If you are the type that seeks these out to play with strangers; shame on you. I suspect that 50% of the people doing this are trying to purposely confuse their opponents.

I'm really a fan of Chinese foils. I learned Chinese and like getting a little bit of extra 'study' in while I enjoy my hobby. Some cards I've gotten in Japanese I got while I was in Japan, others I got while trying to study Japanese (there is some overlap with Chinese, so I would like to learn some). Romance language cards I'be gotten because they are usually cheaper than English, so why not. If they ever print cards in Urdu or Hindi, I would get those as well, since I learned Urdu and would like to get the alphabet down for Hindi so I can read that as well.

__________________
"Message to women worldwide: Girls....we're stupid. We don't like games. We don't know games. We can't read minds. Say it like you mean or STFU." -rockondon

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Originally posted by mm1983:
Let's face it nobody buys Russian, Korean, or Japanese foils of cards because they want to play them.

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Completely wrong. I know because I play with these cards and specifically hunt down the ones I do play with. ANyone who posts in the pimp threads on various forums isn't posting their pile of value, they're posting their efforts at a "complete" deck or something similar.

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Originally posted by mm1983:
At what point in collecting does MTG stop becoming a game and start becoming an investment? Let's face it nobody buys Russian, Korean, or Japanese foils of cards because they want to play them. People buy them because they see future value in the cards and hold onto them as an "investment".

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Your player just wants cards for his decks, and doesn't look at the possible growth of the things he/she buys. But inherently, they'll buy things most of the time that are playable. So decks will just grow in value over time. Especially for EDH players. To me, this is proof that the game is predominately filled with players first, and that the investors have more of a presence just because they are more vocal/public about what they do.

Most of my friends around here quit the game, sold out, and bought a bunch of board games. They said the game "is too expensive". I mean, it's not my money, so whatever, I don't argue but that simply isn't true.

$900 later, they have a nice stack of games, but I just plop down 3 Revised Volcanic Islands that I paid like $50 for in response. Not trying to brag here, but that's just what has happened in Magic.

I made a post complaining about the absurd price of ABU cards and how, for the most part, their price is based off of investments and a "hot potato" kind of speculating.

Long story short, every time I go to play with some of those cards, I get the feeling that I simply shouldn't. They are worth just too much cash. The nostalgia "man I'm so glad to slam this card" is strongly tempered by "at what point is magic an investment and not a game?"

For a player, Players will only pay for something that has perceived value for their money. If you spend 3-4 for a pack you want the chance to open something worth a lot more. If everything you opened was going to be worth less then 3-4 no one would buy the cards regardless how well they played the game.

For an investor/hobbiest, I see it this way. When I get cards in I simply just look and see what they sell for. I don't keep any for myself as a squirreled away stash. I prefer to play with your deck and cards because I don't want to even put the time or hold the cards back from my personal collection. Then you have those that will hold cards that they hope to increase in value. Right now it appears there is a shift, people are dumping cards because of eternal masters that are not on the reserve list. Then picking up ones that are, since the announcement, City of traitors, mox diamond, lion's eye diamond have gone way up and I am sure others are on the way. It is because investors are divesting themselves of potential losses and holding onto cards that are sure things to not be reprinted.

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Originally posted by slurpee:

You do away with the reserve list and there would be a flood of long time collectors and investors who would sell.

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Originally posted by mm1983:
Let's face it nobody buys Russian, Korean, or Japanese foils of cards because they want to play them. People buy them because they see future value in the cards and hold onto them as an "investment". Those who play the game for what it is will just buy the cheapest copy of a card.

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The subculture of people who enjoy rare foreign foils very much includes people who play these cards.
Some things are worth collecting because of their rarity. There are so incredibly few RU and KO foil Jace, the Mindsculptor.

Those who play the game for what it is still buy rarer version of cards. Even standard-only playable foils can be double the nonfoil price, and those just crash after rotation anyway. If what you said is totally true, this would not be the case.

The game is very much worth investing in and the people do it well are better off here than in stocks or gold.

I do the spec thing and the investment thing. I don't really keep anything that is going to burn me hard, so the collection is always gaining value. Doing some obvious specs on the side pays entry fees and some decks.

The top 1% of investments are damaging to the game in a way. A lot of the value in power comes from hoarding, in my opinion, so it's like a circle jerk of increasing value more rapidly than there actually new players trying to get into vintage or collecting the p9 to just have. But, as the game gets larger, there WILL be people move into old formats.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
I have seen plenty of people (annoyingly) playing foreign language foils in standard.

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I don't know why anyone would do that to themselves.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
If you are the type that seeks these out to play with strangers; shame on you.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
I suspect that 50% of the people doing this are trying to purposely confuse their opponents.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
If you are the type that "invests" in these; good luck.

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I also am building an oldschool 9394 format deck. There for I am collecting staples from UNL. As long as its sleeve playable I will try to get it so I can play.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
sarcasm was on the term "investment" not on wishing luck. Nobody is going to get rich off magic cards the way you could off a good stock investment.

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Honestly, I find it to be a better use of my money than stocks. I know the cards (stocks), and I know the game better than I'll ever know a given company or Wall Street as a whole. It costs me more work, and time, but I get more consistent gains too.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
sarcasm was on the term "investment" not on wishing luck. Nobody is going to get rich off magic cards the way you could off a good stock investment.

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I prefer financial market than MTG in the long term. In fact, I am currently at financial market(Stock/FX/Commodities).

So I bought these cards, knowing that they will rise in the future, and if I do it correctly, it won't actually cost me anything. And so far, so good. I think I need to sell another 4K or 5K and I'll break even and everything else is just extra. And the best part is that I do have plans to sell these off slowly to help me pay off my condo in the next 5-6 years.

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Originally posted by hilikuS:
Honestly, I find it to be a better use of my money than stocks. I know the cards (stocks), and I know the game better than I'll ever know a given company or Wall Street as a whole. It costs me more work, and time, but I get more consistent gains too.

I only have to worry about one corporation manipulating my money instead of any number of them, and any number of billionaires who control Wall Street anyway.

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+1.

Except the difference with the magic players that go to events and myself is that they have a much more keen eye on which cards will go up because how they did at the local FNM last week.

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Originally posted by flam flawless:
+1.

Except the difference with the magic players that go to events and myself is that they have a much more keen eye on which cards will go up because how they did at the local FNM last week.

It's exactly what was said here. People that's played the game since the early years have deeper pockets now that they're older and can afford to buy out random card at $2 each in speculation. There is definitely a bunch more stock traders now than there was back 10 years ago that are there primarily to manipulate the market, but the game does need both to continue to thrive.

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Originally posted by Nicksmagic:
Are you saying that Magic needs people to buy out $2 cards and spike them for the game to thrive? Care to elaborate? I see this as cannibalistic and not at all healthy for the game.

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I pretty much agree.

A $2 is worth $2, because that is the value related to its playability. Spiking it up to $10 only serves one purpose, and for one group - speculators/buy-outers.

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Originally posted by Nicksmagic:
Are you saying that Magic needs people to buy out $2 cards and spike them for the game to thrive? Care to elaborate? I see this as cannibalistic and not at all healthy for the game.

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Yeah, I guess that's kinda what I was saying. We need the deep pocketed buyers to still buy up cards. Yeah, there'll always be a buyout on stuff anymore because nobody wants to miss the boat on the next big thing. And I don't necessarily condone the notion of it, but it IS a thing. If it's not you it's someone else. Just whoever has the inside info first wins I guess. Cards will spike. It's inevitable. But it's when people stop buying cards to play in events is when it dies.

Lemme ask you, have you ever got an auction off ebay for a bunch less and felt glad you saved a bunch of money on a card that apparently people weren't paying attention on? Kinda the same thing just on a much smaller scale.

When I played competitively, netdecking wasn't a thing like it is now. Seems like nobody knows how to build a deck on their own anymore. That's imo why the spikes happen. Some pro sat down and built a meta destroyer and all the sheep go ZOMG!! That's great! I gotta get a playset now!!! ZOMG!! The price quadrupled!!! Damn them buyouts!!!

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Originally posted by flam flawless:
Yeah, I guess that's kinda what I was saying. We need the deep pocketed buyers to still buy up cards. Yeah, there'll always be a buyout on stuff anymore because nobody wants to miss the boat on the next big thing. And I don't necessarily condone the notion of it, but it IS a thing. If it's not you it's someone else. Just whoever has the inside info first wins I guess. Cards will spike. It's inevitable. But it's when people stop buying cards to play in events is when it dies.

Lemme ask you, have you ever got an auction off ebay for a bunch less and felt glad you saved a bunch of money on a card that apparently people weren't paying attention on? Kinda the same thing just on a much smaller scale.

When I played competitively, netdecking wasn't a thing like it is now. Seems like nobody knows how to build a deck on their own anymore. That's imo why the spikes happen. Some pro sat down and built a meta destroyer and all the sheep go ZOMG!! That's great! I gotta get a playset now!!! ZOMG!! The price quadrupled!!! Damn them buyouts!!!

Edit - I do understand how it can be frustrating to see a card like wall of omens go from nothing practically to ~$8 as cannabalistic. It's absurd to me too...but realistically, there's TONS of other cards/decks you can assemble and run in and bash.

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For start, winning a cheap auction is not related to purposely buying out $2 cards. I agree with you about the reason cards are spiking in price these days...most of them anyway. It's called supply and demand. But specifically targeting cards for buyouts in your own hobby is simply cannibalistic and amoral (as cannibalism is).

Justifying it because others will do it doesn't cut it for me. Others do all kinds of things to make money which I along with most people won't do; because it is wrong to do so. Saying it happens and saying that it is necessary for the health of the game are totally separate.

All of us who started magic 20 or so years ago, probably as recently as 10 years ago, were not being exploited by our own player base. That's a new thing. And one that I find deplorable. Hey you wanna mess with me because I collect Alpha or play old school? Fine, but you pretty much can't have fun at FNM with casual decks anymore because of the competitive environment that WOTC fosters with GP/PT and all of the hype. They design and test sets specifically to tier them out and put chase cards that are rare specifically to guarantee secondary value. Compare the value of Chronicles to MM2 or Mirage to BFZ.