How To: Gaming
THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
How To: Gaming
THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
◆ CARD VALUES · THE THIRD PAIR · THE WEEK AGAINST THE DECADE
The other two pages in this chapter read a figure and net a figure. This one is about what put it there — four forces, three of which reverse, and one which never has.
A price is a photograph of a disagreement. Change who is in the room and you change the photograph — and almost everything on this page is about who is in the room.
This is the page where a hobby reference has to be careful. Nothing here tells you what to buy, what is undervalued, or where anything is heading, because nobody knows those things and the people who sound most certain about them usually own some. What can be said honestly is how supply and demand actually behave in this particular market: what a reprint does, what attention does, and why the slowest force on the list is the one that made every genuinely valuable old card valuable.
Demand arrives before supply does. Everybody wants the new thing at the same moment and the print run has barely reached the shelves, so the number is describing a queue.
The set was printed for months, opened for years, and the people who wanted one got one. What is left is whatever demand survives once the queue is gone.
Reached on a specific day for a specific reason — a result, a reveal, a video. It is real, it happened, and it is the figure everybody remembers.
The level the card keeps returning to when nothing in particular is happening. Duller, far more useful, and the only one of the two you can plan with.
However many exist is however many will ever exist. Everything that happens afterwards happens on the demand side alone.
A reprint does not damage a card, it answers it: everybody who wanted one and could not have one now can. The original is still the original, and it is no longer the only way to get the picture.
A card is not worth one thing. It is worth one thing on a Tuesday and another thing over ten years, and both of those figures are honest.
THIS PAGE MAKES NO PREDICTIONS AND NAMES NO CARD TO BUY. IT DESCRIBES MECHANICS THAT HAVE HELD FOR DECADES. WHAT THEY DO NEXT IS NOT SOMETHING ANYBODY KNOWS.
A reprint
The clearest mechanism on this page. Demand that could not be met suddenly can be, and the original stops being the only route to the card. It does not make the first printing worse — it stops it being the only answer to a question.
A format change
A card becomes legal, or essential, in something people actually play. This is real demand from people who want to use the thing, which is why it moves fast and why it can reverse just as fast when the format moves on again.
Attention
A video, a result, an anniversary, a film. Attention is genuinely a force and it is the shortest-lived one here. It moves a card quickly, in either direction, and most of what it does is undone within the year.
Time and attrition
Cards get played, spilled on, lost and thrown away, and nobody prints more. This is the only force on the list that never reverses, and it is also the only one too slow to notice while it is happening. It is most of why old cards are worth anything at all.
↑ PUSHES A CARD UP · ↓ PUSHES IT DOWN · ↔ GOES EITHER WAY · GREEN AND RED MEAN DIRECTION ON THIS PAGE AND NOTHING ELSE
Three of those four are reversible and the slowest one is not. Almost everybody watches the three that move this week.
The card has moved, somebody explained why, and the explanation was good. The problem is that the explanation arrived after the movement and was built to fit it.
You would be pleased to own it if the number never moved again. That is the only position on this page that cannot go wrong on you.
Sometimes true and unknowable in advance. Cards that were going to be cheap again usually already were, and the ones that were not have simply gone.
Pick the figure you would pay to stop thinking about it, write it down, and act when the card reaches it. The only price on this page anybody controls.
Nobody in this hobby has ever regretted a card they wanted for its own sake. The regret is always attached to one they bought because of a number.
EVERY CARD ANYBODY WILL EVER ARGUE ABOUT IS ALREADY IN A ROOM LIKE THIS ONE, OR IT IS NEVER GOING TO EXIST.
I have never once regretted a card I bought because I liked it. Every card I regret, I bought because of a number somebody showed me.
That is the whole chapter: read it, net it, and know what moved it. None of which is any use if the card itself has been sitting in a hot box under three others.