Magic: the Gathering recently revealed some of the cards coming to its comic-book-inspired Marvel’s Spider-Man set, including Venom, Green Goblin, Doc Ock, and of course the webbed wall-crawler himself. The cards look cool and seem like they’d be fun to play. They’re also very expensive, continuing a recent trend of Wizards of the Coast’s trading card game charging fans a ton for crossover sets, even before they sell out and get flipped for unconscionable sums by scalpers on eBay and elsewhere.
In addition to teasing the first six cards in the upcoming set, slated to arrive in the second half of 2025, Wizards of the Coast parent company Hasbro also recently confirmed the Marvel’s Spider-Man set is a booster-based expansion, meaning no pre-constructed Commander decks. But even without the recent 40-percent markup on those hot-ticket items, the set’s baseline booster packs will still be $7 each, and a whopping $38 for the Collector packs sporting special card designs.
That’s in-line with the recently revealed Final Fantasy set for Magic: the Gathering, whose prices similarly shocked long-time fans. “Play booster boxes are $200, Collector boxes are $455, the decks and bundles are $70, this is actually ridiculous,” an MTG player wrote last month about the Square Enix collaboration. “I get this is Universes Beyond and all that but this is absurd.”
The discourse around the new Spider-Man set has echoed similar sentiments. Two points often brought up by players are that these crossovers remain legal in the Standard Format, so dedicated players who want to remain competitive and not miss out still need to partake. Also, the cards themselves haven’t changed. It’s the same machines printing designs on the same cardboard as in-universe sets which retail for $5.50, just with extra licensing fees attached.
MTG lead designer Mark Rosewater recently confirmed the resulting $1.50 mark-up for Universes Beyond sets will be standard moving forward. And it’s easy to see why when the cards still immediately sell out after becoming available for pre-order. Collector Booster boxes for Spider-Man retailing at a whopping $455 are already out of stock on Amazon, as was immediately the case with the Final Fantasy set once it was revealed as well. Pre-orders for Final Fantasy collector boxes are now listed for around $650 on eBay, while the Spider-Man ones are upwards of $700.
It’s a bummer that MTG prices are spiking at the exact moment when Universes Beyond crossovers might bring in new or returning players. Some of my friends are lapsed fans and I lobbied them to go in on a play booster box of Final Fantasy for a chill draft when the set drops in June. The universal response upon sharing a screenshot of the BestBuy pre-order page prices in the group chat was “hell no.” I imagine it’s even tougher for any kids without tons of pocket change or who aren’t secretly playing MTG like a stock market in their spare time.
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