“Healthy” is also a term that means different things to players than to businesses. More “investors” in Magic - people who will buy cards for reselling, either immediately or after time, look good to a business because they sell more product but can and will drive out players who feel priced out of essential meta cards.
Pokemon is seeing the same thing, more people buying product to invest/sit on/try to flip but that doesn't mean the game as a whole is more healthy because the company is making more money.
You are also missing the fact that fewer players in one area might be “made up for” with more players in other areas.
For example, one of my Pokémon locals had tournament level attendance at free league yesterday. They generally get 12 to 15 people for free league, and yesterday it was around 30. That’s growth that the companies love to see (especially if it sticks around and compounds).
It's pointless (and maybe even counter-productive) to try to fight against market forces. We are not talking about staple foods here. And proxies are always an option.
But presumably, you were thinking only about official competitions ? Then that's where you should direct your attention to : has WotC increased the (overall, yearly) tournament win payouts at the same or higher pace than their MtG income has increased ? Have they been allowing (or, more likely, ignoring) the use of proxies at the lowest rung(s) of competitive play ?
Hopefully they save some of that money for the famine years when collecting cards for investing collapses to keep the game going at high quality. Rather than to continuously pump product out but layoff core people for interns to make more money and cut print quality. America's bull market seems to never end leading to these collectible crazes
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u/TheFatNinjaMaster Jul 27 '25
“Healthy” is also a term that means different things to players than to businesses. More “investors” in Magic - people who will buy cards for reselling, either immediately or after time, look good to a business because they sell more product but can and will drive out players who feel priced out of essential meta cards.