Once in a while, I’m reminded of an interesting interaction.

It’s October 2024, and I was in the Las Vegas Convention Center for MagicCon, a regular gathering of Magic fans to play games, trade cards, and learn more about the future of the game. I was seated in the designated media room with a few other journalists and PR folks, when the topic of the upcoming Foundations Of Magic’s Next Era panel came up–which, as the name suggests, is where Wizards of the Coast took the stage to talk about the future of the game.

I, and the press in the room with me, had already seen the majority of what the panel was going to show off, as WOTC had held an online press preview/Q&A session over Zoom a few days before. One of the PR folks asked us what from the panel we thought would get the biggest crowd reaction. Some said the art previews from the Final Fantasy set, others said Foundations cards … and then the question came to me, and I answered immediately: the return of MSRP.

MSRP, or Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price, is a price recommended for a product by the company who produced it. Before Foundations launched in November 2024, Magic: The Gathering had been sold without MSRP designations, with Wizards electing to let the stores decide. Foundations, as mentioned, would break that streak.

The PR team was shocked I would choose that, not thinking it to be very interesting … and then, later on at the panel, well …

The crowd went nuts, and I looked over at the folks I’d been talking to and shrugged. The lack of MSRP was a major sticking point for MTG players, and, they’d hoped, bringing it back would curtail some of the then-exorbitant prices found on secondary markets.

MSRP, maybe

MSRP was supposed to herald a new era for Magic: one where players could reasonably afford to get the cards they wanted, when they wanted them. Even when the MSRP figures for Final Fantasy came out higher than in-universe sets Aetherdrift and Tarkir: Dragonstorm, most players understood that with a licensed IP comes a higher price tag. That has not happened–at least not with Final Fantasy, in which some stores acted like the recommended prices didn’t even exist.

Final Fantasy’s MSRP, according to the official MTG website, was supposed to be as follows:

• Play Booster: $6.99
• Collector Booster: $37.99
• Commander Deck: $69.99
• Collector’s Edition Commander Deck: $149.99
• Bundle: $69.99
• Gift Bundle: $89.99
• Starter Kit: $19.99

Now, compare those numbers to these preorder numbers found from an independent hobby shop:

• Play Booster Box (30 Packs): $174.99
• Collector Booster Box (12 Packs): $699.99
• Commander Deck:
  • Final Fantasy 6 – $74.99
  • Final Fantasy 7 – $124.99
  • Final Fantasy 10 – $124.99
  • Final Fantasy 14 – $124.99
• Collector’s Edition Commander Deck:
  • Final Fantasy 6 – $219.99
  • Final Fantasy 7 – $399.99
  • Final Fantasy 10 – $399.99
  • Final Fantasy 14 – $399.99
• Bundle: $79.99
• Gift Bundle: $159.99
• Starter Kit: $24.99

They’re … slightly different, no?

Remember, this isn’t a scalper like those plaguing the Pokemon TCG community: This is a local game store. The place you’re supposed to go to talk Magic, learn Magic, and play Magic if you’re interested, and this is what’s going on. MSRP may as well not exist.

Now, you may have noticed a few interesting things missing from the Wizards post: boxes. While they recommended a price for individual packs, boxes of packs weren’t given a designation. This was intentional, when Wizards communications director Blake Rasmussen was asked about it, he said, “The math on the MSRP is just ‘the box is X times the MSRP of the booster,’ so we aren’t going to list that, but it would be the same thing if we did.”

Ok, so let’s check: 30 Play Boosters of Final Fantasy, multiplied by $6.99 a pack per MSRP, and we have $209.70. The LGS example above actually comes in lower than it needed to, and you love to see it.

Collector Booster time, and … uh-oh: 12 Collector Boosters in a box, multiplied by $37.99 per pack, and we have $455.88 for a Collector Booster box at MSRP. Every other product line from our example store follows suit, as it’s at least five dollars over what Wizards recommended.

Oh, and all of this was at preorder pricing. Now? Collector Booster boxes have four-figure price tags online and on LGS shelves. A single Collector Booster will set you back $120 on TCGPlayer as of this writing. Play Booster boxes are also now over the MSRP math, as the lowest price on TCGPlayer is $230.

Big-box retailers are (mostly) sticking to MSRP, but they can’t keep products on shelves long enough, and there’s no guarantee that the players who want the cards are the ones buying them from big-box shelves. This is a major issue, and one that directly attacks the heart of what Universes Beyond sets are supposed to do: Bring new players to Magic: The Gathering.

Veteran MTG players aren’t immune to the adverse effects here either. The Play Booster price above is particularly hard to swallow considering a pair of key changes–one that began when Play Boosters first hit shelves with Murders At Karlov Manor in 2024, and another that started earlier this year–that resulted in less bang for their buck.

First, the creation of Play Boosters marked the first time in the game’s history that a set would not offer a pack of 15 cards–Play Boosters are only 14 cards, a “middle ground” between 15-card Draft Boosters and 12-card Set Boosters from releases prior to MKM. Then, beginning with Aetherdrift in February of this year, Play Booster boxes now only include 30 packs as opposed to the standard 36 packs from previous sets.

So, if we combine everything, we’re opening packs with fewer cards, from boxes with fewer packs, and yet paying prices well over the MSRP. Something has to change, or players new and old will be leaving in droves.

Universes beyond affordability

Say you’re a devout Final Fantasy fan who hears about one of the longest-running trading card games in the world collaborating with your favorite games. Your friends who play Magic show you the incredible artwork and special foiling and flavorful game mechanics, and it’s enough to get you to try this game out.

You head to your local Best Buy or Target and … well, no luck. Nothing on the shelves. Fine, okay, you heard about the local game store where your friends play the game a couple of times per week, so you head over there. Hooray: The cards are in stock! But wait–$125 for the FF7 deck? The MTG website said $70, and that’s what you were ready to spend, so what the heck is going on here? Understandably unwilling to pay the markups, you head home cardless and instead fire up FF7 to get the experience you wanted.

This scenario is a hypothetical, sure, but there are countless stories on Reddit and other online forums of people experiencing this exact situation. These are the exact people Universes Beyond is meant to be targeting, and they’re being priced out before they can even begin. MSRP was supposed to curtail this, and instead it’s been lost in the shuffle.

In Final Fantasy’s case, Wizards also finds itself at a unique disadvantage; if we consider the inverse of the scenario above–a Magic player seeing FF cards and wanting to play one of those games for the first time–the barrier of entry is far lower. During the recent Amazon Prime Day event, weeks after the MTG FF set launched, multiple Final Fantasy games were on sale, including the Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remasters–six games–for $45.

Even now, at full price, if this hypothetical MTG player wanted to purchase all 16 mainline Final Fantasy games at once, it would look like this (prices via Steam):

• Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster Bundle: $75
• Final Fantasy VII: $12
• Final Fantasy VIII: $12
• Final Fantasy IX: $21
• Final Fantasy X (via X/X-2 HD): $30
• Final Fantasy XI: Free to download via game’s website, free first month
• Final Fantasy XII (via The Zodiac Age): $50
• Final Fantasy XIII: $16
• Final Fantasy XIV: $20 Starter Edition, monthly subscription
• Final Fantasy XV: $36
• Final Fantasy XVI: $50
  • TOTAL: $322

All 16 core Final Fantasy games–the full source material for the Magic: The Gathering Set, spanning hundreds of hours of gameplay–for 25% the cost of a Collector Booster box, and only $100 less than the current Play Booster box pricing. Granted, the experiences of playing a video game and playing a physical tabletop card game are very different from one another, but if the main goal is to experience Final Fantasy, the games simply provide more value for the money spent.

Universes Beyond was touted as something that would bring Magic to new people, and it has technically succeeded in its goal–provided those people are able to pony up the dough necessary to have Magic brought to them. With that financial barrier in place, those new players may not be as eager to pick up the hobby as Wizards wants them to be, which defeats the entire purpose of Universes Beyond to begin with–and with Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender on the horizon, that’s not a position Wizards want to be in.

Band-aid on a bullet wound

If I’m being honest, I’m not entirely sure the powers that be are all that concerned about this problem; after all, the Final Fantasy set made more money in one day than any other MTG set before it. Hasbro put MSRP in place and still got its bag; the company did what it could, and everything else can iron itself out.

Then again, when you really think about it, MSRP was never going to solve the problem, was it? The “S” in “MSRP” is “suggested”–recommended, not mandatory, follow it if you want. This also means Wizards has no official legal recourse to dissuade this type of price gouging; the price was “suggested” after all; it wasn’t set in stone. Unless Hasbro/Wizards dedicate themselves to enforcing fair pricing and punishing stores that do it, whatever that punishment would be, this problem isn’t going away.

The argument may then become “yeah, well, it’s Final Fantasy, of course it was going to be popular. You won’t see this again with any other set this year.” That, unfortunately, is also proving not true:

• Edge of Eternities, the next in-universe set that launches August 1, has pre-sale Collector Booster boxes for $430, when “MSRP” for a Collector Booster pack was $24.99, meaning a box’s MSRP would be $299.88.
• The Spider-Man set due to launch in September is currently pre-selling at $720 per Collector Booster box.
• Preorders for November’s Avatar: The Last Airbender set haven’t started yet, but don’t be surprised if those boxes start at a similar level.

The rot is spreading, and there doesn’t seem to be any urgency in stopping it before it gets out of hand.

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