Magic: The Gathering – Modern Horizons 3 products seized the top three spots on the TCGplayer Top 25 Sealed Products chart for May 2024. The TCGplayer chart (see “May 2024 ) ranks the most active products on the platform by dollar volume, showing the beginning and ending prices of each product, and helps provide some insight as to where the TCG market is in the near term.
Modern Horizons 3 products showed up and dominated the May 2024 chart. The Play Booster displays took the top spot, the Commander Decks took the #2 spot, and Collector Boosters took the #3 spot, making a pretty clean sweep for this incoming product line. Cases of Collector Boosters were also in the top ten, which indicates some very strong demand for this product and that all is well. However, taking a look at the price movement from the start of the month prices to the end of the month, Modern Horizons 3 products moved very little in either direction.
Modern Horizons 3 is going through some pricing pains, which several people have been discussing on social media and other online outlets. Part of this was caused by Amazon’s initial list pricing for these products. Out of the gate, Amazon listed Modern Horizons 3 Play Boosters for $378.00 a box and the Collector Boosters at $504.00 a box. Based on initial preorders from their customers, Amazon must’ve found this pricing to be an overreach, and they progressively adjusted their values to about $270 for Play Booster boxes (28% off initial pricing) and about $389 for Collector Booster boxes (about 23% off initial pricing).
Online sellers adjusted their prices as well, and now boxes of Play Boosters are landing between $250-$270. Unfortunately, these current market prices aren’t leaving much margin for retailers as they are fairly close to wholesale pricing (depending on which distributor the retailer orders from and their WPN status). The potentially low profit margin represents a significant risk for FLGS carrying this product, especially ones buying on credit, as any further drop in the product could result in a “it’s D&D Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate all over again” scenario (see “‘D&D Baldur’s Gate’ Market Value Wanes“).
Luckily, according to the TCGplayer data, product sales volume and demand for Modern Horizon 3 still appear to be going strong, so there’s ample opportunity for retailers to “strike while the iron is hot” before any potential problems occur.
As for the rest of the chart, it is once again divided up between the rest of the Big Five. Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, Pokemon TCG, One Piece TCG, and Disney Lorcana all did decently. Star Wars Unlimited took a little bit of a tumble, but this was mainly due to a lack of product in the marketplace. The only real question about this group is whether or not Disney Lorcana is the fourth largest TCG or the third largest TCG by sales volume. It is likely still #4, as Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and Pokemon TCG tend to do exceptionally well at mass retail, but that dynamic definitely has a chance at changing at some point in the future (at least in U.S. markets).
Source: ICV2
