The Magic Librarities

Jmaschme wrote:a real challenge would be trying to get a gem mint graded set of alt fourth. I do not have the energy or desire to try. but from what I've seen the cards have some centering issues. also, the cards are loose in the deck with no wrapper inside the starter so they bang around in the cardboard. plus apparently they show signs of edge wear more easily than other magic cards.

LOL... yeah, I thought about trying that. I got PSA to grade the cards and sent in a few of my nicer extras. At the time it seemed like a good idea - boxes were reasonable and available, and like GlobalBoosterHunter said they were a good budget replacement for Summer.

The challenge of getting Gem Mint cards made it sort of worthwhile - centering was killer, and you needed to go sealed because raw was almost always too scuffed and chipped (due to the nature of the cards). In addition, the three rares were the first cards in the deck, so they had virtually no protection from damage if the deck was handled too much.

Of course I didn't rush on the project... lots of other priorities, right? Slowly it got harder and harder to find sealed - what was once plentiful changed to impossible. At this point I don't know if it's worth doing. I could bust up my raw set, but short of that I really don't have access to the quality of cards to make grading worthwhile... sigh.

Take it easy,
Jared

GlobalBoosterHunter wrote:Why do you think Alt 4th is so popular? As you say, it isn't for the cards themselves.

I think that maybe Summer is getting too expensive and Alt 4th has enough of an air of mystery to it to be a budget replacement.

The cost of sealed boxes of Revised has also skyrocketed though it seems to have plateaued over the past year. Glad they didn't make boosters of Fourth, that would be a pain to get hold of...

Actually, is there any reason why they didn't make boosters? If they were doing a demonstration then you would think they would want to show off their booster making capabilities as well.

US Playing Card Company (USPCC) was going to be a second source for the cards. With second sourcing, you usually have a company prove capability on one product, and if they succeed you let them work on the other products in the line. My guess is that boxes were easier for USPCC to make, print, and fill, since they did it all the time for regular decks of playing cards. Foil package filling might have been tougher, and Wizards might have needed to ship the 4th edition foil. If the USPCC trial was secret (from Carta Mundi), diverting foil to another printer might have led to some embarrassing questions.

hammr7 wrote:

GlobalBoosterHunter wrote:Why do you think Alt 4th is so popular? As you say, it isn't for the cards themselves.

I think that maybe Summer is getting too expensive and Alt 4th has enough of an air of mystery to it to be a budget replacement.

The cost of sealed boxes of Revised has also skyrocketed though it seems to have plateaued over the past year. Glad they didn't make boosters of Fourth, that would be a pain to get hold of...

Actually, is there any reason why they didn't make boosters? If they were doing a demonstration then you would think they would want to show off their booster making capabilities as well.

US Playing Card Company (USPCC) was going to be a second source for the cards. With second sourcing, you usually have a company prove capability on one product, and if they succeed you let them work on the other products in the line. My guess is that boxes were easier for USPCC to make, print, and fill, since they did it all the time for regular decks of playing cards. Foil package filling might have been tougher, and Wizards might have needed to ship the 4th edition foil. If the USPCC trial was secret (from Carta Mundi), diverting foil to another printer might have led to some embarrassing questions.

That makes sense, thanks!