Transcription
Folks, welcome back! My name is Rudy, you're watching Alpha Investments, and how's everybody doing today? Today's conversation is: holy crap! I will respond to give you all my opinion on the amount of people keeping sending me these emails about Rudy, you got to comment on Moon City Games posting on social media, trying to unload like over 100,000, like bulk Magic: everything from promos to basic lands to rares. They have like literally 50,000 mythics, 50,000—I was like, okay, hold on, this is a very complex, not as simple as it seems type of response. So I'm going to give you all my opinion.
Yes, MoonCityGames.com has posted online. I don't know who the guy is; I'm assuming maybe their high-ups or the owner. It's posted on social media—I would assume it's either Myspace, Facebook, or Ashley Madison—and they are pretty much saying, "Hey, we have tons of bulk Magic: The Gathering rares, foils, mythics," I'm assuming promo cards, and they want to liquidate them. Now, on the surface, because the internet's going to be the internet, this shows, "Ah, Rudy, they're trying to unload all this crap; they know the game piece era is all going to zero; they know all of it's garbage." That's on the surface. A lot of Timmy, shallow-minded internet keyboard warrior anonymous yell, pitchfork, combine Optimus—you know, this is—there are many reasons to do this. Moon City Games simply has so much bulk from being in business for the last million years, like all of us. There are some companies in the card world that have been doing it so long, you accumulate so much sealed product, single cards, in positions that there are times, especially bulk, that you just want to unload a large position.
Now, do I think it's a good price or bad price? Or I—I don't know the bulk market very well; I don't follow it; I'm not sure. Well, they probably comb through it over and over. What's interesting to me, I guess, is the timing of the sale. So a large company would unload bulk: A) when they think the future value of the bulk is going to be significantly lower than it is today; B) the labor and cost, or anything to go through it, sell it, or deal with it, is now greater than the value or future potential of the bulk; or C) of this video, um, they simply do just have too much; they're trying to free up space and raise capital, and it's more specific to Moon City Games themselves, and they're looking to raise capital to buy into other things—maybe more, more new Magic, maybe other new card games. Whatever it is, it's kind of irrelevant. So you can't just say they're dumping all the game pieces because they think it's going to zero, because that's not a valid assumption to do when a large company does that. There's many reasons that could have led them to this. There's company-specific reasons, which is they need capital; they want to free up excess cash; maybe they're going a different direction; maybe they need the space to fill with other things. There's a lot of company-specific things like that. Or B) it's more of a macro thing, like, okay, the overall economy and direction doesn't look good; let's free up some extra cash; let's reduce our exposure to Magic. C) They think Magic itself—instead of a macroeconomy or the company—maybe they're just afraid of Magic itself, and let's just back away from these game pieces based on the behavior of the company. So you have a lot of different thought processes. We don't know the exact thought process that led Moon City Games to want to post online, unloading or trying to unload or offering to the public to buy large positions of bulk cards.
I personally—the only—my only response is the timing doesn't seem that smart, because that volume of it, in the price they're asking, I don't know if that's considered a good or a bad price. Um, I just find the timing not very smart to do. You really wouldn't want to move or offer publicly hundreds of—I mean, I don't know, 200,000 cards, is it maybe 300,000 cards? I, you know, would you want to move 300,000 cards after everything's dropped in price? Now, did something change? And maybe they're labor rate—maybe it's just no longer—or like some other stores have told me, smaller stores—the ecosystem, due to the game piece era, has shifted so hard, it's not worth it to try to do, because there's too many versions of the card. It's too difficult. Literally, you can have one card, 30 printings, 5 to 10 different foil variants, 10 different frameworks, eight different artworks. The amount of extra labor to make sure you have the right frame, the right set—is it a mystery list? Is it the regular version? Wait, is it foil? Is it cold foil? Etched foil? Wait, surge foil? Complete foil? Wait, polka dot foil? Confetti foil? Rudy's X foil? Like, there's too many. I—I understand the labor would take to go down these checklists starts to become not worth the time, and especially if you're a large company with a lot of labor and overhead, you think differently than someone like me or you who only has, you know, maybe under 69 employees. It's going to be very different.
So my overall response to this whole thing going on, since you all keep sending me these emails and screenshots of them posting on social media, is overall, I think it's bad timing, but it's not finite. This isn't a finite proof that the game piece era and all Magic's going to zero. So people sending me these messages, acting like Moon City selling their cards because everything's going to zero, I—I don't think is a—I think it's a very hyperbole—hyperb—it's a very—you're being kind of a meme. I think the real reason is probably a combination of they do want space; they don't see the point of going—having this many cards when they're not going to be paying people to go through it; they'd rather raise capital, because capital has actually—cash is no longer trash and actually gets interest in yield, and well, you know, they probably want to move in different directions. It's probably a combination of a lot of reasons, and—and I think the public is looking way too far into it. I'm not trying to defend Moon City or the Card Kingdom, Castles, the Really Awesome Stuff Incorporated, Channel Fireballs, of course, trolling fair and frog—wait, are they—wait, are they still doing—I think some of them already backed away.
So that's my response, short and simple, to the whole thing. Again, I remain very optimistic, and I almost want to use the word bullish about 2024 with the shifts and changes that are really coming in, cuz remember, Wizards takes 12 to 20 months to implement overhaul and changes. So going into 2024 is exactly 12 to 20 months since we've experienced this drawdown and repricing, overprinting, coming off the Magic 30, the economic pullback, everything happening. So by the time these changes kick in, it's pretty much starting January, February, March of next year, which means I'm very interested to see if Rover Master collapses. I'm interested to see how they do reducing SKUs, getting rid of draft boxes and set boxes, just having a play box. I like—I—all these things that are happening are good bullish indicators. And no, I don't think someone like Moon City posting this is any definitive proof. It doesn't mean you can bash them because they're trying to liquidate or anything. I just think it's a company that has a lot of product, and they're seeing if anyone's interested. I don't think their timing is that good, because they should have done this obviously at the boom, or maybe wait till things recover. I think the timing is not the greatest, but past that, I don't see ill intent; I don't think it means game piece to zero. I think it's just the internet wanting to attack anything they can, including any big store, any small LGS, any distributor, any content creator. I just think it's the world we're in. People are very short; they're very under a lot of pressure; they're under a lot of duress, a lot of anger and anxiety on—on all—on all fronts of the world, and I don't—I don't see anything wrong with what's happening. I think people are just blowing this out of proportion. That's my opinion. I remain happy about 2024. Thanks for watching! Have a great day! Gg. Yeah, we'll do it, g.