Eternal Masters / Vendor leak scandals

DISCLAIMER:

I'm not an economist. I'm not a corporate lawyer or a legal expert. I'm not a vendor, a speculator, an MTG financier, or a Wizards insider. I am simply a competitive Magic player who has to participate in the card singles market in order to play.

I've been following the Eternal Masters leak / Magic vendor drama with great interest. In particular, I think it's fascinating when a lot of things are happening behind the scenes, "under the table" as it were, that a lot of people involved have a huuuuuge incentive to keep that way. Here's my understanding of the situation, my opinion on how it could be handled, and how it's going to affect my behavior going forward.

If you know more than me and feel like at any point in time I got something wrong or I'm not informed enough about something, please feel free to step in and let me know (if you can do so in a mature, constructive fashion).

Also, sorry for the non-strategy post - this is just the best format for thoughts like this.





WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT HAS BEEN HAPPENING?

Over the past couple months (years?), some very big, accurate leaks of Wizards proprietary information have been getting out. Things like the contents of upcoming sets, or information about changes to formats. One Reddit user knew exactly what the changes to the Modern ban list were going to be, well before they happened, and they weren't exactly easy to guess.

The leaks have been getting bigger and bigger. Most recently, Wizards announced a reprint expansion called Eternal Masters, containing reprints of lots of eternal format (Legacy & Modern) staples that have been getting too scarce and expensive. Information about the existence of this set was leaked well in advance of the announcement.

This culminated in someone starting a Twitter account called @Vendorleak making lots of scary claims about insider information and vendor practices.

Some of the things I've picked up from following all this:

-A vendor has access to the entire Eternal Masters card list and is trying to auction that list for $25,000
-Some vendors have been engaging in suspiciously convenient behavior, such as aggressively buying certain cards that can't/won't be reprinted (Reserve List cards, for example) and not buying cards that are certain to be reprinted (Force of Will/Wasteland)
-Some vendors (specifically ones that might be present at GP: Houston) are using their Magic vending businesses to funnel drug money
-Vending is not regulated very well; TOs often don't care who vends at their events as long as they pay their vending fees
-Vendors communicate with each other frequently about things like card leaks, so they can adjust their buying/selling behavior
-Vendors frequently cheat on taxes since it's so easy to hide cash transactions
-One common vendor practice is to take each other to places like strip clubs and get each other drunk to try and get them to make bad/unfavorable business deals
-If they think they can get away with it, vendors often "hit the calculator buttons wrong" to make more money / spend less money on big buys from players selling their collections

All of these things lead me to believe that at least one vendor (and possibly multiple vendors) have access to someone on the inside at Wizards who leaks them info, which they then exploit for their own best interests, whether that be sharing it with other vendors, or using it maliciously towards other vendors, or just simply using it to make more money.


WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS?

This is mostly just me speculating, but to me this behavior is indicative of a lot of things that harm the players.

It seems to me like vending is heavily unregulated. Because of this, vendors will frequently do anything they can just to make more money. Since there's nobody in between a vendor and a customer, every time a vendor does something unscrupulous to make money, it directly affects the customer they are doing it to. That's on a micro scale. On a macro scale, vendor greed is likely responsible for the extremely rapid rising costs of this game, in more ways than one could have imagined at first.

Put simply, if vendors have access to information that you don't, they are inclined to use it to make more money from you, the player/customer, directly. This means that it costs you more money to play Magic. Every time a vendor charges you more for a card based on demand that they can anticipate but you can't, or gives you less money for a card that they know ahead of time won't be in as much demand, you are losing money. On an individual scale that sucks for you because, obviously, you're losing money. On a very large scale, all that means is that a primary reason you and many other people suddenly can't afford to play Magic is because of vendor greed.

HOW DOES THIS MAKE ME FEEL?

I do not like being taken advantage of.

I feel very suspicious towards basically every vendor now. I don't like the idea that so many people are taking advantage of me, and of everyone else who wants to play, just to make more money. It's pretty easy to argue that this kind of thing might happen in any kind of business/industry/hobby, but it bears a very large resemblance to insider trading, which is an illegal practice. I don't want to get into a debate about the ethics of insider trading, or the ethics of the law in general, but the short version is that if a practice is illegal or resembles something illegal, and is being used to take advantage of me, it's gonna make me feel pretty bad.

I also do not like supporting businesses with shady business practices.

If I do business with a Magic card vendor that is using their business to launder drug money, I'm unknowingly supporting illegal activity and I don't like that one bit. If I'm selling my cards to a dealer and the buyer tries to sneak one past me and short me money, if I just "let it slide" I'm basically saying to them that it's OK to keep trying it and that there's no consequence for it. It's hard for me to monitor the tax behavior of businesses, but it definitely doesn't feel good giving my money / business to a dishonest vendor.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

First and foremost, having such a big leak is a gigantic problem for Wizards. I don't know enough about their operation to have any good ideas about how to stop it (and I also HATE when your average forum idiot is critical of Wizards and thinks they know how to do what they do better than they can), but it's clear that it needs to be stopped. Wizards needs to tighten up their ship somehow. I love seeing spoilers, but it's my belief that leaks are very harmful to the players and to the game, and I can always wait a few weeks to see more cards (especially with how quickly Standard has been moving lately).

I would like there to be some kind of regulation for singles vendors. I don't like the idea that TOs might be aware of the shady practices of vendors and would still let them do business at a tournament. I'd like it if all vendors agreed to operate under the same information equilibrium that players have. That's basically impossible, because vendors have so much more access to information than players do (they get to see buying habits of many many players at a single event, whereas you as a customer only know about your own demands and the dealer's prices and stock. I'd like there to be more transparency about the business practices of vendors. I'd REALLY like a huge dramabomb fallout among all the vendors in Magic, resulting in some of the super shady ones being exposed and pushed out of the industry. I understand that this industry is the livelihood of many people, but put simply, if you engage in illegal/shady/underhanded business practices I do not want anything to do with your business. If there were some way for me to see which vendors are reputable and law-abiding, so that I could make good decisions about who to give my business to (both at events and online).

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO MOVING FORWARD?

Moving forward, I'm going to be EXTREMELY careful about who I do business with. I already stopped selling my cards (because everything seems to just continue to go up and up anyway), so hopefully it won't be as difficult as it seems. Until the air is clear about who is reputable and who isn't, I probably just won't do business with any vendor. I'll look to trade more with friends and local players (even though I HATE trading), and give more support to my local stores (I'm lucky to have three great stores in my area, Squabbles in Glen Burnie MD, Games and Stuff in Glen Burnie MD, and Dream Wizards in Rockville MD).

I'd really like if everyone who regularly buys and sells singles from vendors would be a bit more vigilant as well. Be really cautious about who you choose to give your money to.

One idea that was floated to me (by Vishu Doshi) was to start some kind of Yelp-like database with thorough reviews about various Magic vendors - give them scores based on things like customer service, business practices, etc. Almost like a Better Business Bureau just for Magic vendors. If you're OK supporting vendors with illegal/underhanded/exploitative practices, that's one thing, but if you aren't, you definitely deserve to know which ones have them and which ones don't. I've never started something like that and I wouldn't know where to begin, but as a competitive player that likes to think he has some scruples, I'd really value a service like that.

One last thing, and this is tangentially related at best, but one feeling I get that's created by this whole situation is that it's created a lot of pseudo-artifical demand for lots of cards, especially eternal format staples (Legacy, Vintage, Modern). This has opened the door for a lot of counterfeit card operations to move in. I have plenty of conflicting thoughts about counterfeit cards in general, but this isn't really the place for them. (Although I will say that I am absolutely against breaking the rules of the DCI, which disallows use of counterfeit cards in sanctioned tournaments.) I do have a really big issue with anyone trying to sell you a fake card under the guise that it's real for the price of a real equivalent, and since my confidence in MTG vendors is at an all time low right now, I wouldn't really be surprised if doing something like that was in the range of at least one of them. Defend yourself from that happening. Learn how to spot fakes. Get a jeweler's loupe. There are a lot of resources available - I'll try and link some later.