The biggest financial news of the week was the buyout of Lion's Eye Diamond. It's not so much that Lion's Eye Diamond was bought out that's big news, but how it was bought out. The individual who bought out the card posted a video urging his followers to buyout the the rest of the copies with the promise that they would make "$50 a card" if they took his advice as quickly as possible.

It hurts to say this, but buyouts will happen. I wish they wouldn't, but if an individual thinks a card is underpriced, it makes sense that they would buy as many copies as possible. For better or worse, that's capitalism. On the other hand, hyping your buyout and urging your followers to continue the buyout is the text book definition of a pump and dump scheme, an activity that is illegal in regulated markets like the stock market. The person who runs the scheme profits since he incites his followers to buy up every Lion's Eye Diamond, increasing the price of his copies even more. But it will be the followers who will be left holding the bag once the leader dumps all of their copies, lowering the price.

In my opinion, these type of activities are unacceptable and unethical. Unfortunately, they are not illegal in an unregulated market, so these type of market manipulating buyouts will keep happening until either Wizards or marketplaces (like TCGplayer) take action. Wizards enables these buyouts by unbendingly maintaining a Reserved List that keeps cards like Lion's Eye Diamond in woefully low supply. You don't see this type of stuff happening with Standard or Modern cards because there's actually a risk of losing money due to a reprinting. Marketplaces could make these buyouts much harder by limiting the number of copies of a single card that a single account can purchase in a 24 hour period. People could skirt this system with multiple accounts, but it would at least make things harder.

Unfortunately, I don't expect either of these things to happen any time soon. Wizards has made it clear that the Reserved List is here to stay, and marketplaces make a percentage of each card they sell, so limiting the number that people can buy would hurt their business. As a result, there isn't much we can do to stop these type of buyouts from happening. So sit back, have some popcorn, and wait until someone with real money realizes they can buy out every single playable Reserved List card for pocket change (compared to "real world" business deals), and hope that something extreme forces Wizards' hand towards fixing the problem.

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The five most viewed cards on MTGGoldfish this past week were:

1. Allosaurus Rider (Coldsnap)
2. Gisela the Broken Blade (Eldritch Moon)
3. Nimbus Maze (Future Sight)
4. Enduring Scalelord (Dragons of Tarkir)
5. Tamiyo Field Researcher (Eldritch Moon)