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Years later, my Magic cards have returned to me. All 1000+ plus of them.
Skoal Cat
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I want to get back into MTG (my gf has expressed an interest in playing, so yaaay there) so my mom shipped me two big boxes of them. I don't want to get back into the current run of stuff, I just want to get back into playing with the massive shit load of cards that I have. I have random crap going back to Arabian Nights, maybe some earlier stuff, because I purchased a lot of lots on eBay years ago. To put this in perspective, I was really into MTG around Urza Block, it really dropped off once Masques came out.
A lot of my rares are already separated into a binder. I may have some older rares mixed in with my commons because the older sets didn't have the handy dandy color coding system. I searched for a few random cards online to price them, most rares seem to be worth a bunch or less with the random odd ball from an older set going for $60 or so.
Whats going to be my best shot at pricing this stuff? One by one online? Take the collection to a gaming shop? Where should I sell? Brick and mortar would be fastest but they probably give half of market value.
A lot of my rares are already separated into a binder. I may have some older rares mixed in with my commons because the older sets didn't have the handy dandy color coding system. I searched for a few random cards online to price them, most rares seem to be worth a bunch or less with the random odd ball from an older set going for $60 or so.
Whats going to be my best shot at pricing this stuff? One by one online? Take the collection to a gaming shop? Where should I sell? Brick and mortar would be fastest but they probably give half of market value.
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http://sales.starcitygames.com/buylist/
Starcitygames is one of the bigger buyers/sellers online. I'm not saying these are good prices, but at the very least this should shortlist some of the more valuable cards in each set.
You could also search each set individually and sort out the top 10-20 cards, or anything over a buck (or whatever other cutoff you wanted), which would minimize or negate the likelyhood of accidentally selling or trading away something worth decent money.
Almost anything printed in the '90s you see in these lists is moderately to highly valuable regardless of rarity: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/53b
The main things to watch out for are cards like 'Force of Will' which is uncommon but very powerful and valuable, or early dual lands such as 'Plateau' or 'Taiga' which appear worthless to a new player, but are actually very good and hold decent value.
I don't know how trustworthy people in gaming shops are for pricing this stuff, they may be fine, but I'd recommend having some awareness of any $30+ cards in your collection before having someone else value them.
edit: Holy shit it is. A lot has changed in the last 14 years?
I feel like I should sort these cards a bit more. As a kid I did it by color, because that made sense for deck building. Should i redo it based on set? How do I know what edition something is from? Is it year+1 (1994=5th edition)?
This was a big help for me; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_sets - I think you'll find it useful to find out what set a card is from. Just match the symbol on the card. If a card doesn't have a expansion symbol, then it's probably Alpha, Beta, 3rd, 4th or 5th edition. Those are the only 5 sets that did not have symbols to the right of the card type line.
But seriously, I'm a bit unclear? You said you and your gf want to get back into M:tG, but then you talk about selling your cards. Are you wanting to sell them and get new cards, or what? I'm confused.
That and the deck help sections of the forum on the mtg main site should answer any specific questions about casual deck building etc.
I have several thousand cards I think. I want to sell the ones that have any value and keep the rest to have fun with.
Note: I definitely found my Plateau.
Jesus christ. I have like 20 of those. Time to ask my mom to dig out the magic cards and bring them down next time she visits... Holy shit im apparently rich and i wasnt even aware.
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What kills me is that I had with me for almost all of college, just in case, my favorite green deck ever. It was filled with elves and some crazy powerful shit. I kept it for so long, but who knows where it is now.
edit: Goddamn it, I had several Gaea's Cradles in there and they're worth ~$60 now. God fucking damn it.
Far as I know, the best way to get money out of your cards if you intend to sell is to go through ebay, though that has its own set of caveats, in that you should probably have (or at least have access to) someone with a solid account rating. Someone with a 1000 rating is going to get more money (on average) from card sales than someone with a 100 rating, who in turn is likely to get more than an account with a 10 or less.
Your kidding I have 5 of each of the double lands plus a full set of Beta and Arabian that I need to sell off then. I could build another hot rod at those prices.
I even have a set of Mox's in played condition that I thought might be worth 50 a piece.
Good luck getting back in. I've always wanted to, but it's become SUCH a huge cash investment just to keep up and current. I just don't think I'd want to support that crack habit.
I have some really cool rack, bad moon, mind twist based decks that I would love to play even if I get destroyed.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
You'll probably find some casual games, but you're more likely to find games that run by current tournament rules.
Darn, thought as much. Looks like I am off to do some googling for some local games.
And why on Earth would you play with Alpha or Beta cards, holy shit. Sell them and buy a car.
http://mtgcommander.net/rules.php
The basics are simple; 100 card deck, no more than 1 of any given card other than basic lands. At the start of the game, one of those cards is put into a special zone face up, this is your General/Commander, and you can cast it anytime you could normally cast it. When it's put in a graveyard or removed from the game you can instead elect to put it back in that special zone for casting again, but it costs 2 colourless mana more each time you do that (so normal cost the first time it's cast, +2 the second, +4 the third, etc).
Like any other magic game or format, you have your batshit insane decks that can wreck one or more people in a single turn, possibly in the first few turns of the game. You have your theme decks, your 'shit thrown together let's see what happens' decks, and everything in between.
A further advantage of this format is that instead of having to potentially buy/trade for playsets of 4 of a given card, a single one might be all you need for a deck, which if you enjoy cracking open booster packs has the heightened advantage of making those cards you draw more useful than they might've been otherwise.
It's also a multiplayer format (to compensate for which, players start at 40 life, though if a given commander deals 21+ damage to a player (even over multiple castings) that player loses the game even if they have a million life normally), and many players include other products WOTC have released over the years, like Planechase and Archenemy.
I haven't toyed with the latter, but I've played the former heavily with EDH, and enjoy it immensely.
And as a final note on the matter, WOTC will be releasing their own EDH decks during the summer. 5 decks representing 3 colours each (example; White/Green/Black). Details are sketchy on these thus far, but if you find EDH to your liking, they might be an easy way to get some decks started up, or with a couple you could mix and match to enhance decks you've got built or want to build.
Was my shop awesome and special, or is this kind of common? Might I find another mana resource?
Aye, just as a quick note: be sure to not let anyone take advantage of you by looking up those prices! Plateau seemed innocent back when it was first created (there's been many dual lands hence), but its price is because there's never been a set of lands since that has done all of the following:
1) Provided two colors
2) Had no negative side effects (taking damage, generating creatures for other players, starting tapped etc)
3) Are actually considered a "basic" land of BOTH of its root land types.
#3 is the big kicker here, but #2 is also important. In the more recent years of Magic, there's been a lot of design experimentation with the concept of having special/powerful actions based on having lands of certain types in play. They usually protect themselves from letting any one land be too powerful by not having things like dual lands actually also be "basic" land types, but they can't (or won't) retro out the old dual lands which explicitly say that they're both basic land types. As a result, the dual lands let you trigger all sorts of fun abilities and open the doors for certain actions to be much easier than they ought to be.
As an extreme example, take "Coalition Victory". You only need three of those dual lands (or two of them and one other regular land) in play to satisfy the otherwise difficult "one land of each basic land type" qualifier for its instant win condition.
Anyways, that kind of subtle stuff compounded over the last decade and a half may have turned a great deal of cards that you didn't think were a big deal into powerhouses. When someone offers you a trade, be sure to look up the price first as a result. People can be real jerks when it comes to taking advantage of others.