Hello, I think I finally want to start collecting/opening boxes of MTG, I’ve always been attracted to the artwork of the cards, but I’ve never bought anything related to Magic.
So, where do I start? Where do I find informations on cards, what’s inside a box, what is the chase card. How do I defend against fake cards? There’s an equivalent of e4 for Magic? How do I explore the history of the tcg?
I mostly want to enoy the artwork and not make money/profit off the cards, so I’m fine with opening some of the new/cheap boxes or maybe buying bulk. (japanese is fine too)
Anyway any advice if appreciated since I know nothing
I don’t know much about MTG but whenever I want to relax and watch something entertaining I put on Alpha Investments youtube channel. A lot of good info on there!
The original sets are all a great challenge! I would recommend hunting singles for each set, especially The 4 horsemen: Arabian nights, legends, antiquities and the dark. A/b/u are the base set of mtg, but the cost basis naturally drastically increases. With that said prices aren’t that crazy for the rarity & age of these cards.
If you want to open packs, pretty much everything after the 4 horsemen are affordable. Urzas is a nice set/era. But most sets 2000s and beyond are super affordable to open. It really just comes down to preference as collecting is uncommon in mtg.
Lots of questions in your post. Sounds like you are brand new. Let me give you some recommendations:
Newer/Modern/Current Product: Buy from your LGS. Support them and they will almost always be very similar in pricing to online (probably slightly more). Collectability of modern stuff is not a big thing but if you enjoy it (plenty of people do) - wait until a set rotates out of standard so the cards aren’t being played in standard anymore and the prices drop significantly. Use “whatsinstandard.com” to figure this out. New set every 3 months.
In between standard modern product: There are sets released quite often that arent “standard playable” or a part of the 4 sets they release for the game every year. These are usually more fun and more exclusive and can be fun to collect. They produce a lot so just find what you like and go from there.
Vintage Product: “The older, the rarer, the minter, the better” applies to this just like anything else. Alpha is ridiculous rare and expensive. Grading cards isn’t huge in magic unless you in the vintage category and BGS reigns supreme in magic. Old foils are super cool and hard to find mint because they were played and still are played. The first little bit of magics release didn’t have foils though so keep this in mind.
What’s in a box: Modern stuff you can find 3 uncommons and a rare/mythic in every pack. Foils every few packs and mythics are every 4/5 packs or so. You usually get 1-2 rare/mythic foils in a box. Any card can be a foil so when collecting a set there is a full regular set and full foil set. Older vintage boxes have different ratios of foils, etc. Mythic rares are a more recent thing (past 10 years or so - dont remember exactly how long ago).
History of the TCG: wikipedia, books, youtube. There is INFINITE knowledge on the internet about the lore which a lot of people really love and is super interesting.
Ask your local gamestore for any information regarding the basics and they will be happy to help but if you don’t want to do that then youtube is your friend. It’s all on there.
i would say sets from 2020 are nice. i would go with the collectors box since they have all the different varieties (extended art, foil, etc.). And the collector boxes are the only ones where you may hit the premium chase cards. the art from all the recent sets are gorgeous.
Thank you for the detailed answer! Yep I’m new to MTG, I’ve only been collecting Pokemon (and a little of HP and Duel Masters), but I always liked the artwork of magic! I’ll try to build up my knowledge
From a super quick search Collectors boxes have like half the packs of a box(36), but they have a higher chance for profit and/or kind of cards you can find?
some would say they are your only chance at profit, because they have a much, much higher chance of getting chase cards. they only contain 12 packs ea box, so you won’t have a ton of bulk. MTG bulk is pretty much worthless…
There are way fewer MTG collectors than Pokemon card collectors. So there’s no MTG equivalent to E4.
Prices of cards are tied to their playability. So the ugliest card in a set might be the most expensive card in the set. And that card may then become worth significantly less if it’s reprinted, or if it becomes less playable. So many of the current cards will decrease in value significantly once they rotate out of standard (unless they’re playable in other formats).
If you want to collect sets by opening sealed product, then MTG is much better for that than Pokemon – solely because vintage sealed product is much less expensive. You can buy booster boxes of many less desirable 15-25 year old sets for <$400. Whereas in Pokemon there are zero cheap options for opening sets printed 8+ years ago.
99% of MTG collecting is centered around ABU and Arabian Nights. ABU stands for Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, which were the three print runs of the first set ever released (technically Alpha/Beta are the same set – ‘Limited Edition’ – and Unlimited is the second edition release of ‘Limited Edition’). All of them expensive and scarce – Unlimited isn’t anything like Base Unlimited. Alpha is by far the most desirable of the three, but collecting any of them is going to be costly. Arabian Nights is the first expansion released and also had a very small print run. Some other collectors branch into the Antiquities/Legends (which were the 2nd and 3rd expansions, respectively), but they had larger print runs than Arabian Nights and many people don’t bother with them.
Everything besides the aforementioned sets isn’t really collected at all except for a few exceptions:
7th Edition foils (first core set with foils, and every single card in the set had brand new art – beautiful set)
Urza’s Legacy/Destiny foils (first two sets with foils)
English Portal Three Kingdoms (Asian-themed set that had a TINY English print run. Has great art and flavor, and is very scarce)
Misprints/test prints
‘Pimp’ foils (traditionally Japanese foils of the first printing of the card. This is a sort of hybrid of collecting and deck building. If you’re not planning on playing the game, then this isn’t going to be appealing to you, most likely.)
If you have any other questions about MTG collecting, I’d be happy to give my input. I’ve been collecting MTG for well over a decade at this point. Do know that, in my opinion, Pokemon is more fun to collect. But MTG can be rewarding and interesting to collect, too.
Thank you for your help! I mainly would like to collect Magic because I like the artwork, so I’d start with something cheap, but that has lots of artworks that I like in it (doens’t matter if the cards are foil or rare) just to keep them for myself in my binder (I collect raw cards).
For example, to start I could buy the new sets/boxes (since they’ll probably be the cheapest option for a sealed product) open them and maybe sell the doubles of the most played cards(?) to balance the cost of the box
What I’m probably afraid of is missing a misprint, or something valuable among the cards I’d own (even if i could check on ebay for example) because I have no experience, because I barely know what the basic standard card would look like in terms of layout.
I wouldn’t mind buying bulk of cards (with a decent ratio of different cards in it) just to start
Opening boxes and selling doubles isn’t going to be a good approach, IMO. The most valuable cards are almost always mythics (the highest level of rarity) and you’re not likely to pull many duplicates (unless you’re opening many boxes). And MTG bulk is worth much, much less than Pokemon bulk. The going rate for Pokemon bulk is 3.5 cents per card. The going rate for MTG bulk is 0.3 cents per card.
Your idea of buying bulk is a good one, since it sounds like you like to collect the art. One thing you could do is focus on collecting a few types of cards that appeal to you (i.e., angels, dragons, demons, elves, etc.). That could be a fun way to focus your collecting since there are nearly 30 years worth of cards to look through. Building a foil angel binder, for example, could be fun. Just an idea.
If you are looking to just buy cool artwork check out modern collectors boxes. The sealed is pricey, but singles for the most part are really cheap. I would recommend Ikoria because the godzilla variant cards, they are my personal favorite. Also Throne’s fairytale themed stuff is really cool. If you want to stick to online just go to tcgplayer and sort by the set… a lot of the non foil ones are around a dollar and look great in a binder.
man I loved this entire generation as a kid. Unlimited through all of this. What a game, not nearly as collectible as pokemon but my lord is it playable. The best
I’ve opened several Zendikar Rising Collector Boosters recently and had a blast. I sold the non foil Box Toppers sealed to offset costs and you can still hit foil fetchlands in the packs, which qualify as chase cards in my opinion.
I played during the Onsaughlt days to Mirrodin and dark steel. I guess those weren’t very popular times but they bring back memories at my local card shop buying packs to sell a good hit to buy more packs and end up with junk rares lol. I did buy some Ikoria collector boxes for the godzilla cards.
I’ll see if he has some sort of guide on his channel
But I’ll get there eventually