MTG's Zeta Set Has an Insider Trading Scandal

We have to give a little context before we get into this. Last week, MTG launched the Zeta Set, a collaboration with MSCHF that featured Secret Lair’s first ever booster packs. This decision attracted a ton of controversy from the start, but the Zeta Set was enormously popular and sealed packs are currently reselling for around $80.

Notably, 12 of the cards within this set featured “downgraded” card rarities. Cards like Baleful Strix and Narcomoeba that have historically been classed as uncommon or higher were inexplicably marked as “common.”

This attracted the attention of “Pauper” players, an alternate ruleset within Magic that bans cards higher than common rarity. They immediately began petitioning WotC to allow the cards to be legal within the rules. The Pauper Format Panel, or PFP, is the official arbiter on what flies within Pauper, and they stated that the cards would remain illegal despite the new rarity.

That didn’t sit well with players, and on September 4 the panel reversed course. Ten of the twelve cards are now tournament legal in tabletop Pauper starting September 7, including format staples like Vandalblast and Dispatch. Magic Online is on a slower clock, with the same legality change not landing there until September 23.

Because of the ruling, all of the card variants greenlit by the PFP were legal in Pauper, regardless of whether they were the Zeta set variant or from a different printing. E.G., a Vandalblast card marked as “uncommon” from a previous set is now playable in Pauper.

Prices for these cards have skyrocketed since the announcement, in many cases rising 200% or more. This applies to both physical and digital examples used in MTG: Online, where cards trade for pennies to dollars. Baleful Strix, for example, has risen from an average price of around 50 cents to over $3 (these are digital cards).

Still with us? Good, because we’re getting to the scandal.

GoatBots, one of the larger bot networks handling digital card sales on Magic Online, flagged unusual buying activity that has them crying foul. According to the platform, one account scooped up a large volume of Baleful Strix, Vandalblast, and Dispatch copies one day before the reversal was announced, cards that were about to become tournament playable and definitely about to surge in value.

GoatBots pointed at the Pauper Format Panel directly, framing the buying pattern as a sign of insider trading. It’s not clear exactly how many cards the suspected insider bought or how much they spent. We’re talking about less than $1,000 in profit here, and probably quite a bit less.

Remember: these are digital MTGO cards that trade for pennies to a few dollars, not the paper singles resellers usually chase. And the timing alone doesn’t settle anything. Pauper players had been publicly campaigning for these exact cards to get unbanned for a full week, which means a confident speculator betting on that pressure paying off could have made a similar investment with fairly minimal risk.

The main determination of whether this is a clever investor vs. an insider is whether the account bought the Narcomoeba and Price of Progress cards. These were outright banned by the PFP, so an account that skipped over these but loaded up on the other, legal cards is extremely suspect.

Proven or not, insider trading talk sticks to Wizards at an already rocky moment for this release. The Zeta Set introduced Secret Lair’s first ever booster pack format, launched into a two hour queue outage, and has Wizards of the Coast flip-flopping on rules in less than a week. Layer an accusation that someone close to a rules committee’s private deliberations profited before the public did, and you’re handing torches and pitchforks to a crowd ready to riot.

It would be fair to say this is the most controversial MTG release in years, and it’s remarkable to see reasons for players and collectors to get pissed off continue to pile up. GoatBots’ allegations are extremely serious, and also extremely hard to prove.

The potential profits here are small, but the ethical issues are not. If there are actually Wizards of the Coast employees willing to trade on cards using insider knowledge, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about $30 or $3,000. The allegation itself casts serious shadows on the organization, and is something players will no doubt remind them about in weeks to come.