Lately I’ve been collecting MTG cards again, and I’ve been loving it! The difference between Pokemon, and MTG for me is that I actually play Magic. I never really enjoyed Pokemon TCG, but I always loved the art, and collecting. I’ve decided to start collecting MTG alongside Pokemon again!
Heres some nice pulls I’ve gotten mostly out of the new Ikoria set.
The one single unlimited Mountain I own, hahaha. Minty though.
Know nothing about Magic but I’ve seen Rudy pull some absolute beauties from Ikoria. Quality of the art is fantastic
I’m gonna have to check that set out. Is that also the one with godzilla or was that a joke?
I stopped collecting Magic about 15 years ago. Between players (4x) sets of everything non-foil, full sets of foil, and trying to collect every oddball item from the '90’s remotely associated with the game, I burned out. I’m still divesting huge chunks of my collection, and probably will be for years to come.
Haha, yes! They are pretty sweet looking. Theres a few different variants I believe too. There is one that is kindof “full art” and it looks the best imo.
Haha, I love Rudys videos. Always cool to see those really expensive collectors boxes opened that I can’t afford! XD
it’s absolutely bunkers how many sets have been released in MTG in the past 12 months and will be released in the next 6 months. Jumpstart, Double Masters, Core 2021…
Hey man! I’m new to this site but this is the first page I came to and if you ever have questions about Magic The Gathering, let me know! I’ve been a huge high-end collector for about 5 years now and have been playing the game for even longer. Ikoria is a great set to start finding your groove due to it’s explosive and widely accepted art-style/power level. Showcase cards and borderless boxtoppers are the closest thing we here in Magic have to Pokemon’s hyper rares, so it’s great to transition your tastes over to these types. If you’d like some insight into modern staples you can start collecting and holding onto to build more value into your collection, I’m always down to chat!
Cheers!
For sure! Magic is a huge cost sink even if you’re just playing casually. I like to buy the commander precons to play with friends as well as occasional old cards for commander. I think set/artist collecting for magic is definitely underappreciated since most people in magic (obviously not counting ABU collectors) buy/trade cards for their play value and not art value.
Have you seen the war of the spark uncut foil sheet they released last year? I have 2 and love them. They are still very affordable around $100 and would look amazing framed or on a wall. It’s probably one of the only affordable uncut sheets you can find in magic or pokemon at this point. @gollox,
I did open a random japanese ikoria booster this week and got an alt art cycling tri land and really love it!
I think the real underappreciated sector of MTG collecting is original art (the 1/1 traditional paintings that were scanned in for use on the card, as opposed to prints or repaints of digital art ). It’s still surprising to me that you can buy many original paintings for under $1200. If it were possible to buy original Pokemon card art (if any of it is/was traditional), there’s no chance it would be remotely that cheap. I guess the thing with MTG is that most people involved with it are players first, and collectors second (if at all). And because playability is such a relevant factor even for most collectors, there is a much greater desire to own tournament-legal cards. But from a collector’s standpoint (or at least my perspective), it doesn’t get much better than owning something that’s both widely recognizable and literally one-of-a-kind.
Now is really the time to buy magic imo. I’ve been playing since 2012 but had to sell off my expensive stuff and go on a hiatus back in 2018 due to family financial issues. I took a MAJOR loss in selling everything but now most of the stuff I sold is cheaper than it was 2 years ago. I was in the middle of building several casual decks that needed playsets of cards that were $10-20 each. Now those cards are mostly $3 or less. Some are bulk rares now and they haven’t even been reprinted recently.
YA, YOU ARE SEEING SMPRATTE AND SOME PEOPLE DABBLE IN MTG RIGHT NOW. I THINK IT’S A GOOD TIME AS WELL.
I’m pretty sure the vintage magic market is its own beast similar to some low population vintage pokemon cards in that there are some big market players in addition to normal collectors. Though there does seem to be a high number of people selling off vintage magic collections to fund retirements and other things. It might be a future parallel to pokemon in about 15 years or so for some people.
Random MTG noob question about Ikoria for everyone: what’s the difference between the collector’s and regular Ikoria booster packs? Are there cards that appear in the collector’s booster packs that don’t appear in the regular ones?
I assume you know the contents of a regular booster pack, and cardgamebase.com/ikoria-collector-booster/ has details on the collector’s booster pack.
Yay! Glad to see some MTG make it in here. Big fan of the game itself after I fell out of playing Pokemon and Yugioh. I still have my two favorite decks, an Illusion based one and an Elves deck. Collecting always seems pretty damn daunting considering the amount of reprints, holos, etc, so I never got into it. I’ll passively buy an Elf card here and there if I see it’s one I don’t have yet (since I was taught how to play MTG with an Elf deck) but that’s as close to collecting I’ll ever get.
Curious, what are your goals currently in collecting MTG?
That’s really cool. It must be nice to know how the game actually works. 
I’ve literally been collecting cards that I think look cool and have close to 0% of an idea as to what I’m collecting. The MTG collecting world seems to be really weird just because of how interconnected it is with playability. I just remember seeing @smpratte 's ‘the dark’ binder and thinking the art was just sooooo cool. It’s honestly been an amazing, temporary breath of fresh air from Pokemon because I really don’t know enough to care about value. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
Yeah, a ton of the artwork is incredible. I’d definitely stick with the “collect what you like” philosophy when it comes to MTG. If you want, maybe pick and choose which arts you like from each set (start with older sets to make sure they’re not harder to acquire). The monetary worth in MTG nowadays is 95% playability in Standard and EDH formats where as the remaining 5% is actual rarity by quantity. That changes once you start talking about Alpha/Beta of course.
One of the things I love about MTG for its collector base is the fact that they have art cards (Art card - MTG Wiki) - cards that are essentially just full art versions with no text. They also are known to have prints of some of their more famous cards that can be fetched for a decent price depending.
Looking forward to seeing what else you bring in!
Watched a bunch of Rudy opening Ikoria Collectors packs and had to buy some from him. That set looks awesome and the virus Godzilla was too perfectly timed. Have not touched magic since I was a kid, but looking forward to them.