Magic: The Gathering – Bloomburrow products once again captured top spots on the TCGplayer Top 25 Sealed Products chart for August 2024. The August chart (see “August 2024“) also led to some new insights as to which direction the TCG market is tracking going into Q4 2024.
In general, the August 2024 chart was fairly consistent with what happened on the July 2024 chart (see “July 2024“). The Bloomburrow set was a apparently the smash hit Standard set for the year, as it led the chart for two months straight and booster boxes are holding their value. Magic sales, after a questionable start with Murders at Karlov Manor (see “Rolling for Initiative“), seem to have gained momentum over the summer and carried it into the Fall 2024.
The rest of the TCG market is still jockeying for position to gobble up what they can of the rest of the market share (see “Jockeying“). Disney Lorcana, Pokemon TCG, Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, Star Wars Unlimited, and One Piece CG all seem to be getting piece of the action on this chart. Some of the other Bandai games, namely Dragon Ball Super Fusion World and Digimon CG, also managed to grab a piece of the pie. On the surface, everything looks like a “normal” TCG market (which is odd to see because “normal” after the pandemic era seems relative).
However, there is an undercurrent to be concerned with. Mass market buyers for the major retailers seem to be shifting their gears a bit going into the holidays, which is a trend ICv2 has been tracking for a few months now (see “Channel Check: Walmart Supercenter“). From what we’ve seen on shelves, buyers are looking like they are going all mega-brand with their TCG selection (WotC, Bandai, Pokemon, Konami, etc.) while the individual stores off-load smaller TCGs. Even amongst the mega-brands, stores are discounting boxed sets for specific lines. Essentially, they are going with a more lean-and-mean strategy when comes to the calming of the TCG market (see “TCG Market Settling Down“).
While this seems like great news for hobby channel retailers (as they will undoubtedly profit from mass dropping some popular products), it is also somewhat questionable news for the market. Buyers for mass are sometimes a leading indicator for where things are headed, mostly because they have access to more consumer data and don’t make moves like this without analyzing it. If they are actually starting to scale back going into the holiday season and this isn’t just some random function of corporate inventory control, the peak of the TCG market, after it’s astounding bull run from the pandemic onto today, may be nearing.
This is by no means a “panic and hide in a turtle shell” situation for retailers. However, it is definitely a “keep an eye on it” scenario. After all, the number of TCGs on the market has grown a lot since 2016, and there have been a number of “theme-adjacent” games produced to mimic the TCG experiences of top sellers like Pokemon TCG, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh TCG. Also, some companies have begun to push the boundaries of the TCG space to places where it hasn’t been before (see “Bo Knows TCGs “). These are usually also indicators that a market top is near, based the events that unfolded during the first couple of TCG market downslides in the 00s. Source: ICv2
