Magical Memories
I came to the rescue this afternoon at my local comic book shop. I was scanning the racks for the latest issue of B.P.R.D.: 1946 when I overheard a pair of young teens asking one of the employees about the value of their Magic: The Gathering cards. One claimed that he had been told a few of his cards were worth in excess of $50, perhaps even way more.
The problem was that neither of the kids nor the employee could tell which set/edition the cards were from, which affects the value of the card. For those who don't know, some Magic cards are reprinted in different sets with the original sets being the most valuable. The early sets didn't have much in the way of identification, but Wizards of the Coast quickly figured out a system--hence expansion sets and reprint sets having little icons.
Anyway, back to the story. I walked over to the counter and offered my two cents worth. I looked at the card and quickly recognized it as a Revised Edition, Force of Nature, which much to the kids' disappointment was only worth about $1.75. Discouraged, the kids left the store and the employee thanked me for me help.
I use to play Magic a lot about ten years ago, but I probably haven't touched a deck in the past five years (give or take). Once I got to college I stopped playing as much, aside from a game here or there with friends for sheer nostalgic value. I just couldn't keep up with all the sets and all the wacky rule changes. I'm sure all of my painstakingly fine tuned decks are verboten in tournament play now. I used to play in tournaments back in the day, and I even won a couple (or placed pretty high). There was a Media Play store about 20 minutes from home that had weekly (or bi-weekly, can't remember) Magic nights on Fridays.
Yeah, so my Friday nights in middle-school/high school were spent playing Magic, watching X-Files or playing Mario Kart 64 or Golden Eye at a friend's house. I was (was?) such a geek.
The other issue I had with Magic as I got older was that I didn't like having to dump a bunch of money into it all the time--and there was the ever present complaint of having to play against people who would just buy the super-rare cards worth hundreds of dollars so they could easily win. I hated that. I really liked playing sealed deck/draft tournaments--you were given a brand new starter deck and a couple of boaster packs and had to make a working deck out of it. Those were a lot of fun, because some of the people I played against who'd just buy the super rare/game breaker cards didn't know much about strategy or how to work with less.
I still enjoy the game and think it is fun, even though I haven't played it in a long time. Where's my Red/Green Erhnam Djinn deck?
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danieljhogan) wrote,
nostalgic
