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Selling MTG cards advice

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31 Jul 2013 20:11 #157497 by dragonstout
Yeah, put me down as being flummoxed by this. I am *so curious* what the scam is. Because if it's not a scam, I think this would be the biggest Magic find...ever? No, I mean LITERALLY. So it's just *pretty* hard to believe something like that.

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31 Jul 2013 20:19 #157498 by Michael Barnes
Yeah, if it is a con, he's definitely going long with it...but the thing is, this is the kind of thing that does happen occasionally with collectibles...somebody finds a Davinci sketch used as a book mark in a garage sale copy of The Joy of Cooking or something. It's not outside the realm of possibility.

But yeah, if its legit, then this is a major find, no doubt. I told him I'd like to see pictures for an article, I really want to see what he produces. That may tell all right there.

Counterfeit cards is another possibility.

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31 Jul 2013 20:21 #157499 by san il defanso
If that Worthpoint article ever sees the light of day, you had BETTER remember to put the URL in the article.

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31 Jul 2013 20:43 #157500 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Re: Selling MTG cards advice

Michael Barnes wrote: Yeah, if it is a con, he's definitely going long with it...but the thing is, this is the kind of thing that does happen occasionally with collectibles...somebody finds a Davinci sketch used as a book mark in a garage sale copy of The Joy of Cooking or something. It's not outside the realm of possibility.

But yeah, if its legit, then this is a major find, no doubt. I told him I'd like to see pictures for an article, I really want to see what he produces. That may tell all right there.

Counterfeit cards is.

I fixed this for you.

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01 Aug 2013 15:46 #157553 by SebastianBludd

Michael Barnes wrote: Yeah, if it is a con, he's definitely going long with it...but the thing is, this is the kind of thing that does happen occasionally with collectibles...somebody finds a Davinci sketch used as a book mark in a garage sale copy of The Joy of Cooking or something. It's not outside the realm of possibility.


Hell, there's at least one story like that in each episode of Antiques Road Show, if not multiple stories. Of course this Magic find strains credulity, but on the other hand it was found in a card collector's collection. It'd be (more) fishy if the only collectibles in the estate were Precious Moments figurines, or something like that.

Of course, I was one of those hopeful souls who bought one of those "discovered" Heroscape Wave 9 booster packs from eBay a few weeks ago where it turned out to be a SKU error, so I suppose you could color me optimistic about these sorts of things.

Also, I'm not familiar with counterfeit Magic cards, so how easy would it be to fool game shop owners who sell them? Are the fakes usually that good?

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01 Aug 2013 16:38 #157554 by dragonstout
There are some damn good fakes out there. I own a jeweler's loupe and blacklight to help test for fakes, and run about a half-dozen tests on any high-value card. I still missed one, and brought it to a big tournament to ask for expert opinions. One major internet retailer wasn't sure but gave it a 75% (or was it higher? I forget) shot at being real (it's not).

I'd say it might be easy-ish to fool a small-time game shop owner, harder to fool a big-time retailer who has someone on staff who specializes in early cards. One fake I bought (and caught, and returned) was from a medium-sized retailer with a very good reputation.

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01 Aug 2013 17:46 #157564 by Michael Barnes
Any time there's thousands of dollars to be made off a paper product, there's forgery.

This is why getting very valuable cards graded and appraised is important...experts know what to look for, and it's not always obvious stuff. There might have been a tiny smudge or hair or piece of dust on the original plate that the card was printed from that doesn't show up in a forgery. Or there can be misaligned text or images from scanning/duplication. Colors can be off, images can be off-center, and so forth.

Small shops don't tend to appraise cards in the same way, but they also don't tend to be in the market for $1000+ cards The bigger shops that do a larger collectors' business are the ones that are going to really do the tests.

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01 Aug 2013 21:18 #157579 by bomber
Replied by bomber on topic Re: Selling MTG cards advice
i cant quite wrap my head around the concept of a fucking game printing out a file that exists digitally, deciding to artificially limit how many are printed, and then convince enough people that they cant just print their own shit out as and when (like I would) and thus create a huge million dollar industry based on nothing more than utter fuckwaddery. Thank fuck when my old research colleague Jeremy Duck (who I later found out had placed highly in some UK national MTG tournaments) tried to show me this game he was into I was like, yeah, seems kind of cool but what, you have to buy loads of cards and the good ones actually cost more money because theyre rare? fuck that. I'm rarely the voice of wisdom but given my own compulsion with wasting money, I think I dodged a bullet there.

Do you ever get guys turning up to big conventions and tournaments with home printed or even hand drawn Black Loter cards? I would so totally do that
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01 Aug 2013 21:21 #157580 by wadenels

ldsdbomber wrote: Do you ever get guys turning up to big conventions and tournaments with home printed or even hand drawn Black Loter cards? I would so totally do that


I would totally pay to see you show up to play at a tourney with a hand drawn Black Loter card.
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01 Aug 2013 21:56 #157583 by Michael Barnes
Now that has got to be one of the best typos ever here at F:AT.

Some tournaments actually do allow proxies like that, they tend to be more causal and not like national championships or anything like that.

The point of the rarity has become somewhat obscured. When Magic first came out, the idea was that the rarer cards would be extremely powerful but actually have less utility than, say, a 1 CC creature with flying. They'd be harder to use. But some cards, like the Moxes and Black Lotus, were actually STUPIDLY powerful AND useful- so they were quickly restricted or even banned.

But you see, at first Magic was written to be an _ante_ game. You could put that really rare Black Lotus in your deck, but you'd be _risking_ it. As written in the first editions of Magic, both players put a random card from their deck on the table as stakes, with the winner taking the loser's card. There were specific cards that affected ante in some of the earliest sets.

But it didn't pan out like that. People didn't play ante, largely because they came to realize that certain cards were exceptionally rare, and even at that early stage quite valuable because they were desirable and in demand. I don't think Garfield and co. initially realized that there would be a collector's market, singles sales, and all of that. I think they really thought that the rarity would be a factor in ante play. I don't think they realized that people would go out and spend $100+ to get four Royal Assassins and four Oubliettes.

What they didn't count on was the psychological power-trip/competitive angle of the game, the metagame, and the speculator market getting in on it. At first, rarity wasn't even printed on the cards. The first packs I opened I had no idea what the rares were. We started to see that some cards were obviously more common- I'd have five Benalish Heroes but I'd see a Force of Nature and had no idea where the hell that card came from.

That was really an awesome stage for Magic, this kind of wild frontier atmosphere it had. Five color, 70 card decks with everything but the kitchen sink in them. Constant speculation that the next set was going to introduce ORANGE or RAINBOW mana. Discovering those first two card and three card combos.

Now, the rarity is still an important part of the competitive tournament scene and organized play, especially sealed deck/booster draft events. It really serves WotC no financial purpose to NOT just run off sheets and sheets of Black Lotuses. But it affects how the game is played, what cards are in the mix, and what is going on in the metagame.

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01 Aug 2013 22:38 #157585 by Black Barney
the most fun I've ever had paying Magic was playing for Ante. I remember being devastated when I lost both my Demonic Hordes.

I didn't know forging Magic cards was actually a big deal but yeah I guess it makes sense. They should make a sequel to The Counterfeiters and have them doing Magic cards.

/offensive

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01 Aug 2013 22:46 #157586 by jeb
Replied by jeb on topic Re: Selling MTG cards advice
Until very recently, no rares were more or less rare than any others. Black Lotus was printed as many times as Blaze of Glory. But one of them is amazing, and one is a piece of shit. Being able to tell the difference is the game.

Ante was not stopped because people didn't play ante--it was in the rules. Ante was stopped because it's gambling. It's children: gambling. The game was popular beyond their wildest imagining, the secondary market formed and was robust, and all of a sudden kids were crying to Mom about losing their Juzam in ante and the lawyers said, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

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01 Aug 2013 22:49 #157587 by tscook
Replied by tscook on topic Re: Selling MTG cards advice

jeb wrote: Until very recently, no rares were more or less rare than any others. Black Lotus was printed as many times as Blaze of Glory. But one of them is amazing, and one is a piece of shit. Being able to tell the difference is the game.

Ante was not stopped because people didn't play ante--it was in the rules. Ante was stopped because it's gambling. It's children: gambling. The game was popular beyond their wildest imagining, the secondary market formed and was robust, and all of a sudden kids were crying to Mom about losing their Juzam in ante and the lawyers said, yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.


The point is rares are no longer printed~

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01 Aug 2013 22:51 #157588 by ChristopherMD
Somebody really needs to mock up a Black Loter card now.

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01 Aug 2013 23:13 #157589 by dragonstout
Barnes' post hit on a lot of reasons why things are the way they are, mostly boiling down to the fact that Garfield's vision of how the game would be played is very, very different from how it's currently played. Those early days were crazy and awesome. I miss ante. Garfield knew how crazily powerful Black Lotus and the Moxes were, he just didn't think it'd be a big deal, because they'd be so rare. He didn't predict that people would buy so much that they'd be able to create unbeatable decks, and if they did...hey, pretty nice problem to have!

Back in the day, there theoretically was a deck that was unbeatable on the first turn 99% of the time...just pack your deck full of Black Lotuses, Fireballs, and Channels. But it would have been incredibly difficult given that Lotus and Channel are both rare.

As for why the supply of Black Lotus is "artificially limited"...i.e. why don't they just print more? It's complicated. Back in the day, there was a set printed called Chronicles; it reprinted some of the big hits from the extremely rare Arabian Nights, Legends, etc., including the Elder Dragon Legends. People who had spent a bunch of money to acquire those cards saw the value of those cards drop down to zilch because so much Chronicles was printed. People left Magic because of it. Huge outcry. So Wizards made a list of cards, the Reserve List, and promised to never reprint anything on it ever again. This list, of course, includes the Power 9. Every set had to add a few cards to the reserve list, until they decided that the whole idea was a terrible one, and stopped adding cards (and also scaled back the list a bit).

A few years back, in a very limited edition boxed set, they reprinted a few Reserve List cards; nothing too crazy valuable, and they used a loophole that allowed them to print FOIL versions of the Reserve List cards. There were then two completely mysterious meetings at Wizards headquarters: one had Stephen Menendian (outspoken promoter of Vintage Magic, which allows the Power 9), Ben Bleiweiss (owner of StarCityGames), and more. The other group, we know nothing about. The topic of discussion: abolishing the reserve list. Both Stephen and Ben were in favor of abolishing it.

The following week, Wizards officially stated that they would *not* use foils to break the Reserve List ever again, and made their Reserve List promise even stronger. No one who works at Wizards or who went to those mysterious meetings is ever allowed to talk about it.

So that's why they'll never print another Black Lotus, even though of course, it would make a ton of money for Wizards.


This month, however, they *are* reprinting the most expensive card of the modern era, "Jace, the Mind Sculptor", whose prices were around $150 before the announcement. Not to mention they just did "Modern Masters", which was basically Chronicles Redux, and reprinted a crapton of expensive cards. But all from post-Reserve List.

Every Vintage tournament in the USA except one allows proxies, by the way. So yes, people do show up to tournaments with "Black Lotus" scrawled in sharpie on a land, and get to treat it as such.
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