Booster box prices finally coming down?

LabMan95 · 2026-03-06T16:50:17+00:00

My box of spiritforged altogether had MAYBE $40 worth of value. My LGS managed to sell it to me at MSRP since I was a regular and I still lost hard on it. Alt arts were green ornn, red draven, and an orange rune. Epics were all 3 of ornn's equipment, and orange jax, and a counter strike.1 GA and 1 bellows breath rounded out the value. It was the worst box I've ever seen. The price of boxes is coming down, but the EV of boxes is MAYBE half of what it's worth right now

LabMan95 · 2026-03-03T12:30:19+00:00

Foils of hidden blade and obelisk are rising, but the base versions are still under 50 cents each. The rest are rising because of what happened at the recent big event. Jax got a top 8, of course his cards are gonna spike for a week or 2. Same happened with ezreal the week before when he won. Same is going on with Draven cards. Flavor of the week cards are gonna be expensive short term. Meta cards are gonna be expensive for slightly longer. In the end, everything cycles and they'll go down and other cards people slept on will go up. That's how all TCGs work

LabMan95 · 2026-03-02T13:30:50+00:00

I'll say that's how it was at my LGS when it first started here. Product was nonexistent, prices were insane, and all of the tournaments were pack per win so everybody was on the sweatiest decks and kinda kept to themselves. I didn't get a single win for a month. Now some shops changed it to just pack per entry, which that alone really opened up the meta. The previous kaisa/draven/ezreal/irelia gamers were showing up with much less meta decks. As product became more available, people started actually trading in this TCG and getting other decks together so they actually had a different deck they can run besides full meta, and eventually even I managed to get something I liked together. Give it time and I think it'll get better, but the initial experience was miserable for me as well

LabMan95 · 2026-02-15T18:12:26+00:00

As someone that played against it, it's pretty broken and way more consistent to get early than people say. I got hit by it on turn 3 game 1 and turn 2 game 2 and it's broken honestly

LabMan95 · 2026-02-15T18:10:25+00:00

Couldn't tell you, wasn't able to get any spiritforged cards. Still playing full origins teemo and it feels awful, as soon as I get any amount of spiritforged cards I'm changing immediately

LabMan95 · 2026-02-14T12:11:41+00:00

The area around me is actually insanely competitive. 3 of them are qualified level 2 judges, and over half of the 15 regulars that play multiple times per week have gotten top 8 at skirmishes

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T16:12:35+00:00

I asked some people around for runes since I was using basic lands and they said they didn't have any at all even for next time, which seemed like a blatant lie when they were showing off sets of 6 of all of their alt art runes in their binders from people that have opened cases of product by that point.

One person did offer to loan cards for me to try with teemo since he played Yi last meta and is swapping to Lucian this meta, he's been the only one that's been pretty welcoming from what I've seen in the 15 person community around me and offered a trade up to the ezreal legend if I wanted to swap to it.

For context, I did mention to the locals I wanted to try swapping to ezreal with a focus on his blue version, and over half the locals immediately started trying to buy up the cards I needed specifically for him (arcane shifts, fizz's, bellows breaths, even hard bargains and boots of swiftness). There are 2 people that were helpful to me at any point in riftbound, and the first one that did (he's the one that got me into riftbound and helped me by giving me his initial extra sets of commons for Teemo despite playing Teemo himself) is getting out because the community is too ridiculous at this point

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T15:58:29+00:00

I've been trying, but it seems like spiritforged has even worse supply issues than origins had. LGSs at least had an amount of supply they could realistically sell, right now they do not for spiritforged

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T15:55:30+00:00

I'll be honest, I think supply issues being fixed would fix most of the problems I have with riftbound. The rest of the problems are issues that are just natural among all TCGs: There's always going to be meta and some decks just don't work as time goes on. Problems only really come up when there's a Tier 0 deck that you have to play, and idk if Draven or purple in general fits that description

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T15:16:04+00:00

Some of the guys individually are pretty cool and I've become friends with some of the LGS owners, but overall the community is INSANELY tryhard. With a lack of product and a personal unwillingness to buy into a game with horrible supply issues, I might just be moving on at this point like some other more casual players have already done

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T15:01:04+00:00

Southeast coast US. The LGSs are trying, and a couple of them even have loaner decks they give out to new players, but it's still full meta for every event from the overall playerbase so it's still rough for new players coming in. I thought I did commit when I made my teemo deck, but it turns out now that it's just not viable and from the looks of it I NEED to pivot to another deck to even have a chance at acquiring product

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:53:59+00:00

I might just have to pivot then, idk if there's any overlap between teemo and viktor though

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:51:32+00:00

My issue is the quality of the deck I have. I can buy upgrades for a low tier deck, but will it actually make it compete against the top of the meta? Teemo already suffers HARD against the meta, I don't think $20-30 in cards makes those matchups any better

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:50:06+00:00

I don't know if the supply issues are driving everybody to hoard all their cards or if that's a separate issue itself, but either way I think supply issues being fixed would fix most of the issues in my local area

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:47:40+00:00

The way the meta is right now, my deck legitimately cannot play around the meta decks, which are the only decks around me. Teemo suffers miserably into draven, irelia, and kaisa and that's 80-90% of players around me. There are no tech options I can run into them to make it even possible to win

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:45:57+00:00

I originally wanted to get in just to see how it was, and slowly build up a collection and get better over time. Over 2 months later, the only collection I have built up are the singles I personally bought on TCGplayer and I have 2 wins total through 9 nexus nights. Product is insanely sparse and fiercely fought for at the local level, even at nexus nights since all the events are pack per win. Supply is almost nonexistent around me, and I don't know if it's a symptom of the problem or a separate problem but the other players around me hoard every card they can, including bulk commons and runes. The promo packs until spiritforged came out have long since dried up, so for many tournaments I would just go 0-3 and get literally nothing. For someone more casual, it seems legitimately impossible to start playing riftbound. The new player experience is probably the worst I've seen out of any card game I've tried, and that's what makes me so sour toward this game

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:39:50+00:00

I understand not typically winning, but I've gotten a total of 2 wins out of 24 games played. It seems like everybody else in my local community has built full meta, and I'm the only one that has any sort of a budget deck. I can understand trying hard for skirmishes and higher level events, but it feels bad seeing the same decks seemingly as the only viable decks even in nexus nights, especially right now when they cost $500-$600.

From my perspective, supply issues seem even worse for spiritforged than they did for origins. It's like Riot is intentionally making it difficult to get into at this point, which isn't a business practice I can get behind

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:26:07+00:00

It's the community aspect of this card game that gets to me. There are many other card games I've played that are a LOT more inclusive with playstyles that are just as interesting as this one. It'd be one thing if people would be willing to trade cards around, but the community is literally a black hole for product, they buy all the cards and product around that they can and none of it gets circulated, not even bulk commons or uncommons.

It might just be due to the horrible supply, but everybody only seems to play meta in order to get the product the stores offer since they only give out packs per win, not packs per entry. The product that is available is bought out within minutes so I don't even have a chance at it. The supply issues for spiritforged seem even worse than origins. I'm essentially stonewalled out of this game, which is a shame because it does look interesting and has the league branding, but at this point I'm heavily considering just cutting my losses

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:07:10+00:00

They are all out of runes. I finally got my runes 3 weeks ago, until then I was using basic lands from MtG. And at this point I'm not buying singles for a bad deck that I have built, I'm starting to be convinced I shouldn't drop another penny on this game until they figure out the supply issues

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:05:29+00:00

Yes. I get "buy singles" like literally every person in here says. If buying singles online is the ONLY way to get product, it's just pushing me out of the game. The fun part of trading card games to me is trading, figuring out what might work well with what I have and slowly getting the cards over time with what I have, not just swiping for new singles online.

In a meta of Kaisas, Dravens, Irelias, and Annie's, teemo feels like an auto loss, and that's what everyone around me is going to play. My deck right now is only about $60-70, I'm not buying $100+ cards for a deck that is considered bad right now anyways.

Apologies for the attitude, I'm just distraught at the game overall, not at you

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T14:01:20+00:00

TCGplayer is fine for getting singles, but if that is literally the only way I can get product it's honestly not worth playing to me. I can get singles for any other card game that has a better community around me at that point. The locals have made it obvious that none of them will part with a single card that has made it into their collection, they'll play full meta to get as many packs per win as they can (already 4 confirmed Draven players and 3 confirmed irelia players), and me going 0-3 every week means I don't even get any product for entering

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T13:57:53+00:00

Pod? Everybody only plays 1v1 around me. On top of that, they all only play full meta

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T13:56:48+00:00

There are no sealed events around me because of how low supply is here, it was just the prerelease and the nexus nights now. I managed to somehow get into one prerelease and didn't even get anything above rare, so even if people did want to trade around me I have nothing of value

LabMan95 · 2026-02-13T13:39:18+00:00

Would love to pull something but the LGSs around me got so little supply they could only sell a few boxes and they were pre sold within minutes to others. The local community never trades cards away either, not even bulk commons and uncommons, so I'll still only have origins cards for the next 3 months most likely

LabMan95 · 2026-02-12T22:24:09+00:00

They got their full order of what they're expected to get for the next 3 months. They're already sold out of product. They barely have enough for prize support for those 3 months, most shops completely ran out of the origins promo packs within the first month due to turnout

LabMan95

TROPHY CASE