cards in the deck that "beat" Akroma, like all the Sacrifice effects. This teaches players to play to outs without even coining the term. You eventually get mad at their "stupid friggin' Akroma" always killing you. Knowing nothing of "outs", you say "I'm going to save this Fleshbag Marauder for Akroma no matter what!" and you plan your whole game around "killing his stupid Angel". Sounds like a typical noob grudge, right? Wrong. Whether he realizes it or not, that "noobie" just played to his outs. He couldn't win against Akroma, so he saved the only card he had against her, no matter what. That's called playing to your outs, and this deck teaches new players how to play tight, no matter whether the players know it or not! Sadly, I think this may have made the black deck seem "unbalanced", and thus the product was mainly a novelty purchase for the foil Angel of Wrath. So that represents a decrease in player demand, but an extension of collector demand. However, those collectors seeking the alternate art cards open their products. We can firmly assume now that the price of a deck is irrelevant if open, and high when sealed. Even at only 2x MSRP, this release is still a double-up in a year. That's just fine in my books.

Garruk vs Liliana Released 10/30/2009 ~$20-25

Now we get to some interesting data! This deck is barely selling above MSRP, and it's not even a year old. The contents still do not eclipse the MSRP value, but they come close. Garruk Wildspeaker and Liliana Vess are both popular and Treetop Village, Rancor and Mutilate put it really close. It's hard to say player demand was low, but an increase in print run size might be at work here. Once we get to Phyrexia Vs Coalition, we're still at MSRP. It will be interesting to see whether Divine Vs Demonic ever hits those high numbers. If it does, I will posit that it will be because of a low player demand. Collectors just had longer to get their copies, so they don't need to rush and drive up the price of sealed products. If it remains below 3x MSRP, a change in print run size seems to be the likely cause.

It's rather frustrating to come all this way with no real conclusion, but there is a great deal of information to be had as time goes by, provided we know where, and how, to look. The important metric is, clearly, multiples of MSRP. That Garruk Vs Liliana is selling at 1.25 MSRP is more important than what MSRP actually is, since it hasn't changed recently. By monitoring the price of Divine vs Demonic, we'll have a better model on which to predicate our theories.

Looking forward to the Elspeth vs Tezzeret deck, which has a street date of September 3rd, we have a unique situation. The contents of the deck are worth more than the cards themselves are! Now, both are taking a hit because the set will release when the cards rotate from Standard, but it's clear to me that both Elspeth and Tezzeret have a long-term home in this game. Tezzeret already breaks older formats wide open. Thus, an alternate art foil version will be highly sought after for collectors.

If we correlate change in price with age, which is perfectly reasonable, we can assume that the EvT deck will appreciate. The question is, by how much? As a reseller, you should really want to know this, because it determines how many you should put aside for later. The margin on Magic sealed product is nice, but it's obviously not 400% nice. Without saying too much, I'd rather sell them at MSRP now than at 2xMSRP in a year. Once we start talking about 4x MSRP in under 2 years, I start listening.

The bottom line is that we can't know precisely what the price will be at any point in the future, but if we use the precedents to make a good guess, we'll be able to start thinking along the right lines. First, we know that Planeswalker Duel Decks just plain sell better. They have more of a draw to the average player. Second, both Tezzeret and Elspeth are very, very good, and are probably going to see heavy play in Extended or Legacy. Second, people who foil out decks for Legacy will want Tezzeret's alternate art version. It's not a stretch to believe that the decks will start above MSRP. This is tough to predict since no Duel Deck has ever started above MSRP.

Ultimately it seems like the Tezzeret vs Elspeth deck will be received with above-average popularity, and as such, I plan to order as many as my distributor will allow. I'd suggest anyone with the funds and access to do the same. I was considering writing about From The Vault: Relics this week, so here's a little bonus article-within-an-article to close out this week.

FTV Relics - License to Print Money

FtV Relics is going to be the most popular FTV set to date, and it won't be close. While you could trust my opinion on the matter, as someone who purports to understand such things, you could also ask a trained chimpanzee and he could probably tell you the same thing. Buy as many as you can and never look back. Every EDH player absolutely needs one, and that's not up for debate. Get some. It's probably good I didn't decide to write about this boxed set for my main topic or else the article would probably end, well, here.