If you take a quick glance through the different articles here on my blog, you might notice that Minecraft has come up a couple times. What can I say, I’m a fan! During my undergraduate career, I discovered the joys of Minecraft YouTube and constant uploads from the Hermitcraft community quickly became my comfort content. Sometimes you just need some fun, wholesome YouTubers to help you forget the woes of a poor test score.
Recently, one brave pioneer on the Hermitcraft server devoted the past year of his videos to creating an in-game trading card game, and after a smashing TCG fever that swept through his peers and the fanbase, the Hermitcraft TCG is becoming a reality. It took all of two seconds for my wife and I to put in our orders.
What’s fascinating to me is that it’s all just a commemorative but fun piece of merchandise for fans to get their hands on. It will boast all the top features of what you’d expect from a TCG. Everything from holographic cards, rare editions, elusive cards signed by creators, but there will be one key difference. The Hermitcraft TCG will only be sold for a limited time.
Unlike other popular TCGs of our time (Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, …other card games?), longevity is not the strategy. As far as I’m aware, there won’t be new editions or future expansion packs. There won’t be an effort to build a company off of this. This is a one time thing as a thank you to the fans, and then it will never hit the stores again.
And you know what that smells like to me? Scarcity.
TCGs are famous for how much people will spend on rare cards. Everybody wants their first edition Charizard. But what happens when you get an entire game where everything is first edition? I’m foreseeing a cult following springing up around this deck building game. I’m predicting that it will be nearly impossible to collect all the cards you want. Why? Because there will only be so many out there and there will never be any more. If one copy of a really sought after card gets lost or destroyed, the value just increased across the board for the rest. This will be a very deflationary system where nobody will want to sell or trade. Why would you when you could get a higher offer tomorrow?
These are my predictions, and I’m excited to get in at the ground floor, so to speak. I’ve made my purchase at what I expect will be the best price we’ll ever see, and I’m excited to track the niche little economy that will spring up around the Hermitcraft TCG. Quick disclaimer, I'm not looking to blow millions of bucks on my favorite creators' autographed cards, but I am excited to see who is. I wasn't around to see the dawn of the Pokemon TCG and witness its growth, but I'm here for this one and I'm excited to see what becomes of a TCG where the whole game is scarce - not just the cool cards. Here’s to the collectors! Here’s to market predictions!
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I'd be remiss if I didn't at least link the launch video. Lots of work went into this and lots of love from the community helped support it when we never thought we'd get a chance to play.
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