State of the Market: End of November 2021

Here we are at the end of another month. November really contrasted the play side of the game with the market-oriented side. Competitive play featured National Championships across the world, with some interesting first place hero appearances popping up. Meanwhile, the market remained mostly flat, with newer product dipping down.

But, to return to more salient FAB matters, there’s not a lot going on market-wise, though Everfest news might potentially shake things up in the coming weeks (more on that at the end of this piece).

So, this is awkward, but I’m going to give you a bit of a peek behind the curtain. About 24 hours before I was going to hand this article in, LSS made a significant announcement about WTR unlimited being out of print. At that time, about a third of this piece was a recommendation that you go out and buy $65-70 WTR unlimited if you wanted them for personal use (draft/sealed/opening for fun). That is obviously no longer actionable. The market is going to change on these boxes by the day for the next couple weeks, so instead I’m going to discuss my take on what will happen in the coming days, and when you read this, you can figure out where we are on that timeline.

Interestingly enough, we had a similar event that occurred last month, and we can use that as a reference point. While writing about the sudden out of print notice for unlimited Crucible of War, I suggested that if you wanted WTR and ARC unlimited boxes for your own use, you’d probably want to get those in the next couple months. As we now know, it turned out that “months” was actually “weeks,” and we’ve since gotten OOPs for both sets. ARC went OOP first by a few weeks, and we can look to that set as a very strong analog to WTR: both sets were normal, draftable releases with (I assume) similar print runs for unlimited, and (we know this from the collector’s center) they had identical first edition print runs. They also both had a pair of staple generic Majestics and a powerhouse generic Legendary that was nearly ubiquitous in competitive lists. So, similar money cards, similar print runs, and both sets can be drafted.

For ARC, between the OOP announcement and now, TCGPlayer sales show a movement up to a peak of $120-130 and a retrace back to about $100 at time of writing (several large, reputable stores have them at $99).

Prior to the OOP announcement, they were selling at $65-70 with some even cheaper case deals popping up here and there. In my opinion, those prices are gone for good. The big question on unlimited ARC is, if we know it’s trending down, where will it settle? Or, has it settled already?

I’d look to CRU for this. Unlimited CRU is a bit of a different product than ARC and WTR. As far as meaningful differences go, CRU is, by all indications, a notably smaller print run than unlimited WTR or ARC. WTR or ARC unlimited were on the market for about a year across many waves from multiple printers. CRU unlimited was a more constrained print run and never got down to the low box prices that WTR and ARC saw. While CRU cannot be drafted- which is potentially a ding on its long term value- in the immediate future, its floor is likely higher than WTR or ARC because there is less product out there (again, this bit is an inference based on the above rationale).

So, what happened with CRU unlimited? Boxes were selling for about $75-80 before the out of print announcement. From there, they went all the way up to a peak of $150-160 before coming back to reality at around $85-90 over the past few weeks. That suggests to me that we’re still in ARC’s retracement period. I doubt that they’ll get back to that $65-70 range, but I suspect the $75-80 range is realistic once the dust settles. If you want ARC, I would probably hold off for a few weeks and monitor the trend until it stays flat for 2-3 consecutive weeks or begins to pick back up.

WTR is, at this moment, still available for about $75-80 a box from various retailers. (NOTE: this could change in the hours between when I turn this article in and when it’s published.) Given that that’s my projected floor price, I would absolutely pick up a case at that price now if you want them. I think we’re going to see similar movement where WTR gets pushed up to over $100 and then comes back down as ARC is doing right now.

With that said, I want to reiterate what I said last month. Buying sealed unlimited product is far from the best way you could invest money in cardboard. I recommend buying them only under the condition that you want them for personal use. They are not going to age as well as other products that you could be acquiring for a similar price.

However, if you do fall into that camp, you’re probably not going to see a cheaper price for WTR; and once ARC settles down to whatever its new price is, it’ll probably slowly creep up over time. If you want them and they’re in that $75-80 range, get them, but do it with the idea that you’re saving yourself money for a personal entertainment purchase as opposed to investing it well.

Tales of Aria continues to take a bit of a beating across the board, but unlimited booster boxes in particular have had some of the worst performances we’ve seen across the FAB product line over the entire life of the game. There was a series of extraordinarily low ($45-50 shipped) boxes selling via ebay auction in recent weeks, and the product remains readily available well below MAP: $65-70 or less. I’ll forgive anyone who is having Monarch unlimited flashbacks.

That said, we’re seeing some rather bizarre behavior in Legendary singles right now, with TCG pricing for TOA cold and rainbow foils at about the same price (which represents a downward trend for the cold foils, as expected). I suspect this is due to what is still a relatively recent unlimited release. We’ll likely continue to see prices for both versions fall for several more weeks as more product enters the marketplace; and when all is said and done, there should be a gap between the two again.

This may go without saying, but if you were going to buy an unlimited Legendary and the cold foil version is a couple dollars more, you should pay to upgrade. This is doubly true for cards of Majestic rarity and lower, where prices are functionally the same for first edition and unlimited. Given how Monarch has behaved, they’re not going to separate for quite some time. So, if the first edition version of Pulse of Volthaven is going to cost you five cents more than an unlimited copy, you might as well spend the extra nickel because the two could separate a bit over the coming years.

In a solitary hint of positive news for anyone who went hard on first edition Tales of Aria, Korshem remains the notable hold out in the face of unlimited. Although it’s lost a significant chunk of its value from last month, the cold foil version is still selling at about twice what the rainbow foil is going for.

Still, at this stage, I wouldn’t open sealed TOA product unless you hate money or you have a burning desire to gamble with bad odds. OK, that’s not totally fair. If you want common/rare playsets and don’t want to go through the hassle of ordering 3 copies of every single card in the set individually, opening a case or two is fine.

As far as I’m concerned, the future of unlimited edition is a big question mark. As we’ve gotten farther from Monarch’s release, we’ve seen LSS pull back on unlimited- a bit of a longer gap for TOA, CRU’s relatively small print run, and a lack of any information on an unlimited edition of Everfest. I suspect we may see a fairly different approach to unlimited from here on out, but we’ll have to wait for LSS to give us more information.

Given the performance of Monarch and Tales of Aria, it feels prudent to start thinking about how you want to handle the Everfest release, as people are already offering pre-orders.

If I could tell you only one thing, it would be that you should absolutely not pay over MSRP for Everfest first edition pre-orders- and, to be honest, I wouldn’t personally pre-order at MSRP either.

You’re probably aware that Tales of Aria first edition boxes are barely over MSRP right now, so unless something changes with how LSS releases product, why would you assume that Everfest is going to come out higher?

When I say, “unless something changes,” what sorts of things am I on the lookout for? There are two major pieces of information that could sway my opinion on this stance:

• information on what exactly the “carnival slots” in the boosters could potentially contain, and
• news on how unlimited is going to be handled.

If, for instance, we find out that the carnival slots are going to contain desirable and rare cards and will only be in first edition, that would likely increase demand on the product. Conversely, if we found out that LSS had no concrete plans for an unlimited edition in the near future because they anticipated the first edition print run would be big enough to meet demand, then it’s likely that the boxes will be MSRP or less. There are more possibilities than we can really discuss here, but the short version is: if nothing notable is announced, avoid pre-orders that you can’t easily cancel. Be on the lookout for news about the carnival slots and how unlimited is being handled.

In the introduction, I spoke about exercising caution with promos. The WTR OOP announcement was accompanied by news of a series of farewell events offering cold foil versions of the young heroes from WTR. These are going to be a hot item out of the gate, but again, they are unpredictable. One line in particular stands out to me:

We do not know if these will receive additional printing, but the language chosen here- along with LSS’s reprint policy concerning cold foil promos, which states ,“A promo card printed using the cold foil printing technique (Cold Foil Promo Card) can be reprinted, including as a cold foil in a retail product”- gives me pause. I fully expect people to disingenuously list these for sale with a strong implication that they are super rare and will remain so, when nothing LSS has actually said suggests that to be true.

Additionally, while the list of events awarding these promos is currently short, the article states that “participating stores will be loaded into the Event Locator throughout December.” Please don’t be the person who wildly overpays to buy the first ones of these that hit the market.

Finally, given a recent trend of nervously questioning the game’s financial future on various Facebook groups, I wanted to publicly articulate my position on the subject.

As I’ve said before, over the past several months the game has transitioned from being driven by collectors and investors to being driven by players. While this may be disappointing to some who were chasing short term gains, it is very good for the long term prospects of Flesh and Blood. The game survived the crash that occurred around Monarch, the market largely stabilized, and the prices commanded by sealed boxes of the first three sets and the accompanying cold foils are still staggeringly high when you consider the game is only two years old. LSS is hosting many large events around the world and player growth remains notable. As long as they can continue to foster this growth, the older cards and sealed products have a bright future ahead of them.