The Reserved List is a major factor when it comes to maintaining the high secondary market price of certain cards, but so is the playability or pure nostalgia associated with those cards. A big chunk of cards on the list would not be affected by reprints, and no one would complain, or potentially even notice, if they were reprinted.
Protecting, ahem, Collectability
Few decisions made by Wizards of the Coast regarding Magic have impacted the game more than the company's official reprint policy and the promise (lovers of formats such as Vintage and Legacy may say "threat") to never print certain cards again. The so-called Reserved List, that this promise has resulted in, consists of 571 cards protected from reprint in order to maintain confidence in Magic as a collectible… which is WotC's way of saying to uphold secondary market prices, without saying that.
These may not be among the strongest Magic cards printed, but their unique effects in conjunction with their inclusion on the Reserved List have made these cards a lot more expensive than what their power justifies.
However, with this large number of cards on the list, once you have gone past your Power Nines and dual lands, , , , and past unique effects such as , , and , and even past various cards highly priced for nostalgic reasons or due to extreme scarcity, you enter the long tail of overprinted, unplayable and unloved Reserved List cards. And, as you should have guessed by now, it is these Reserved List wallflowers that we will look at in today's installment of Forgotten Zeroes.
No Fear of Missing out on Little Ponies
The very fact that hundreds of cards from the list can be found for less than a single Euro makes you wonder whether even a century would be enough to make certain cards on the list interesting as collectibles. The best thing that one could say about many of these cards is that they are a waste of really nice artwork that could have been used for playable cards. And some don't even have that going for them.
Still, the upside is that you could easily build up a sizable Reserved List collection just for the heck of it, but don't expect it to ever be more than a silly project. Even if less than 500 copies of the Homeland zero are listed for sale on Cardmarket, any attempt to create a price increase through a buy-out would most certainly just see more copies of the card listed for sale right away. And any temporary price spike would be due to the demand you yourself were creating and you should not expect anyone else to follow suit and getting hyped about your little pony.
For Whom the Apocalypse Chime Tolls
That cards from Fallen Empires and Homelands overflow the list of worthless cards protected from reprinting should surprise no one and many would perhaps prefer that the list instead was a promise not to reprint some of the most useless cards ever to see print. I mean, we can all do without more copies of , , and [Hazduhr, the Abbot] or (even if I love Amy Weber's illustration for it) .
Even interesting or funny art in combination with a solemn oath never to reprint them ever again for all eternity have succeeded in driving the price of certain cards up above half a Euro or so in the quarter of a century since they were printed.
Other expansions less infamous are also well represented in the ranks of the hopeless and Ice Age not least with everything from the depletion land cycle including and over to . Admittedly, I don't really know if Ice Cauldron is a bad card because I fall asleep every time I try to read it. Eight mana from the same expansion also deserves a mention if not for anything else than its odd and disconcerting illustration – and that's even by Drew Tucker's standards.
Another Stone to My Pyramid
Legends' lets you regenerate a creature if you plan ahead and pay a total of eight mana and at the same total price, allows you to splash a card in any color (it better damn well win you the game, huh?). , another wallflower from Legends cannot be blocked if opponent has in play and chooses not to use it to bounce her back to your hand. Another Legends wallflower is which may be safe from Karakas but paying 2GG for a 1/1 flyer with the ability to make your creatures by paying GGG and tapping it is just not enough for anyone to ask her for a waltz. It must be the beautiful Quinton Hoover illustration the puts the price above 20 € for a near mint English version.
On the even costlier side may easily cost you more than 60 €, but as with many other cards from Arabian Nights, this is solely due to scarcity. You probably won't ever see the six mana artifact in play even in the most land destruction heavy meta, because, like, how would you ever get to six mana in such an environment. And if you think land destruction is too effective or mean, you may be one of the few players in the market for a playset of which could set you back as much as 100 €. Even Fallen Empires' is better than that … and a whole lot cheaper.
Cool as he may be, Teferi obviously comes from a quite useless place. And I have a feeling that Urza's rage may stem from someone giving him their honest opinion on his hat. We never see him wearing it much anymore.
In short we should probably thank WotC for not reprinting most of these cards, even if that means we will never get a Standard where we can cast with mana from or use to draw into in Modern.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.
