Reprint Policy
Reprints, the reserve list, and the price of entry
"To maintain your confidence in the Magic game as a collectible, we've created this Magic: The Gathering card reprint policy." This statement opens the article on the official Wizards of the Coast page regarding their reprint policy. Their article goes on to say that they reprint cards because they believe the cards they do reprint do two things for the game. First they believe that the cards reprinted make the game more fun to play overall. Second they believe that all Magic players deserve an opportunity to play with these cards.
I have a few thoughts on this because frankly the secondary market doesn't believe that all players deserve an opportunity to play with these cards because even after reprints there's still cards out there that just aren't financially feasible for the average player to buy. I'll elaborate on this later when covering price of entry to various formats.
Let’s talk about their first point of the reprints they give us make the game more fun to play overall. From the perspective of a limited player I would agree to a certain extent. The Masters sets were fun to play because the reprints they chose for each individual set fit into certain archetypes and mechanics they were trying to showcase in those sets. The other side of that is that while, yes, they were giving us reprints that fit into certain archetypes there are other cards that would better fit the strategy of those archetypes that were probably more deserving of a reprint. From the perspective of a constructed player, I would have a similar perspective. They gave newer players ideas for archetypes they may not have thought of before or cards they might not be familiar with, for a deck that they already play. They also gave more competitive players a few reprints of difficult to find or expensive cards making it easier to finish a deck, upgrade an existing deck, or even build a whole new one. However, in giving us a few much needed reprints, they failed to give us more effective reprints. They also didn’t always give us playable reprints in those sets either. I understand that they built Masters sets to be drafted but not everyone plays draft. There’s those players that solely play constructed formats. That’s also where a lot of prize support goes is constructed events. Yes there’s limited events at various events and some are even limited focused, but when you design a set strictly to be drafted and give it a limited print run those competitive constructed players are going to eat up the supply of playable cards driving up their price and leaving the rest as bulk.
As someone who started playing kitchen table magic with friends, learning how to play the game, part of the fun for me is brewing a deck with what I have and maybe buying a couple random cards here and there specifically for that deck. If one of those cards that I want just so happens to not have a lot of printings it makes it difficult to build the deck that I want because there’s always that one random card that’s outside of your budget to buy. You may buy a couple packs of the set that it’s in if you can find them and hope you get the card from there but otherwise you’re stuck playing without it. To me playing without the cards that you want to play with takes away from the potential fun to be had. You may have what you feel is a great deck idea and you just need this one card. But then you go look up the price of said card because you’ve decided to add to your list and see that it’s way out of your price range. I’ll talk about this more in my price of entry portion of this article later but it’s very disheartening as a kitchen table player who wants this cool card for whatever their brew of the week is but has to go out of their price range if they want it that badly.
Now let’s talk about their second point and reason for reprinting cards. They state that they feel that all players deserve a chance to play with the cards that they reprint. If this were a true statement we would see Masters sets printed in higher quantities and more reprints into standard that showcase the direction they’re going with the storyline, the mechanics of the game, and the feel of the format as a whole. These reprints may or may not have an impact on the various eternal formats but it’s likely they would by bringing down the price of those cards, especially if they’re valuable or very diverse in the decks those cards fit into. A recent example of a couple of good reprints we got into standard that don’t really effect the format but may while they’re around and have an impact on eternal formats are Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, and Grafdigger’s Cage. All three of these cards are excellent sideboard cards in modern and before the banning of Faithless Looting, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, and Bridge from Below were seeing vast fluctuations in price and Leyline of the Void and Grafdigger’s Cage were seeing extreme spikes as people were buying them out for the main board of their decks in some instances even because of the direction the meta had shifted. These are the types of reprints we need to get. None of them are particularly good in limited, especially the leylines, as you want all four in your deck to try and have one in your opening hand, but they are great in constructed. Steel Overseer is another prime example of a good reprint. On its own, and in a limited environment it’s ok at best typically, but in a constructed environment it’s pretty great. With the direction they took in the next set, Throne of Eldraine, they added more artifact creatures to add value and incentive to playing it. It also has decent constructed playability too. It’s in a couple of modern decks, a couple of vintage decks, and sees some edh play. Granted it wasn’t that expensive of a card to buy but it has playability on its own and gets better the more artifact creatures you have but the lack of reprints was hurting it and players that wished to play with it. If WotC could stay on this path of reprinting cards that are spiking in price and seeing play in at least two formats we can get a good rotation of reprints that will keep familiar cards in standard for the seasoned players, keep standard fresh and fun for all players, and introduce newer players to older cards that they may have never seen or heard of before. It also gives those newer players better access to older formats than Masters sets did.
With this cycle it gives gaps in time between reprints maintaining the secondary market as a whole as well as maintaining fluctuations in the market based on current meta. It also helps maintain a lower average cost amongst eternal format staples by reprinting them when they start to spike to a point that they’re beginning to no longer be affordable by the average player. With a cycle like this it still maintains the collectability of the cards as well, especially if they use new art occasionally.
For collectors and investors this sounds like a bad thing. It is to a point. They still have their positions in the market. They might not have as much value as they once did, but they’re still holding a majority share. Think of Magic cards as a share of stock in a company. I understand that the stock market isn’t for everyone but it’s the easiest and best example to use. Now think about these reprints as the company bought out another company and converted the shares of stock from company B to their own. Now there’s say 20,000 shares of company A stock when there was only 10,000 before. Yes it devalues the original 10,000 shares but the original stockholders in the company still are majority holders. The new shares are up on the secondary market being bought and sold effecting the prices for a short time until everyone has the amount they want then everything stabilizes and starts to climb back up until they buy out another company and do the same thing. This is all reprints are, this model I just explained. And while yes, it will, over time, effect the overall price of that one card but not as significantly as one might think. If they were to reprint a reserve list card it would throw the market way off track for a while but, it would eventually stabilize again and we’d start to see growth.
Speaking of the reserve, based off of their opening statement regarding the reprint policy they need to do away with the reserve list. I get where it maintains the collectability of the cards on the list as a whole, but let’s face it, an Alpha or Beta Black Lotus will always hold a premium over any reprint they could ever give us. I'll use a non-reserve list card from Alpha as an example. Birds of Paradise, on the secondary market, an Alpha printing goes for roughly $3000. The most recent printing, from the Ravnica: Allegiance Guild decks is going for about $7 in the same secondary market. The last time Birds of Paradise was printed in an actual standard legal set was in 2012. That printing is roughly $7.50 on the secondary market. Black Lotus could be reprinted and released tomorrow in a limited print run product and the original printings won't take much of a hit, if any at all because of what they are and what set they're from. Everyone wants an Alpha Black Lotus. People that have never played the game a day in their life have heard of the Black Lotus. What these people probably don't realize though, is that it's a $10,000+ card for a couple of reasons. It was only ever printed in 3 sets and will never be reprinted again as well as being one of the most powerful cards ever printed. If Wizards really wanted people to be able to play the various formats they've created over their 25+ year history they should do away with the reserve list and reprint these cards, or at least look over the reserve list and determine which ones would be safe to reprint today. Do I want any of them to be standard legal? Sure, some of them are just fine in standard. They're simply on the reserve list just because of the rarity the held in their respective sets and when they were printed. Roc of Kher Ridges is a good example of this type of card. It's simply a 3/3 flyer for 3R. There's nothing exciting about this card in general as there's been exponentially more powerful cards printed in recent history. However, there are also cards that would not be ok in standard. The power 9 are examples of these. I don't want to sit across from someone that’s playing turn 1 Ancestral Recall or taking extra turns with Time Walk. The format just isn't designed for that style of play. However, like with the Masters sets, I feel they could do away with the reserve list and do some sort of "Reserve Masters" product in a similar way with limited print runs, give some of these cards new art, give some really old cards a foil treatment as they've never had one. The foil printings of these cards would hold an extreme premium on the secondary market if they never had a foil printing previously but I feel the non-foil versions would slowly climb the ladder in price and be in the neighborhood of $100+ for different individual cards while the set is in print. I don't feel these new printings would have a great effect on the existing printings floating around for sale currently as those are original printings and will continue to hold premiums simply because of age and lack of quality supply. Most of the supply of reserve list cards on the secondary market is either graded or in generally bad condition. I understand the collector/investor argument to keeping the reserve list intact but they need to understand that while yes, these cards are collectible, this is a game first. What would they do if the game disappeared off the face of the earth and the cards all of a suddenly had no value when they invested tens or hundreds of thousands into these cards, getting them graded, storage, etc.? Would they be ok with someone buying the rights to the game and reprinting them? Or even creating a new game using similar mechanics and giving these cards identical, functional reprints?
This all ties into my thoughts on the price of entry to various formats at a competitive level. To get into standard currently the average price of a top 8 deck from the most recent Fandom Legends standard tournament was roughly $230ⁱ. This amount seems to stay fairly consistent even as sets rotate and the meta changes. There have been a couple of exceptions to the rule. Khans of Tarkir standard is one where the Onslaught fetch land cycle was reprinted and decks were upwards of $1000 at the time. Now we'll compare this amount to the average cost of a top 8 modern deck from a recent tournament. The average cost of the top 8 decks at the SCG Classic in Syracuse was right around $1150ⁱ. This number continues to grow exorbitantly as you move to other formats. Legacy decks are $2000 or more typically. Vintage decks hold an even higher price tag. Competitive EDH usually holds a similar price point to high end legacy decks of anywhere between $3000-5000. For the average player most of these costs of entry are entirely too high for them to even consider playing in paper. Wizards has done some good there with creating online platforms where card prices are typically cheaper so the average player does have a little bit easier access to playing with some very powerful cards from throughout the game’s history. But we're going to kind of ignore that for now as most of the large tournaments that are held, either CFB sponsored or SCG sponsored are paper tournaments. You bring your deck of cards, sit down across from an actual person, shuffle up, and play. If the average player wanted to go to one of these events and play with the same deck their favorite pro player is using they're probably not going to be able to afford it. With the current reprint policy that's in place, it's likely that they'll never be able to afford it. I play modern and have a deck nowhere near competitive enough to try and place well in a larger tournament but it works fairly well at my local FNM and my deck is roughly $650⁴. I had to go out and buy a good majority of the cards for the deck as I didn't already have them. Going into the format with a pseudo-competitive mindset I did my research and was well aware that I would likely be ultimately spending at a minimum $500 for the deck I wanted to build. I accepted that and went for it anyway. I also had the means at the time to do so. Not everyone has or will ever have the means to just go out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on 75 pieces of cardboard with pictures drawn on them (100 for commander). This is where WotC needs to step in. If they really want people to play with these cards they should do reprints more often and follow the secondary market when doing so. This will help newer players as well as even more established players step into other formats. You want to play legacy? Ok, here's a set where we're reprinting vintage/legacy staples to help lower the price of entry to the format. Now have fun and go play some Delver or Turbo Depths. You're a cEDH player that wants to move to vintage? Ok, buy some things from the same set and have fun casting your Ancestral Recalls or drawing cards off your Library of Alexandria.
To go with this however, not every format is for every player. The larger the card pool gets, the more difficult playing the game actually becomes. Standard as it is has a fairly high difficulty level for a couple of reasons. There’s a limited card pool, which makes the deck building aspect difficult. Then there’s actually playing the game. I believe it was Forbes that recently put out an article talking about how Magic: the Gathering was the most complex game in the world for various reasons. One of them being card pool size and the number of different interactions different cards have with each other. Modern is a little more difficult than standard from both perspectives as there’s a larger card pool and more options for interactions between card within your own deck as well as trying to plan for different things your opponents might do with their strategy. Then legacy, because again card pool grows so difficulty grows with it. Then vintage for the same reasons. Then there’s EDH which is probably the most difficult format to play. Most other formats are 1v1. Commander is a four player game usually where it’s every person for themselves. This is just one aspect to what makes it so difficult. Then there’s a card pool size of somewhere between legacy and vintage. Throw in the fact that you can have no more than one copy of any card except for basic lands and now your variance is thrown off. Every other format you can have up to four copies of a single card unless the rules text on the card states otherwise or it’s on the restricted list for vintage in which you can only have one copy in your deck. Oh, you’re also limited in what cards you use in your deck because you can only use cards in the same color identity as your commander. And this is just deck building restrictions. Then there’s actually playing the game and the politics that come with it.
In short, the reprint policy needs to change and reprints done more often with analysis of the secondary market and the reserve list needs to be at least edited to remove some cards that aren’t very good comparatively to other cards that are played in the formats they’re currently legal in. Doing these things will lower the price of entry to the various formats allowing for newer players to expand their horizons from a player's perspective and will also help maintain a healthy secondary market with fluctuation instead of just constant growth. It will also get more of the older copies into circulation initially as investors sell their positions because of their fear of a crash.
ⁱ-Prices are average of tcgplayer.com and Card Kingdom prices quoted on mtgtop8.com
⁴-Price estimated based on current tcgplayer.com pricing
"To maintain your confidence in the Magic game as a collectible, we've created this Magic: The Gathering card reprint policy." This statement opens the article on the official Wizards of the Coast page regarding their reprint policy. Their article goes on to say that they reprint cards because they believe the cards they do reprint do two things for the game. First they believe that the cards reprinted make the game more fun to play overall. Second they believe that all Magic players deserve an opportunity to play with these cards.
I have a few thoughts on this because frankly the secondary market doesn't believe that all players deserve an opportunity to play with these cards because even after reprints there's still cards out there that just aren't financially feasible for the average player to buy. I'll elaborate on this later when covering price of entry to various formats.
Let’s talk about their first point of the reprints they give us make the game more fun to play overall. From the perspective of a limited player I would agree to a certain extent. The Masters sets were fun to play because the reprints they chose for each individual set fit into certain archetypes and mechanics they were trying to showcase in those sets. The other side of that is that while, yes, they were giving us reprints that fit into certain archetypes there are other cards that would better fit the strategy of those archetypes that were probably more deserving of a reprint. From the perspective of a constructed player, I would have a similar perspective. They gave newer players ideas for archetypes they may not have thought of before or cards they might not be familiar with, for a deck that they already play. They also gave more competitive players a few reprints of difficult to find or expensive cards making it easier to finish a deck, upgrade an existing deck, or even build a whole new one. However, in giving us a few much needed reprints, they failed to give us more effective reprints. They also didn’t always give us playable reprints in those sets either. I understand that they built Masters sets to be drafted but not everyone plays draft. There’s those players that solely play constructed formats. That’s also where a lot of prize support goes is constructed events. Yes there’s limited events at various events and some are even limited focused, but when you design a set strictly to be drafted and give it a limited print run those competitive constructed players are going to eat up the supply of playable cards driving up their price and leaving the rest as bulk.
As someone who started playing kitchen table magic with friends, learning how to play the game, part of the fun for me is brewing a deck with what I have and maybe buying a couple random cards here and there specifically for that deck. If one of those cards that I want just so happens to not have a lot of printings it makes it difficult to build the deck that I want because there’s always that one random card that’s outside of your budget to buy. You may buy a couple packs of the set that it’s in if you can find them and hope you get the card from there but otherwise you’re stuck playing without it. To me playing without the cards that you want to play with takes away from the potential fun to be had. You may have what you feel is a great deck idea and you just need this one card. But then you go look up the price of said card because you’ve decided to add to your list and see that it’s way out of your price range. I’ll talk about this more in my price of entry portion of this article later but it’s very disheartening as a kitchen table player who wants this cool card for whatever their brew of the week is but has to go out of their price range if they want it that badly.
Now let’s talk about their second point and reason for reprinting cards. They state that they feel that all players deserve a chance to play with the cards that they reprint. If this were a true statement we would see Masters sets printed in higher quantities and more reprints into standard that showcase the direction they’re going with the storyline, the mechanics of the game, and the feel of the format as a whole. These reprints may or may not have an impact on the various eternal formats but it’s likely they would by bringing down the price of those cards, especially if they’re valuable or very diverse in the decks those cards fit into. A recent example of a couple of good reprints we got into standard that don’t really effect the format but may while they’re around and have an impact on eternal formats are Leyline of Sanctity, Leyline of the Void, and Grafdigger’s Cage. All three of these cards are excellent sideboard cards in modern and before the banning of Faithless Looting, Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, and Bridge from Below were seeing vast fluctuations in price and Leyline of the Void and Grafdigger’s Cage were seeing extreme spikes as people were buying them out for the main board of their decks in some instances even because of the direction the meta had shifted. These are the types of reprints we need to get. None of them are particularly good in limited, especially the leylines, as you want all four in your deck to try and have one in your opening hand, but they are great in constructed. Steel Overseer is another prime example of a good reprint. On its own, and in a limited environment it’s ok at best typically, but in a constructed environment it’s pretty great. With the direction they took in the next set, Throne of Eldraine, they added more artifact creatures to add value and incentive to playing it. It also has decent constructed playability too. It’s in a couple of modern decks, a couple of vintage decks, and sees some edh play. Granted it wasn’t that expensive of a card to buy but it has playability on its own and gets better the more artifact creatures you have but the lack of reprints was hurting it and players that wished to play with it. If WotC could stay on this path of reprinting cards that are spiking in price and seeing play in at least two formats we can get a good rotation of reprints that will keep familiar cards in standard for the seasoned players, keep standard fresh and fun for all players, and introduce newer players to older cards that they may have never seen or heard of before. It also gives those newer players better access to older formats than Masters sets did.
With this cycle it gives gaps in time between reprints maintaining the secondary market as a whole as well as maintaining fluctuations in the market based on current meta. It also helps maintain a lower average cost amongst eternal format staples by reprinting them when they start to spike to a point that they’re beginning to no longer be affordable by the average player. With a cycle like this it still maintains the collectability of the cards as well, especially if they use new art occasionally.
For collectors and investors this sounds like a bad thing. It is to a point. They still have their positions in the market. They might not have as much value as they once did, but they’re still holding a majority share. Think of Magic cards as a share of stock in a company. I understand that the stock market isn’t for everyone but it’s the easiest and best example to use. Now think about these reprints as the company bought out another company and converted the shares of stock from company B to their own. Now there’s say 20,000 shares of company A stock when there was only 10,000 before. Yes it devalues the original 10,000 shares but the original stockholders in the company still are majority holders. The new shares are up on the secondary market being bought and sold effecting the prices for a short time until everyone has the amount they want then everything stabilizes and starts to climb back up until they buy out another company and do the same thing. This is all reprints are, this model I just explained. And while yes, it will, over time, effect the overall price of that one card but not as significantly as one might think. If they were to reprint a reserve list card it would throw the market way off track for a while but, it would eventually stabilize again and we’d start to see growth.
Speaking of the reserve, based off of their opening statement regarding the reprint policy they need to do away with the reserve list. I get where it maintains the collectability of the cards on the list as a whole, but let’s face it, an Alpha or Beta Black Lotus will always hold a premium over any reprint they could ever give us. I'll use a non-reserve list card from Alpha as an example. Birds of Paradise, on the secondary market, an Alpha printing goes for roughly $3000. The most recent printing, from the Ravnica: Allegiance Guild decks is going for about $7 in the same secondary market. The last time Birds of Paradise was printed in an actual standard legal set was in 2012. That printing is roughly $7.50 on the secondary market. Black Lotus could be reprinted and released tomorrow in a limited print run product and the original printings won't take much of a hit, if any at all because of what they are and what set they're from. Everyone wants an Alpha Black Lotus. People that have never played the game a day in their life have heard of the Black Lotus. What these people probably don't realize though, is that it's a $10,000+ card for a couple of reasons. It was only ever printed in 3 sets and will never be reprinted again as well as being one of the most powerful cards ever printed. If Wizards really wanted people to be able to play the various formats they've created over their 25+ year history they should do away with the reserve list and reprint these cards, or at least look over the reserve list and determine which ones would be safe to reprint today. Do I want any of them to be standard legal? Sure, some of them are just fine in standard. They're simply on the reserve list just because of the rarity the held in their respective sets and when they were printed. Roc of Kher Ridges is a good example of this type of card. It's simply a 3/3 flyer for 3R. There's nothing exciting about this card in general as there's been exponentially more powerful cards printed in recent history. However, there are also cards that would not be ok in standard. The power 9 are examples of these. I don't want to sit across from someone that’s playing turn 1 Ancestral Recall or taking extra turns with Time Walk. The format just isn't designed for that style of play. However, like with the Masters sets, I feel they could do away with the reserve list and do some sort of "Reserve Masters" product in a similar way with limited print runs, give some of these cards new art, give some really old cards a foil treatment as they've never had one. The foil printings of these cards would hold an extreme premium on the secondary market if they never had a foil printing previously but I feel the non-foil versions would slowly climb the ladder in price and be in the neighborhood of $100+ for different individual cards while the set is in print. I don't feel these new printings would have a great effect on the existing printings floating around for sale currently as those are original printings and will continue to hold premiums simply because of age and lack of quality supply. Most of the supply of reserve list cards on the secondary market is either graded or in generally bad condition. I understand the collector/investor argument to keeping the reserve list intact but they need to understand that while yes, these cards are collectible, this is a game first. What would they do if the game disappeared off the face of the earth and the cards all of a suddenly had no value when they invested tens or hundreds of thousands into these cards, getting them graded, storage, etc.? Would they be ok with someone buying the rights to the game and reprinting them? Or even creating a new game using similar mechanics and giving these cards identical, functional reprints?
This all ties into my thoughts on the price of entry to various formats at a competitive level. To get into standard currently the average price of a top 8 deck from the most recent Fandom Legends standard tournament was roughly $230ⁱ. This amount seems to stay fairly consistent even as sets rotate and the meta changes. There have been a couple of exceptions to the rule. Khans of Tarkir standard is one where the Onslaught fetch land cycle was reprinted and decks were upwards of $1000 at the time. Now we'll compare this amount to the average cost of a top 8 modern deck from a recent tournament. The average cost of the top 8 decks at the SCG Classic in Syracuse was right around $1150ⁱ. This number continues to grow exorbitantly as you move to other formats. Legacy decks are $2000 or more typically. Vintage decks hold an even higher price tag. Competitive EDH usually holds a similar price point to high end legacy decks of anywhere between $3000-5000. For the average player most of these costs of entry are entirely too high for them to even consider playing in paper. Wizards has done some good there with creating online platforms where card prices are typically cheaper so the average player does have a little bit easier access to playing with some very powerful cards from throughout the game’s history. But we're going to kind of ignore that for now as most of the large tournaments that are held, either CFB sponsored or SCG sponsored are paper tournaments. You bring your deck of cards, sit down across from an actual person, shuffle up, and play. If the average player wanted to go to one of these events and play with the same deck their favorite pro player is using they're probably not going to be able to afford it. With the current reprint policy that's in place, it's likely that they'll never be able to afford it. I play modern and have a deck nowhere near competitive enough to try and place well in a larger tournament but it works fairly well at my local FNM and my deck is roughly $650⁴. I had to go out and buy a good majority of the cards for the deck as I didn't already have them. Going into the format with a pseudo-competitive mindset I did my research and was well aware that I would likely be ultimately spending at a minimum $500 for the deck I wanted to build. I accepted that and went for it anyway. I also had the means at the time to do so. Not everyone has or will ever have the means to just go out and spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on 75 pieces of cardboard with pictures drawn on them (100 for commander). This is where WotC needs to step in. If they really want people to play with these cards they should do reprints more often and follow the secondary market when doing so. This will help newer players as well as even more established players step into other formats. You want to play legacy? Ok, here's a set where we're reprinting vintage/legacy staples to help lower the price of entry to the format. Now have fun and go play some Delver or Turbo Depths. You're a cEDH player that wants to move to vintage? Ok, buy some things from the same set and have fun casting your Ancestral Recalls or drawing cards off your Library of Alexandria.
To go with this however, not every format is for every player. The larger the card pool gets, the more difficult playing the game actually becomes. Standard as it is has a fairly high difficulty level for a couple of reasons. There’s a limited card pool, which makes the deck building aspect difficult. Then there’s actually playing the game. I believe it was Forbes that recently put out an article talking about how Magic: the Gathering was the most complex game in the world for various reasons. One of them being card pool size and the number of different interactions different cards have with each other. Modern is a little more difficult than standard from both perspectives as there’s a larger card pool and more options for interactions between card within your own deck as well as trying to plan for different things your opponents might do with their strategy. Then legacy, because again card pool grows so difficulty grows with it. Then vintage for the same reasons. Then there’s EDH which is probably the most difficult format to play. Most other formats are 1v1. Commander is a four player game usually where it’s every person for themselves. This is just one aspect to what makes it so difficult. Then there’s a card pool size of somewhere between legacy and vintage. Throw in the fact that you can have no more than one copy of any card except for basic lands and now your variance is thrown off. Every other format you can have up to four copies of a single card unless the rules text on the card states otherwise or it’s on the restricted list for vintage in which you can only have one copy in your deck. Oh, you’re also limited in what cards you use in your deck because you can only use cards in the same color identity as your commander. And this is just deck building restrictions. Then there’s actually playing the game and the politics that come with it.
In short, the reprint policy needs to change and reprints done more often with analysis of the secondary market and the reserve list needs to be at least edited to remove some cards that aren’t very good comparatively to other cards that are played in the formats they’re currently legal in. Doing these things will lower the price of entry to the various formats allowing for newer players to expand their horizons from a player's perspective and will also help maintain a healthy secondary market with fluctuation instead of just constant growth. It will also get more of the older copies into circulation initially as investors sell their positions because of their fear of a crash.
ⁱ-Prices are average of tcgplayer.com and Card Kingdom prices quoted on mtgtop8.com
⁴-Price estimated based on current tcgplayer.com pricing
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