Sr15, it's entirely possible that this deck was being designed for a magician who wanted to reserve most of the black ones for his personal use. And even if that isn't the case, there's still just 101 decks going into circulation. If more get released, no biggie - the market value will go down because they're not as hard to obtain as they once were.
I suppose that could be possible, but I don't think it would be the case in this scenario. I agree on the second point, although the only reason I could possibly see to hold out on decks in this scenario would be to have the price as high as possible for each release. Not exactly a bad business model, although it might piss off some people who got the decks early only to see the price and rarity dropped later. Just to clarify, I made that post when I thought the entire run of this deck would be 101 decks out of 500 due to the original wording of the OP, not just a special edition of the deck being 101/500.
Extreme rarity does not always automatically equal valuable. A simple example: compare the Bicycle Black Ghost 1st Edition with the Black Crown Deck and the Bicycle Gold Seal New Fan Back. Each one of these decks were made in a print run of exactly the same size: 5,000. If you were looking to buy them from a fellow trader, however, the first deck goes for around $100, give or take, the second is perhaps $20 and the last one is still selling at nearly the original retail.
I mean I'm an economics major so you aren't telling me anything that I don't already know. There is obviously a difference between a print run of 5,000 and a print run of 500, especially when there are only 101 being released. Look at the pricing on the special editions of the Aurum deck. It wouldn't be unreasonable to think that Aloys saw the price at which the 75 deck edition of Aurum was selling at and would try to do something similar by releasing only a small number of decks.
One could argue, based on your perspective, that ALL limited-edition decks are unfair because there's only so many of them to go around.
I never said it was unfair. I just said that a) it's not the best business model, especially when done by companies without a big stock of unlimited run decks like T11 or E, and b) it leaves a bad taste in my mouth because it ends up being a negative for collectors.
Again, keep in mind that I made my original post based on the assumption that the 500 was the entire run of the deck and not just one edition. I still don't necessarily like the idea of severely limiting decks because in general it artificially drives up value, no matter how many anecdotal situations you bring up. Obviously it doesn't drive up the value as much anymore given the trend for everyone and their mother to put out a limited edition deck run these days, but just like a 2,500/5,000 deck run used to have a deck be considered rare, companies may decide to limit deck runs to an even greater degree to spark that "rare" appeal for collectors. I used the example of the Aurum deck earlier, although that was more from a manufacturing circumstance than any deliberate action taken by Encarded, but it is entirely possible and even likely that we see deck runs become more and more limited as numbers that used to be considered rare become common or even an industry standard. As I said, I only see this as being a negative for deck collectors as a whole.
Just consider what I wrote as playing devil's advocate.
As an econ major, you also know that the market will only bear so much of that type of behavior before it starts to react negatively. Short supply/high demand only works up to the point that the consumer population doesn't get frustrated enough to stop purchasing from one supplier and seek products from other suppliers, especially when it's a luxury item in the first place. If I tried to by a Porsche but kept missing out on the new models due to them being limited editions that rapidly sell out, I'd bet that some of the less-rare Ferraris or BMWs would start to look awfully attractive...
In order to make the feel better, I use the Bicycle Stock and LINOID FINISH and metal ink ！
I hope you can like this deck, yolanda elaborate design.
Thank you
Aloys！
Ok a couple things, one please stop posting like 5 times in a row. Put it all in one. It starts to seem very spammy. Also I am calling bull shit on LINOID finish. As Don has mentioned many times the 2 finishes are air cushion and magic finish. You can have them put whatever name on it but those are the 2.
Aloys, John raises a valid point - it's against forum rules to make multiple posts in a row as you have done. Please, for the future, make a single post, adding edits to it if you want to post something else before someone replies, unless your post is several hours old at the time.
John, even if this was a deck with Linoid Finish - which no longer exists - it would handle like crap with the metallic inks, just like many of the early Diavoli decks. The default finish for any custom deck now is Magic Finish - the standard finish has to be requested. Further, it's practically a given that any deck using metallic inks these days uses Magic Finish to counteract the impact of the inks on the cards' performance.
But having said all of that, USPC does allow quite a lot of wiggle room in terms of what someone calls their finish on their deck - even they don't publicly admit that there's only the two finishes to choose from. They still use terms like Linoid, Air Cushion and Cambric to refer to a deck with embossed paper and a standard finish, and Smooth and Ivory to refer to a deck without embossing and a standard finish. To further muddy the waters, they have allowed on numerous occasions the use of these standard names on a deck with Magic Finish.
In the end, it's all marketing and "name-calling"! The differing finish names allows for their brands to be thought of as more distinct from each other than they actually are, and some people will psychologically buy into this, especially when each deck handles just a little differently for reasons having nothing at all to do with finish. They feel no good reason exists for not allowing their clients to do the same thing on their custom orders.
