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Do You Believe in Magic?
Nov. 10th, 2004 12:50 pmLast night I spent a few hours sorting Magic cards.
Magic: The Gathering, you see, was perhaps my first luxury after college. I finished up in Spring of 1993, and shortly thereafter began working fulltime, which did wonders for my cash flow. Within a couple of months I'd been rehired at my NASA job (at CEA) as a Programmer/Analyst I and not too long after that I got reclassified as a Programmer/Analyst II thanks to the untiring work of my very cool boss, Anna B. I never was making a huge amount of money, I was working at the University afterall, but it was still a good $35k or so a year. Considering I was still living in my $400 or $450 room, that was a lot of money, and thus I had a lot of free money.
I remember playing my first game of Magic: The Gathering with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angrybuffalo, and I remember that mainly because he taught me the rules wrong. I can also remember some of my early purchases. I'd go and buy a starter or a booster, and Chris V. would be really excited about a rare I purchased. I'd offer to sell it to him for $3 or $4, and then I'd take that money and go around the corner to Games of Berkeley and buy another set of cards. Repeat as necessary. He got nice rares; I got tons of effectively free commons and uncommons.
However, it was at CEA where I really played in those early days. My coworkers, Jim A. and Donald K (and maybe Brian M.?) were all soon interested. Through those early sets (Arabian Nights, Antiquities) I bought a few cards, but by the time Legends came around, I'd moved on to buying $100 display boxes when a new set came out: usually a display of starters and a display of boosters. (I was always wanting to have enough cards to create nice decks, never concerned about collecting the whole thing.) I can actually remember standing in line first thing one day at GoB to get my displays of Legends. I suspect those days of early-morning lines are gone. (WotC was cranking up production with every new set in those days, often multiplying it by 4x which each new set, so while there were shortage problems with Antiquities and maybe Legends, by the time Fallen Empires rolled around, they were printing way too many.)
The thing I remember most clearly at CEA was how at one point the white board at the entrance to my office was covered with probability calculations showing the likelihood of pulling a complete set of out N display cases of boosters. Jim A., I remember, had come up with some ridiculous number, so I ran through the entire probability chain to show a rough expected value. I think it showed that he had to buy a lot more display cases than he thought he did in order to have a decent chance at a full set.
I can remember continuing to play Magic when I moved into my first actual apartment, around 1994 or so. I left CEA soon after that, and so my lunchtime and after-work games ended, but my gaming friends and I would sometimes play 4- or 5- or 6-player Magic after our normal RPG sessions. We'd sit around my little dining room table (which came with the apartment, as it happens) and play in the tiny little dining nook, with its cold linoleum floor and ugly particle board bookcases rising up around.
I can also remember many hours sitting at that table constructing decks. Blues were often my favorite, with a multiple of cards that tapped the other players' resources.
By the time I met Kimberly in 1999, Magic wasn't very high on my interest list any more. It looks like Fallen Empires and Homelands were my last major purchases. By 1996 I'd begun working at Chaosium, and a serious plunge in income, tied with my own CCG to work on (Mythos), left me fairly Magic-less. I can remember pulling out some Magic cards once in that late 1999 time period, because my brothers had gotten interested in the game, but that was it. I tried to give them cards, but they were too shy to take much.
Since then I've played Magic once, when Mike A. arrived at gaming early one day (or else everyone else arrived late, I'm not sure which). It was a bit of a work just to figure out where my playable decks might be! It's still a fun enough game, but I can't imagine anymore sitting around constructing decks, let alone scraping up the money to buy enough cards to actually be competitive in the ever-more-powerful world of new releases.
Somehow my Magic cards caught my attention a couple of weeks ago. I thumbed through some of my boxes, now scattered across closets throughout the house, and pulled out some of my oldest cards (Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends) that I thought might be valuable. Much to my surprise, I discovered that one of the 26 Arabian Nights cards I had was considered one of the most valuable in the set. The Bazaar of Baghdad. It went on eBay last week, and the bidding is up to $103.50. That'd be a fair enough price if I get it, but it could go maybe 50% higher if the currents of eBay are lucky enough for me this week.
Hence, the sorting of the collection last night, which Kimberly was kind enough to help with. Things got sorted into set (since only the oldest couple of sets have actual value), then colors. It looks like I have a handful of additional cards worth $40 or so each, then piles of cards worth $5-$15 each. All told, if I managed to sell eveyrthing for what it's worth, I could probably get back the $1000-$1200 I'd guess I spent on Magic cards, which means all those years of fun playing and designing decks would have been free.
However, the trick is going to be figuring out how to sell them. I'm willing to go to the trouble to eBay and ship a card worth $100, and even $40, but the $10 cards start to become too much trouble, and the $1 or $2 cards definitely so. I'll have to figure out if there are good ways to make sets, or else to find out if bidders on the big cards are interested in buying smaller ones as well, as a set of cards would probably be worthwhile, just not the singletons.
In any case, I'm happy to sell the higher value cards for now, as they'll generate some nice cash to buy new games that I'll actually play now (much as when I sold a couple of my old, unused games earlier these year for some nice premiums).
And I have decided to keep a few decks of Magic cards: mostly the preconstructed decks, all minorly tweaked by me, which Wizards starting selling in the latter half of the 1990s. I've got 7 or 8 or them, so they'll be plenty if anyone wants to play, and they're all the sort of newer, and thus more interesting cards.
Magic: The Gathering, you see, was perhaps my first luxury after college. I finished up in Spring of 1993, and shortly thereafter began working fulltime, which did wonders for my cash flow. Within a couple of months I'd been rehired at my NASA job (at CEA) as a Programmer/Analyst I and not too long after that I got reclassified as a Programmer/Analyst II thanks to the untiring work of my very cool boss, Anna B. I never was making a huge amount of money, I was working at the University afterall, but it was still a good $35k or so a year. Considering I was still living in my $400 or $450 room, that was a lot of money, and thus I had a lot of free money.
I remember playing my first game of Magic: The Gathering with
angrybuffalo, and I remember that mainly because he taught me the rules wrong. I can also remember some of my early purchases. I'd go and buy a starter or a booster, and Chris V. would be really excited about a rare I purchased. I'd offer to sell it to him for $3 or $4, and then I'd take that money and go around the corner to Games of Berkeley and buy another set of cards. Repeat as necessary. He got nice rares; I got tons of effectively free commons and uncommons.However, it was at CEA where I really played in those early days. My coworkers, Jim A. and Donald K (and maybe Brian M.?) were all soon interested. Through those early sets (Arabian Nights, Antiquities) I bought a few cards, but by the time Legends came around, I'd moved on to buying $100 display boxes when a new set came out: usually a display of starters and a display of boosters. (I was always wanting to have enough cards to create nice decks, never concerned about collecting the whole thing.) I can actually remember standing in line first thing one day at GoB to get my displays of Legends. I suspect those days of early-morning lines are gone. (WotC was cranking up production with every new set in those days, often multiplying it by 4x which each new set, so while there were shortage problems with Antiquities and maybe Legends, by the time Fallen Empires rolled around, they were printing way too many.)
The thing I remember most clearly at CEA was how at one point the white board at the entrance to my office was covered with probability calculations showing the likelihood of pulling a complete set of out N display cases of boosters. Jim A., I remember, had come up with some ridiculous number, so I ran through the entire probability chain to show a rough expected value. I think it showed that he had to buy a lot more display cases than he thought he did in order to have a decent chance at a full set.
I can remember continuing to play Magic when I moved into my first actual apartment, around 1994 or so. I left CEA soon after that, and so my lunchtime and after-work games ended, but my gaming friends and I would sometimes play 4- or 5- or 6-player Magic after our normal RPG sessions. We'd sit around my little dining room table (which came with the apartment, as it happens) and play in the tiny little dining nook, with its cold linoleum floor and ugly particle board bookcases rising up around.
I can also remember many hours sitting at that table constructing decks. Blues were often my favorite, with a multiple of cards that tapped the other players' resources.
By the time I met Kimberly in 1999, Magic wasn't very high on my interest list any more. It looks like Fallen Empires and Homelands were my last major purchases. By 1996 I'd begun working at Chaosium, and a serious plunge in income, tied with my own CCG to work on (Mythos), left me fairly Magic-less. I can remember pulling out some Magic cards once in that late 1999 time period, because my brothers had gotten interested in the game, but that was it. I tried to give them cards, but they were too shy to take much.
Since then I've played Magic once, when Mike A. arrived at gaming early one day (or else everyone else arrived late, I'm not sure which). It was a bit of a work just to figure out where my playable decks might be! It's still a fun enough game, but I can't imagine anymore sitting around constructing decks, let alone scraping up the money to buy enough cards to actually be competitive in the ever-more-powerful world of new releases.
Somehow my Magic cards caught my attention a couple of weeks ago. I thumbed through some of my boxes, now scattered across closets throughout the house, and pulled out some of my oldest cards (Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends) that I thought might be valuable. Much to my surprise, I discovered that one of the 26 Arabian Nights cards I had was considered one of the most valuable in the set. The Bazaar of Baghdad. It went on eBay last week, and the bidding is up to $103.50. That'd be a fair enough price if I get it, but it could go maybe 50% higher if the currents of eBay are lucky enough for me this week.
Hence, the sorting of the collection last night, which Kimberly was kind enough to help with. Things got sorted into set (since only the oldest couple of sets have actual value), then colors. It looks like I have a handful of additional cards worth $40 or so each, then piles of cards worth $5-$15 each. All told, if I managed to sell eveyrthing for what it's worth, I could probably get back the $1000-$1200 I'd guess I spent on Magic cards, which means all those years of fun playing and designing decks would have been free.
However, the trick is going to be figuring out how to sell them. I'm willing to go to the trouble to eBay and ship a card worth $100, and even $40, but the $10 cards start to become too much trouble, and the $1 or $2 cards definitely so. I'll have to figure out if there are good ways to make sets, or else to find out if bidders on the big cards are interested in buying smaller ones as well, as a set of cards would probably be worthwhile, just not the singletons.
In any case, I'm happy to sell the higher value cards for now, as they'll generate some nice cash to buy new games that I'll actually play now (much as when I sold a couple of my old, unused games earlier these year for some nice premiums).
And I have decided to keep a few decks of Magic cards: mostly the preconstructed decks, all minorly tweaked by me, which Wizards starting selling in the latter half of the 1990s. I've got 7 or 8 or them, so they'll be plenty if anyone wants to play, and they're all the sort of newer, and thus more interesting cards.