So the wifey just found a huge binder in her mother’s house full of M:TG cards. She doesn’t know anything about the game (and neither do I) - basically, she got them from a relative and kept collecting them as though they were baseball cards.
There are oodles of 'em - all enclosed in their only little plastic sleeves, plus in plastic covering in the binder. Over 300 in all.
They all say “Deckmaster” on the back - I don’t know if that means they’re from a particular edition, or whatever.
Here’s a selection of the cards, which I picked out at random. I’ve listed them as “card name (card type) [numbers in corner*]”. I assume that’s all that matters:
Agility (Enchant Creature)
Benalish Hero (Summon Hero) [1/1]
Brainstorm (Instant)
Castle (Enchantment)
Coral Eel (Summon Creature) [2/1]
Crash of Rhinos (Summon Rhinos) [8/4]
Defiant Stand (Sorcery)
Ebony Charm (Instant)
Ethereal Champion (Summon Avatar) [3/4]
Fire Diamond (Artifact)
Fissure (Instant)
Forest (Land) - she has a bunch of these
Ghazban Ogre (Summon Ogre) [2/2]
Goblin Bully (Summon Creature) [2/1]
Goblin Shrine (Enchant Land)
*attack/defense, I’m guessing
ETA: I’m not trying to sell them here, for the record. Just wondering if there’s a market for this stuff.
If there’s any value in the set, it’ll be mostly in a few specific cards, with most of them being worth very little. The Forests, for instance (along with Plains, Islands, Swamps, and Mountains) are worth about a nickel a piece. On the other hand, if you have (for instance) one called Black Lotus, that’s worth hundreds of dollars.
The value will also depend on which set each card comes from (some have been reprinted many times). Do any of the cards have a black border on the front side? Do any have a little icon of some sort to the right of the card type, underneath the picture? Who is listed as having the copyright at the bottom, the artist or Wizards of the Coast?
About half have the black border, and a similar number have an icon to the bottom right of the main illustration - a chakra looking thing, a palm tree, and a crescent, for example.
They’re all copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast between '95 and '97.
Yeah, but it’s a Mona Lisa thing : it’s expensive because it’s famous for being expensive. It was an “illegal” card in tournaments for being too powerful before I even got into the game, and that was at the time of the 3rd or 4th edition…
I still have an unopened deck of Magic: The Gathering cards. I bought it in 1994. Says Revised Edition and Deckmaster on the front of the pack. Any idea what that’s worth?
That’s not true. It rotated out of Extended and Standard a long time ago true, and it’s banned in Legacy for power reasons, but it’s still legal in Vintage. And, as I’m sure you can imagine if you know the game at all, it’s played in more or less every single deck in that format.
Those icons are a quick 'n easy tipoff to approximate value.
If the icon is straight black & white, those are “common” cards - they’re probably worth no more than a quarter.
If the icon is black and a silvery-blue, they’re “uncommon” cards, and it’s probably worth checking their value. Unless they’re quite old, the value most likely won’t be really high, but you still might get a buck out of it.
If the icon is black and gold, you have a “rare” card. The value could go anywhere from a buck or so on up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.
If there’s a gaming store near you, pick up a price guide magazine. They only cost five bucks or so if I remember correctly. The store would probably do an appraisal for you, but that’s probably not worth the price on a typical collection.
ETA note to Snowboarder Bo: Do not open the deck. It’s worth more sealed.
Based on the symbols he mentions(palm tree is Mirage, crescent could be Arabian Nights, not sure what a chakra looking thing is), the symbols won’t tell you the rarity. That wasn’t introduced until Exodus, the third set of the Tempest block, which is after Mirage. You can use a website like Star City Games(www.starcitygames.com) to get a rough idea of the value. Keep in mind that the prices you find on a site like that are what dealers are selling it for. You won’t get anywhere near that price if you sell it to a dealer. If you sell it yourself, on ebay for example, you’ll possibly get more than a dealer would give, but only if you have something that’s valuable to draw people in.
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Agreed here, Without a Doubt. Catch 22 is, you don’t know, you COULD have a “God Pack” of cards though.*
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As per the OP, nothing sticks out as “good” for me either. Benalish Hero screams 5th edition to me. Oh yeah, that’s cause it has Banding.
I thought the Lotus was up to 1,800 - 2k?
Then again, The Power 9 didn’t have expansion symbols, and were all Alpha/Beta to begin with, correct?
Translated for the OP : The true money cards in the game do not have the icons that you are talking about, did not have a Copyright date on them, and are considerably more rounded on the edges than newer (95 or later) cards.
*God packs are packs of cards that for one reason or another, have more rare cards in them than they should. I know they exist, because I personally got one, Once. -5Ed.
This isn’t atcually very helpful for the OP, since they only started color-coding rarities via the set-symbol (located below the bottom right of the illustration - i.e., the palm tree, crescent, etc.) in more recent sets. In the sets of the vintage the OP seems to have (based on his description), all the set symbols were black, regardless of rarity.
Some of the cards the OP mentioned are going to be essentially valueless (the forests, for example, nobody is going to buy those for any price). If you’re curious to see what (if anything) those cards are worth, you might try looking them up on starcitygames.com - they have a search by name function which tells you how much they’re selling a given card for, and they’re usually fairly current and reasonable with their pricing.
Although anything sealed should probably be left that way until you have more informed guidance
In general, if it has a copyright line, it’s not very valuable. There are exceptions, but very, VERY few of them are worth more than about $20. The exception is if you see a copyright date of 1994 on a white-bordered card. Report back here immediately with high-quality scans, treat the card(s) with kid gloves and don’t do ANYTHING else until you get advice.
