Why do I do this to myself?

Standard Card Count: 91

Ok, so let's get this out there right now.  With Phase 1 and Phase 2 coming to an end, I am going to start tracking what I need for standard after my box openings.  Currently we are sitting at 91 more cards, and that is after I took a big hit for doing a stupid thing.

Let's take a look at what a mistake looks like, shall we?

So, I went into the LGS, Lodestone Coffee & Games on a lovely Wed afternoon, to spend some time dumpster diving in some of the bulk boxes they have.  Mainly I was looking for the non-Full Art basic lands from BFZ that I do not have.  I am proud to say that I did fine three of them!

But if you know me, and what happens when I go to a MTG store, you know there was more things bought.  And the trip down that stupid rabbit hole continues.  All the shiny things, for cards I don't even need, just tears me apart.

What?  These are bring reprinted in Iconic Masters?  Why not pickup enough for another playset?

Yeah I said I was done with Tenth Edition a while ago, but as I was going through some of my cards it looks like I was missing a 4th Goblin King, so I picked one up.

This completes my 2 play sets.

And here is a single playset of a card I should have picked up for $6 but instead decided to wait until after Worlds and had to pay $13 per...  sigh...

Considering my last mistake with those lands I figured I would pick up the second playset just incase someone figures out a really cool use for them.  I am very interested in these because of the similarities to Maze of Ith.

I like this one because of the uses it has with EDH.  You can cast instants and sorceries at 1 less mana, and then it flips to give you a mana to cast a spell, and that creates a copy of the spell for another target.  I just think it opens up a deck possibilities.

This is for my playset of this card.  If you have been reading my blog for a while, you will know that I have an affection for this card.  The 5/6 Flash card that lets you play an Instant in your graveyard for free just gets me in the heart.  I don't know why, I just like it.  If WotC ever puts out an insane Instant that costs a ton, I feel this card will just blow up.

And then I made my mistake.  I decided to try to finish out Amonkhet while it was still in Standard.  Yes, it means I just paid a ton to support my LGS.  I have no idea what took me over to try and get everything while it was still in Standard, I did not even have a deck to build.  Sigh, yeah no idea why I did that, or what I was thinking.

So yeah, really stupid that I bought Standard cards at the Standard rates, just felt like trying to finish some sets.

Getting close to the end

Total Card Count: 10

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So I officially got sick of trying to trade for the cards I am looking for, and decided to just buy everything I was looking for, and this is the first post on how I am getting what I need.

We are talking about Phase 1 and Phase 2 now.  I am still looking for 10 Battle for Zendikar non-full art basic lands, but that is going to take me a while to find and I don't want to spend $3.00 for them right now, but I am pretty sure I will at some point.

I went to TCGPlayer this run to finish out everything like I normally do.  It is just a lot easier to find the cards on this single site.  I did have to go shopping in specific sellers just to fill in the $2.00 minimum, which really bugs me.  If they are charging for shipping then why would they require for me to buy more than $2.00 worth of cards?  I know that they are spending the time to pull the card, pack the card, and then ship but come on.  Ok, so yeah, that does make sense considering I don't even look at anything under $2.00 on CardSphere when I am sending cards.

Anywho....

Here we go!

Channel Fireball

They sent a great package with everything I was looking for in the conditions that was posted.  Unfortunately I did not need the Sylvan Basilisk as my documentation was inaccurate.  That Rhox is a pretty awesome pickup, but I already have the 2 sealed learning decks coming in the mail.

Brute Force Games

And this is the last card I needed for 9th Edition!  What a long road...

Geeks and Games

Picked up the Spined Wurm from Starter 2000 for reasons, but I needed to grab those Ixalan cards to get above the $2.00 mark.  So yeah, over paid on the Ixalan cards to get s single Starter 2000 card...  Sigh...  I did grab a couple other Starter 2000 cards, but with my recent discovery I had those cards in my inventory.   There is a lot riding on the sealed decks coming in, I am getter very anxious.

CCG House

Exhaustion is the same deal as my other Portal Second Age cards, a miss in the inventory caused me to pick up some more that were not needed.  I did need that Hand of Death from Starter 2000 and the Righteous Fury from Starter 1999, so just happy I did not need to order more just to get the deal done.

Gators

Waste of a shop.  Complete waste of a shop.  They sent me a Starter 1999 Stone Rain instead of the Starter 2000 one I was looking for.  So really, I paid for the Ixalan card and the Commander card for nothing.  Then the guy picked a fight with me on the bad score I gave them.  Waste of time.

Competitive Card Shack

Another huge waste of poo.  Sent me the wrong Goblin Hero since I was looking for the Starter 2000 one, not the Starter 1999.  Bad score for them!  Luckily they just refunded me the pennies for the card and I over paid for some more Ixalan cards just to get the order pushed through...

TCG Player Direct

Great service on this on as always, just wish TGC Player Direct was the only way to get cards instead of always going through other sellers.  With this order I was able to finish out 6th Edition, 8th Edition, Portal!  Oh yeah, and since there are literally no Lord of the Undead out there, I ended up paying double for that stupid card...

So yeah I need 11 more cards to finish up Phase 1 and Phase 2, and all 10 cards should be headed my way to finish it out.  With this shipment I finished 6th, 8th, 9th, and Portal.  Here is what is left from the other sets

7th Edition: 1 card

Portal Second Age: 2 cards

Starter 1999: 6 cards

Starter 2000: 1 card

Really hoping I can close out these last sets before the weekend!

Starter 2000

Phase 2 Card Count: 16

The question today is, Can you tell if the 6th Edition cards from Starter 2000 are really from the set?  Or are they just 6th Edition cards?

So yeah, the story about Starter 2000 was a release in 2000 with all reprints.  This product was released in a Starter package with a CD ROM that taught you how to play Magic.  During the process of trying to get a complete set of this release I have found a bunch about what is in the set.  So much that I decided to just purchase 2 sealed learning kits off eBay.

Supposedly what is coming in the mail is that wonderful CD to teach me how to play Magic, and 3 packs.  These three packs are going to have all the cards in the set.  The total of the set consists 52 different cards, 10 different basic lands, along with a Rhox foil promo.  Most of these cards are reprints from Portal and Starter 1999, but it also has pretty much exact copies of some 6th Edition cards.

Over the weekend I went out and bought a Starter 2000 Shock, and the seller ended up contacting me with a lot of information I was not expecting.  It ends up, the 6th Edition reprints have a small difference in printing in the rosette that was used for the Starter 2000 cards.

So here are the two examples.

6th Edition Rosette

As you can see there is a black dot surrounded by more lighter print.

Starter 2000

And from what I have been told that they Starter 2000 rosette, there was a light dot surrouned by darker print.

You can only really see the difference when using a Loupe to see the actual rosette.

Now I was a bit hesitant hearing this news from the seller, since it was him that was trying to sell me a $0.22 card for around $4.  So you can see where you might not believe someone, and there is nothing online about the differences.  You will only find that the 6th Edition cards were just exact reprints that were thrown into these packs.  The Portal and Starter 1999 cards were the only ones you could tell were from the set because of the missing set symbol.

Me being me, decided to go in and check the 6th Edition cards to see if I could find these differences.  Low and behold, I could see a difference in most of the cards that were filed as 6th Edition cards.  There were two different rosettes, and you really could assume there were two printings.

This really pulled me into a gully, so I went out to try and find some of these Starter 2000 packs.  I was lucky enough to find a seller on eBay that had 2 learning packages for a really good price of $19.99, so I picked up the 2 sealed packs.  This is going to allow me to open up one pack, knowing that I have all the Starter 2000 cards, but then I can also verify what I have been told and can actually split up my cards under Starter 2000 and 6th Edition.

Basically I am going to look at all the 6th Edition cards under a loupe to see if I can find that same rosette pattern.  If it is a mix of rosettes, then I know that the 6th Edition cards are just that, 6th Edition and the only important cards from the set are the Portal and Stater 1999 reprints without the set symbol.

If this is correct information, then I am down to needing 1 single card left for the set.  After going through all my 6th Edition cards, these are what I found for the set!  Of course I am going to be able to replace them all with the actual Starter 2000 cards, but lets hope these are extra cards I can trade!

Big one here if I am right, that Obsianus Golem is worth $50.00!  I have no idea why it is that price, but someone has it at that price.

So yeah, look out for an update in the next week or so with what I find!

Ixalan has come!

It is here!  The first set of the 4th Quarter and where all Magic the Gathering players go broke!  Ahh, remember the days when you could just buy the last expansion and have a good 3 months to save for the beginning of the next year.  Those days are gone, and I really hope that some day they come back.

So yeah, lets get into it.  This is the first expansion set of the last block set in the Magic the Gathering set release.  Now lets just take a moment and think about this.  The last set that was not in a block was Alliances, and Mirage was the start of the Block cycle.  That is insane!  We are no longer going to be looking forward to a block set of 3 expansions that will span the year, and now we are going to be moving into a content driven expansion release.

I see the Content driven expansion release as a positive.  That means we can stick with a story for as long or as short as we need to as long as the content is there.  The on going storyline within Magic the Gathering has been at some ends lately, but it will allow the content be more flowing and the story to be as involved as it needs to.  We could have a set of expansions that spans across 5 releases, or we could just have a fun non-storyline set of 1, just to add some different game mechanic.

So lets take a look at how my Ixalan pre-order ended up.

So I pulled this out of my first Bundle!  No, yeah.   That did not happen, but I did pick this up at the LGS because I needed it for the Card Count.  Woot! 

Card Count: 8

Bam!  No I did not pull all of these in the boxes I bought, but I knew I wanted these so I just went ahead and bought some because that is what I do.  I paid a little more than what they are worth now, but this is the only card I cared about in the whole set.

What the fuck are these!  Finally a reason to pre-order!  Seriously!  I hope they keep doing this.  This is more than enough reason to even buy more boxes through the LGS just so I can stock pile these packs.

Ok so yeah, I opened 4 of those packs, but just because I wanted a set of these lands.  They are the Rebecca Gauy foil lands.  They were given out during the Standard Showdown series and WotC decided to put these lands in the Buy-a-Box packs.  I did pick up a bunch of other rares and foils, but it is all trading fodder to me.

So the LGS also game me 8 of these Buy-a-Box promo cards, but they also came in the Buy-a-Box packs, so yeah.  I have 12 of these things.  Sometime they are really good, and sometimes they are just $0.50 foil promos...

Bam!!  This is what I am opening!  I am still on the fence of buying more on the larger sets, but since they are getting rid of the block sets, and everything is pretty much going to be big sets, I am still on the fence.  I am only saying that because after my opening I am still 117 cards short, and around $366 needed to get my playset.  Now I know that is just after the release, and in a year it will be about half, but it is a good reason to open more packs. 

So after I opened everything, here are all the rare and mythic rare foils I got.  That is right, bottom row second from the right.  Foil Growing Rites of Itlimoc (AKA New Cradle)!!!!!  Tits Magee right there!

This is what the pre-order looked like after I opened everything.  And after I sort everything out, I will only have 2 rows of commons, so opening the amount that I do appeals to the OCD in me with organization.

This is what all the rares and mythic rares I pulled looks like.  Yeah it is not a lot and just those 2 extra booster boxes really brings in a lot more for the trading fodder.  Hmmm....

Here are the uncommons after the sort.

Commons.....!

Sexy basic lands!  I think Obi Won agrees.

And this is what my playset looks like without sleeves.

So yeah right now I am sitting at all the product I need opened, sorted, and inventoried.  I have also sleeved up the playset that is going into the collection.  I still need to make my labels, print the labels, and make the card separators.  I also still need to add all the tradable cards to my trading sites, but that is pretty easy and no one really wants new standard cards once they are released.

This is also the fall so rotation has happened, and I need to move 4 expansions into the Modern boxes because they are no longer Standard playable.

We are left with 117 total cards needed, with 40 of those cards being Planeswalker deck cards, so that leaves us with 77 cards needed for the playset.  That is 28 Mythic Rares and 48 Rares.  That is $297.60 worth of cards that I still need to pick up.  Now if I opened up 2 more booster boxes at the price of $90 per box, that still leaves a $117.60 difference that I would still need to pick up if I were to pick up $180 worth of value in those 2 booster boxes.

With that being said, I still stand by just opening a case and my bundles.  But with that being said, I might switch it up to 9 booster boxes and 2 bundles since they are providing those Buy-a-Box packs.  That would give me 7 booster boxes to open and I get an extra BaB pack.

I am expecting to be able to finish up this playset after rotation, and will just pick up cards here and there.  I will also consider adding this stuff to my CardSphere, and try and pick up the standard cards at a discount.

Kneel before Zod!

Card Count: GFY

Today on the Greatest Magic the Gathering Blog!

Sick ass trade!

So this is a trade that I am pretty proud of.  There is this long time trader that I have had the pleasure to do multiple trades with.  While we were working on another trade, she mentioned that she had a couple of Shahrazad cards for trade and wanted to know if I was interested in picking them up.  Of course I was!

She sent me some pictures and they looked good to me.

So I went through and posted a bunch of cards that I did not have on my tradelists because I was holding them back for trades such as this.  I would also like to add that now I am pretty much done with Phase 1 and Phase 2 I am starting to post extra cards that I did not want to trade away in down trades, so I can start to make moves with more valued cards to get other cards I am looking for.

She was looking for some Dual lands, and other things, but ended up picking out these cards:

1 MM17 - Basilisk Collar
1 Torment - Cabal Coffers
1 Exodus - City of Traitors
1 MM17 - Damnation
1 MM13 - Doubling Season
3 M13 Reliquary Tower
1 Revised - Tundra

So in the end I think I came out pretty well.  I could be totally wrong with this, considering they are not playable in any real format, but in the end owning a playset of a card that starts up a new game within a game of Magic the Gathering is a pretty serious card.

Trade Ball-Z!

Phase 2 Card Count: 42

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CardSphere trades coming in!  What a great feeling it is to go to your mailbox and find a bunch of envelops in there just waiting to get opened. 

Here we go!

Nice little pick up here and happy to have accepted these cards into the collection!  Only need 2 more Portal Second Age cards!

This was a nice little package with putting that Portal count down to one left!!

Waaaaaa?  BOOM!  Unhinged is done!!!

So with these cards that came in from CardSphere I am making a real dent on the Phase 2 cards, but if you keep reading, you will see that everything is coming to an end soon.

Goodwill Auctions

The Greatest Magic the Gathering blog is back and running! 

The last couple of weeks I have been attempting to take care of my wife and our new born baby, so I have not really been able to spend time to write blogs or keep up with the collection.  Recently I have been able to get in front of some things and spend some time with the cards.

As the title of the blog suggests, I was running around with the wife doing a little last minute shopping for the baby.  We ended up hitting up the Goodwill so I decided to check out the cabinet that is locked, just because I have read a lot of stories on Reddit about other collectors finding gems in those types of stores and I wanted to take a stab at it.

I ended up not finding anything in the cabinet, but I did find a nice little link that they post.

https://www.shopgoodwill.com/

This is a link where you can shop the auctions they are putting on all around the country.  You can put in a max bid, and get some of the card collections they post on their site.  Now, completed a couple of auctions and won them both, and of course I ended up paying too much for them.  But really, I just wanted to get my feet wet with what type of stuff I can get, and what I should expect.

Here we go!

Alright, so this was my first buy, and I think I spent around $100 on this one.  Way over spent on this one, and did not get much from here.  It was my first auction and really I just wanted to get it because I saw some Modern Masters 2013 common card on the top.  Of course I was thinking that there would be more in the bulk of it.  I did not really get through it all, so I will write another blog on this one, and how not to bid on these auctions...

So this was the second auction I bid on, and I spent a little too much on this one, but it was well worth it.  I have been able to accept the collection into my inventory and update my trading sites with the new cards.

Here are the money cards I pulled from the collection and the 2 Theros Thoughtseize were the only cards that forced my higher bid on this collection.  Since we are looking at two trade binders, I just assumed that there was a lot more to use as trading fodder.  I was a little right.

Here are some land pulls that should being in some good trades.

Here are some more money rares, just smaller values.

Here are all the other Mythics I pulled.  Yeah yeah, not the Fog bank, not sure why that is in this picture.

This was just all the leftover bulk rares that I got.  You can also see the lower left stack, those are some promo and prerelease cards I picked up.

And here are some Commander 2013 first prints I pulled out because at some point I am going to start working on these, along with Conspiracy.

So yeah, on the second auction my bid was $200 and I ended up having to pay around $20 for shipping, but it was worth it if I can trade these cards away.

Breakdown
Cost Basis: $220.75
Money Cards: $228.69
Bulk Cards: $88.35
Promo Cards: $12.34
Duel Deck: $69.99

So in reality I spent $220.75 and picked up $399.37 worth of cards.  Some high priced cards, some bulk, some promos, and that Duel Deck.  I was actually surprised on that Duel Deck, I just assumed it was a newer one that was not worth that much, but it is one from 2011 and has a pretty nice price tag on it.  There are some up for sale around $80 on eBay right now, but the ones that have sold were closer to the $69.99 price range, so that is why I went with that.

So I am really hoping that I can turn these cards around to pick up some of the stuff I am looking for. But as you will see, I might not be in the need for trading fodder much any longer.