u/mulletstation

Amaze your friends and pod by correctly guessing the lowest price that The Hobbit Collector Booster Box will reach 1 calender year from release, as well as the August 14, 2027 price.

To Enter, post in this EXACT format ("Low" #value comma "1yr" #value):

Low 697, 1yr 1731

You must post in this format because I will have to use automation to gather up and calculate entries, no way am I doing this by hand. I'll take entries for 1 full week from now. All pricing will be taken from tcgplayer so people can see the values.

For the LOW value, I'll take the average of the 25 lowest verified full collector booster boxes in English that sell between release date (August 14, 2026) and 1 calender year later (same date, 2027)

For the 1YR value, I will take the average of all sales in the week from August 8th to August 14th.

Winner: Lowest difference between your LOW guess and the 1yr guess, added together. Lowest $ amount wins. If there's a tie the earliest poster wins.

Prize: I will ship you (1) The Hobbit collector booster pack after a winner is found. If the winner ends up with under $25 difference in the two guesses combined differences with the calculated values I'll ship them a The Hobbit Play Box as well.

Edit: Relaxed the bounds on the combined difference to under $25. If you get within $25 total of the difference I will ship the extra The Hobbit Play box.

MTG D&D Adventures of Forgotten Realms Booster Boxes released July 2021, 5 years ago. They were approximately $115/box for draft (36 packs, $3.20/pack) and $125/box for set (30 packs, $4.16/pack) on release. Let's take like a 60:40 ratio of those since current Play Boosters are basically Set Packs but I want to be fair to the blend. $3.78 a pack.

In Reverse Chronological set order we have these current pack prices via tcgplayer:

• Marvel Super Heroes Box - $115/box, 30 packs, $3.83 a pack.

• Secrets of Strixhaven Box - $140/box, 30 packs, $4.66 a pack

• TMNT - $115/box, 30 packs, $3.83 a pack

• Lorwyn Eclipsed - $120/box, 30 packs, $4.00 a pack

• Avatar - $127/box, 30 packs, $4.23 a pack

• Spiderman (Out of Print, probably) - $120/box, 30 packs, $4.00 a pack

• Edge of Eternities (Out of Print) - $170/box, 30 packs, $5.66 a pack

• Final Fantasy (Printed likely for another 1-2 years) - $240/box, 30 packs, $8 a pack.

• Tarkir Dragonstorm (Out of Print) - $150/box, 30 packs, $5 a pack.

• Aetherdrift (Out of Print) - $107/box, 30 packs, $3.56 a pack.

Last 10 MTG sets average out to $4.677 a pack.

Inflation from June 2021 to June 2026 using established models shows that $3.78 would be the same buying power as $4.65 in June 2026. MTG Packs have UNDERPERFORMED inflation over a 5 year timeframe. Yeah inflation is bad, but MTG prices are not at a historical outlier of being 'expensive'.

Maybe we should wait on The Hobbit to leave Pre-release pricing before we get ultra-angry guys

Edit: Join me tomorrow when I make a post about why Collector Booster Boxes are actually better deals now than when they first came out

This fuckery can't go on much longer

WOTC parent Hasbro (HAS) is going to report earnings pre-market 7/21/2026. I expect a beat above expectations as MTG's growth is likely outpacing the analyist consensus views.

For those unaware, Hasbro at this point is basically a mostly deadweight traditional toys/games business, and WOTC. WOTC and magic the gathering are powering almost all the earnings growth. All the toys business has to do, is recover from the tariff shock and analysts will largely ignore any negative sentiment attached to it.

2026 sets: Magic growth is huge. I've talked with plenty of LGSs over the past few months and the trend has been that Marvel Superheroes is selling much better than anticipated which makes sense as everyone was wary of SPM trends. But MSH is doing very well, and I would say there's the possibility it de-thrones LOTR as the 2nd best selling set of all time until The Hobbit releases. Reality Fracture looks to have good sentiment online currently. Star Trek is showing that WOTC is willing to take risks like autographed cards to pull in collectors from outside the direct MTG or TCG playerbase and reach for people into more traditional trading cards like Pokemon/Topps collectors. I expect Star Trek to outperform reddit sentiment.

2027 In-universe sets: All smash hits it looks like from the social media reaction. WOTC has really zero'd in on the blend of nostalia and novelty that they need. Expect CBBs to continue to sell out immediately and everyone being big-mad that they can't buy them at 'msrp'.

2027 Universe-beyond sets: Nintendo signing is a clear signal this could be the 'set that beats Final Fantasy' that Mark Rosewater has hinted at. But there's also the potential for massive properties like WoW, SW, or Elder Scrolls, etc... that would have broad massive audiences built in.

Distribution vs. Direct Selling on Amazon: WOTC looks to have been trying to capture more of the revenue chain by direct selling more products on Amazon. This means that instead of traditional TCG distribution capturing 25-35% of the margin on a product, Amazon is only capturing 10-15% and WOTC is getting that extra chunk.

Distribution model benefits from ancillary products: Because TCG printing is limited by production speeds and facilities (much like datacenters), for every 1000 play boosters you can make, you can either produce 33.33... (repeating of course) play booster boxes, or 4-5x as many bundles, gift bundles, singleton packs, scene boxes, warehouse boxes, and beginner boxes. Likely this is a way to incentivize stores to buy up as much of the ancillary products as they can from distribution to get access to higher CBB allocation. The net result is WOTC sells more broad SKUs and isn't relying on hardcore MTG people cracking play boxes or drafting.

Positions: CBBs in FF, BRO, MSH, SPM, LOTR, $HAS Aug 80Cs, Sept 110Cs, Jan 90Cs, Mar 110Cs, Jun 110Cs, Jan 120Cs.

Previous thread(s) here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1sr1fj2/hasbro_reports_earnings_this_thursday_ah_expect/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1r0ertm/mtg_and_dd_parent_company_hasbro_has_reports/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1qu6r39/wotc_parent_hasbro_has_rising_before_210_earnings/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1q5vb91/hasbro_wotc_parent_breaking_out_of_6_month_range/

https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/1iu5ibi/hasbro_reports_above_expected_revenue_wotc

Longtime Magic collector and investor and hyper Modern one piece and Pokemon investor as well (although that's almost everyone in those two TCG).

Have noticed that like traditional equity markets, there's very predictable sector rotation trends of money rotating in and out of the TCGs and between TCGs and that this can be exploited for Alpha.

Biggest example right now is Pokemon sealed product has been largely stagnant for half a year or more while money has been flooding into secondary collector markets such as MTG sealed products (ex: Final Fantasy) and certain one piece sets (ex: PRB01) and even Lorcana has been rocketing the past few weeks.

My plan because of this is to be more dynamic with shifting product around and trading in and out of certain games. MTG has been a huge laggard for years but the broader market is finally starting to bid into MTG as more single prices increase and the sealed products containing them start raising to match the EV multiple that other games place on sealed.

The other consideration is everything held in TCGs also competes with the actual equity markets and so I've been shifting in and out of Semiconductors and high bandwidth memory (which I'm the most bullish on) in and out of TCGs to increase or decrease personal exposure.

I'm looking at both the OP anniversary sets in the fall, MTG announcements of next years UB collaborations, and Sandisk earnings coming up as decision points to make larger moves in.

Revenue: $41.46 billion versus $35.84 billion estimated

EPS: $25.11, adjusted, versus $20.78 estimated

Gross Margin: Adjusted gross margins hit a record-breaking 84.9%, topping tech leaders like Nvidia and Meta.

Data Center Strength: Driven by skyrocketing AI memory demand, data-center sales soared 415% year-over-year to $25 billion (61% of total sales).

Guides $49-$51B. +14% AH move. Reddit neva right.