Card Market Values
Try to do things that the Big 3 haven’t done yet. The individual marketplace is a good start, it gives you some flexibility to get ahead in innovation.My best marketplace idea is to use generative AI to animate a set of 12 cards from each set in the preview of the cards (2 for each faction, I suggest the limited print ones).This is one I did for the king of the jungle:Sneezer Card Animation
Promote the creation of great house rule modifications. Name them, post them in short blurbs somewhere on an altered gameplay channel in the discord or altered.gg.This is my best “alteration” of the game.COMPANION QUEST2 player collaboration mode.Altered Objective: Coordinate between players to reunite both heroes and companion pairs to the center of the tumult.Altered game play: once a hero and companion for either player is reunited, they move together towards the center of one or more sides of the board are won by that player.Altered deck building: Mostly character cards are used, can choose characters that appeal to them, especially the massive 9 mana characters that seem otherwise less useful for standard play.Altered “competitive aspect”: instead of racing an opponent, your playing partner is part of the team. Play against another 2 player team to race against them.This can be played 1 vs 1 with each player playing a solitaire with two decks, possibly with a spinning table that allows to switch decks quickly.Advantage over the Big 3: this game mode is inviting for women. The big 3 have some women, but they aren’t women first, Magic has always been “comic turned barely social” game for greasy dudes who want to “kill someone” because they have been picked on for many years, first.Plenty of hygenic people came around to play, which is great, but those people are less likely to be buying large monthly amounts ($500+/month).Based on card inclusion, Altered TCG can “alter” the game in ways that attract women first.If you can get women, you will attract guys to play a game that are not TCGers.Right now I think it’s less than 1% of the population that actively play TCGs though many others have tried at some point.Since this generation of high school and college kids arguably do not have their own generational TCG, and they have more progressive social values in general, now is a great time to adapt this game with house rules that make it more social and fun, instead of competitive and strategic.
A recent announcement subtly implied that prior sets will not be reprinted.Make this official and include it in the brand messaging. Also state how many of each card exist somewhere in the card profile.These two moves will make collectors salivate. When that happens, they will buy up digital cards in bulk, digital card prices on earlier sets will make the unopened pack have an implied value that exceeds MSRP.
When just one card increases in value to the point where it is unreasonable to purchase the digital card for a deck, this would necessitate a rental market.The rental market is fantastic for collectors and players alike. Set a floor of $0.05/hour or something like that, allow users to build decks and fulfill rental orders with one click at the point they need to use the cards, and allow card owners to generate passive income from their collection.Of course, take that $0.02 slice of the rentals and fully expect that collectors will commit more monthly to purchases as well as hoard their cards meaning card prices will be further boosted (and people outside the community will notice.In addition to rent-to-play, allow users to rent someone else’s card at some royalty fee when they want to print a card they do not own.Expect that if digital card values exceed MSRP per pack, that booster boxes will be sold out to stores. Anticipate using a lottery system that only sells booster boxes to LGSs and guarantee subscribed LGSs 10 boxes or something. Lottery will allow > 10 box purchases.For both card rental types, set a floor for rental, and when a card owner posts their card for rent, put it in an endlessly churning queue at their selected price point. That is, once the card has been rented and used for the rental period, automatically return the card to the queue.If card rental availability dries up from the natural market, make that card available at $0.50 and distribute that revenue in a fair proportionality to card owners. Pause their card rental availability at some point in the future to offset the advance.Offer transparency for the rental queue and do not give any queue priority to any card owners. Maintain fairness integrity at all times as you already do.Why would this make card values, and therefore booster pack sales increase?Look to the discounted cash flow method of basic finance to see that if a card is rented 3x per year at $0.03 net revenue to card owner per use rental or print royalty, this generates $0.09 revenue to them per year.If you love the game and love building your collection, you will absolutely love getting a 9% return on common cards that shoot up from $0.05 to $1.00 after implementing rental features.This would make the $5 MSRP pack worth $12 for the digital cards and the print price (plus delivery) of the physical cards. It costs me about $2/card to print, so that’s $12 digital value, $24 physical value. Do you think that people might look into playing this game or some house rule variant that appeals to them if they get $36 in liquid asset for $5?SOLD OUT
Allow card market value API data to be available for reputable devs to implement into their site.A Muna faction fan site should be able to show price tracking on a subpage for Muna cards, or the site’s favorite card.This allows the site owner to get an ROI off of promoting the game in any way, because they can promote the price of a selected set of cards. As better and better fan sites emerge, collectors will speculate (FOMO induced) on cards those innovative sites are promoting with price tracking. Before the site owner launches the site, they can buy up some amount of the cards they will promote.Lastly, have a list of approved projects where you have interviewed or otherwise validated the site owners/devs. You guys are doing so well on quality control of all releases, set quality standards on sites that must be met prior to approval.
Charge $100 to review the site (maybe $25 for subsequent submissions), and charge a monthly fee for a site to be promoted on altered.gg.
The optimal LGS approach seems to be for the LGS to print massive amount of single cards and allow players to test them out in-store before buying them.This would necessitate a used-card library with a checkout system for in-store deck exploration. Then, when players want to own cards, they can buy a new version of the card at print+shipping cost.If they want to swap cards out for multiple decks, they can trade-in a card for X% print cost credit and use it to purchase a new or used version of the new card they desire.Consider going to a manufacture for sleek hotel room key style card holders that hold up to 4 cards (one for collection display and 3 for decks), feature each card image on the front, equinox/altered messaging on the back, and a tab that indicates set logo, faction color/logo, and card name. This will allow players to sort their collections easily, and for LGS to rapidly assemble a functional and organized library.
I have been autistically specially interested in finding ways to market Altered after buying several thousand in floor priced cards of common/rare.I know these cards will be worth more than $1 each some day.The most obvious path is to encourage and feature newcomers learning the IP and getting to know cards. This can be done by advancing through house game alterations that range from really basic social renditions to maximized competitiveness.I think the card art is interesting enough that women, the target market I encourage you to prioritize, might be first only interested in a go fish, or concentration (match cards) rendition.Then, the bros will want to learn the intended game with full mechanics and strategic deck building to impress the ladies, and they can invite the women to play with them with a starter or constructed deck.Bottom line: you can use a game alteration funnel at the LGS level to promote IP bonding and lead non-TCGers into the main game.It’s time to first get the technology you need in place to do this; and then have it ready to meet a newly published 2026 roadmap so there isn’t a letdown with the development side. I understand KS investor were not pleased with slow marketplace launch.