From jonandek’s MtG Vault

Found these on my phone and I thought the MtG collectors here might find them entertaining. Vintage MtG sealed product videos, all from 2015. Each one is like 1-2 minutes long only. This is the reason why I don’t collect sealed product in Pokemon. I WILL open it eventually.

Sealed (Alpha or Beta?) Starter Deck Box:
vimeo.com/464813996/179d46a971

Sealed (Alpha or Beta?) Starter Deck Box 2:
vimeo.com/464814042/85cb4b73c1

Sealed Alpha Starter Deck:
vimeo.com/464813904/4e86ff3d32

My voice is quiet in the first two videos because I’m in a bank vault. It’s quiet in the second because my kids are very young and are sleeping!

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Haha cool videos, how come you opened the starter brick? Were you going to open all the starters or part them out?

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This is incredible! There are a handful of people who probably have those sealed deck cases!

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Thanks. Yeah it was pretty cool. I kept it sealed for a few months, then I was just dying to know if it was alpha or beta so I had to open it. Main lesson for me was don’t buy sealed product. Some people can keep it sealed forever. Not me!

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Crazy! Awesome to see how similar Media Factory released Pokemon product to MTG it is almost identical. The decks also open the same way!

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Very cool. I’ve never opened any base set pokemon starter decks. Have opened quite a lot of mtg though. Quite a bit back in the 90s and also some around the time that I made these videos.

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Holy shit. Oh man. And I thought I was nuts for opening (what was at the time) two $500 Unlimited starters and a $550 Revised booster box lol. That Beta starter brick…I don’t even want to know how much that cost you. I’ve never opened Alpha or Beta and I can only imagine that it’s a magical experience. I’m assuming you sold the Beta starters? And if they were Alpha, I’m assuming you would’ve opened them? And did you end up opening the Alpha starter – or did you nope out of it after seeing the Righteousness? lol

Super cool to see!

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Thx. I did indeed sell/trade the beta starters. I had waited to open the box until the prices of beta starters put me at a breakeven point. If it was alpha I would have hit the jackpot, but as it was I broke dead even.

I opened that alpha starter, couldn’t resist. The other rare was a jade monolith (ouch!) but there was an icy manipulator in the uncommons, and pretty much every good common except lightning bolt. I still have a bunch of the cards from it in their raw, pack fresh mintiness, plus the box and instruction manual

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Nice! Re: the Jade Statue – oof. It’s a tough situation to be in because Jade Statue is the likely second rare (the second rare is usually, in my understanding, the one directly above the first rare on the sheet – which Jade Statue is). So it would be a tough deck to sell with Righteousness as the first rare. So I can definitely understand opening it and hoping for that wild-card second rare lol.

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Exactly. It was the exact rare it mapped to on the sheet. Ironically I didn’t buy the deck it was part of a trade. Long story but while I was of course hoping for a P9 or dual land, I had never opened an alpha starter so the experience was awesome. Alpha was almost mythical where I grew up. We barely got beta. Anyways, finding these old videos was fun. Glad others enjoyed them too

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Amazing

When you have lost something precious to you, there’s nothing like the feeling of getting it back. This was my alpha black lotus that I sold with my entire alpha set in 2016. It will never leave my possession again.


Considered one of the top 3 copies in the world after the sole BGS 10 pristine.

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Great pickup and story! Was it always on your mind to reacquire the Black Lotus? Did your Lugia sale influence your decision?

@jonandek, that is easily the nicest Alpha Lotus I’ve ever seen. I don’t see a speck of whitening on that thing. Congratulations on the re-acquisition!

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Thanks! Consensus among top collectors is that it may be THE nicest one outside of the pristine 10 copy. When I say “top 3” I’m hedging because after all grading is subjective. Plus kind of an awkward flex.

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Thanks! Lugia did not influence my decision at all. However I would say that re-balancing my collecting hobbies is definitely something that selling my graded pokemon cards had made possible. The cost for this lotus and the other Alpha cards I acquired was quite high though… suffice to say I no longer have a graded no rarity collection. :smiling_face_with_tear:

Now I just have a mint copy of every ENGLISH pokemon set card printed from base set 1st through the end of the EX era.

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how much does a gem mint alpha black lotus actually cost, if you don’t mind me asking. could be a big range for sensitivity reasons.

hardly see any for sale publicly and always wondered if it has returned to eclipse the top tier of pokemon.

It’s all good. MtG is incredibly nostalgic for me, and honestly I may have never had the chance to get this card back again. Plus I’ve also acquired some other obscene alpha goodies which I’ll post here soon as well. Don’t feel bad for me - it’s a no regrets trade that I entered into willingly. I love collectibles and shifting them around is something I’ve always done

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A “Quad+“ like this has been valued twice recently in trades at $500k+, including mine. With conservative trade values. So in that sense it has eclipsed the recent zard sales. Or maybe it’s more that the zard hasn’t quite caught up to it because a quad+ Alpha lotus has been valued higher than $400k for some time.

That said, I don’t think a cash sale has happened at that level before or even close to it. That’s partially because people don’t want to recognize taxable gains and also because it’s just a lot of f@cking money! So in that sense zard can still be considered the winner.

One of the biggest differences between mtg collecting and pokemon is that mtg is almost entirely a BGS hobby at the high end, with sub-grades being obsessed over and causing HUGE differences in price. Which really speaks to small differences in card quality making a big difference. While Pokemon (as everyone here knows) is almost an entirely PSA hobby. A “strong 10” in pokemon will maybe go a for a bit more than a “regular 10” but not always. Generally a mis-graded 10 or a 10 with a strong visible flaw will get a discount. That’s one thing I love about Pokemon - the PSA grading system makes collecting graded cards so much cleaner.

Most strong PSA 10 black lotus cards, and every other key PSA 10 mtg card for that matter, have been cracked over the years and converted to BGS, often with great results. The sole Pristine Alpha black lotus was a cracked PSA 10.

A PSA 10 alpha black lotus will be up for auction this January in the PWCC block. It’s my friend’s card and I’ve seen it in person. It deserves its PSA grade but should never convert to a beckett quad. I expect that card to sell for north of $200k but nowhere near $500k. But it will be fun to watch as I don’t remember the last time one was auctioned.

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