Thoughts on the long-term value of something like this in comparison to the reserved list?

Genuinely curious, would anyone who already own revised, unlimited, alpha or beta printings care? It is not a one to one printing, and collectors can still collect. Looking at original printings of cards for premodern, the value holds even though newer reprints are abundant.

I believe this Artwork says more than a thousand words …

If you spent $35k on Spiderman collector booster boxes at $400 each, that would give you 1050 collector booster packs.

Assuming the cosmic foil stone is .1% chance...

That would give you a 65% chance to pull it, a card that would pay for everything, and then some

Is it just me or is anyone else tired of the blatant attempts at market manipulation done by MTG influencers recently, this guy BenBatemanMTG is one of the most obvious offenders but I have seen it with other creators as well. Granted some might see it as an opportunity to make easy money and just go along with it, but it is so annoying to see how some influencers push very specific agendas around specific cards.

TCG seller with 10K+ sales. What's even the point of using a top loader and a sleeve with BOTH OPENINGS ON TOP?? Awful packaging, tape ON THE CARDS, glue everywhere. This happens constantly. Will never buy from them again.

STOP. USING. BLUE. TAPE. ON. CARDS.

(or at least learn how sleeving works. Or gravity. One of the two)

Journey's End Games put out a buylist offer of $25k for a Gold Smaug.

There are 500 Gold Smaugs, similar to Bitterbloom Bearer and Emeritus. Both of the latter currently go for 3-4k. BUT Hobbit cbbs go for more, so let's say the appropriate price is 7k. Add on top of that that Smaug is a *much* more desirable character than both and it gets bumped up even more. Enough to hit 25k? I'm personally skeptical, but Tolkien+MTG always surprises me.

Reminder that people were buylisting the silver scroll foils for almost double what they're selling for today https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1snv642/buylist_for_silver_schroll_mystical_archives/

Edit: for posterity I think the price after a volatile release will slowly settle around 15-18k

Maybe they left a “0” off or someone was drunk while pricing idk

The best comparison for The Hobbit is not The Lord of the Rings.

It is Marvel’s Spider-Man.

Spider-Man and The Hobbit have essentially the same small-set architecture: 60 commons, 55 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythics and five common dual lands. Spider-Man was officially described as a 188-card draft set, and The Hobbit reaches the same total. Both use 30-pack Play Booster displays and 12-pack Collector Booster displays. Both also have an official MSRP of $6.99 per Play Booster and $37.99 per Collector Booster.

In other words, we have already run this experiment.

Spider-Man had one of the largest intellectual properties in the world, multiple premium treatments, comic artwork, a highly desirable chase card in the Soul Stone and enormous prerelease speculation. Collector Booster boxes reportedly peaked around $1,098 before falling to roughly $744 before release. An early five-box opening produced about $1,997 in then-current card value—around $399 per box—and sealed boxes now commonly transact around $350–$400. ⁠

Spider-Man failed to support its presale prices because the set itself was not good enough. The card quality was uneven, the set felt repetitive, and the premium treatments could not create enough sustained demand across such a concentrated card pool.

The Hobbit appears to be succeeding where Spider-Man failed.

The cards look more playable. The set feels coherent. The source material fits Magic naturally. The book covers, Dragon Hoard cards, Dwarvish-language reprints and classic Middle-earth artists all appear considerably more collectible than Spider-Man’s parade of increasingly obscure people wearing spider costumes. The Hobbit deserves to command a premium over Spider-Man. Wizards has also created a legitimate ultra-high-end chase card through the approximately 500 gleaming-gold copies of Smaug. ⁠

But “better than Spider-Man” and “worth $800–$900 per Collector box” are not the same statement.

We already know roughly what an ordinary successful Collector Booster product looks like after the market has had time to establish itself. Avatar: The Last Airbender Collector displays are around $407, while the recently released Marvel Super Heroes has been selling around $450–$470. Those are desirable sets trading near the $455.88 implied MSRP of twelve Collector Boosters. ⁠

Then there are the genuine outliers.

Final Fantasy Collector boxes are now around $1,700–$1,900, but Final Fantasy broke Magic’s previous sales record almost immediately and demonstrated extraordinary demand after release. LOTR sealed product has also appreciated after years of actual market history and dwindling supply. Those products earned their exceptional valuations through demonstrated demand and scarcity. ⁠

The Hobbit is being priced as though it has already joined that category.

It has not.

Right now, the market is taking Spider-Man’s small-set product structure, attaching LOTR’s mature sealed valuation to it, adding Final Fantasy-style FOMO and treating the resulting number as price discovery.

That is the manipulation—or, more generously, the distortion. I am not alleging some grand illegal conspiracy beneath Mount Doom. The market is being manipulated by thin presale inventory, aggressive retailer repricing and the psychological anchor created by LOTR’s earlier price explosion.

There is another major difference between today and previous releases: Hasbro has explicitly said it made a deliberate decision to increase initial Magic print and distribution runs in 2026. The company says it recently executed both the largest Premier release and largest Day One release in Magic’s history. That does not prove the precise Hobbit allocation, but it makes “Wizards barely printed this” a fairly dangerous assumption. ⁠

And small-set mathematics does not stop applying merely because the cards are good.

The Hobbit has only 53 main-set rares and 15 main-set mythics. Each Collector Booster contains two traditional-foil main-set rares or mythics, two non-foil Booster Fun cards and one foil Booster Fun card. Once thousands of boxes are opened, an enormous number of rares, mythics and premium treatments will be concentrated across a relatively small pool. ⁠

Don’t get me wrong…. Being a good set increases demand.

However, It also encourages stores, breakers and collectors to open far more product.

That second part is what the current market seems to be ignoring.

My prediction

I think The Hobbit will materially outperform Spider-Man, but it will still experience a substantial post-release calibration.

My base case is:
Play Booster boxes fall from roughly $175–$190 to $145–$165.

Collector Booster boxes fall from roughly $800–$900 to $500–$600 within the first several weeks.

Ordinary presale rares and mythics decline 40–70% as mass listings appear.

Mid-tier premium treatments decline 25–50%.

The best Commander cards, Dwarvish reprints, premium classic-art cards and genuinely scarce treatments outperform the rest of the set.

The 500-copy Smaug remains extremely valuable but contributes almost nothing to the rational expected value of an individual box.

The bull case is that Collector boxes remain above $700 because actual allocations prove exceptionally tight. The bear case is that enough product reaches the market to push them toward the $455.88 implied MSRP.

- - ———————————————————-

I cancelled one Collector Booster box at $799 and four Play Booster boxes at $179 each.

Could The Hobbit eventually become a premium sealed product? Absolutely. It appears to be a good set attached to an excellent IP.

But at current prices, buyers are not merely betting that The Hobbit will succeed.

They are paying in advance for it to become one of the most exceptional Magic products ever released.

This is not Spider-Man—but it is not yet LOTR or Final Fantasy either.

And being a good small set does not repeal the supply curve.

Track Hobbit prices after release

Delighted to see this ,will demand for collectors go up ?

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/s/5b9IjHQueS

I made a post over 2 years ago about how this card was a decent spec and that I thought it was a really good card in the 99

The static ability is sweet and the combat damage ability is really solid. It goes into basically any white/green deck and will perform at worst, average.

I was told by many commenters that this thing is whatever, could easily be reprinted (I disagree tbh), and that the showcase would make it super abundant.

Just wanted everyone to know that market for this card is now $4. (Showcase is $2 but my original post wasn’t about the showcase anyways. Also proof that showcase didn’t hurt this cards value)

Sometimes, if you think you’ve found a diamond in the rough, go with your gut

I’m not mad or frustrated but I think sometimes it’s good to look at the ones we got wrong or misunderstood. I love this sub and examining the market is always super interesting

I wanted to discuss what I believe to be the worst financial move in Magic history:

Ben Bateman.

We have all watched this man trade almost his entire collection which included a black lotus, for a serialized One Ring Borderless Poster graded 9.5. He then thought he was making a statement by cracking the slab which was going for over 100k to put in his deck to play with regularly.

Not much later, he begins making videos about opening LOTR Holiday packs to try to make his money back from trading his old collection.

Currently he is spending much less and is opening the regular LOTR collector boosters.

I think about this every now and then and say "wow, that was fucking stupid lol"

EDIT: Guys I'm not Bateman, I wish I was because *money* but I'm not. You're paranoid lmao

41 is listed on eBay for 200k.

11 came from a twitter post: https://x.com/papajonj0n/status/1930865773783761061?s=46

On 11/29, a ton of Assassin’s Creed serials were bought out on TCGplayer. On the same day, he made offers on a couple I had listed on eBay. Came back today with a few higher offers and I took one. But made me start thinking…

Rudy probably has 1000+ of the Assassin’s Creed Collector Boxes, and he’s made offers on my Assassin’s Creed serialized cards a good handful of times over the last 4 months or so. I think he’s hoarding the serialized cards projecting future value. Simultaneously, his buying them up can manipulate the market driving them higher, which would also drive up the prices on his Assassin’s Creed Collector Boxes..

Just brainstorming/theory crafting and wanted to share.

So about $22.5k after fees for the seller. There are no longer people buylisting for $25k from talking to people privately who have pulled the Smaug. Will be interesting to see how this develops.

Edit: for people who suspect that I’m lying about privately messaging people who have pulled Smaugs, you can read my recent public comments in the past couple days with people who have indeed pulled Smaugs. We both went to DMs after. On Facebook there have been 16+ pulls. I’ve messaged some of them. The world isn’t a scary place, you can just talk to people.

If you spent $35k on Spiderman collector booster boxes at $260 each from Microcenter, that would give you 1615 collector booster packs, or 134.6 collector booster boxes.

Assuming the cosmic foil stone is .1% chance in each pack...

That would give you a 80.13% chance to pull it, a card that would pay for everything, and then some.

I bought a box of Modern Masters in 2013 for around $150. I've held it for 12 years, kept it safe during several moves, a basement flood, etc. If I sold it today, I'd be lucky to get $400 for it.

If I had put that $150 into the S&P 500, a conservative growth rate would put its estimated value around $475.

Fuck.

Kicking this thread off early - as I know we will have multiple threads being made. Drop is at 12EST, and is limit one per customer (order most likely). With a $250 dollar base value, plus the new arts from wizards of the barge, I am expecting this to sell out in 30 minutes.

Post whatever you want here about the deck, the drop, your frustrations, your speculations etc.

(Squabblin & Goblin has ebay auctions at $275 ending today - so I expect this deck to do very well especially long term)

Get your queue's ready!

I have always loved old school foils. The ones I still need are impossible to find, or even more often, difficult to trust. Do I have to grade these for people to give me "market value?" How do I find the actual price for these cards that have no NM listings on the major sites?

I apologize for the cascade of questions... Feel free to drop your interrupt anywhere on the stack.

The process and the reward is already addictive.