As an online marketplace, TCGPlayer’s platform listed the low, median, and high price for each card they listed. These values reflected the prices that sellers set on their own stock, which was then sold through TCGPlayer’s platform. In addition to this easy-to-access data on their own platform, they made the data available to developers to use in their own applications through an API, which resulting in widespread adoption of the “TCGPlayer Median,” or “TCG Mid,” among players and sellers to value cards in their collections.

TCGPlayer Median in action.

Unfortunately, this value could be manipulated. So long as Craig Berry owned all copies of a card, the supply was severely limited.

Card values naturally rise and fall over time in response to a number of factors, such as their perceived effectiveness in player’s decks. Take, for example, this price chart for a recently-released card, “Kolaghan’s Command,” whose value has steadily risen and fallen:

Price trends over time (green line) for Kolaghan’s Command. (Blue line indicates buylist price.)

Buyouts, on the other hand, result in a sudden and dramatic price increase, like what we see in the aftermath of the Moat buyout:

Price trends over time (green line) for Moat; the buyout is immediately apparent as a sharp spike. (Blue line indicates buylist price.)

Buyouts like these are an ongoing problem in Magic’s secondary market. They’re often driven by speculators — individuals who believe that a card’s value is certain to rise, and in wanting to get in early by buying many copies of the card while its value is low, inherently cause prices to rise in response to limited supply. Since these values are tied to the price at which sellers are listing their cards, a buyout is an effective way to dramatically increase the value of a card and profit off of the difference.

In an announcement on the TCGPlayer website late last week, Chedy Hampson, TCGPlayer’s CEO, shared details about how TCGPlayer is rolling out a long-planned change in how pricing data is shown.

Instead of averaging the price of cards for sale — the TCG Mid — they’re now averaging the price paid in completed sales — the “Market Price.”

The new Market Price in action, reflecting the updated post-buyout value of Moat.

When Berry bought out Moat, the TCG Mid price jumped from $375 to $654. This doesn’t necessarily reflect the true value of the card: while it might be listed for $654, it might not be selling for $654.

With the introduction of the new Market Price value, the true value of Moat on TCGPlayer became $354: the average price that users actually paid for the card, rather than what sellers wanted to receive for the card.

In addition, the company is adding a new data point, called “Buylist Market Price.” When players want to sell their cards to a seller, they expect to receive less than the actual value of the card — after all, the seller has to make a margin on the card’s eventual sale. The price that the seller is willing to pay for a card is known as the “buylist price.” Even after Moat’s value spiked to $654, sellers weren’t willing to pay more than $290 for the card.

The new Buylist Market Price averages out how much sellers are willing to pay players for a card, which, together with the Market Price, gives a much more accurate reflection of a card’s real-world value.

The Magic community is responding very well to these changes, as evidenced by numerous glowing comments across social media channels like Reddit and Twitter.

“I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but just wanted to say a big THANK YOU again for responding to this issue so quickly. I look forward to buying and selling on TCGPlayer for years to come.” —Reddit user urza_insane

While TCGPlayer’s actions aren’t a silver bullet for stopping buyouts—as long as card availability is restricted, they will continue to exist, and indeed, are still underway—their actions will still have a real, positive impact on players’ and sellers’ abilities to value their cards in a way that doesn’t affect TCGPlayer’s business model or its relationship with buyers or sellers.