MtG Power 9 on Antiques Roadshow

[glazball 152]

Go ahead and laugh, but I love Antiques Roadshow almost as much as Grandma's Boy's granny.  I have it set to record along with another show called Collector's Call hosted by Blair from Facts of Life.  I just like seeing rare and weird things appraised I guess.  Anyways I was watching AR the other night and a woman brought in her husband's Magic the Gathering collection.  What the actual fuck??  I don't play but I did know some cards like Black Lotus are rare worth a lot.  I certainly didn't expect this!  I thought I would share the clip below.

Who has that kind of money AND who is ever going to use these in play?  It would be like paying $20k to obtain an uber-rare Uno card just so you can slap down a Draw Four Hundred wild card on your astonished opponent!  Yea that's right, I just compared MtG to Uno!

 

[DefaultGen 4,935]

It's funny to see such a well known thing (to us at least) with an owner who doesn't know anything about them on Antiques Roadshow. This must be how rug enthusiasts feel when the expert is about to reveal how amazing someone's ancient Indian rug is.

[darkchylde28 1,546]

Honestly, if I still had mine (sold my entire collection, including my P9 with duplicates to clear all my debt right before I got married), I'd still be busting them out to play with, albeit in sleeves.  I did have several Betas that I played with (Timetwister, Mox Pearl and a bunch of other random stuff like play sets of Counterspell, Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, etc.), although most of the ones I picked up were Unlimited.

[DoctorEncore 3,687]

I don't know anything about Magic, so this was pretty cool just to watch and learn and see the appraiser's excitement.

[RH 4,444]

What amazes me about the continual growth in value of these cards is that I really don't feel like these were rare.  I mean, compare it to "Stadium Events", or even Little Samson.  These games were rare for a reason.  SE was manufactured but quickly pulled because Nintendo bought and rebranded the game.  Little Samson was late release, subsequently didn't sell well, but was actually really good so it's worth $$$ now.  That makes sense.

But when I was in middle school, right when MtG came out and was in alpha, I knew multiple kids who had binders like this.  It was popular right out of the gate.  In the coming years, the Black Lotus, and other cards, were considered OP but never band, so they were worth money back then.  I mean, granted, $100 doesn't compare to $20k today, but still.  If you were a kid in 1992/93 and had a collection and saw in a price guide in 1996 that your alpha and beta cards collectively were worth $2,000 or more, you either sold them to collectors or kept them.

I know these are highly desirable but to me it blows my mind how "rare" these thing are and how much money they fetch.  You'd think only 100-200 Black Lotuses exist but knowing my friends and the size of the community I grew up in, probably 100-200 Black Lotuses floated through Columbia, SC and I'm suspect that many of those were lost with time.

[Gloves 10,940]

37 minutes ago, RH said:

What amazes me about the continual growth in value of these cards is that I really don't feel like these were rare.  I mean, compare it to "Stadium Events", or even Little Samson.  These games were rare for a reason.  SE was manufactured but quickly pulled because Nintendo bought and rebranded the game.  Little Samson was late release, subsequently didn't sell well, but was actually really good so it's worth $$$ now.  That makes sense.

But when I was in middle school, right when MtG came out and was in alpha, I knew multiple kids who had binders like this.  It was popular right out of the gate.  In the coming years, the Black Lotus, and other cards, were considered OP but never band, so they were worth money back then.  I mean, granted, $100 doesn't compare to $20k today, but still.  If you were a kid in 1992/93 and had a collection and saw in a price guide in 1996 that your alpha and beta cards collectively were worth $2,000 or more, you either sold them to collectors or kept them.

I know these are highly desirable but to me it blows my mind how "rare" these thing are and how much money they fetch.  You'd think only 100-200 Black Lotuses exist but knowing my friends and the size of the community I grew up in, probably 100-200 Black Lotuses floated through Columbia, SC and I'm suspect that many of those were lost with time.

Only 1100 Alpha Black Lotuses were printed, and 3300 Beta. And these are cards meant for playing with (and the majority found heavy play). Being little pieces of paper many were straight up destroyed. That said, Unlimited saw many printed and these were more likely what you and your friends had pass through your hands; even these are worth around 50k today.

Nintendo required 10k+ units for print runs on the NES. We can argue up and down that SE was pulled before hitting shelves, but that's not to say there's not a big ol' pile of em sitting in some warehouse unbeknownst to us all. Nobody knows exactly how many were printed. 

Simply stated, nobody outside of us here and hardcore game collectors gives two shits about SE. Conversely, Black Lotus (and the rest of the Power 9) have mass appeal to 30 years' worth of MtG fans, old and new. ANYONE who plays MtG knows the Power 9. Ask some Xbox kiddie if he knows about Stadium Events and he'll look at you sideways. The MtG cards have CLOUT out the wazzoo.

[RH 4,444]

26 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Only 1100 Alpha Black Lotuses were printed, and 3300 Beta. And these are cards meant for playing with (and the majority found heavy play). Being little pieces of paper many were straight up destroyed. That said, Unlimited saw many printed and these were more likely what you and your friends had pass through your hands; even these are worth around 50k today.

Nintendo required 10k+ units for print runs on the NES. We can argue up and down that SE was pulled before hitting shelves, but that's not to say there's not a big ol' pile of em sitting in some warehouse unbeknownst to us all. Nobody knows exactly how many were printed. 

Simply stated, nobody outside of us here and hardcore game collectors gives two shits about SE. Conversely, Black Lotus (and the rest of the Power 9) have mass appeal to 30 years' worth of MtG fans, old and new. ANYONE who plays MtG knows the Power 9. Ask some Xbox kiddie if he knows about Stadium Events and he'll look at you sideways. The MtG cards have CLOUT out the wazzoo.

Yeah, I'm sure something is off in my assessment.  I will say though, in my younger days, I'd seen multiple Black Lotuses.  Some were behind glass at shops, some were in binders and some were even played with.  My point is, though, these were accessible.  They weren't like other items that weren't and for as long as I can recall, at least the Black Lotus has been valuable.

Granted, I do recall seeing more white-bordered earlier cards than black bordered ones and I think I knew of only one guy who had a near complete alpha set.  But, I was also a serious nerd and so were many of my friends.  A lot of them hung out at local card/collectible shops.  We had 3, I think, in our city and maybe it was just really popular in my area, more so than other places in a city the size of my hometown.

If there are only 4,400 original Black Lotuses, I won't put a real number came through where Iived but CCGs seemed to be quite popular with the nerds going all the way back to about 1993-1994.  Again, I knew a few guys who got in early in my school and there are were probably about 10 other middle schools in Columbia, which I just assume also had collectors and players.  I'm just scaling up those numbers to come up with a general figure.  No, not everyone had a complete set but since many of us were comic and Topps card collectors before MtG came around, we were use to dumping our allowance money into packs of cards.  But, that might have been our culture.  Even back then one of the shops often had news stories written about it.  It was a HUGE warehouse and the owner at that time had a World Record for most Star Wars toys.  At that time, he supposedly had every single Star Wars toy ever made, and he had a bunch of other things.  Anyway, he set the general tone for the nerd-culture of the area.  My guess is, he got into MtG at the ground level, bought as many booster boxes a he could, and pushed them.  My friends would have been part of his original clientele.

It's a shame too.  I lived way outside of town, so I almost never got to go to the card and collectible shops.  All of my collectibles came from Wal-Mart, and MtG didn't come there until looooong after it was released.  Had I had a chance to make it to the card shops, there's a good chance I could have possibly picked up 5-10 betas packs on my own.

[MachineCode 159]

In 3rd grade (94-95) they were already $100 bucks. I saved up that amount but bought a skateboard instead. While I don't at all regret that purchase, I do wish I had bought one at the time as the prices are now insane.

[glazball 152]

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, since I honestly know nothing about MtG:

Would a complete alpha set be worth more?  I would assume so, but how much more?

[Gloves 10,940]

13 minutes ago, glazball said:

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, since I honestly know nothing about MtG:

Would a complete alpha set be worth more?  I would assume so, but how much more?

A complete Alpha set would be worth about 4x more. Last year a complete set auctioned for $430k.

[Kguillemette 1,320]

I sold a warped and water damaged beta lotus 5 years ago for 3600. That was the only remnant of my collection i had held on to. No regrets, it paid for my wife's lpn program cash money. I do wonder what it would sell for now though...

[RH 4,444]

So where is the equivalent site for MtG like PriceCharting.com?

[guitarzombie 783]

So these are worth that much, even tho you cant even use them in a real tournament except a vintage one.  Which im sure in those tournaments they're not using the real cards either... ok.

[The Count 466]

I love AR and I DVR and watch every new episode. I especially enjoy when they show vintage sportscards. I saw this and always regret trading my MTG cards for Game Gear games back when, lol.

[Bearcat-Doug 4,944]

4 hours ago, Gloves said:

A complete Alpha set would be worth about 4x more. Last year a complete set auctioned for $430k.

I thought video game prices were high!

[Gloves 10,940]

1 hour ago, RH said:

So where is the equivalent site for MtG like PriceCharting.com?

Yeah, multiple. Here's one: https://shop.tcgplayer.com/price-guide/magic

[Gloves 10,940]

1 hour ago, guitarzombie said:

So these are worth that much, even tho you cant even use them in a real tournament except a vintage one.  Which im sure in those tournaments they're not using the real cards either... ok.

You don't buy Stadium Events or an NWC cart to play it, same applies here.

[guitarzombie 783]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

You don't buy Stadium Events or an NWC cart to play it, same applies here.

Im sure some people do haha.  But you can if you want, these cards you cant.  Would Stadium Events be worth that much if people didn't consider it part of the set?  Probably not.

Edited May 13, 2020 by guitarzombie
Nothing more fun than seeing a typo after being quoted.

[Gloves 10,940]

2 minutes ago, guitarzombie said:

Im sure some people do haha.  But you can if you want, these cards you cat.  Would Stadium Events be worth that much if people didn't consider it part of the set?  Probably not.

NWC would be the best comparison - you can still play the game/card all you want. But doing so ain't gonna win you any tournaments.

[RegularGuyGamer 1,858]

6 hours ago, Gloves said:

A complete Alpha set would be worth about 4x more. Last year a complete set auctioned for $430k.

Did the heavy hitters have high grades? It's crazy to think how close a complete 1st edition base set, with some high grades, wouldn't be too "far" behind. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. 

[Startyde 174]

3 hours ago, RH said:

So where is the equivalent site for MtG like PriceCharting.com?

Mtggoldfish is one of the best, tracks physical, and digital.

[Gloves 10,940]

21 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Did the heavy hitters have high grades? It's crazy to think how close a complete 1st edition base set, with some high grades, wouldn't be too "far" behind. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. 

Tbh not sure, I only followed it loosely. There was a graded alpha set on ebay a few years ago marked at 1.25m, but no clue where that went. 

[DefaultGen 4,935]

37 minutes ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Did the heavy hitters have high grades? It's crazy to think how close a complete 1st edition base set, with some high grades, wouldn't be too "far" behind. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. 

Are you talking Pokemon? How rare are first edition base set cards compared to MTG alpha? In my area, everyone had at least some first edition Pokemon, but there was typically only like one guy at a comic shop who had been playing Magic since the early days and that might mean Beta/Unlimited, not even Alpha.

[RegularGuyGamer 1,858]

42 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

Are you talking Pokemon? How rare are first edition base set cards compared to MTG alpha? In my area, everyone had at least some first edition Pokemon, but there was typically only like one guy at a comic shop who had been playing Magic since the early days and that might mean Beta/Unlimited, not even Alpha.

Considering they were released in 96, and were marketed exclusively to kids, while they were the rarest things to come by in the years shortly after the release, it's basically impossible to find PSA 10 1st editions. Even pack fresh don't get 10s, mostly 7s and 8s. 

For some perspective, a PSA 10 1sr edition Charizard sold at auction for over 30k recently. 

There were so several releases of base set. 1st edition, shadowless, and unlimited. Also base set 2 that also had a 1st edition. 

[arch_8ngel 1,597]

9 hours ago, RegularGuyGamer said:

Considering they were released in 96, and were marketed exclusively to kids, while they were the rarest things to come by in the years shortly after the release, it's basically impossible to find PSA 10 1st editions. Even pack fresh don't get 10s, mostly 7s and 8s. 

For some perspective, a PSA 10 1sr edition Charizard sold at auction for over 30k recently. 

There were so several releases of base set. 1st edition, shadowless, and unlimited. Also base set 2 that also had a 1st edition. 

I think his point was that even garbage condition Alpha and Beta are relatively rare since they were limited initial releases, whereas Pokemon 1st edition was everywhere from day 1.