Early Magic the Gathering Collection

On Jul 24, 7:19 am, d... RemoveThis @gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:

> That's nice.

Since he _is_ selling them by auction, it won't be necessary to advise
him that if the cards are pre-fourth-edition, they may be more
valuable than he might realize.

Finding out that Kaja Foglio did the art for a handful of the cards -
so did Phil Foglio, and even Brian Snoddy - caused me to check it out.
One comic book store actually has individual cards loose for 10 cents
each (including some uncommons!) and I picked up Bird Maiden there.

Later, a used book store in my neighborhood had a book with pictures
of *every Magic: the Gathering card ever made!* so I thought I'd pick
that up as a useful guide. It noted that unlike the Mox amulets, Serra
Angel had never been removed from the core set...

it went right up to the fourth edition.

In the fifth, it _was_ removed - and it came back in the seventh (or
the eighth) as a rare instead of an uncommon. Knowing about its
importance helps me realize the joke in a What's New page...

Picked up a few more cards, having had my interest piqued.

Wikipedia says fifth edition cards don't have a V on them except if
they're in simplified Chinese. I have a few English ones with a V, so
I'm wondering about Wikipedia more than I'm worried I bought
forgeries.

John Savard

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:40:55 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsavard RemoveThis @ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>On Jul 24, 7:19 am, d... RemoveThis @gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> That's nice.
>
>Since he _is_ selling them by auction, it won't be necessary to advise
>him that if the cards are pre-fourth-edition, they may be more
>valuable than he might realize.

True. It's not quite the "only ever goes up" investment, but they aren't making
any more of the early cards.

>Finding out that Kaja Foglio did the art for a handful of the cards -
>so did Phil Foglio, and even Brian Snoddy - caused me to check it out.
>One comic book store actually has individual cards loose for 10 cents
>each (including some uncommons!) and I picked up Bird Maiden there.

Bird Maiden was a common to start with, and did get reprinted. It's the
Happiest Card in early Magic...

>Later, a used book store in my neighborhood had a book with pictures
>of *every Magic: the Gathering card ever made!* so I thought I'd pick
>that up as a useful guide. It noted that unlike the Mox amulets, Serra
>Angel had never been removed from the core set...

At the time that was true. The Magic Encyclopedia has five volumes at last
count, though the last one came out _several_ years back.

>Picked up a few more cards, having had my interest piqued.
>
>Wikipedia says fifth edition cards don't have a V on them except if
>they're in simplified Chinese. I have a few English ones with a V, so
>I'm wondering about Wikipedia more than I'm worried I bought forgeries.

Wikipedia is correct on this (as a quick look through the pictures of -actual
cards- on Gatherer, gatherer.wizards.com , will show). _Sixth_ Edition was the
first main set to have an expansion symbol, and it was the VI with bars top and
bottom, correct. Some later-reprinted Fifth Edition cards - for Battle Royale
perhaps, or Beatdown? - were given a V symbol even though they didn't have it
in the 5E set release. So your V-symboled ones are later versions of something
that appeared in 5E (or appeared first with that particular art in 5E, as
Wikipedia notes, since 5E was where they finally terminated the last of the
art contracts from back in the beginning that paid royalties per amount of
cards the art appeared on, rather than per set the card appeared in - but they
had NO way to know what would explode from Alpha...). Their copyright lines
should probably give you some clue.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from dbd RemoveThis @vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

David DeLaney <dbd DeleteThis @gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote:
>Quadibloc <jsavard DeleteThis @ecn.ab.ca> wrote:
>>Wikipedia says fifth edition cards don't have a V on them except if
>>they're in simplified Chinese. I have a few English ones with a V, so
>>I'm wondering about Wikipedia more than I'm worried I bought forgeries.
>
>Wikipedia is correct on this (as a quick look through the pictures of -actual
>cards- on Gatherer, gatherer.wizards.com , will show). _Sixth_ Edition was the
>first main set to have an expansion symbol, and it was the VI with bars top and
>bottom, correct. Some later-reprinted Fifth Edition cards - for Battle Royale
>perhaps, or Beatdown? - were given a V symbol even though they didn't have it
>in the 5E set release. So your V-symboled ones are later versions of something
>that appeared in 5E (or appeared first with that particular art in 5E, as
>Wikipedia notes, since 5E was where they finally terminated the last of the
>art contracts from back in the beginning that paid royalties per amount of
>cards the art appeared on, rather than per set the card appeared in - but they
>had NO way to know what would explode from Alpha...). Their copyright lines
>should probably give you some clue.

And, come to think of it? Taking the names of those V-symboled cards and
putting _them_ into Gatherer will show you which expansions and sets they
have appeared in ... and you can click on the various set symbols to see
pictures of what that particular card looked like in that particular set.
Which might track these down for you faster than nearly anything else.

Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from dbd DeleteThis @vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.

On Aug 13, 11:33 am, d....DeleteThis@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:

> Wikipedia is correct on this

Yes; I took another look, and the symbol was the one from "Visions";
which re-appeared in Battle Royale just like others re-appeared in
Chronicles.

John Savard