On February 2, Wizards of the Coast released one of its strangest Magic: The Gathering Secret Lairs yet. There's nothing odd about the cards themselves; they're a quartet of green spells, each with a very different illustration style that would nonetheless make perfect sense as the label of a craft beer.
But what's different about this collection is the way it's been sold through the SL website. Rather than a fixed price point, 'Prints Charming' was made available at multiple different pricing tiers. If you got in early, before the lowest tier sold out, you could make off with these cards for $9.99 - a darn sight cheaper than what these products usually go for.
But the exact same item could also be bought for $19.99, $29.99, $34.99, and $39.99 (with foils going up to $49.99). This is one of WotC's 'Chaos Vault' experiments, seemingly designed to see how much fans think a Secret Lair drop like this is worth.
The combined value of these cards on the secondary market is about $6, so with no high ticket items, it's mainly just the art styles adding value here. That shouldn't be overlooked though, as with time, SL cards can become quite valuable simply by way of being rare and pretty. For instance, the cheapest version of Nature's Lore - one of the cards in Prints Charming - is $2.70, but a version from a Lair sold in 2021 now goes for $35.
While you'd expect the drops to disappear off the shelves in ascending order of price, bizarrely this doesn't seem to have happened. While they're all gone now, screenshots shared on social media reveal that the $49.99 foil edition sold out earlier than the $29.99 foil edition, meaning fans were voluntarily paying an extra $20 for no good reason.
This seems to have been repeated in other regions too. Here in the UK, the £39.99 tier is sold out but the £29.99 version is still on sale.
I don't know if this can be chalked up to fans hoping for a secret bonus card with the more expensive versions, automated bots that got burned by this experiment, or kindhearted individuals opting for a more pricey copy to leave the cheaper options to those less well off. I wonder what Wizards of the Coast will make of the results.
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