I have MtG cards back from the first printing of the game. I played it way back when, and even have some packs I never opened. Some cards may have some value just for being that old (which is to say, not much but more than I paid), and some are probably worth a fair amount. Not all of the cards are the first printing. We played for a while, and I used to be able to quote chapter and verse about why a color on the edge meant a card was from a certain print run.
Can anyone point me towards a good place for valuing the cards fairly? They range in condition from Good to New, with most Very Good.
True. The reason these cards are so valuable is in 1995 wizards of the Coast printed a set called Chronicles which reprinted a great deal of expensive cards tanking their secondary value. This pissed off a large enough group that they instituted something called The Reserve List which was essentially a promise not to ever reprint in paper Magic certain cards. Many of the cards on this list are powerful and still used today in formats that allow them but because the supply is so low they are very very expensive. Dual lands such as Volcanic Island and Badlands and all the cards I named in my previous post are on this list.
They’ve since printed a number of new dual lands, but they all have some drawback or another, such as coming into play tapped, or causing damage to you when you use them, or the like. Also unlike the originals, most of the new ones (aside from the ones from Ravnica) don’t have the basic land types: A Volcanic Island counts as both an island and as a mountain, which can be significant (and usually beneficial) when interacting with various other cards.
Dual lands really shot up in value as Legacy became more popular. I remember when I was in college and dual lands rotated out of Extended. Their values dropped precipitously as very few people played the older formats and I snapped up a good lot of them to resell once everyone was done dumping theirs on the market. I didn’t keep great track of how much I made (and since becoming an accountant I really laugh at how I conducted “business” back then) but I was selling them for around twice as much as I paid for them, which was a pretty good return on a year’s money. They since appreciated another ten times or more (I haven’t looked) in the roughly 15 years since then, which is still a great return, but one that didn’t look so obvious as it was when they first dropped off the main tournament scene.
I also a few years earlier than that bought someone’s collection that had a full set of power as well as a bunch of other old cards. I immediately turned around and sold it piece-meal since I spent my entire savings on it, and again would have made a ton of money had I instead held on to it, but the same can be said for stocks like Amazon and Microsoft; no one knew early on just how massive they were going to be.
I also am reminded of the fact that I lent my Chrono Trigger cartridge, one of the few gifts I got as a child for Christmas from a relative that I remember which relative it was from, to someone at school and never saw it again or even remembered who I lent it to. Back when I actually wanted to play it again several years ago, I was rather shocked at how much the physical cart was worth, especially since I had played it on an emulator since then.
As you should be. If you want to take some pictures of things (particularly the sealed boosters) and post them, many of us will be happy to offer some generally helpful commentary. How many cards are we talking here? Stored how?
Several hundred, nut sure how many are still in packs. I’ll have to check those. Stored plastic boxes, inside other boxes, inside yet other boxes. I may start laying them out this weekend.
I need to go and see what I got down in my basement. I had quite a number of the cards on that list at one point or another. I think I was a bit overly generous and allowed some people to pick through my cards, but I’m sure I have some of them left.
Note that most of those cards need to be the specific printings shown there. Some have almost never been reprinted but some have. There are also a handful of more modern cards that have rare special printings on the list.
Yeah, before anyone gets too excited looking at that list, keep in mind that the ones with the black borders are from the original, Alpha printing, and are only super valuable if they’re from that specific printing. If you’ve got a reprint from one of the later editions, then it’s going to be worth about 1/10th of the value of the Alpha version.
Beta had black borders as well. As I recall, you told the difference between those and Alpha because Alpha had rounder corners than any of the other sets.
In fact, Beta sets used to be more in demand for play because some judges considered the Alpha cards marked due to the obvious corners unless you had a full deck of Alpha edition. I don’t know if that still holds true.
OK, granted that it’s only for specific printings, but I can see why most of those cards are on that list. But why Elvish Archers? They’re way underpowered by modern creature standards, and they were never all that rare. And what the heck are a Forest, Island, and Plains doing on that list? I thought that they only way a basic land could ever be worth anything was if it was a misprint, and those don’t look misprinted.
