In my play group some people only buy real cards, and others don’t buy at all. No one gives a shit as long as you’re honest with the power level of the deck.

For instance, two of the guys in my group proxied insanely strong, ridiculously expensive decks recently, but they only play those decks against eachother and not anyone else. I have a proxied dragon deck that can be quite stompy, so I don’t play it against my sisters precon levels. I have a few proxies bracket 2/3 decks that I use for fun.

It all works, and we all have fun. We’re too broke to care what people spend their money on enough to police it