It is nuts, completely and utterly nuts.
As of this writing, a revised Underground Sea is about $538... Good luck actually paying that as the real costs are in the 600-700 range. TCGplayer only has 18 total Revised USea listed for their site. 18.
Supply and demand I suppose.
I don't care about the Vintage cards, really don't. They can run up the prices of Mox and Time Walk all they want, those cards are SUPER busted. Legacy cards are just busted. Besides, the format is great fun and once you get a deck, you are good for a couple years. There are a few cards to add or subtract over time, but for the most part the core cards are the most expensive. Usually.
I recommend this really good article regarding the Reserve List from Hipsters of the Coast.
There are so many reasons to getting these cards in to the hands of people who want to play them.
There is one factor that the above article did not mention- proxies. Not, print at home, or write on a land proxies. But extremely high quality proxies. Like one or two steps away from being completely perfect from the real cards. I still believe once that perfect copy is available for mass consumption- Wizards will need to do something. Either come up with a very smart way of getting these extremely expensive cards back in to the market, or ... *shrug*
[caveat: There are two type of people who get high quality proxies- #1 is the people who just want to play the game and do not have the means to pay $500 for a single card. These are the gamers, who just might want to play in events without selling a kidney. #2 are people who actually acquire with the intent to deceive and cheat people out of real cards by means of either knowingly trading fake cards for real/good ones, or selling them to make profit. Both types of people are hurting the game by leaps and bounds.]
Wouldn't it be a hoot for Wizards to make a Reserve List pack of 3 cards, with one of the cards being from the Reserve List, 2 others being some sort of fluff card. Call it "Instant Collection" packs. There are 571, FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENITY ONE cards on the Reserve List. Many/most of these cards are pointless in any competitive deck. They could even make it a "Classic" packs and starters, complete with the old school amount of lands they included. Oh, that would drive people to drink these days. Draftable? Not if you are sane.
I'm just tossing ideas around... there are ways for Wizards to make a ton, and keep the collector's market happy.
Anyhow- its time to bring down the Reserve List, give players a fighting chance to play these older cards, and breath some life in to formats Wizards doesn't really even acknowledge exists anymore.
Addendum- the other side of the agreement is to just ban all Reserve List cards from Legacy. It would make it 'Legacy Lite.' The article linked is from 2015, so the meta has flipped a bit and the prices are not reflective of the current values... but it makes some very good points.
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