I have been a life long Magic the gathering player, 29 years off and on. I have been through a lot of ups and downs of the game. I've lived through banning of cards because of art being too insensitive, to the de-feminization of women in the art. The cards have been over printed and reprinted. The rules got more and more convoluted. The card stock got worse and worse, with pringled foils and misprints that smell like Chinese oil fields. I have dealt with price hikes and scummy gimmicks. Nothing had made me more sad than this Magic 30 release. The got rid of the most sacred tenant of Magic, the reserve list. Cards that were promised to never be printed again... Hasbro did it. They printed them again.
I have decided to finally purge my collection. I am now only keeping very specific cards and selling everything else. Here is my plan.
I only keep card that are pre Hasbro. So Everything before September 1999. So the cutoff set is Starter 99. That was the last set to not be touched by Hasbro. I'm sure their influence on the company was minimal for the first few years they took over, but I don't care. If Hasbro touched it, it should be treated like it's poisoned.
Cards I will keep for trade are foil rares, mythics, foil mythics and promos. No reason to keep full art rares or foil alt art. Everything gets reprinted and everything will lose value. Cards worth over $5 that a a year old are a keep, because they somehow retained value. Everything else is turbo sell at market value.
I have a 2 trade binder rule. I keep 2 leather folios that can hold 800 cards. If they spill out of the binder I start selling the lowest cost cards or make booster repacks to sell online.
I warn everyone that opens a foil to immediately put in a hard toploader. They will be trash in about an hour if they touch air. Whatever printer they use for modern cards sucks.
I'm going to deconstruct my cubes and sell everything. I had a 20 deck limit. 2 modern decks and 1 pauper, 1 vintage, 16 commander decks. I might drop down to 15 deck limit. 2 modern (I love my rack and my boggles to much), 1 pauper (need to rebuild anyways), 1 vintage (channel fireball fun deck), 1 competitive commander, and 10 casual commander decks.
No reason to do standard or pioneer. The card values drop so fast now, you would spend $50 to build a standard deck, then a few months later you have a $10 deck...
Darfting is still my favorite format, but it's hard to do when I know all the cards are essentially useless. The overproduction of vanity packs costing up to $40 a pack full of foils and full arts, has made the rarity all messed up. It's like Yu-Gi-Oh! now, where if the card is really fancy and foil, it's probably trash because or overprinting and reprinting.
I think a lot of people are angry like me and frustrated with the road Hasbro has taken to ruin the secondary market. I don't see it very hopeful for 2023 for Magic players.