View Single Post
  #6  
Old 05-28-2018, 12:09 PM
Bored5000's Avatar
Bored5000 Bored5000 is offline
Eddie S.
Eddie Smi.th
 
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Fleetwood, Pa.
Posts: 1,265
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by swarmee View Post
As a guy who played Magic about a year after it started (1994-96 timeframe), I can give you a little background. The initial MTG base sets (black bordered Alpha with heavily rounded corners, and black bordered Beta with lightly rounded corners) came out in 1993 along with the additional sets Arabian Nights (scimitar logo on cards). They were made in much more limited numbers than the white-bordered (3rd*) edition base sets called "Unlimited" or "Revised." The game became much more even when Wizards of the Coast (game producer) really let the presses run for 4th edition in 1995, which was the first year they put the copyright date on the cards.
Alpha and Beta were mostly only available in larger markets in the country, and the Unlimited and Revised cards were the ones that trickled through the country and spread like wildfire. So think of them like the 1952 Topps High Numbers, and the Black Lotus being the Mantle. The Mox jewels being the Mathews, Mays, Jackie, etc.
Everything in Magic is based on being able to call the cards from your hand by paying a casting cost. Each land gives you one piece of energy per turn, so the first turn, you could play a land and then play a card with a casting cost of 1 energy (mana). On turn two, you could place your second land, and cast either a creature with a cost of 2 mana, or 2 with a cost of 1 mana each. It would give each player a fair chance to have a few turns to get enough creatures out there to be competitive.
The Black Lotus, however, was a "cheat" to this pattern. For a zero mana casting cost, you could immediately conjure 3 mana and cast a stronger creature. And since it was a rare card, there weren't many out there. You couldn't just buy pre-made decks with all the same cards to compete against your friends and in tournaments. If you didn't own the card, you couldn't play it. So the players that got the Black Lotus in packs had the best chance of winning the games and becoming tournament beasts. The Moxes were similar; they gave you cheap energy that you could ramp up your creatures with faster than your opponent. And since the early years of Magic required you to play for ante (risk a card to win your opponent's card), the best decks kept getting stronger. Because they accrued a lot of play wear, finding gem mint ones are difficult, because you used to shuffle them into your decks like playing cards before people started keeping them in sleeves.

TLDR: Black Lotus has always been a powerful and in demand card, and links you to the founding players of MTG.
Thank you for the explanation. I know at its very basic level, a Honus Wagner T206 is just a piece of cardboard, same as a MTG card. But it is weird to me because in the rest of the hobby, game cards like the Tom Barker game and Fan Craze cards are worth very little compared to non game cards of the same player.

I get the part where the Black Lotus card was a super card if someone was playing MTG, but five figures for a card that does not depict a person and is not even going to be used for the game seems weird to me. But I know that paying $44,000 for any piece of cardboard is a bit weird.
__________________
Flawless BST transactions with Wondo, Marslife, arcadekrazy, Moonlight Graham, Arazi4442, wrestlingcardking and Justus.

Last edited by Bored5000; 05-28-2018 at 12:14 PM.
Reply With Quote