About six months ago, I received an IM from my boss, Matt Gargiulo, telling me that he had a “special project” for me. I obviously accepted because the response, “No thanks, I’d rather not do work” would probably not have been received well. The details of the project were given to me along with a crudely labeled card hotel that contained a large collection of miscut, crimped, altered, and rare Magic cards. It was a few years’ worth of stock that had been (mostly) collecting dust at Star City Games. My task was “simple.” Organize, catalog, and price these cards. Yep! “Simple” enough to find prices for cards I had never seen before and didn’t even know existed!
Cataloging and organizing was easy. Pricing was a completely different battle. The phrase “a card is worth however much someone will pay for it” stands so true for these cards; the trick was finding out how much someone would pay for a (nearly) unique item! After a few months of stalking eBay, I managed to come up with what I consider to be a close figure for a lot of these cards. The ones I haven’t figured out yet—that’ll be up to you all, the consumers, once we get them listed.
So why am I writing this article?
Well, I’m glad I asked.
Despite my seemingly negative perspective about this task, it’s actually been a lot of fun looking up these items. I’ve been exposed to tons of rare cards, met some awesome people who specialize in collecting misprints/rarities, and I’ve learned a lot of information for my career. I’m writing this article to share the information that I’ve learned over the past six months. What I’m covering here is a very small fraction of all the rarities Magic has to offer.
With this introduction out of the way, let’s start the fun stuff!
Alpha Cut 4th Edition
The Alpha edition of Magic was cut differently from the Magic card you know today—for that edition (and that edition only), Magic was printed with rounded, rather than square, corners. A very small portion of 4th Edition cards were accidentally cut using the Alpha-shaped print plate. The majority of these cards were uncommon, but some commons exist. The cards aren’t extremely pricey, and they’re still a neat way to pimp out a cube or EDH deck.
Alternate 4th Edition
Another “error” that occurred in 4th Edition is called Alternate 4th Edition. Wizards of the Coast commissioned a playing-card company to make a test run of Magic cards that used the “traditional” glossy coating you feel on a regular deck of cards, rather than a the regular cardboard-feeling Magic back. The cards are extremely glossy, and the backs look almost like wax. They look and feel slightly different from most Magic cards but are still sleeve playable.
Alternate 4th cards were only released in Tournament Decks and have different packaging from “regular” 4th Edition cards. Regular 4th Edition is manufactured by Carta Mundi; Alternate 4th Edition was manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company. This is the way you can tell them apart if you are looking at the packaging!
Artist Alters
Alters are regular Magic cards that have been “altered,” usually by having their artwork touched up/changed by a third party (and sometimes the original artist). They are becoming more and more popular among Magic players. We have multiple amazing alterers at almost all of our StarCityGames.com Open Series events. I commissioned Eric Klug to alter my set of Moxen to become GURU Moxen! He did an awesome job, and his work continues to amaze me.
Aside from alterers, we often have Magic artists at our events. They’ll gladly sign cards and doodle on them, giving your cards a more personalized touch. If an artist has the time and you have the money, they will sometimes agree to do a more in-depth alteration job and mail you the altered card(s) after the event!
So what do alters and signatures do to the value of your cards?
As far as alters are concerned, you usually get what you pay for. I’ve seen a lot of amazing art put on cards, and I’ve also seen cards that look like a four-year-old drew on them with watercolors. My advice to you is this: don’t let someone destroy the value of your card by doing a shoddy job. If you want an alter, bite the bullet and shell out the money for a quality job with a reputable alterer.
Artist signatures almost never affect the value of the card. Some people love artist-signed cards and will pay a premium for them, and just as many (if not more!) people think that an artist’s signature on the card defaces the card. Until recently, StarCityGames.com sorted all of their signed cards in with the slightly played versions, allowing anyone who purchased a slightly played card to potentially get a signed card. We got enough customer complaints that we pulled the signed cards out of our slightly played stock, and a new system is currently in the works to separately list signed cards for those who want to purchase them!
Artist Proofs
When an artist draws a card, Wizards prints them 50 artist proofs of that card as a thank you for their work. Artist proof cards look exactly the same on the front as a regular Magic card, but they have a completely white back. The majority of artist proofs aren’t worth a lot of money; artists typically charge $5 for any given artist proof. The higher-end proofs, those that are of tournament playable cards, will often fetch a much higher price than the actual card.
One cool thing is that since artist proofs are blank on the back, you can often pay an artist to do an original sketch on the back of the card! From what I’ve noticed, the proofs that have detailed drawings on the back normally sell for significantly higher than ones that are just signed or blank.
Alternate Art
Many of you know about the rare foil cards printed in Planeshift. There was a small chance to open up these alternate-art foil versions of Ertai, the Corrupted, Tahngarth, Talruum Hero and Skyship Weatherlight out of booster packs.
What many people don’t know is that the Foreign Foil Planeshift versions of these three cards are all the alternate art! Make sure you don’t pay $150 for a “Foil Japanese alternate art Ertai” because there is no alternate art Japanese version; or more accurately, they all use the alternate English art, but the regular English art foil versions don’t exist in foreign languages!
The majority of the alternate art cards are printed in Chinese languages. China has strict standards about what is allowed to be printed, and one restriction is against depicting skeletons. A lot of cards that have pictures of skeletons had to have their art changed in order to meet these standards. Coffin Puppets from Prophecy is one example of this.
In addition to these language-specific alternate art cards, it is becoming a tradition for Wizards to print extended and alternate art versions of cards as tournaments prizes and as judge/player rewards. The value of these cards isn’t really difficult to figure out; since they are given out in large-ish quantities, most of them are abundant enough for the market to determine their value.
Color and Ink Errors
From time to time, the machines that print Magic cards malfunction. On rare occasions, these cards make it into booster packs and into public circulation. Coloring and inking errors are among the more common types of these errors. Sometimes cards are printed too light (not enough black ink) or too dark (too much black ink); other times they’re missing a particular color of ink (blue/red/cyan), and very rarely they’re printed without colored ink at all!
Discussing the value of these cards is awkward because this category is so broad. A small ink smudge will only increase the value of a card by a few dollars, while a major inking error can turn a $3.00 card into a hundred-dollar bill. If you have cards like this, my best advice is to poke around eBay (or our website, once I finish getting our misprints uploaded) and find cards that are of similar play value and have a similar type of misprint. One thing is certain: these errors always increase the value of a card. Even bad commons with a small inking or color problem are still worth at least a couple of bucks.
One of the more popular coloring errors is referred to as “Dark Visions.” There was a small print run of Visions that was printed extremely dark. All rares, and a small handful of commons (most notably Phyrexian Walker), were printed with this discoloration. Most of the cards aren’t worth a ton ($5-$20), but cards like Vampiric Tutor and Natural Order usually sell for well over $100.
Cards that are printed with mostly or only black and white ink are referred to as “albino.” These cards are extremely rare and tend to fetch a very pretty penny. The “albino” error can occur on either the front or back of cards. Like most misprints, the more playable the card, the more money it will ultimately be worth. True albino cards usually fetch $50-$100 minimum and only go up from there!
Miscuts
A manufacturing error that still occurs today is when the cards are cut off-centered. Like most misprints, the severity of the miscut and the quality of the card (or cards) being miscut (if two are showing) has a lot to do with determining its value. When I first started doing this, I was under the impression that a Brainstorm showing another part of a card would be in the ballpark of $50 to $100 dollars; then I saw one end on eBay for $600. That’s right; 600 American dollars. I’ve seen miscut dual lands end for less than $600. While I consider that to be extremely high, it just goes to show you that “one-of-a-kind” cards can be extremely valuable.
While dual lands and tournament staples can fetch absurd prices, most miscuts don’t. Crappy cards that are slightly off-centered are usually worth less than $10. Even playable rares that are slightly off-centered aren’t much more expensive than the normal versions. I often get emails from people asking me what their miscuts are worth, and I do my best to give them an accurate price, but these cards are very difficult to price accurately. Unless it’s showing another card, it will likely be worth less than two times a non-miscut one.
Crimps
When a Magic card is caught in the foil of the pack itself when being sealed, it gets extremely rippled on the sealed border; these are referred to as “crimps.” Crimps vary in all shapes and sizes, and the more crimped the card, the more it’s worth. I’ve seen cards that are crimped in the middle of the card, and I’ve seen cards where the crimping is hardly noticeable. The popularity of the card that is crimped still has a lot to do with its value but not as much as many other errors. People pimping out decks generally tend to shy away from misprints like these that cause the card to be physically different from the rest of their cards because they can be called for marking their cards during tournament play.
Crimped cards that are really bad will still retail for around $5-$10. The more expensive cards are generally worth two to three times the retail value of an uncrimped version.
Charlie Brown Medallions
During Tempest, one of the machines used to print Magic cards also used to print the comic strip “Peanuts.” Carta Mundi didn’t clean the print plate enough before putting on the next product, which happened to be the Tempest Magic set! The end result is that some of the Medallions in Tempest have pictures of the Peanuts comic strip in the background. Sapphire Medallion and Emerald Medallion both have pictures of Charlie Brown’s head, and Ruby Medallion has the frame of one of the strips. I’ve seen Sapphire Medallions sell for between $20 – $40 and Emerald Medallions sell for around $10-$20. I’ve never sold a Ruby Medallion nor have I seen one sell. The visibility on the Ruby Medallions is a lot worse than the other two, which in my opinion makes it less valuable.
Right Card, Wrong Picture
There are a number of cards that picture one card and have the text of another. Almost all of these errors appear in foreign cards, but most of them are awesome. In English, one such card is the 3rd Edition Serendib Efreet, which has the picture of Ifh-Biff Efreet from Arabian Nights instead! A few other examples are Drudge Skeleton Swamps (picture of a Swamp, text of a Drudge Skeleton), Wald (a German Forest with the picture of a Plains), Serra Elemental (a Serra Angel with Time Elemental’s picture), and ManaTroll (Manabarbs with Sedge Troll’s picture)! There’s even a Burrowing that has Strip Mine’s picture! This mainly occurred in older sets, so the supply of these cards is very limited.
“Walds” are the German Forest with a Plains picture. They usually end on eBay between $10-$20, but they’re rarely posted. A few months back, a handful of Burrowing Strip Mine made their way onto eBay, and all of them ended between $40-$50. The “Serra Elemental” is one of the more iconic misprints. They’re usually $60-$100 depending on condition.
Summer Magic
StarCityGames.com has recently added Summer Magic to the website. These are perhaps the rarest “regularly issued” cards, even though they were not actually regularly issued. Summer Magic was intended to be a white-bordered reprint set of 3rd Edition, produced mainly for England, where the errors in 3rd Edition (mainly the incorrect picture on Serendib Efreet that I discussed above) were corrected.
Wizards of the Coast wasn’t happy with the print quality of Summer Magic (also referred to as “Edgar”) because the cards were printed too darkly, and there were other errors that cropped up—most famously Hurricane was printed in a blue border instead of green!
Pricing these cards was extremely tricky because they almost never appeared on eBay, and I rarely saw them sold. A few months ago a large collection of Summer Magic was posted, and the prices they sold for were mind blowing! Zombie Master for $570, Dark Ritual for $634, and Island for $400. That’s right, you didn’t misread that; basic Island: Tap to add U to your mana pool – $400.
It’s estimated that only a handful of cases made their way to the public, and the majority of the print run was destroyed by Wizards. It’s impossible to get an exact number because nobody knows how much Summer Magic made its way to the public, but those who follow Summer Magic closely estimate that only between 12 and 40 copies of any given rare exist for each card!
These cards can be identified because they are the only English cards printed with a 1994 copyright line, and the font on the copyright line is printed in the Revised edition font. Don’t confuse these with the Promo cards (Blue Elemental Blast/Fireball) that were released in promotional magazines/comic books—while those cards have a 1994 copyright date as well, they use the 4th Edition font, and therefore are not Summer Magic cards!
A Lesson in History
The most fascinating part about working with all of these misprints is it has exposed me to all of the history that has made Magic such an awesome game. Every one of these cards has a “story” of sorts that is attached to it. While chasing misprints isn’t interesting for everyone, you can’t deny that they’re a special part of Magic history.
Thanks for reading!
-Wesley David Wise
@wdwise on Twitter
I’d like to thank Ben Bleiweiss for being a huge help with writing this article. His knowledge of Magic history is unrivaled, and it would have been very difficult to compile this information without his help. Thanks Ben!!