Who's afraid of the big bad reprint?!

From : #BeatTheBuylist - 19/09/2022

It's been two months since the release date of double masters 2 (2X2) - We know the purpose of masters sets is (to make WOTC a boat load of money) to use reprints to lower the prices of cards by introducing new supply into the market.

Everyone who has one of those reprinted cards will see the value drop, but by how much? Lets take a look at the data and find out

1. TLDR - Gimme the headlines, I'm outta here
2. Scope - What are we looking at here?
3. How much value is lost?

TLDR - Gimme the headlines, i'm outta here

If you're holding the original printing of a reprinted card, the TLDR fact is you're going to lose "value" (well, in 60 out of 61 cases anyway)

How much? It's complicated - between 5% and 50% - depending on what rarity the new card is, and the value it started at, and even which artwork is used

• Mythics - 20%-30% loss - beware if you're holding higher value cards
• Rares - 10%-40% loss - usually on the lower side, closer to 10%
• Commons and Uncommons - very little danger here (they're cheap and still cheap!) - unless they're breakout higher value, reprinted with the same artwork - then you'll lose at least 50%

TLDR over - there's much more value in looking at the charts and full analysis, so please carry on! (also, can you guess that ome case that didn't lose value?)

Scope - what are we looking at?

There are exactly 999(!!!) different card variations in 2X2 (counting all foil, non foil, borderless etc etc). That's far too many - we'll be a bit more concise, and look at these:

1. First time reprints - the card has one previous set printing (judge promos counted for this so we can't look at imperial seal this time)
2. Non foil only - both original and new printing
3. The original can be in any set, but the reprint was specifically in 2X2

With these constraints, our analysis covers 61 cards in total.

We have a few rarity shifts (both up and down - EG an upshift is when a card was Rare in the old set, but Mythic in 2X2) - they may have an effect on the data, so we'll be separating them out into groups.

We'll also look at different price brackets and see what difference that makes.

Additional info

1. All prices collated from this site (MTG Price Comparison @ BeatTheBuyList) - using a weighted average of retailer's price and quantity available that day (PS - not the TCGlow!) - please do check the rest of the site out!
2. All the charts you see are interactive! Hover for more data, click and drag to pan/zoom, click on a line to remove cards, press the buttons above to filter - enjoy! (note : desktop viewing is best, but scales to mobile, dont worry!)
3. Thanks to Scryfall for collating the spoiler dates - you'll see these as a big X on the charts

Which cards had first time reprints in 2X2?

Click the headers below to explore each rarity and rarity shift

Part 1 - Original Printings

Mythic to Mythic first-time masters reprint

Let's dive in at the top - no downshifts, mythic cards reprinted at mythic again

There's a clear value stratification here - The big boy, Allosaurus Shepherd starting at $60.49, dropping to $46.18 ( 23.7%) by release, and then $42.51 ( 29.7%) by 2 months after release.

The mid tier, Uril, the Miststalker and Emiel the Blessed in the $10-$20 starting range, showing about a 5% drop by release, 15% by month 1 and 25% 2 months after release.

At The low end, less than $5, we have Empyrial Archangel and Legion's Initiative both starting at $3.50, showing 17.6% and 19.7% respectively by the 2 month after release point.

Note that both Allosaurus Shepherd and Emiel the Blessed both have two premium reprints in 2X2, and drop a few % points faster than the rest of the pack.

TLDR: With a Mythic to Mythic masters reprint, the original will drop in price by:

• High value - expect a 30% loss
• Mid value - expect a 25% loss
• Low value - expect a 20% loss

Rare to Rare first-time masters reprint

There are two clear losers here - Twinflame ( 18.3% at release, 43.1% by 60 days out) and Nim Deathmantle ( 15.6% at release, 37.9% by month 2) - I cant actually work out any reason for these extreme drops, any ideas out there?

The Lorwyn and Shadowmoor sets were notoriously short printed - underopened at the time, so it stands that the price on those cards may be artifically inflated due to the the supply side, and likely to have greater movements on a reprint - Mindwrack Liege and Thistledown Liege are two of the bigger losers - over 20% by the two month point.

Note : While it looks like Backdraft Hellkite actually increased in value, there's some strange inventory movements going on at Troll and Toad - releasing 2 playsets at a massively inflated price, then taking if off a few weeks later (always on a friday), which distorts the weighted average - an interesting phenomenon to look into another day!

TLDR: With a Rare to Rare masters set reprint:

• Absolute maximum, you could see a 40% loss
• Short printed set? Expect a 20% loss
• Otherwise, expect a 10% loss

Uncommon to Uncommon first-time masters reprint

OK OK, i'll admit I was wrong - there ARE some interesting observations here

In the $0.50c and up category, we have 3 cards:

• Dragon Arch - Same artwork - but the reprint has the new black border instead of the old school/retro brown artifact frame - Old frames are still desirable (despite WoTC driving that style into the ground recently...), this printing dropped the least ( 7.1% at 2 months and starting to recover slightly)
• Vampiric Rites - reprinted with different artwork (I'm going to say worse artwork) - ( 14.8%)
• Conclave Mentor - printed with the same artwork - absolutely decimated from $1.99 to $0.91 after 2 months ( 54.3%)

What's going on in the $0.00->$0.50 category - specifically Firemind Vessel and Gloryscale Viashino? - It's our friends Troll and Toad again! listing over 100 copies at twice the price of every other vendor, then mysteriously pulling them back out of the market - anyone got an understanding of the purpose behind this? (note that only Rare level members of the site can see all these individual vendor movements in their charts - sign up now to get this insight)

The rest of the uncommon category is not noteworthy - some cents movements around $0.25 - mostly just noise. Moving on!

Common to Common first-time masters reprint

Absolutely nothing of note to talk about here, except a quick mention of Troll and Toad playing around with the price for Kasmina's Transmutation!

Uncommon to Common first-time masters reprint - Downshifted Rarity

Again, skipping over this one quickly - Troll and Toad forcing Tenth District Legionnaire up in price (and then back down 2 months later), Pirate's Pillage is the only uncommon of value - 22.2%

Mythic or Rare Downshifted to Rare / Uncommon first-time masters reprint

Only one card here to look at - Drogskol Reaver - which is apparently a card that combos at the drop of a hat - suffering absolute decimation, going from $20.97 to $11.30 ( -46.1%)

Upshifted first-time masters reprints

Here we have the big boys - Dockside Extortionist and Warrior's Oath, both upshifted from Rare to Mythic - Why? I expect different reasons:

• Warrior's Oath]] ( -12.9%) - A card that doesnt seem much play, but was printed in [s[Portal Three Kingdoms (short short SHORT supply, high demand among speculators and collectors) - WOTC can't print this into the ground, for fear of angering the whales.
• Dockside Extortionist ( -1.3%) - Everybody who plays EDH wants this - but it's on the edge of eating the banhammer, putting WOTC in a difficult spot - flood the market with a rare, and EDH suffers as a whole - or dont flood the market, and that staple stays expensive.

There are some interesting movements at Card Kingdom for Warrior's Oath (again - sign up for the rare members only plan here to see these insights yourself) - from 14 to 8 to 2 copies available before the reprint announcement - either someone got burned speculating, or CK themselves knew about the announcement and were able to get rid of the stock - someone get me my tin foil hat!

Wrap up

This has been a long one, and took a lot of effort to put together! - Part 2, looking at players who didn't have a copy already is coming as soon as possible, go sign up for notifications - Either as a free or paid member, it's all good!

Thanks again for reading, What other subjects would you like to look at? Let me know on social media (click the icons at the bottom of the page) or comment below.