Smart decision. This would have been a stain on the Secret Lair brand for years to come. Worse than the curly foils from the early SL days, even worse than the Bakshi LOTR drop.

Not worse than dropping print to demand though.

Yeah and it would be all that more amazing if you could just mute entire topics.

You guys give me life. I've never been more proud to be a patron for some random nerds on the internet. Magic wouldn't be the same for me without you. ❤️

Thanks for reading! That's exactly it - I got too invested in my collection up to the point where it's now financially irresponsible. This isn't the first time I grew apart from a hobby I really used to love which switched its focus onto other audiences, so I should be able to just walk away.

Some thoughts on what is happening rn.

Wizards managed to evolve a fun-to-collect, quirky product line into an abysmal totem of Hasbro's greed. This isn't even a product for whales anymore, it's completely out of control and doesn't even care. I'm at my limit and I just have to hit the brakes. After six years, Secret Lair lost me. 13/13

Looking at the gap in the collector's numbers from 2231 to 2281, it is clear they'll give the surge foils different numbers AND the drop will be in English and Japanese. That's four times you'd have to buy the complete superdrop just to remain complete. And it's the final nail in my coffin. 12/13

But their ingenuity never stops. They added special foil treatments with different collector's numbers to the regular foil versions. Earlier this year, there were two 100€ drops that did this. The Furby drops did it. And with the Monster Hunter superdrop, the nightmare is finally complete. 11/13

... Relentless Rats, Seven Dwarves, Shadowborn Apostles and Persistent Petitioners to collect. It was SO MUCH PRODUCT thrown at us that it has become practically impossible to keep up with it. Seven chase Lotus Petals. Five chase Incarnations, both English and Japanese. Pure collectors' hell. 10/13

Not only was it now a struggle to even get all the drops, competing against scalpers and the horrible waiting line, they increased the release frequency even more and put even more chase cards in the bonus slot. Spongebob suddenly had two of those, all while there were still Elves, Zombies,... 9/13

...also being released in English and Japanese respectively. I had long since given up on hoping to ever have a complete collection by then, but I would at least try to get foil versions of all non-chase cards I could get my hands on.

Then came the atrocious limited stock releases. 8/13

Now with regular superdrops, commander decks, countdown kits and Festival in a Box drops, Secret Lair had become Wizards' money printing machine. The Mana Vault from the Fallout drop was the first regular bonus chase card to hit 1k€, and Hatsune Miku's Snapcaster Mage did the same while... 7/13

Even ignoring this, the moment it went overboard for the first time were the signed Gatewatch baseball cards which all went for several hundred bucks. These were the first micro-percentage chase cards put in the drops as bonus cards, and boy, did they lay some groundwork for sinister stuff. 6/13

When they put out the Secret Lair 295 cards, Wizards made it obvious that collecting SL would no longer be a thing for everyone interested, but a luxury thing. They were the first punch in my face (and a gap in my binder) because it was clear that these weren't even intented to be collectable. 5/13

They kept adding randomized stuff like the blueprint colorless cards while also accelerating the release schedule and the Junji Ito drop suddenly went on sale in two different languages, meaning collectors would have to buy sets of those to keep the collection complete. Another recurring theme. 4/13

Then came the randomized Sliver bonus cards and suddenly, they introduced a chase element. Sliver Hive was always around 200€ and some Slivers made it to 100€. Avid collectors like me had an incentive to hit the secondary market to complete their binders, but it was obviously not great. 3/13

The first bonus cards were the stained-glass War of the Spark planeswalkers which was a cool idea. Some fetched a pretty penny on the secondary market, but since the bonus run was rather long, you could actually get them all with a little luck without looking elsewhere. 2/13