Magic cards for sale in '93 - '94

[Aaron]

While using Google Groups to find Magic posts from 1993, I came across a couple I wanted to share:

http://tinyurl.com/natot

http://tinyurl.com/rmvw3

I do realize that back when the game started, a Black Lotus wasn't anything to get excited about. That said, the posts still make me groan 

Anyone have stories to share? Did you buy seventeen Lotii for a couple hundred bucks? Did you SELL seventeen Lotii for a couple hundred bucks? I've got one for you guys, but I want to hear yours first. 

[CrashTest]

Cool stuff. I started playing in early 94, when I was really young. (10 or so.)

        My local store that had Magic also sold video games, so I remember selling a bunch of my old Nintendo games there to pick up some cards.

       Nevermind the $20 Black Lotuses, Beta SHIVAN DRAGON WAS BALLIN'.

         The prices went up fairly fast if I remember correctly - $2.75 Black Lotuses soon turned into $50 Black Lotuses within 1-2 years, and they quickly went up after that, I believe the price was perhaps around $200-300 for a Beta one in 1996-97.

[BigMac]

I started september 93 and started collecting as soon as i started. So i actually had my power twice. Once for playing and one for the collection. Well, as a student i needed the cash and at the time we did not have anything like deckprotectors. So you can imagine my played power was, well, really played. As well as my duals and other cards i used a lot around that time.

I sold 6 of my played power 9 (6 moxes and lotus) for a then staggering 600 dollars and some 30 legend rares (which were more expensive then than now). I used my blue power to refresh my duals for the most part and get other cards within the trades. Needless to say, they could have fetched a lot more now.

The best story, well the worst story, was when we still were playing for ante. I actually lost a juzam djinn in the ante. And yes we were playing for ante untill deep into 1994.The lotus i have now and do use in tournaments was right from the booster into my binder. Prolly not mint anymore but still is very near mint as it only sees the light of day when i change deck protectors for a tournament.

Other cards i got really cheap were my MWS. I got those for around 20 dollars a piece. Drains i actually traded for but untill today have used maybe in three decks as i do not like control decks. And to imagine, that all non restricted cards i have i have 5 times, once in my collection, and four times to play with.

One thing we will never forget is a friend of ours that we gave a mox pearl for his birthday (this one was around 50 dollars at the time which for us students was a lot of money) and he sold it little over a month later for the same amount of money. Talk about a Rachel (friends) move. (never liking presents and getting what you want).

[CrashTest]

Heh, I was still playing for ante until 1997.

       It was a very interesting part of early Magic, which is now lost. We'd just flip the top card over before we would play from each of our decks, and that was the ante.

              You've never played until you have had a big money  card on the line!

[scribe888]

haha i remember laughing at mishra's workshop back then . and skipping over the duals for 'geddons.  then again i was in second grade and whatever money i had was birthday money so spending that much on cards didn't seem quite right. if we could turn back time. but i guess if we did, we'd lose all good and bad times magic brought us that brought us to the hopefully better versions we are today.

[pyr0ma5ta]

Did you SELL seventeen Lotii for a couple hundred bucks? I've got one for you guys, but I want to hear yours first. 

I sold my 3 sets of Beta Power.  I got lunch money out of them.  $5 for a piece of power?  I eat lunch for 2 days!

Also, I remember in middle school when my life savings was $200.  I was randomly at the neighborhood shop and looking in the display case at a singed, beta, mint Black Lotus, and wanting to buy it, knowing that prices were only going upwards.  Mom wouldn't have any of it, insisting that a bank account would accumulate interest much better.  I spent $500 for a played, Unl Lotus last year.

[CrashTest]

I can't think of how many Bazaars of Baghdad I traded straight up for Cursed Scrolls when they were hot.

      Bazaar and Mishra's Workshop were just archaic lands back then, with only "coolness" factor much like Chaos Orb, with almost no playability aside from the random jank artifact decks or reanimator decks.

[vroman]

I played for one summer in 94, and quit until 2003. I never owned any power, but I had ~25 dual lands and Berserk which I sold for $50 total.

[49 Cents]

From:       Sea Wasp - view profile
Date:      Wed, Nov 10 1993 11:42 pm

        Surely you jest. 5 bucks for a single card? Hell, the Shivan Dragon
isn't even all that nasty. For two of your cards I could get another DECK.
Or save a few more bucks and get the collection edition.

        I could see the rare ones going for, oh, maybe 50 cents each or
something. I mean, for crying out loud, there are 60 cards in a deck. At
a quarter each that's 25 bucks!

[Jacob Orlove]

Still not as bad as Ironman Magic.

[marcb]

Fortunately, the stories I remember most were the good cards I got for cheap, not the good ones that I traded for nothing. I remember trading a friend a legends underworld dreams for a workshop back in the day when they were both around $20. I also remember buying a moat on ebay where the seller said that if the price of the moat reached 65 he would throw in a mana drain, so I wound up with both for 65. I was trying to build Zack Dolan's old deck, and I was much more interested in the moat.  The biggest mistake I made was probably not buying 4 bazaar's because I decided I wanted a berserk, eureka, and a fork so I could build a zoo deck, instead of buying the bazaar's for my reanimator deck (the old one with Nicol Bolas). Those were the times.

Marc

[cancerstix]

I still play Ironman once in a great while.  Mostly Ironman draft though.  

I did own a few pieces of power way back when.  Right before I quit (right after Alliances came out) I sold my Unl Sapphire for $75.  My mint, Alpha Ancestral netted a whole $100.  The Beta Twister also went for $100.  After that, I gave away the rest of the collection to a couple of guys at the local coffee house.  I know there were a few Fow's and some duals in there for sure.  Oh well.

[Godder]

Still not as bad as Ironman Magic.

Everyone's favorite side event at NZ Nationals is Ironman Limited . Early in round one of NZ Vintage Nationals, the TO yells out "This event has now been changed to Ironman!" just as I've put an Oath(!) trigger on the stack...

[BigMac]

Quote from: Jacob Orlove

Still not as bad as Ironman Magic.

I once sat watching a game of multiplayer magic where the winner could win a mox saphire. This was a game of ironman multiplayer magic and they were mostly playing fully powered. Normally when you play a mox it is not a big deal. There was even somebody playing a lotus at one time just not using it. Than the unpowered player played a shatterstorm. Well needless to say, a few pieces of power were lost then and there. The lotus player kept 1 piece of his lotus so nobody could remake his one and for remembrance. I think he will look at it now every once in a while and have some pain in his heart.
Those were good times hehe...

[yangtze34]

Whats ironman magic?  sorry if i sound like a n00b

[Sextiger]

I believe its where when cards go to the graveyard, they are destroyed, aka ripped apart.

[zeus-online]

Hmm how does yawgmoth's will work in Iron magic then? Can i replay each piece of my lotus or what?

/Zeus

[Godder]

If a card would go to the graveyard or be removed from the game, destroy it instead. There is no graveyard as such (or, it's empty - your choice). In other words, Yawgmoth's Will would suck (as would Regrowth etc.) .

[adrienger]

Quote from: Jacob Orlove

Still not as bad as Ironman Magic.

I once sat watching a game of multiplayer magic where the winner could win a mox saphire. This was a game of ironman multiplayer magic and they were mostly playing fully powered. Normally when you play a mox it is not a big deal. There was even somebody playing a lotus at one time just not using it. Than the unpowered player played a shatterstorm. Well needless to say, a few pieces of power were lost then and there. The lotus player kept 1 piece of his lotus so nobody could remake his one and for remembrance. I think he will look at it now every once in a while and have some pain in his heart.
Those were good times hehe...

Can't you just concede in response?

I'd rather light a cigarette with a 100$ bill than rip a mox!

I've never seen a blacker lotus torn apart...but a real one !!

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

e]
Can't you just concede in response?

Yes, but if you aren't prepared to rip your cards then why are you playing Ironman in the first place...?

[Dr. Teeth]

e]
Can't you just concede in response?

Yes, but if you aren't prepared to rip your cards then why are you playing Ironman in the first place...?

hmmm...actually, I doubt anyone would be prepared to rip up half their p9 to win just a saphire

[CrashTest]

Yeah you would. It's a REAL man's game. You'd rip up your Lotus to win a revised Bayou.

      It's about the MAN aspect.

[Dr. Teeth]

Maybe you mean the "don't-know-what-else-to-do-with-my-hard-earned-cash-aspect"... How long was that ago, anyway? Do people play this nowadays?

[ReAnimator]

I remember trading a Force of nature for a Timetwister.

It was a large trade maybe 14-16 cards for the same amount, everything was matched up in my mind 1 for 1, and then at the end there was a twister and a Force of nature. 

This was in 95 so by that time twister was quite a bit of money, but buddy seemed more than willing to do it since it was somewhat beat up.

I've still got it today. I also remember what i got the Force for (since it was a very big card back in the day when everyone was terrible) i got it off a friend for 2 macdonalds hamburgers since he was hungry and broke, what a bargain! 2 hamburgers for a twister!

[pyr0ma5ta]

what a bargain! 2 hamburgers for a twister!

I think I just found a new siggy quote.

[ReAnimator]

A friend of mine played a game of ante back in 94 (all beta) they played with the clause you can trade back for the ante you loose. The ante he lost was a jet, and the guy wanted his segnir vampire for it!
Well as some of you may or may not know Segnir and Serra were considered better than pretty much any rare, and even rarity of things back then werent that known, so my friends response to that offer was "are you kidding? you want my crazy sick vampire guy for a fast swamp? yeah right"

what a bargain! 2 hamburgers for a twister!

I think I just found a new siggy quote.

Nice!

[BigMac]

Maybe you mean the "don't-know-what-else-to-do-with-my-hard-earned-cash-aspect"... How long was that ago, anyway? Do people play this nowadays?

This must have been 94 or 95, but i bet 94 as it was at one of the first "spellenspektakels" of Eindhoven and those started somewhat more than a decade ago. Pretty much what you call gencon but smaller, a lot smaller, like infinite smaller. Think original series shuttle versus galaxy class. Moxes then were not that hard to come by and not that expensive yet. Still, there was destroyed far more than the winner actually got. However, the winner was the one that played the shatterstorm cleaning up much of the board and owning the rest with his shivan.

Now you could consider playing in that event with just commons, but the restriction was that your deck had to be worth a certain amount of money to be able to enter it. So, if you entered, you knew it could be costly. And yes, all them cards were ripped up. Most players actually kept a piece of the more expensive cards they ripped up as a remembrance. Around that time playing with sleeves was considered to be crap as well, at least around here. Needless to say that some cards were showing wear. I actually was one of the last to give up sleeveless play. I still got a lot of them old foursomes that are really bad, but i keep them for old times sake. (for example 4 unlimited hippies, 4 ul lightning bolts, 4 ul giant growth)

[Dr. Teeth]

Was there any way to play multiple rounds in such an event? 

By the way, I know the spellenspektakel, I go there (but I'm not dutch)

[Gandalf_The_White_1]

Was there any way to play multiple rounds in such an event? 

Yes: make sure you have a big deck.

Actually this reminds me of an article I read on MTG.com about Ironman draft.  The tourney was multiple rounds so part of the stratey was to try to 'save' one's best cards for tougher rounds when one might need them, so one would avoid casting valuable removal or creatures if one didn't need to in order to win.  Conversly, if one was losing one might try to spite one's opponent by killing their best creatures, etc.  Another thing that would happen a lot is that as the rounds progressed the land/spell ratio of one's get would get higher and higher (as lands aren't usually destroyed as much as spells are) leeding to more and more mana flood, such that people were actually trying to destroy their own lands when possible.

Edit: Oh I think there might have been something about adding the loser's deck to the winner's also.  I'm not sure about this though, because this was from a while ago.

[Godder]

Edit: Oh I think there might have been something about adding the loser's deck to the winner's also.  I'm not sure about this though, because this was from a while ago.

The winner of each match in Ironman gets the loser's cards, and is given time to construct a new deck with the cards.

Incidentally, Web of Inertia is banned .