Support Sealed Promotional Packs

[Hycord]

I personally collect packs of promotional cards if they are still sealed in the plastic and would like to support the tracking of these through an API.

Typically these are given to WPN stores as a bundle for Store Championships, Regional Championship Qualifiers, and even Buy a Box Promos are distributed this way. They are typically 8-16 cards in a clear plastic pack, sometimes they are different from each other in the same pack but all packs have static contents.

Convention promos are also distributed like this, although typically the only way you can obtain them is through an insider staff member willing to steal a still sealed pack for you.

Ideally all of these would be supported although it will definitely be a struggle to get everything especially the convention promos.

Currently wondering how these should be handled as products, they can very easily be added to the data/contents directory since they are set-card however these aren't officially supposed to be obtained so they aren't listed on TCGPlayer or any other marketplace that I have been able to find (outside of Ebay). I am guessing I would just leave them out and not make a product for it but want to confirm and get input from other contributors/maintainers before I make any changes

[kodawah]

IMO these seem a bit of a spicy product for inclusion, here is why

• /most/ of these are not supposed to be circulating outside the store/distributed on the secondary market
• unless I'm missing something, the contents of the packs is unknown, and cannot be fully mapped (ie a lot of the "top8" cards are missing from scryfall)
• typically the only way you can obtain them is through an insider staff member willing to steal a still sealed pack for you. this seems a bad premise

Given we won't find these product on tcg or any retailer, what is the use case of tracking these, if the contents cannot be mapped, nor products purchased? If the goal is tracking their existance, couldn't be decklists just be added without making a product entry?

[kodawah]

possibly offtopic but slightly related, any interest in mapping Promo Pack boosters? 👀

[Hycord]

/most/ of these are not supposed to be circulating outside the store/distributed on the secondary market

True, however they do circulate on secondary market and I would like to be able to track them. Although they aren't supposed to go out I don't see why they can't still be tracked. I'd honestly also be interested in adding the boxes of promo packs (typically 27 non-foil and 13 foil). I am new to the community so if I'm trying to add stuff in the wrong place please let me know.

the contents of the packs is unknown, and cannot be fully mapped

I have access to a lot of them and it's a personal goal of mine to collect every one ever made so I can thumb through them still sealed to get a list of the ones I have and they typically follow the same formatting. I.E. Buy-a-box is always 16 of the same card, RCQ promos are 7 foils with a full art behind it (think the Urza's Saga textless or City of Brass) so it wouldn't be easy but over time I think the info can be accumulated. It's also listed on the WPN website sometimes (https://wpn.wizards.com/en/wpn-promo-usage-and-policies)

[Hycord]

possibly offtopic but slightly related, any interest in mapping Promo Pack boosters? 👀

Actually yes! I'm super interested in mapping boosters, and plan on mapping as many as possible once I am comfortable with the process :) SPM was my first goal but will take down as much of the list as possible once I understand how

[Hycord]

Other than it not typically being accessible I am curious why we shouldn't support it? I feel like we know they exist and it can't hurt to document which ones exist. Maybe there's a new type of product we can create that is used to designate non-retail items provided by WOTC?

[axxroytovu]

The value I see in this is building out more of the "where does this card come from" mapping. It would be valuable to have a repository of where each promo card came from.

[kodawah]

Other than it not typically being accessible I am curious why we shouldn't support it?

It's not that we shouldn't, but we're a small team of maintainers and we need to face the reality that we cannot support everything: for example, we already stopped supporting most of non-English products (half due to workload, half due to technical limitation on how ids are represented), and as we're pulling from a variety of data sources, I think that we made the implicit call to try and support products that can be bought on the secondary market, from card-specific marketplaces.

Otherwise where do we draw the line? Should we support pallet of booster box cases? Should we offer empty boxes of products? Empty booster seals? Dice? These are all products that exist are available on ebay, and they are all collectibles, but we're not actively tracking them.

To be clear, I'm not stopping anything from being added, and I agree there is value in mapping this kind of product to improve the "where to find which card" process, but I'm worried that the backlog keeps expanding

Maybe there's a new type of product we can create that is used to designate non-retail items provided by WOTC?

This could be a good implementation point, makes them easier to track or filter if they are unneeded

The value I see in this is building out more of the "where does this card come from" mapping. It would be valuable to have a repository of where each promo card came from.

yup agree on that! maybe i'm overthinking this but i believe we could just have decklists loaded in taw's repos and maybe coalesce them together in a single yearly promotional item maybe? unclear on the width of the task and how many promo types are there

[Hycord]

Should we support pallet of booster box cases? Should we offer empty boxes of products? Empty booster seals? Dice? These are all products that exist are available on ebay, and they are all collectibles, but we're not actively tracking them.

Empty boxes, no. But I actually very much agree that palettes and dice should be added and I am personally more than willing to lead the charge on adding these products. I know you are a small team and I know I am asking for a lot here, so I plan to be the one that puts in most of the leg work for these.

I am building a fairly sophisticated system that actually very much does rely on knowing about the dice and supporting up to a palette of booster boxes. I know it's not something that a typical person would ever need to work with but the people who are using what I am building absolutely will be dealing in palettes and even multiple palettes.

I want to be very clear again, I understand I am asking for a lot and I am absolutely willing to be the one that puts most of the work in. I will be tracking these items regardless into my personal cache of MTGJSON so I figured it would be better to track them for everyone than keep the data myself if that makes sense.

[axxroytovu]

(Dice are usually included in product contents already)

E.g.

  Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Bundle:
    ...
    other:
    - name: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms Premium Spindown
    ...

[kodawah]

(Dice are usually included in product contents already)

yeah but they are not exposed at the product level, so they are tracked but they aren't.. trackable?
should we make a separate category/field for it?