Unlimited, Summer, 4th Edition and French/German Test Prints

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ouallada
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Post by ouallada » Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:28 pm

Maybe I am missing something, but that sounds a lot like summer.

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Post by dragsamou » Thu Oct 24, 2013 7:32 pm

ouallada wrote:Maybe I am missing something, but that sounds a lot like summer.
Just a very old but very helpful link from the past :wink:
http://www.usc.edu/dept/Deckmasters/arc ... oil-al.txt (broken link)
https://web.archive.org/web/19961231030 ... chive/mtg/
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Post by ouallada » Thu Oct 24, 2013 8:16 pm

Image

Here is the back as promised.

Eh, still not convinced that isn't summer. That page was created in 1996, way before summer was popularised and if I recall, before it was officially even recognised by the "summer" nickname. Everything about it, from the hurricane and efreet errors to the copyright date, point to summer.

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Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Oct 25, 2013 4:06 am

dragsamou wrote:
4th edition test print
----------------------
There was apparently a printing of cards in late summer 1994 which
was intended to be 4th edition (back when it was going to be
released in September 1994) which had borders and colors similar to
(but not identical to) the now-released 4th edition. This was known
to have the following features:
* misprinted Hurricane with BLUE borders
* correctly printed Serendib Efreet
* 1994 copyright date, probably like Legends and Dark copyrights

Tom Wylie just said this was a test print, and the cards were
intended to be destroyed, but some were released accidentally.

However (according to Eric Aldrich) at ConQuest in November, Richard
Garfield spoke about this printing; this was intended to be the real
4th edition. Due to typos and other errors, like the Hurricane, the
printing was stopped and 120 million cards were destroyed -- but
apparently not all of them. This was probably part of the reason for
the shortage of Revised cards that occurred in December 1994 -- almost
two months of printing (at that time) was wasted.

I will not attempt to note the changes for these cards on my list,
but if anybody has any of them, let me know and maybe I can assemble
a separate list. I particularly would like to know of any other
misprints in the test print, and cards in the test print that were
NOT in revised.
That is a reference to Summer. Back then it was called Edgar. 120 Million cards is NOT a test print!

I saw my first blue Hurricane in Kansas during 96 or 97 when a collector came into the local game shop. He was real proud of it, but most people just didn't understand why. (pretty sure he didn't open it himself, he hunted it down somehow) He also had a full set of Arabian Nights, which was really hard to find ANY of back before everyone had the internet. I think his name was Mike Sutton. If anyone knows where he's at, I wouldn't mind getting back in touch.

Tav

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Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:56 am

ouallada wrote: Note the textboxes (on black cards), and that outside of colouring, the Revised textbox differs in its design. This is most obvious with the chinks at the bottom and left of the textbox.
Yes, the older sets including Revised, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, and even the Harper Prism Book Promo cards have the textbox with the "chinks" on the black cards. Note, Summer (as shown here on librarities) ALSO uses the textbox with the "chinks". The textless test prints and the "test printing" test prints do not have the "chinks" This suggests that neither of them were a test print for Summer, since Summer does have the "chinks".
Foreign Black Border Italian does NOT have the "chinks". Foreign Black Border was released before 4th Edition. Foreign Black Border seems to be the earliest set that did not have the "chinks"

I agree that the color of the textless test prints is similar to Summer. Would they do a white border test print for a black border set? I wouldn't think so, but I don't really know. What do you guys think? It would make sense to fix the too dark color of Summer before printing more cards, but there were a LOT of cards printed between Summer and German black border (see below). Foreign white border 3rd Edition or English 4th Edition would be the first white border candidates for the textless test prints since neither of those sets have the "chinks", but by that point there would be little need for color correction.

Is the card stock on the textless test prints the same as the "test printing" & German/French test prints? Possibly the testless & "test printing" test prints are two different test print runs for the same set, the text being added so as not to mix them up?


Back to the German/French test prints. They also don't have the "chinks" on the text box of the black cards, but I'm more interested in the size of the copyright date as a reference for where to place them in the printing timeline. Here they are listed in order...

Unlimited = no copyright date
switch to slightly larger art box
Arabian Nights = no copyright date
Antiquities = no copyright date
switch to tilted T tap symbol
Revised = no copyright date
Legends = Large 1994 date
The Dark = Large 1994 date
Summer = Large 1994 date
Armada Comics promo = Small 1994 date
Sewers of Estark / Arena = Medium 1994 date
Nalathni Dragon = Medium 1994 date
Fallen Empires = Medium 1994 date
black cards switch to text box without "chinks"
Italian black border = Medium 1994 date
switch to tilted card with arrow tap symbol
German black border = Small 1994 date
French black border = Small 1994 date
French white border 3rd = Small 1994/1995 dates
Windseeker Centaur = Small 1995 date
Ice Age promo cards (including Fylgia & Prismatic Ward) = small 1995 date
switch to new white mana symbol here.
Italian / German white border 3rd = Small 1995 date
English 4th = Small 1995 date
Italian The Dark = Small 1995 date
switch to new font here. now has dot instead of slash over i
Italian Legends = Small 1995 date
Renaissance = Small 1995 date
Foreign 4th


The German/French test prints have a French copyright with small 1994 date. I agree that they use the German black border text. Again, I have to ask, Would they have printed a white border test print for a black border set? It's interesting that the font is different. Foreign White Border 3rd has a slightly different vertical alignment of the card name than Foreign 4th. I'm not sure if that will apply to the test print due to the different font, but I'd like to take a look. I have a test print Scryb Sprite and a German 4th Scryb Sprite. I'm looking for a German white border 3rd edition for my global set. If someone can provide one, or at least post a high quality scan of one, I'll do a comparison. (The German white border 3rd is the one that says "Fliegen" like the test print, the German 4th edition which I have says "Konnen Fliegen".)

Tav
Last edited by cataclysm80 on Mon Oct 28, 2013 4:45 am, edited 5 times in total.

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Post by dragsamou » Fri Oct 25, 2013 7:34 am

Hi Tav

Very interesting post, can you specify precisely what you mean by "Chinks"
This is the only scan I could find online, not good enough to make a proper statement:

Image

If needed, I can provide scans of 2 Foreign Black cards from 4Th Edition, Japanese and T-Chinese
cataclysm80 wrote:Is the card stock on the textless test prints the same as the "test printing" & German/French test prints?
From the very few info provided (They came from an old WOTC employee that get them from an Art Director cleaning his desk, when Hasbro bought WOTC), No , it's not the same. Buying cards, Test Prints, etc...It's a very easy task, getting the complete info that goes with it, is way more hard. If I will be the owner of those Test Prints, I will try to get the name of the Art Director, try to contact him, so he can provide as much info on those :wink: Also, my point is about history of those Test Prints, but let's not forget the financial part, with the huge inflation on any Rarities, Misprints, etc...Saying that they are for example 4Th Edition Test Print will not have the same impact as if you say that they are Summer Test Prints. I try my best to get in touch with people that back in the days were involved with those Test Prints projects, Long time Collectors that own Test Prints, etc...But it will take time to get replies, but slowly but surely, we will get some answers.

Regarding the French/German , I can help on that matter as I own quite a few. All the cards, have a different back, and we are talking about 14 different ones. The Waldfeen (Mesa Pegasus/Scryb Sprites) is not the same as the one that was available on Ebay sold by Amy Weber, that received 50 of them, when I contacted Melissa, on her part, she didn't received any. The Waldfeen (Mesa Pegasus/Scryb Sprites) sold by Amy Weber is not a Test Print but definately a Finished product, otherwise, 50 of them will not have been send to her. I own 2 of those, and mine are definately Test Prints, when you look at the back. Can someone post a scan of the front and back of the one from Amy Weber, as I didn't bought one (2 was enough for me) #-o It's interesting also to notice that the First card that was having a White Border back is the Dryaden aus dem Shanodin (Holy Armor/Shanodin Dryads), till more shows up very recently in a MTG shop and offered on Ebay.

As a reminder:
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/forum/v ... us&start=0
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Post by ouallada » Fri Oct 25, 2013 3:34 pm

cataclysm80 wrote:
ouallada wrote: Note the textboxes (on black cards), and that outside of colouring, the Revised textbox differs in its design. This is most obvious with the chinks at the bottom and left of the textbox.
Yes, the older sets including Revised, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, and even the Harper Prism Book Promo cards have the textbox with the "chinks" on the black cards. Note, Summer (as shown here on librarities) ALSO uses the textbox with the "chinks". The textless test prints and the "test printing" test prints do not have the "chinks" This suggests that neither of them were a test print for Summer, since Summer does have the "chinks".
Foreign Black Border Italian does NOT have the "chinks". Foreign Black Border was released before 4th Edition. Foreign Black Border seems to be the earliest set that did not have the "chinks"

I agree that the color of the textless test prints is similar to Summer. Would they do a white border test print for a black border set? I wouldn't think so, but I don't really know. What do you guys think? It would make sense to fix the too dark color of Summer before printing more cards, but there were a LOT of cards printed between Summer and German black border (see below). Foreign white border 3rd Edition or English 4th Edition would be the first white border candidates for the textless test prints since neither of those sets have the "chinks", but by that point there would be little need for color correction.

Is the card stock on the textless test prints the same as the "test printing" & German/French test prints? Possibly the testless & "test printing" test prints are two different test print runs for the same set, the text being added so as not to mix them up?


Back to the German/French test prints. They also don't have the "chinks" on the text box of the black cards, but I'm more interested in the size of the copyright date as a reference for where to place them in the printing timeline.

Tav
See, I don't necessarily agree with what you're saying about the textbox design. A design facet on a test print which isn't in the final product is not evidence enough of the former not being related to the latter. Otherwise, we won't be calling the UNL/Rev test prints as such, as the grey borders never happened. Same for the 8e/Jud ones. That said, if you read through my OP, it's via induction that the textless ones are placed where they are -- as summer test prints. They can easily be 4th ed test prints, but that is HIGHLY unlikely because 4th ed was created to fix the problems with summer, chief among which was the overly dark colour. It's simply the best possible fit.

On FBB with regards to the textless cards, I honestly can't draw any similarities there, and I don't think the textbox design is enough of a relation -- it was a minor aesthetic when put in comparison vs the colour issues with summer -- it is unlikely to be a coincidence that Revised was too light, and test prints appear which are darker to fix the issue. That doesn't rule out there being FBB test prints, but we don't have that info now.

On the french/german being test prints for fbb, unlikely. Look at the colouring -- fbb is already aesthetically changed from revised (tap symbol, darker colours), but is NOT the same as the french/german cards, which are close to summer magic colours. Note what I wrote on the FB page -- I'd expect fwb test prints to have fbb text/summer colours because fwb proceeded from those -- test prints are typically run on existing templates with changes made. The templating of the text is similar, only the exact wording changes in accordance with how it changed in English.

http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff28 ... 438720.jpg
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff28 ... c68641.jpg
From the very few info provided (They came from an old WOTC employee that get them from an Art Director cleaning his desk, when Hasbro bought WOTC), No , it's not the same. Buying cards, Test Prints, etc...It's a very easy task, getting the complete info that goes with it, is way more hard. If I will be the owner of those Test Prints, I will try to get the name of the Art Director, try to contact him, so he can provide as much info on those
Trust me, we realise that, but it isn't as straightforward as you might imagine. Some of us have spoken to him, and there are difficulties there. Additionally, you must realise that if within the community here, where most of the large collectors are, we can't even agree on terminology, and where we are even debating summer as a test print, we need to take terms given with pinches of salt as well.

And just so we are clear, I only own some test printing cards and the french/german cards, not the textless ones. I couldn't care less if being 4th ed test prints affects their value. Whatever is in the OP is done with complete fairness in mind.

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Post by dragsamou » Fri Oct 25, 2013 5:05 pm

ouallada wrote:
See, I don't necessarily agree with what you're saying about the textbox design. A design facet on a test print which isn't in the final product is not evidence enough of the former not being related to the latter. Otherwise, we won't be calling the UNL/Rev test prints as such, as the grey borders never happened.
Why you call those UNL/Rev ?
ouallada wrote:
Trust me, we realise that, but it isn't as straightforward as you might imagine. Some of us have spoken to him, and there are difficulties there. Additionally, you must realise that if within the community here, where most of the large collectors are, we can't even agree on terminology, and where we are even debating summer as a test print, we need to take terms given with pinches of salt as well.
No need to trust you, can you imagine when I was asking or calling MTG Shops at the very beginning, to find out if they was having any Misprints or Rarities, how many times, I did get "WTF you talk about", at least, I'm glad that few years after, I educate a bunch of them properly with others Members, and that suddenly Misprints and Rarities sections appeared in MTG shops :) I have spent as well thousand of hours to find info, as others Members, about Test Prints, Tokens, etc...Covered on this website. So I do know, how hard it is to collect precised and verified info :)

ouallada wrote:
And just so we are clear, I only own some test printing cards and the french/german cards, not the textless ones. I couldn't care less if being 4th ed test prints affects their value. Whatever is in the OP is done with complete fairness in mind.
To be clear also, I didn't point any fingers at anyone, just mentioning on a general level, that MTG has become a Huge business, and when it comes to Misprints or else, prices have skyrocketed. Also, now, a Lot of people owning a very slight miscut or else, believe that they have found the goose that lays the golden egg(s), this is indeed reality :)
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Post by ouallada » Fri Oct 25, 2013 5:26 pm

I guess that is the popular term for them, although there are unknowns there as to whether those are even test prints in the first place. Anyway, those aren't really the centrepiece of the post, just to show that the cards we are talking about aren't test prints for revised.

Yeah, we can try to speak to him, I'm not expecting huge results there to be honest though.

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Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:05 pm

dragsamou wrote:Hi Tav

Very interesting post, can you specify precisely what you mean by "Chinks"
Sure, I circled them in this picture. They are on the Revised card, but not on the 4th or either test print. They are darker shaded areas around the edge of the textbox. Called chinks because they give the illusion that part of the edge of the textbox is damaged. The "chinks" are on all of the black cards up until they stopped using them, which I believe was an effort to clean up the text box.

Side Note: I edited the list in my previous post to include when changes were made to the tap symbol.

Tav

Image

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Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:24 pm

dragsamou wrote:Hi Tav

This is the only scan I could find online, not good enough to make a proper statement:

Image

If needed, I can provide scans of 2 Foreign Black cards from 4Th Edition, Japanese and T-Chinese
The Waldfeen in that picture is from 4th. I need to see the one from German white border 3rd. The flying ability for the one I'm looking for should read as "Fliegen".

I have the 4th black border Japanese & T-Chinese (and Spanish), but lets start by comparing to German cards since the test print is in German.

Tav

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Post by cataclysm80 » Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:41 pm

It would be nice to see one of the textless test prints next to a Summer card for color comparison. Is this possible? If not, then the next best thing would be a good scan of the textless Samite Healer, as I have a Summer Samite Healer in my global set that I can scan and post for comparison.

Tav

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Post by ouallada » Fri Oct 25, 2013 7:11 pm

The scans of the textless cards are not good enough, and while I have all the summer versions, I need better scans of the textless cards.

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Post by dragsamou » Fri Oct 25, 2013 7:39 pm

cataclysm80 wrote:
dragsamou wrote:Hi Tav

This is the only scan I could find online, not good enough to make a proper statement:

Image

If needed, I can provide scans of 2 Foreign Black cards from 4Th Edition, Japanese and T-Chinese
The Waldfeen in that picture is from 4th. I need to see the one from German white border 3rd. The flying ability for the one I'm looking for should read as "Fliegen".

I have the 4th black border Japanese & T-Chinese (and Spanish), but lets start by comparing to German cards since the test print is in German.

Tav
Hi Tav

According to that German Website:
http://www.trader-online.de/Magic-Einze ... eutsch.php



Deutsch Limitiert (DL) Black Border

Image


Deutsch Unlimitiert (RV) White Border

Image

4Th Edition will be this one: I didn't notice any difference with the German Introductory Two-Player Set Cards
Vierte Edition (4th)

Image

And while I'm at it 5Th Edition
Fünfte Edition (5th)

Image
Last edited by dragsamou on Sat Oct 26, 2013 9:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ende73 » Fri Oct 25, 2013 7:51 pm

I checked through my cards and feel safe in confirming the Konnen fliegen Waldfeen is from German FWB or German WB REV (unlimitierte) and not from 4th.

This is based on me owning several Konnen fliegen versions and no Fliegend ones and since I only bought some German FWB or German WB REV packs in 1995 (i.e. the ones with dual lands) and no GER 4th edition ones.

Also, konnen fliegen literally means "can fly" whereas the other wording means "flying", and I'd expect the language on the foreign cards to evolve to be in better accordance with English as sets advance, and not viceversa.

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