Glossary
What is the Magic: The Gathering Reserved List?
The Reserved List is Wizards of the Coast's policy guaranteeing that a specific list of Magic: The Gathering cards (mostly from 1993–1999) will never be reprinted in a tournament-legal form. The promise creates artificial scarcity and underpins the long-term value of those cards.
Why it matters to a card shop
Reserved-list cards are the closest thing card retail has to a stable store of value. They appreciate slowly but reliably, which is why most shops exclude them from autopricing and reprice them by hand against recent comps.
Reserved-list cards also drive a disproportionate share of high-value buylist activity. A single Beta dual land trade-in can be a larger transaction than a month of singles sales.
Related terms
- Autopricer — An autopricer is software that reprices a card shop's singles automatically against live marketplace data — typically TCGplayer market price, Cardmarket trend price, or eBay sold listings — applying margin rules per channel and per condition.
- Buylist — A buylist is the set of prices a card shop offers customers for cards they want to sell or trade in. Most shops publish two prices per card: a lower cash rate and a higher store-credit rate.
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