Despite 2022 being stuffed with Magic: the Gathering products, some stood out as great buys that we would recommend even to the most casual of players. One of those is Secret Lair’s 30th Anniversary Countdown Kit that included 30 highly playable cards for an amazing price of US$150. Within an hour of its launch, all units were sold out, leaving many players disappointed.
To understand how much value came with the 30th Anniversary Countdown Kit, remember that regular Secret Lair products tend to come in sets of 4-5 cards for US$30-$50, depending if you got the non-foil or foil versions. To get 30 symbolic cards (including pricey reprints for Chrome Mox and Necropotence), at an average cost of US$5 per card was a great bargain. There was even a 30% chance for each card to come in traditional foil, so overall it’s just a good product whether you are buying as a collector or player.
However unliked previous Secret Lairs, Wizards of the Coast elected to sell a limited number of these Countdown Kits, and all were sold out within 1 hour of their launch. Shopee’s official Wizards of the Coast store, whose sales also launched at midnight local time on 1 Nov, also sold out within 5 minutes.
For such a good product, it’s baffling why Wizards opted to have such a limited run. Buyers were also allowed to purchase more than 1, hence taking away the chance for more people to own a copy. It’s not clear how many Countdown Kits were available for purchase, but if the Beadle & Grimm’s special edition Secret Lair is a benchmark, then it could be 10,000 at most.
We genuinely hope that Wizards will release more print runs down the road, even if it’s beyond 2022’s holiday season (which this product was meant to cater to). It’ll allow more fans to own a piece of history, and since the 30th Edition packs are out of reach to most people, these Countdown Kits will serve as a worthwhile memento.
