TCGplayer revealed their February 2022 data for sealed TCG products sold on their site and the price shifts for these products. This newly released data suggested new trends going on in the TCG market.
Magic: The Gathering‘s Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty came to market strong in February 2022. This is the first Standard set in a long while that was an all-star for sales, despite not toppling Pokemon TCG for the top slot on the charts. This set, more or less, had it all going on as far as what Magic players look for in a Standard set, which includes having playable cards across several formats, a captivating theme, and stunning artwork. However, the true attraction for Magic enthusiasts to this set was likely the valuable parallels randomly inserted into the Collectors Packs.
The Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty Collector Booster Display rose from $224.63 a box to $240.77 a box in the month of February (see “February 2022“). The likely reason this product went up in value was because fans had a chance of pulling the red Neon Ink Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos parallel out of Kamigawa Neon Dynasty packs (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’“). The red ink parallel is the most scarce and had recently sold on eBay for $2,750.00 on March 9, 2022. Additionally, the yellow Neon Ink Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos parallel also routinely sells for around $400 on eBay. Collectors also have a good chance of pulling less rare valuable variants from packs, such as a borderless Boseiju, Who Endures which sells for around $40 in non-foil.
In essence, Kamigawa Neon Dynasty‘s sales performance has more or less provided the answer to a question WotC has been grappling with as far as design goes: “Should they include ultra rare chase cards in Magic sets or not, and how?” WotC first experimented with these ultra rare chase cards in Kaladesh with Inventions (see “Major Plans “), which were a huge success. However, they moved away from this product model, circa Hour of Devastation, and later, dove into offering different product types with more chase cards, such as Collectors Packs and Set Boosters.
They then went on to experiment with adding different parallels to sets, starting with the different artwork versions of Teferi offered in Core Set 2021 (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’ ‘Core Set 2021’“). When Collectors Boxes started to fall flat 2021, they moved to adding parallels with different rarities to their products in Kamigawa Neon Dynasty (see “Parallels to ‘Magic: The Gathering’ “). This set seems to have struck a decent balance between collectability, value, and playability for players and collectors alike, and it will be interesting to see where WotC goes from here with parallels and chase cards.
Source: ICv2
