I'll toss in my two cents on this.
First, if a company says "we're making X amount of decks", they're usually telling the truth. T11 never said they made only 500 - they said they were RELEASING 500 back when they tried the two sales windows. This indicates that there may be more, but it's still limited.
CBJ or someone mentioned about the quantity of uncut sheets that would be released. I can't imagine it's going to be as high as all that - and in the same breath I can't imagine they''' last the whole twelve hours.
Who was it that commented about Gold Arcanes still being in stock at E? Ellusionist employees have been around here, and this is what I know. As of about a year ago, they had about 1000 BG1E and 4000 GA remaining, and this was before RA was released. As of post-Christmas-New-Year's, I was told that VERY LITTLE of ALL the rare cards remain. Furthermore, you stated something about those decks retaining their worth - sure they do, until E throws a "buy $50 of stuff, get a free X deck" specials. Then the price drops because the market gets flooded with them. But it doesn't take long for the glut to disappear and the prices to go back up again.
A few of you were trying to guess what the new releases would be on Friday. The White Monarchs deck and uncut sheet were being counted as TWO of those releases. Guess what? Judging from this quote, posted by Bayme in the T11 forum on this release, they ARE NOT being counted among the six releases. This was in response to someone griping about why they didn't just sell the decks like normal.
Nevertheless, if the White Monarchs aren't of interest, then by all means disregard that part of my message and look forward to SIX new releases on Friday. The White Monarchs were just something nice we thought we would do as icing on the cake.
So, six releases, AND the White Monarchs deck, and the WM uncuts. Lotsa stuff going up for grabs...