No one ever replied to this, but I'm still wondering about it, because I just opened a foil redemption set of Torment, and the cards were overall in beautiful condition, but some did have an occasional small spot of clouding visible along a border, etc. A couple also had a thing I've seen before, where the backside of the card actually has what looks like slits of foiling somehow projected onto it or something, I don't know exactly how to describe it.
Can these imperfections in old foil redemption sets be caused simply by the cards having rubbed against each other a bit over the years as its been handled/transported/etc?
I guess it's too much of a risk to open older sets like Onslaught or 7th Edition if the clouding or imperfections can be worse in some cases?
I mean specifically the 20-page, 360-card Ultra Pro Pro-Binder series, with the set art on each binder. They definitely don't exist for the Innistrad block, the furthest expansion set it goes back to is Return to Ravnica I believe. Can someone confirm this?
I'm about to open and sleeve foil sets of M13 and M14 and want to make sure I don't put M13 in a plain binder if there was a themed Pro-Binder available that I missed.
Which set was the first one that Ultra Pro created a 360-card binder for with the set art on the front? Was it Return to Ravnica? Or are there any older ones than that? What about Core Set 2013? I can't seem to find the answer with certainty.
I purchased foil MTGO redemption sets of the Alara block on eBay last year, and ended up selling them (sleeved and in binders) because they had some clouding on the borders, and what looked like sprinkles or splotches of foiling material on the surface of some cards too. Nothing that my buyer would ever notice, but for me it was enough that they weren't worth keeping for long term collecting.
The question is, will every foil sealed Alara block redemption set be pretty much the same? There are some on eBay again now that I'm thinking of bidding on, but if they'll likely be the same then I won't bother.
In ten boxes of Kaladesh I did not get one copy of Nissa, only got one Chandra, and then got playsets of several of the mythic rares. There should be on average 3 copies of each mythic in ten boxes of a set with 15 mythics.
In previous sets the distribution was really even with a similar amount of boxes. In Eldritch Moon I got pretty much exactly three copies of each mythic with nine boxes of the set. With twelve boxes of Shadows I also got a very even distribution of everything.
But then in Kaladesh it seemed much more random. Have they taken new measures to mix up boosters within boxes and boxes within cases?
I just got a regular Forest in an Eldritch Moon pack (number 297) that looks like someone whited out some of the card type text. So it looks like Ba******* - Forest, with the asterisks just being a complete covering over the letters, of a similar color to the rest of that middle band of the card. Is it worth anything?
For a while it was 53/15 rares/mythics for large sets and 35/10 for small sets. Small sets had pretty much exactly 2/3rd the amount of large sets, so if you wanted to get identical amounts of each rare and mythic of a set, on average, you could get 3 boxes of a large set for every 2 boxes of a small set. In a case of a typical large set, you'd get 27 mythics, or 1.8 of each mythic in the set on average, and 189 rares, or 3.56 of each rare in the set, on average. Four boxes of a small set would yield 18 mythics, or again, 1.8 of each on average, and 126 rares, or again, 3.6 of each rare in the set, on average.
I did the typical ratio between Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch, without realizing that Oath had more rares and mythics than normal, but I'm fine with that because I don't like Oath that much anyway.
But now I'm seeing that the ratio is off kilter again in the SOI block, and is projected to be yet again in the Kaladesh block! Wiki says that Aether Revolt will have 42/12 like Oath.
To complicate matters with the SOI block, there are more rares and mythics per box than in sets without double sided cards. I got 35 or 36 non-foil rares per box, and 5 to 6 mythics, on average.
Key question #1: Is the increase in rares and mythics due to double-sided cards in Eldritch Moon mathematically identical to the way it was in Shadows?
See the thing is, a case of Shadows that has say, 35.5 non-foil rares per box, gives you about 3.6 of each rare (the typical figure from above), even though there are 59 rares, because normally you'd get 31 or 32 rares per box in a set.
But with Eldritch Moon having 47 rares, four boxes with 35.5 rares each only gives you 3.02 of each rare. If you add a fifth box you get 3.77 of each rare, now we've overshot.
If you get two cases of Shadows and nine boxes of Eldritch (as opposed to the eight that you'd normally get in the 2/3 ratio system that sets used to follow), you get about 7.22 of each rare in Shadows and 6.79 of each rare in Eldritch, falling short this time. Make it ten and you get 7.55 of each rare in Eldritch, overshooting again.
The math is identical with the mythics. One case of Shadows gives you (assuming 5.5 non-foil mythics per box) 1.83 mythics per box, similar to the classic 1.8 number from above (larger amount per box, offset by there being 18 instead of 15), but with four boxes of Eldritch you get only 1.57 of each mythic because there are 14 of them. Add a fifth box and you get 1.96. There's no way to keep the ratios the same in the way it used to be with 53/15 and 35/10.
Will it go back to 53/15 and 35/10 consistently at some point?
I've been opening boxes of SOI over the past few days and feel like I've pulled at least nine or ten Geier Reach Bandit and only about two or three Thing in the Ice. Half the time when there's a double sided rare in the back of the pack it's the damn Geier Reach Bandit. Is that card more common than the other double-sided rares?
Does anyone know if products like the set-themed Ultra Pro Pro-Binder series will have special accommodations in the Eldritch Moon binder to allow for proper display of the meld cards? The binder typically holds 360 cards, and the set is only 205, so there's plenty of room after the first 12 pages or so to have spaces designed specifically for displaying the flip sides of the meld cards together. I really hope they do this! It would require having two copies each of the cards that meld, in order to properly display the full set, but it would still be better than not having a place where you can display those cards at all.
If I had asked for cash I don't think I would have been able to buy five packs with the cash he would have given me. So it was a trade of cards for cards.
I walked into my local LGS today with a pack foil Relentless Dead that I had pulled at the pre-release. I said I was interested in store credit for it, to get more SOI packs. The guy looks up the card on his phone and offers me five packs for it. I was expecting around three.
In the five packs I got Avacyn, Wolf of Devil's Breach (I know, but it is a mythic), two of the rare dual land series, and a foil Scourge Wolf.
I picked up a box and a fat pack yesterday, and going through them, I noticed that occasionally there's a pack that has eight commons, the way a foil pack would, except there's no foil, just two double-sided cards instead of one. In the first instance the extra double-sided card was a mythic, and in the second instance it was a rare. Shouldn't these have been foil?
No. MaRo has spoke to this a couple of times. Every pack has 1 DFC and 1 in 8 packs have a second DFC. This doesn't include the foil, so there is a possibility of getting 3 DFC's in the same pack with the foil
Oh okay, sweet. So that secondary double faced card that was mythic... did that take up a regular mythic slot in the box or not?
I picked up a box and a fat pack yesterday, and going through them, I noticed that occasionally there's a pack that has eight commons, the way a foil pack would, except there's no foil, just two double-sided cards instead of one. In the first instance the extra double-sided card was a mythic, and in the second instance it was a rare. Shouldn't these have been foil?
I live in Canada and I've had nothing buy success buying from FaceToFaceGames, Magic Stronghold Games & Fusion Gaming. You can always e-mail them in advance and talk shop, they encourage folk to drop off a message and see if they can help. They always mark the sleeves of their cards with the structural integrity of the card itself. NM, M, SP, P, and so on.
ABUGames is the only other site I use for Magic cards, they're based down in the States. Good folks, huge selection of cards. I've bought from them frequently enough to feel confident saying that when they mark a card as NM/M they honestly mean it.
Hope this helps ya out.
I frequently buy cards from ABUGames for the same reason as the TC, to get mint cards for collection purposes. I even mention this to them to send me the best copy they have. Still I get cards that are listed a NM and it's not really NM. This is true for sets that are really hard to find. I ordered 6th Ed cards from them last time and they had lot of blemishes that collectors don't like to see in their NM and Mint rated cards.
This happened to SCG, Troll&Toad, ChannelFireball, and some big ebay stores as well, so it's not a problem exclusive to ABUGames or any other online store. You have to resign yourself in getting the perfect online store for these NM/M hard to find cards.
Well I'm not collecting hard to find cards, and I never buy singles to begin with. These are situations where I had the bad luck of pulling a card with some sort of flaw from a booster pack or a redemption set. The last two cards I bought from Star City Games were a foil Ashcloud Phoenix and a foil M15 Shivan Reef. They have many copies of both these cards, including I assume some that they opened themselves from booster packs and have never been touched otherwise.
And yet both cards were noticeably different from pack-fresh cards.
Can these imperfections in old foil redemption sets be caused simply by the cards having rubbed against each other a bit over the years as its been handled/transported/etc?
I guess it's too much of a risk to open older sets like Onslaught or 7th Edition if the clouding or imperfections can be worse in some cases?
What I'm trying to find out for sure is whether or not there's a Core Set 2013 binder. There's this hard-to-find M14 one - http://www.abugames.com/gaming-supplies/product-detail/Magic-2014-/-M14-Chandra-9-Pocket-Pro%2DBinder
I'm about to open and sleeve foil sets of M13 and M14 and want to make sure I don't put M13 in a plain binder if there was a themed Pro-Binder available that I missed.
The question is, will every foil sealed Alara block redemption set be pretty much the same? There are some on eBay again now that I'm thinking of bidding on, but if they'll likely be the same then I won't bother.
Thanks!
In previous sets the distribution was really even with a similar amount of boxes. In Eldritch Moon I got pretty much exactly three copies of each mythic with nine boxes of the set. With twelve boxes of Shadows I also got a very even distribution of everything.
But then in Kaladesh it seemed much more random. Have they taken new measures to mix up boosters within boxes and boxes within cases?
I did the typical ratio between Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch, without realizing that Oath had more rares and mythics than normal, but I'm fine with that because I don't like Oath that much anyway.
But now I'm seeing that the ratio is off kilter again in the SOI block, and is projected to be yet again in the Kaladesh block! Wiki says that Aether Revolt will have 42/12 like Oath.
To complicate matters with the SOI block, there are more rares and mythics per box than in sets without double sided cards. I got 35 or 36 non-foil rares per box, and 5 to 6 mythics, on average.
Key question #1: Is the increase in rares and mythics due to double-sided cards in Eldritch Moon mathematically identical to the way it was in Shadows?
See the thing is, a case of Shadows that has say, 35.5 non-foil rares per box, gives you about 3.6 of each rare (the typical figure from above), even though there are 59 rares, because normally you'd get 31 or 32 rares per box in a set.
But with Eldritch Moon having 47 rares, four boxes with 35.5 rares each only gives you 3.02 of each rare. If you add a fifth box you get 3.77 of each rare, now we've overshot.
If you get two cases of Shadows and nine boxes of Eldritch (as opposed to the eight that you'd normally get in the 2/3 ratio system that sets used to follow), you get about 7.22 of each rare in Shadows and 6.79 of each rare in Eldritch, falling short this time. Make it ten and you get 7.55 of each rare in Eldritch, overshooting again.
The math is identical with the mythics. One case of Shadows gives you (assuming 5.5 non-foil mythics per box) 1.83 mythics per box, similar to the classic 1.8 number from above (larger amount per box, offset by there being 18 instead of 15), but with four boxes of Eldritch you get only 1.57 of each mythic because there are 14 of them. Add a fifth box and you get 1.96. There's no way to keep the ratios the same in the way it used to be with 53/15 and 35/10.
Will it go back to 53/15 and 35/10 consistently at some point?
In the five packs I got Avacyn, Wolf of Devil's Breach (I know, but it is a mythic), two of the rare dual land series, and a foil Scourge Wolf.
Oh okay, sweet. So that secondary double faced card that was mythic... did that take up a regular mythic slot in the box or not?
What do you mean a known issue? Specifically with 7th Edition?
Well I'm not collecting hard to find cards, and I never buy singles to begin with. These are situations where I had the bad luck of pulling a card with some sort of flaw from a booster pack or a redemption set. The last two cards I bought from Star City Games were a foil Ashcloud Phoenix and a foil M15 Shivan Reef. They have many copies of both these cards, including I assume some that they opened themselves from booster packs and have never been touched otherwise.
And yet both cards were noticeably different from pack-fresh cards.