Hasbro and Magic: The Gathering botched up sales of War of the Spark Mythic Edition boxes, overselling potentially thousands of units.
With every new MTG expansion, there’s a limited Mythic Edition box containing cards that aren’t available anywhere else. The War of the Spark Mythic Edition promoted 24 booster packs, with each one containing one of eight foil planeswalker cards. Magic: The Gathering went a step further in their promotional campaign by only printing 12,000 units.
Hype for the War of the Spark Mythic Edition (priced at $249.99) was too real for Hasbro’s eBay site, however, as issues with orders began almost immediately upon launch (1pm CT on May 1).
Magic: The Gathering first responded by saying it was investigating problems on Twitter. Roughly eight hours later, MTG posted another tweet admitting units of War of the Spark Mythic Edition were oversold.
Fans were enraged by eBay’s mistake. Many were told orders were processing, only to receive a notification that their order was unsuccessful. Things got worse for Hasbro and Magic: The Gathering when sales on eBay resumed just minutes after the site reportedly sold out of the War of the Spark Mythic Edition.
According to reports, sales potentially exceeded 30,000 units, which means Hasbro and its partnership with eBay will end up refunding thousands of customers.
While the War of the Spark promotion seemed like a good idea on paper, the reality of refunding thousands of customers says otherwise. Perhaps for future Mythic Edition boxes, Hasbro will consider doing pre-orders instead of limited quantity amounts.