Why does it cost so much to play magic the gathering?

Answer 1

Magic does not have to be expensive so long as you know what you're doing. I used to work in a Magic store and have built many fun and pretty strong decks for $20~$40 to sell. There are many different things you can do to keep costs down.

1: Do your research to find a deck you want to build. By doing this, you're not going after cards you ultimately won't need to make the decks you want.

2: Don't buy booster packs. Packs tend to give you a huge variety of cards, most of which you won't use. For the $4 you spent on a pack, you could get quite a few cheap cards that could fit very well in a deck you want to build. If you're very new to Magic, I recommend buying a deck builder's toolkit and/or intro deck from your local retailer.

3: Go to a Magic or comic store and buy single cards. This goes hand-in-hand with #1, and is what you should do instead of #2 if you're not just starting out. It's also probably more worth to get similar, but cheaper cards, rather than the expensive ones when you're just starting out.

4: Trade your cards. Once you get a few cards that you no longer want to use, consider trading for cards that you do want. A good way to find people wanting to trade is to go to local tournaments. Friday Night Magic (FNM) is usually popular. Also, cards out of newer sets tend to start expensive, and then drop in price once it rotates out of Standard. Because of this, you should try to trade for cards that are 3 years or older.

5: Don't sell the cards you don't use. Magic cards usually only go up in price over the years, so the longer you can hold onto them, the more they'll eventually be worth (probably, occasionally some will go down due to reprints or other reasons).