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Magic: The Gathering is a game divided in two. The people who uplift it are players and collectors.

Some of us are players who become collectors, or vice versa; the identity of what we value and what we want intermixing. What do these identities have to do with each other, and what does this have to do with scalping? A lot.

I have a theory that Magic players don't realize the duality of their identity, being both a collector and a player, has transformed them into their own enemy.

The Amorphous Shape of a Scalper

When we talk about scalpers, we are often referring to a very particular kind of person. In Spider-Man, Scalpers, and the Gathering, Paul Marquissee says: “They’re camping out, using bots, scooping up product, and flipping it for 2-4x the intended price.”

This is the form of a scalper, right? We see what the Pokémon TCG environment looks like, then see the prices of Collector Booster Boxes going up, and we naturally liken them to each other. What's happening to them is happening to us, right?

I previously thought this must be true as well. It wasn't until I was researching my article about Secret Lairs that I noticed something might not be true about that:

"Secret Lair has attempted to solve some of these [scalper] problems. Cart maximums have changed from five to two, and this hasn't affected how much fans are able to purchase.

They've worked with their website host so as to close loopholes like queue bypassing through reused tokens. And lastly, Bartell says their site provider analyzed the amount of potential scalpers in the buying process, through their internal systems, and they found it is less than 0.5%."

This amorphous blob of “scalper” wasn't heavily involved with the Secret Lair problem, but we were still experiencing scarcity. I wondered if, maybe, we were wrong about who the blob was altogether.

I was watching this video, What exactly is scalping in MTG and how do you feel about it? and it was discussing a post that I'll get into in another section of this article, but it reasoned something that I found fascinating. While questioning why Wizards of the Coast (WotC) doesn't regulate the secondary market more, Musclesandmtg points out something I'd been trying to articulate for a long time. How do we precisely identify scalping?

The Goblin Storm Secret Lair, in this example, might have been bought one to use and one to keep for later. The one meant for saving was allowed to grow in value, to sell later. Is that scalping? He implies no.

He suggests that there might be nothing wrong with the value of a card or sealed product growing before you sell it. That you shouldn't be forced to sell anything for less than it is worth just because you bought it for less.

I mean, we all do this, as Magic players, right?

We see a card we didn't care about shoot up in value, chase cards pulled in prerelease packs, and we sell it for more than we paid for it. This is so embedded in how we think and operate as Magic players that we don't actually see the fatal flaw in the culture of that.

When we buy one for ourselves and one to sell later, we buy up the product enough to create scarcity. If each one of us buys more than we need, in the event it goes up in value, this poses a problem. This is the most meager of scalping, isn't it? And with the numbers, and a culture built around doing it, it might add up.

I want to note here that this isn't a moral failure. I'm not trying to moralize this act, call someone out, point to them as the problem with Magic, but I do want to isolate where we direct our anger.

Additionally, I'm not saying there might not be bigger scalping going on to some degree, surrounding Collector Booster Boxes, but everyone else seems certain the amorphous blob of “scalpers” is to blame. I just pose this hypothetical to really ask: is there evidence surrounding these kinds of scalpers being a problem in our community?

On the other hand, we know for a fact regular Magic players often follow the rule of buying one for themselves and one to sell, especially when the product is speculated to really grow in value. And we do it pretty often.

I looked into the Collector Booster Bandits a little more.

Evidence of Artificial Scarcity and Major Scalping

I was poking around Reddit looking for references to official writing or research into the topic of Magic mass scalping, and I ran across a particular thread: How does scalping work in Magic: The Gathering?

"Can someone coherently explain to me how 'scalping' in MtG is supposed to work? Because I understand the theory: you buy up all the product in your locality, then sell it at increased price because you're now the monopolist. Would've worked beautifully around 1900, or even 1950. Now? There are thousands of LGS, plus retailers like Walmart or Target, plus the internet. There are probably millions of booster packs around. So, you buy up all the three sealed boxes at your local LGS. Unless you're deep in the pampa, everyone who wants to buy one just goes online. And if the online price is high, it's not 'scalping.' It's called 'free market.'"

The reason I was on Reddit was mainly because I couldn't find a single reputable article with substantiated evidence that there was a problem with mass scalping in Magic.

There was nothing addressing numbers, statistics, or even “findings” in this regard. It's a sentiment that gets brought up often because it is an experience a lot of players have had. I clearly see the effect, but not necessarily a definitive cause. Just a lot of speculation.

This post highlights something interesting, though: the distinction between who is doing what in the secondary market.

When an LGS inflates the price of a preconstructed deck because of the reprints' value, to make a little more for their shop's bottom line, we don't call that scalping. It seems like a weird semantics argument, but really I'm trying to isolate when and where we put our blame.

Are LGSs scalping too, if there is no difference in the 'free market'? Should we be upset with them?

So, I know what you're all thinking now. “This is WotC's fault. They need to control the secondary market more. They need to print more product because the amount they're printing now is artificially inflating the prices.”

Let's get back to Musclesandmtg's video. Imslumpd commented: “Seeing WotC-sponsored stores selling them at 3x/4x MSRP without any repercussions just feels like WotC isn't thinking or caring at all about the product after scalpers/LGS's already bought it. They got their money; in their mind, they are free of any 'secondary market' problem.”

Marquissee also said, “Wizards could fix this. They could increase print runs or put some enforceable purchase limits in place. Instead, they lean into the ‘trading’ part of the trading card game and let the secondary market do its thing. Which, in practice, means players like me pay way too much just to participate.”

These sentiments are good ones, but in practice they don't exactly work.

WotC could put limits on LGSs, I think, but this doesn't solve the problem. This only displaces the source of the scalping from LGSs, which need to profit to make spaces available for players, to people who scalp. Even when limiting amounts, dedicated scalpers will go from shop to shop, buying up what they can.

The secondary market will charge whatever it can get. LGSs will just get stuck in the same situation as WotC, being unable to control what their buyers resell things for. And again we know that Magic players, the intended consumer and average player, will buy more than they need.

The most WotC can do is provide enough printing or reprints. Larger print runs and reprints in later sets are the best they can do to influence the market. And here a lot of you might agree with Marquissee when he says, “and that's the trap Wizards has set: scarcity mixed with cultural FOMO.”

I wondered something about this sentiment, something critical. Where are we, as a community, getting the evidence that WotC is printing less than they need to, in order to influence the market? I'm genuinely asking. I looked everywhere and couldn't find a shred of anything that suggested that WotC was producing a low amount of product.

From what I can find, WotC doesn't seem to release print run amounts. I can't nail down an exact source that says this, but the overwhelming consensus — as I've searched online and forums like this and this — is that WotC doesn't release these numbers. We can make some inferences here, though.

In Hasbro's statistics, Magic is “played by over 50 million players to date globally,” and “Magic: The Gathering has grown at a 17% Compound Annual Growth Rate since 2009.”

“Total Magic revenue was $1.72 billion... FY 2025.”

How can it be possible, without gaining extra money from the secondary market, that revenue is increasing if they're not printing more product?

There is increased demand, and Collector Boosters for Final Fantasy were only $37.99 at MSRP, according to WotC. They aren't charging much more for the products they sell. They must be printing more product than before, year over year, to account for the growth.

Maybe we can argue they're not printing enough for demand, but how can they predict their growth? I found a blog with some estimates on Magic players worldwide by year: “2013: 16.2 million Players (35% growth from 2012). 2014: 21.87 million Players (35% growth from 2013).”

That might have been more than ten years ago, but in 2025, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks said,

“Last month’s MagicCon: Las Vegas saw record attendance with more than 19,000 badges sold and the Wizards Play Network now boasts nearly 9,000 locations globally as its expansion continues. He said they saw nearly a 40-percent increase in unique players who participate in organized play in the first half of 2025”

Coupled with the fact that “Magic: The Gathering first crossed $1 billion in annual revenue in 2022,” and that it cleared $1.7 billion at the end of 2025, this kind of growth is clearly hard to predict.

Perhaps it's not the malicious machinations of a corporate overlord artificially creating scarcity to drive up values of a secondary market they see nothing of. Maybe demand is just that explosive.

I'll say it again: “The concern that WotC wouldn't want to maximize sales by making as much product doesn't make a ton of sense. They want more money, so they would make more product.”

What WotC Has Done to Help

Before we move into our last section, I want to air a grievance I've had. In my article, “Let's Talk About the Magic Final Fantasy Prices,” I asked WotC to help us through transparency. When printing issues or demand got out of control, we wanted to understand what was happening to us.

Here are some examples of them doing that:

• “Rather than the typical limited supply of past Secret Lair collaborations, the Hatsune Miku-themed deck is experimenting with a 24-hour made-to-order period, where any deck purchased between August 10, 9:00 AM PST and August 11, 8:59 AM PST will be fulfilled and delivered, regardless of how many decks are sold.” — Magic: The Gathering Is Officially Countering Scalpers With New Crossover
• “On December 9, 2026, Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set will go on sale again for a single 24-hour limited order window. No setting an alarm for a specific minute and hoping. If you want Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set, everyone who orders it during that window will have it fulfilled. We estimate these orders to begin shipping in the second half of 2027.” — An Update on The Zeta Set Sale
• At MagicCon Las Vegas 2025, the Final Fantasy Collector Boosters were limited to three per person per day at MSRP.

Obviously this is not all they can do.

Maybe they can talk about why they don't list print amounts for each set online? I did find some speculation about this online, but I'd like one from WotC themselves.

Have We Forgotten the Word "Collector" in Collector Booster?

I was on Reddit again.

I came across this thread, MtG scalpers have gotten out of control and are ruining the game for new players. I saw a comment that resonated with me: “CBBs do not matter for regular players. They are solely for the whales. Ignore them and you will be happier.”

CBBs, or Collector Booster Boxes, are for collectors. They're for people who want to invest financially in having unique versions of the cards to eventually profit from, or simply to own something valuable. The artificial value of “high-end” cards is part of collecting. The tumultuous nature of collecting allows for the fluctuation of demand and prices. It's part of the collector's ecosystem.

When players talk about being priced out of the game, Collector Boosters come up a lot. We're back to that collapsing of the identity of most Magic players. The practicality of owning as a player and the desire for opulence as a collector are fighting each other. There is a desire not to be priced out of the collector side of Magic by a lot of players, as players, not collectors, because for a long time the cost of entry to collect was rather low.

I urge us to look into the sun here — the Reserved List, the cost of the one-of-one The One RingThe One Ring.

“Players” aren't necessarily who these boxes are for. “Collectors” are.

I'm not saying that the inflated barrier to entry can't be upsetting, but WotC facilitates two types of customers: ones that want artificial inflation to increase the price of their collectibles, and others that want to keep the prices low to make them accessible.

Collector Booster Boxes aren't designed to remain accessible, as in many other collectible scenes. I know this is devastating to players who used to enjoy the access, but I'm not sure how we satisfy two consumers of this game who want two different things.

So, I want to ask again: are Magic players their own scalpers?

We're cannibalizing ourselves. Whether it's the average player's culture of buying one to play and one to sell, or our fellow collectors buying Collector Booster Boxes for their intended purpose, we're in the OuroboroidOuroboroid of Magic culture. At least that's what I think. What do you think?