Happy Monday to all! I had a question in regards to the uncut sheets. As I love adding super out of the ordinary type of pieces of modern art around the crib, I’ve really been eyeing uncut sheets. I’ve never even owned an mtg card, yet I picked up the War of the Spark uncut sheet a while back haha, haven’t even displayed it since I’m just really not into magic, more of a novelty piece to collect. Anyways, I first saw those sheets years back and they seemed to be more affordable, now the price seems extremely out of reach for me presently.
I had some keywords on alerts and I often get different listings pop up, but I’m kind of confused with a few things. Some of the sheets being advertised come with descriptions suggesting they were distributed at some point by some X marketing company (the name slips my mind right now) and others just don’t mention anything and say something like “super rare factory uncut sheet of ___ set”. I know if ever I get ripped off, I can always charge back or whatever, but what’s the deal with these sheets?
(1) Are these uncut sheets from whatever printing company handled the WOTC runs at the time and either an employee of either had some lying around, like were these ever “legal” from the company to own? Or were these SPECIFICALLY made to distribute at some point like the recent MTG War of the Spark one / some type of poster promo, etc. Like you can find the 30k+ one Fossil 1st on eBay but then you can find some 1-2k of non 1st base or whatnot or some type of weirder series of cards of the set and duplicated in a row… and is this market riddled with counterfeits?
(2) Were these limited to just Base/Fossil/Jungle, or they’ve existed for sale/leaked for other sets? Like does an Aquapolis uncut sheet exist or something even from a set like B&W Dragons Exalted that I really enjoy the artwork…
The sheets I think you’re referring to are the Kaybee toys promotional uncut Fossil holos (unlimited) Sheets. These were printed for the purpose of distribution at the roughly 1300+ locations as an award for winning a sweepstakes giveaway in their stores (1 per store). These are the only sheets that were bulk distributed for the purpose of promotion and are all labeled as such on the bottom front. There were other types of uncut sheets given out at tournament style competitions (usually WOTC sanctioned but not official tournaments) but far less frequently.
For your intents and purposes, the Kaybee toys Fossil sheet is the only sheet that you’ll commonly see, aside from a large quantity of a Neo Genesis commons sheets that a third party cut up and sold on ebay over the last several years. There are a few other uncut sheets which are known to exist in large quantity in third party hands like the Neo genesis… a print of Mewtwo ex sheet is another example. The Vaporeon & Kangaskhan PCD holo sheet is another example of one was given away in relatively small quantity as tournament awards. Any others you find are roughly equal in rarity and came from a variety of unofficial sources.
There are proofing samples sent to the Nintendo print coordinator for every set released, but Nintendo has been far better at keeping their products from reaching third party hands than WOTC. Just like Nintendo, WOTC received proofing samples of each release and that’s where a small quantity of sheets were retained.
I completely read this title in a Jerry Seinfeld voice and i feel that really dates me.
But i have zero information on sheets but would like to thank @jkanly for that small yet very informative write up. As i always say, you learn something new in this hobby everyday
@dizzle24, damn why you profiling me like that… spot on die hard fan here lol… I’ve told girls on first dates it wouldn’t go anywhere after their answer on my Friends vs. Seinfeld debate haha
@jkanly, Thank you… exactly what I wanted to know and what I thought as well in terms of the quantity available… I used to see videos every other week someone picking one up from TCA or whatever and they seemed fairly priced but the listings dried up and now the few listed seemed a little bit exaggerated, I’ll just wait for something to pop up thank you!
