Thank you very much! I’ve been basically collecting equal amounts of Pokemon and Magic recently. I love both equally; it feels wrong to only collect one!
100% agree re: Zendikar and Innistrad. My favorite blocks of all time, though, are definitely Lorwyn and Shadowmoor blocks. I’ve always adored the art from those sets. I plan on picking up those boxes at some point as well.
I love the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor blocks as well! Great art and a very cohesive and imaginative theme. Do you plan on collecting complete MTG sets besides Alpha as well? Lately I’ve been working on completing mint condition sets for some of my favorite older sets (Alliances, Mirage block, Mercadian Masques, and Future Sight). It’s a decent challenge and WAY cheaper than trying to do the same in Pokemon right now. Old sealed product is much cheaper in MTG as well, so I can actually justify opening it to build out my sets.
I’m like 50% done with Legends, and like 10% done with Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and P3K. And then I’m missing 1 card for The Dark (Blood Moon – of which I’ve been sent like 3 copies so far, none of which were actually NM lol). I’ll be finishing up all of those, but I’m not buying a ton for LEG/ARN/ATQ/P3K because the prices have gone up sooooooooo much. It’s very tough for me to justify spending $6.5k of store credit on a NM Tabernacle when I can spend $6.5k of store credit on a NM Alpha Time Vault. In what world should those two cards be worth the same amount of money?
I also think I’m going to try to do all of the mint foils sets up through Innistrad block. But I haven’t started on that yet. That’s an awesome slate of sets you’re collecting – getting truly mint older cards is harder than people think. Most of the stuff from those sets was (and still is) not worth a ton so basically no one penny sleeved and preserved it. Definitely a cool challenge!
Gaea’s Liege is a staple in my EDH deck right now. Looking forward to seeing what you get and hope you get some Alpha Beta heavy hitters! Congrats on the pickups!
Nice! The four horsemen sets are great as well and are a true challenge to collect. I bought a few high graded non-RL cards from these sets back in January, but I’ve been mostly avoiding them now for the same exact reason. In my opinion, these sets are slightly overrated from a design perspective, especially compared to the sets from Alliances through Weatherlight and Kamigawa through Innistrad. Still, they are very iconic and the low supply makes them way more collectible.
Also, I would take that Time Vault over a Tabby for the same price in a heartbeat! Currently, I think the market way overvalues non-ABU Reserved List cards. I think a lot of players turned into first time speculators are particularly attracted to these cards since they are more familiar and get more exposure on MTGFinance and on Rudy’s YouTube channel. In reality, I think these types of cards (Tabby, Mox Diamond, Gaea’s Cradle, Revised duals, etc.) stand to lose a lot of value if there is a large decline in the popularity of paper eternal formats outside of cEDH, which itself is a very proxy friendly format. The value might tank as well in the unlikely event that WotC gets rid of the Reserved List. There’s a lot of paranoia among speculators surrounding the possibility of removal of the Reserved List, but I can rest easy knowing that, for example, my Jeweled Bird probably wasn’t widely speculated upon when I bought it due to an ugly Chronicles reprint. We’ll see how things play out, but I don’t think the cards I’m collecting will stand to lose too much value in the future due to the lack of speculation on them at the moment.
Absolutely. I think being on the reserved list is literally a meaningless designation for many cards. Like, they could reprint Jeweled Bird at common in a core set and it wouldn’t affect the value of the original at all. People are buying it to collect, not to play with. Collectors won’t care about reprints. Reserved list only means something for cards that people are only buying to play with (i.e., Mox Diamond, LED, Grim Monolith).
I actually disagree with you, though, on your statement that:
The value of those cards is held up basically entirely by EDH (and speculators). Paper Legacy/Vintage have been basically extinct for several years at this point. Even though cEDH players are generally accepting of proxies, people don’t like to play with proxies. And proxies are totally out of the question for people who like to bling out decks, who are super common in both the EDH and cEDH communities.
I do agree that those cards could lose a significant amount of value still. But I think the risk is relatively limited for the high-end stuff – including Tabernacles. Most people who are committed enough to Magic to have a Tabernacle (or Alpha duals or what have you) in their EDH deck aren’t going to suddenly drop paper Magic. The sorts of people who have those cards are enfranchised, long-time players.
The risk is much greater for Revised duals since everyone owns them (not just enfranchised, long-time players). But high-end cards (meaning cards that have been $1000+ for years) are primarily in the hands of people who have been dedicated to Magic for a long time. I could see Tabernacle retracing back to last year’s prices, but I have a hard time seeing it lose most of its value simply because the people who own them are already hardcore players/collectors.
Those are CK’s current prices for both – insane!!! I’ve been considering just ordering the Vault, but it would derail my Alpha power plans lol.
There are a lot of crazy pricing anomalies in MTG right (just like as in Pokemon). Unlimited prices have gotten wayyyyyyyy too close to Beta prices. And Alpha just seems undervalued relative to everything RL except for Beta lol.
I really appreciate your perspective Zorloth! I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the Reserved List is highly overrated and is, for the most part, a trap for speculators. People over at MTG Finance get very defensive when this is brought up. Also, I’m a jaded Legacy player who’s watched the paper format slowly die after the glory days of the weekly SCG Legacy opens, so I might be a little overly skeptical of the value of RL legacy staples. I don’t play EDH/cEDH, so your perspective on those formats is very helpful. It’s great that EDH players still value having the older cards. Though, as a set collector, it’s hard for me to justify that Mox Diamond is worth 30x than the, in my eyes, almost equally iconic Hermit Druid.
I also agree with your perspective on Alpha. I’ve been eyeing a few Alpha cards and waiting for them to come up for auction.
No problem; great to hear your perspective, too! I think the reason for that is the people over there are more players/speculators than collectors. I remember reading a discussion there where people were saying that (unplayable) P3K rares should be worthless because they can be reprinted at any time. But if a card already only appeals to collectors, then reprinting it won’t affect the value. They could remove Raging River from the RL and reprint it to the moon and back, and the Alpha (and even Beta/Unlimited) version wouldn’t budge.
It’s the same reason why players/speculators get caught in the RL trap that you mention. No one’s buying some garbage Ice Age RL rare to play with. The mere fact that it can’t be reprinted is meaningless because players already don’t want it, and collectors don’t care about reprints. It’s definitely a trap as it relates to unplayable cards. I don’t think it’s a trap as it relates to format staples, though. The fact that, say, Mox Diamond is on the RL should make it more valuable because its value is derived from its playability.
Re; the glory days – ugh, I miss watching paper SCG legacy streams lol. Some tournament organizer should try to revitalize the format; I think there’s a huge untapped (no pun intended) demand for paper legacy.
Nothing too major, but I’ve acquired some cool cards over the past several weeks:
Ever since I first laid eyes on these cards, I knew I had to get these in 10. Gorgeous. I would put these above even the EX Dragon ones, honestly.
Won this in the most recent PWCC. TRR exs are easily the highlight of the entire EX Series, IMO. They’re such unique cards, and Scyther’s my favorite (and one of the lowest pop!). It also happens to be a very strong 10 – it’s clearly a pack fresh, minty card. Very happy with it.
Same goes for the Zapdos in terms of condition (based on the certs, these were almost certainly from the same submission). Quite happy with this one, too.
Another PWCC win. Nothing too crazy, but I got it for NM buylist price so I was happy lol. It’s also the exact sort of 9 I love – in pristine condition but with abysmal centering. Outside of the centering, it is as clean as it gets. A cool side note about this card: it’s a pop 1 in PSA 10. So any PSA 10 Alpha collector (except for one lucky person) has to settle for a 9 of Veteran Bodyguard!
And some random raw NM store credit pickups for my Legends set. I’m like 90% done at this point, but I do still need Tabernacle, unfortunately (I just can’t bring myself to spend $5k of store credit on a Tabernacle when I could pick up an Alpha Time Vault or something for the same price):
(That bend in the bottom right corner of the Carpet is on the sleeve, not the card, thankfully lol).
No Alpha power yet. I’ve been too impatient with my store credit . It’s my next task, though, I swear lol. Hopefully I’ll have one in hand within the next month or two. Thanks for reading/looking!
Haha, you’re not going mad. It is mislabeled. In fact, there’s at least one other pair with mismatched labels, too. So the pop should be the same, but (at least) two copies of each are labeled incorrectly.
Such amazing artwork on those MTG cards Zor! I can’t get enough of those.
Also you guys are just poisoning me with your EX filth . Before we know it, I will be picking some up, I just know it. Some of them are so good. Koike undoubtedly in the pantheon of tasteful CG artists.
EX era was literally my first introduction to Pokemon, even before the games, so looking over this thread was a beautiful wave of nostalgia. You have an amazing collection! It always makes me laugh how early EX cards make the Pokemon look like they’re gonna beat you up or something lol. I know collecting EX era again is going to be a euphoric experience for me, but I just can’t decide what to collect next! I don’t wanna deviate too hard from my collection plan, but I ended up splurging on a NM Gengar EX from FRLG lol I am getting like giddy waiting for it to arrive! Anyway, your collection is so good it’s making me question my choices lmao! Keep it up, I’d love to see more when you get the chance
Thanks so much for the kind words! Pretty much the same with me – the EX Series was my childhood and the cards (particularly the exs) are very special to me. No other era touches it, in my mind. If you also love the EX Series, then I highly recommend jumping in. It’s a challenging and highly rewarding collecting experience.
And yes, I plan on posting a collection update soon! I’ve made an insane amount of progress since my last post – I’ve acquired dozens of more gem mint holos/exs for my sets, some beautiful Alpha, and plenty more. In my next post, I’ll showcase my current progress with my gem mint sets – I’ve acquired some key pieces since my last update and am excited to show them!
Thanks again for the comment and for looking at my thread .
First, I completed the gorgeous DF Latias/Latios pair. As many know, I’m primarily a fan of the early EX Series. But Latias/Latios are my favorite Pokemon, and the Dragon Frontiers exs certainly do them justice. Really happy to have these two together!
Before I give an update on my gem mint PSA/CGC set progress, I’ll also show off some other cool cards I’ve recently acquired:
All of the above were store credit buys, with the exception of Jace, which I just won via PWCC. Jace has been my favorite MTG card since it was released. A combination of the artwork, its power, and its enduring iconic status make it very appealing to me. In my view, Jace TMS is the most iconic and important MTG card released since Y2K. The duals are part of an ongoing project where I add one dual into each store credit order I make. The goal is to accumulate enough to trade into a piece of NM Alpha power. I have 15 here so far, and many in transit. None of these are impressive cards on their own, but the piece of power that they will turn into will sure as hell be a sight to behold.
Also, some cool PSA 10 reverse holos, all of which I personally pulled:
And now, my gem mint PSA/CGC set progress. For those who don’t know, my goal is to complete the first five EX sets in gem mint condition (as designated by PSA/CGC). I have all of these sets complete in mint condition, but collecting them in gem mint, truly pristine condition is an extra layer of challenge. I’m also passively collecting the TRR exs in PSA 10 as well as some other exs. But the main goal right now is completing the first five sets.
My apologies for the slightly out of order photos.
Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now with my sets. Big things on the horizon – if this update was lackluster, my next one sure as hell won’t be.
. It’s my next task, though, I swear lol. Hopefully I’ll have one in hand within the next month or two. Thanks for reading/looking!
. Before we know it, I will be picking some up, I just know it. Some of them are so good. Koike undoubtedly in the pantheon of tasteful CG artists.
.