questions on collecting foreign cards...

[merfolkguy]

Hi all,
I'm curious what kinds of things have worked for all of you in the past in terms of finding cards in foreign languages, meaning any that are not your native sold-down-the-street language for you.

I realize the game originated in the U.S. and so there is probably a bigger proportion of English than any other language, but I still have some questions...

I preface all this by saying yes, I am an idiot American and I'm not bilingual...I have the highest respect for anyone out there who speaks 2, 3 or even more languages, and I wish that was me, but it's not unfortunately.  I can greet someone and ask them how they're doing in maybe 5-10 languages, but that's my limit other than some minimal conversational French and some very rusty but semi-fluent Espanol...  Anyway, to those of you for which English is your 2nd language and you're as fluent as me....I think that's way way cool and I admit I'm jealous.

questions:

1) I have local shops nearby, and some of them have webpages of course--they buy and sell collections.  Surely there are such shops overseas--do they usually have their pages/storefronts only in their native language so I can't find them, or do they just stock so many English cards that I can't tell they are actually a Spanish/Italian/German/etc merchant?

2) I occasionally have seen ebay links that go to non-english offerings.  My Spanish is decent enough that I could probably carry out some transactions with someone who doesn't speak English if needed, but are there a lot of cards for sale on international ebay pages or am I just not seeing them because I have my default gateway/settings on English etc?  Educate me please...

3) Is it just me or are there really very few big shops that stock a lot of international inventory?  cardshark,collectmart,abu games have worked for me finding a few things, but it's very frustrating when the only description of the cards is 'foreign' or 'asian'...  is the investment in cataloging the foreign collections so costly for shops that they just don't bother, or do they really not have that many foreign cards?  (what is the relative print run breakdowns between the languages anyway, do you know?  How many of those foreign boxes end up in the US despite WotC's probable intent to distribute them somewhere else?)  If you run a shop, can you comment--do they just list their rares perhaps and so I need to call them and ask to find commons?

4) okay, this is going to be the dumbest question, but I don't know so I have to ask--when i see japanese, korean and chinese characters in my browser (IE 6.0 in this case), they're always just rows of rectangles...can I configure the browser to display the character set?  I guess that makes sense but I never have looked into it...  for instance here, can you read the characters underneath the cards, or do many of you also just see the rectangles for characters that I do?

5) Okay, back to trading/acquiring cards...how large is the trade volume going on in non-english forums out there if you frequent such in your native/other languages?  I've stumbled across some pages in the past that were primarily trade boards but I assume if they don't have a forum in English they probably only want to trade with native-speakers there or they don't speak my language either, so it's a wash either way...Hypothetically if you just pick a rare at random that's been in print for a time, like Nightmare--should it be that difficult to get copies of every language, every set (other than Summer)?

I guess I just find myself thinking sometimes, 'well if you need 5th edition language cards, why not just find an individual or a shop in country who speaks both my language and theirs and you're all set'...  but searching with google never seems to make this easy.

Any info appreciated if you've thought about these questions before.  I know i'm not the only 'one of every' collector out there and a lot of you regulars are from varying international locations, so I thought I'd throw the questions out :)

peace,
Merf

[Mr.C]

Hello!

Well, let's address a few questions (all answers are relative to Brazil):

1 - All Brazilian Shops are in Portuguese, and ship Brazil only;

2 - Might be, dunno;

3 - Keith (Fvzappa) and (EclipseAgent) are store owners, and Jim (gamingjim) is in the business for years. Summing it up, the demand for foreign cards is lower than english, so it's not worth it. Unless its asian. And people who pick up asian to Pimp their decks dont usually mind if its Japanese, T/S-Chinese or Korean, as long as its ASian.

4 - Well, i can 'read' them, but im using Firefox on Linux, so that might be  aproblem with your Windows settings. Cant help you there now, will look into it.

5 - Well, we have a large trading forum here in Brazil (3000 members, i think, most active), but its members speak maily portuguese, and a few have notions of/speak fluently english. You have to know the language, at least a bit. I mean, if you speak (and write) spanish, if you poste on the Brazilian forum, you proabably would get some replies...

- Not that easy. People here are mainly T2 pĺayers, so getting NM/M old cards is INSANELY hard around here. To give you an Idea, i've been trying to finish my NM/M Portuguese 4th BB set since 2001.... :(

[rg]

1)  According to Hasbro Germany currently is the second largest magic market. There are a lot of shops, most in german language some ship international some not.
Most specialize on english cards or do not make any difference for english or german cards, a few also have german cards.

2) here's a current statistic of some european ebay sites with a magic the gathering category:
germany: ~17000
italy: ~7000
france: ~3500
spain: ~2200
uk: ~1300
belgium: ~1200
netherland: ~1200

3) For me the best place to find special foreign cards is here :D (maybe until Gryfalia finishes his project ;))

4) Have a look at Ralphs hint on the bottom of the "about" page ;)
W2K; XP;W2003 have buildin support, you only have to install the font/language package
Maybe this page will also be of help: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/dow ... fault.mspx

5) same as Mr. C said for Brazil
there is a big trading side in germany, people there are also mainly after T2 cards and most prefer english cards
but sometimes if you are lucky you'll meet another fan of older foreign cards

[l0qii]

I'm also in the US like you, and I've been collecting foreign cards for years.

1. It's hard sometimes to tell whether a foreign store is selling english or their native language. If a store in Germany is selling german cards, there's no need for them to say "german" on the website. I have never bought foreign cards from foreign stores. I look for less ambiguous sources.

2. Foreign eBay sites have their own category heirarchy, and most have 1 or 2 magic related categories, but you have to at least learn enough words to navigate your way around. Best thing to do is search for a card you're likely to find (some big T2 thing) then browse the rest of the category it was posted in, maybe bookmark it. Second most important thing, if you're going to bid on a foreign site, make sure they ship to the US. Next, make sure you will be able to pay them in the currency they want.

3. You are right, few shops stock foreign inventory because there's les demand for it, and cataloging english cards is time consuming enough. When my store was still up, I cataloged my foreign stuff, but rarely ever sold any of it. I always thought it would be cool to have a full stock of singles from all sets in all languages. You would never make money on it though.

4. see rg's answer

5. There's a pretty healthy non-english forum trading scene, but I'm not directly involved with any of it. I only know because my website stats show refers from several of these forums.

I think if you're looking for specific foreign things, post something in the Trading section of the forum here. If you just want random lots of foreign cards searc heBay for the word foreign and see what you get.

[Celebrindor]

1.)  Don't know

2.)  The main problem I have is that when I search non-english eBay sites, the only things that come up are english cards.  For example, when I am looking for German foil forests for my foil land collection, if I type in 'forest,' i get English cards, but if i type 'wald' (german for 'forest') I get a mix of English and German forests.  If you know the translation of the card title, it really helps.

3.)  Mr. C. is exactly right - most stores do not bother to inventory their foreign cards.  He is also right about people 'pimping out' their decks with Asian cards - I did this with my Vial-Affinity deck, and I really don't care which I get.  On the other hand, I am trying to collect foreign foil basic lands, and stores not inventorying their foreign cards doesnt help...

4.)  Run Windows Update - that should fix the problem.  If not, I can walk you through enabling the correct display properties.

5.)  Can't help you there - when I need foreign cards, I post here


If someone who speaks 3 languages is trilingual, and someone who speaks 2 languages is bilingual, what do you call someone who speaks 1?

American.  [smiley=laugh.gif]

[hammr7]

For many parts of the US, most foreign cards are given a second rate status.  This means you can get collections cheap if you can actually find them.  The problem, of course, is finding them.  Some stores will keep them separate.  Others, unless they are a very noticible rare (like moat, the abyss, or a dual land) will mix them in with English cards (I've often seen them, from commons to rares, in regular english uncommon boxes).  

As for language problems, both Windows and your browser can be upgraded to show foreign languages more approriately.  If you are using Windows XP and Internet Explorer, and the software was registered, you can go to the XP update page.  Support for different languages can be found under non-critical updates, and there are about 20 of them.  Download only those you expect to need; otherwise you may find yourself dealing with some funky fonts and a slower computer.

[Gryfalia]

Part of the reason I started my epically large, yet stunningly slow-moving, project is because there is a market need (albeit a very limited one) and I really do like foreign cards.

But not so much for the 'pimp your deck' types (tho they like foreign cards too), but for the 'collectors' who are trying to get all of..something.

I decided long ago that I would never, ever have every card in every language, but I would try to at least get some of every set in at least a couple languages.

But for your local store, keeping track of the .1% of cards that they get that aren't english usually isn't worth it.  Locally, no one likes foreign cards.  Indeed, they are considered bad.  This is mostly because the local players are quite casual and have no idea what older cards do.  Oh well..;-)

Gryfalia

[squt]

I think that what Gryf's doing is GREAT.  I actually finished my english sets about a year ago, and now i'm slowly moving towards creating foreign sets, and I too get very frustrated by ABU games and others who just post 'foreign' or 'asian' when I'm lookin specifically for an Italian card or a Spanish card.

I hope that a lot of people shop Gryf's project when it's done.

You can also check collectmart.com.  They're the only site i know of that actually separates the cards by language, but their selection isn't so hot.

Squt

[Mr.C]

Part of the reason I started my epically large, yet stunningly slow-moving, project is because there is a market need (albeit a very limited one) and I really do like foreign cards.

But not so much for the 'pimp your deck' types (tho they like foreign cards too), but for the 'collectors' who are trying to get all of..something.

I decided long ago that I would never, ever have every card in every language, but I would try to at least get some of every set in at least a couple languages.

But for your local store, keeping track of the .1% of cards that they get that aren't english usually isn't worth it.  Locally, no one likes foreign cards.  Indeed, they are considered bad.  This is mostly because the local players are quite casual and have no idea what older cards do.  Oh well..;-)

Gryfalia

What is this project?