starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

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Alphafoil
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Post by Alphafoil » Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:22 am

dragsamou wrote:
Alphafoil wrote:Is this card an uncommon? I wonder why it's so expensive in that case. The last one one on Ebay sold $405. Is Portal so extremely rare in Simplified Chinese that an uncommon can be so expensive? I know there are many angels collectors and this card is also wanted by rarities collectors, but it seems overvalued.
Yes, it's an Uncommon, Simplifified Chinese Portal is extremely rare, and out of a Simplified Chinese booster box of 60 boosters, you can only get 2, according to different sources.
Thank you. I tried to find some Portal cards on MKM in Simplified Chinese and they are really extremely rare in comparison with the European languages. Traditional Chinese also seems to be very rare. So now I can understand why it's so expensive. I wonder how much would cost a key rare like Wrath of God or Armageddon in Simplified (or Traditional) Chinese if it had an alternate art :)

Completing a Chinese Portal set has to be extremely hard...

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dragsamou
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Post by dragsamou » Tue Mar 24, 2015 11:34 am

Alphafoil wrote:
dragsamou wrote:
Alphafoil wrote:Is this card an uncommon? I wonder why it's so expensive in that case. The last one one on Ebay sold $405. Is Portal so extremely rare in Simplified Chinese that an uncommon can be so expensive? I know there are many angels collectors and this card is also wanted by rarities collectors, but it seems overvalued.
Yes, it's an Uncommon, Simplifified Chinese Portal is extremely rare, and out of a Simplified Chinese booster box of 60 boosters, you can only get 2, according to different sources.
Thank you. I tried to find some Portal cards on MKM in Simplified Chinese and they are really extremely rare in comparison with the European languages. Traditional Chinese also seems to be very rare. So now I can understand why it's so expensive. I wonder how much would cost a key rare like Wrath of God or Armageddon in Simplified (or Traditional) Chinese if it had an alternate art :)

Completing a Chinese Portal set has to be extremely hard...
As probably one of the biggest Portal, Portal Second Age, and Portal Three Kingdoms Collector in the world, I know how hard it is. Only Simplified Chinese has Alternate Art cards, you can see the full list here:

http://www.magiclibrarities.net/506-rar ... ortal.html

For Portal Alternate Text here:
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/553-rar ... index.html

For Support cards here:
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/558-rar ... index.html

To get a complete Portal set in any languages:
*Portal contains 215 black-bordered cards (55 rare, 55 uncommon, 85 common, and 20 lands) add to those the Alternate Art Text (7 cards) and the Demo Game cards (6 cards), 228 cards in total.
*Portal Second Age Portal contains 165 black-bordered cards (55 rare, 55 uncommon, and 55 commons)
*Portal Three Kingdoms contains 180 white-bordered cards ( 55 Rare, 55 Uncommon, 70 Common)
you need to open at least 3 Portal Booster boxes, maybe some others collectors, went lucky getting a full set in 2. Finding sealed Portal Products in Asiatic languages is really not an easy task, to my personal experience Japanese and Simplified Chinese were the hardest one to complete. For the European language Spanish is by far the hardest one to complete, I still miss few cards out of the 2 Booster boxes that I opened. For Portal Second Age, Italian is the nightmare, also missing few cards. For Portal 3 Kingdoms, Traditional Chinese was for me a real challenge. I did collect them since the beginning, when everyone was mocking me to collect "Baby MTG Cards", after they went playable it was a different story.
Last edited by dragsamou on Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:00 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by l0qii » Tue Mar 24, 2015 3:10 pm

dragsamou wrote: To get a complete Portal set in any languages, you need to open 3 Portal Booster boxes, maybe some others collectors, went lucky getting a full set in 2.
I had to open 5 to complete a p3k set!

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dragsamou
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Post by dragsamou » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:49 pm

l0qii wrote:
dragsamou wrote: To get a complete Portal set in any languages, you need to open 3 Portal Booster boxes, maybe some others collectors, went lucky getting a full set in 2.
I had to open 5 to complete a p3k set!
Hi Tim

I should have wrote "at least 3 sets" will edit.
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Post by Alphafoil » Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:57 pm

I wonder why they also changed the art of basic lands...

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Post by dragsamou » Tue Mar 24, 2015 5:16 pm

Alphafoil wrote:
I wonder why they also changed the art of basic lands...
Because it was the first ever printed black-bordered Simplified Chinese set in 1997. The First Edition was Fifth Edition white-bordered with the unique "V" symbole in 1998.
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Post by mystical_tutor » Wed Mar 25, 2015 1:53 am

Alphafoil wrote:
I wonder why they also changed the art of basic lands...
I can add a little bit of history to this and at least answer that queston, I was at the launch of MTG in Beijing. It was a big deal in the aspect that various secretariats of the Chinese government had to approve it or be satisfied in the negotiation. The offices were something like:
Secretary of Culture/political?
Secretary of Sports
Secretary of Commerce
Assistant/Deputy Secretaries attended the event which was a sealed deck event with a lot of pomp and ceremony.
The groundwork negotiations, handled by Jackson Tsey, were VERY complex. issues were:
Art content
Who would do the art
Where the product would be manufactured
How money would be handled.
The starting position of the People's Republic of China was that all four would be Chinese.
AA was conceded, and artists were conceded. Manufacture was NOT conceded. It was thought that the money transfer was agreeable.

To point here, There was not much in the way of AA in the game at that time and one of the standard DCI rules was that a player must be able to know what a card did by it's art work--thus DCI had issues with AA. With P1,P2 & P3K there was a lot of pressure to have it done by Chinese artists and WotC accommodated this to a large degree more so with P1 and P3K.

Thus you even have new art for the basic lands.

Regular sets were then printed the same as other nations with the exception of objectionable art (mainly relating to death and ancestors).

It was a very adventuresome project and I can not imagine any company other that WotC (with it's adventuresome corporate culture) ever having the perseverance to pull it off.

Of all things ever done by WotC I think this is one of the most significant from a international/corporate perspective. I'm sure that it's success was inspirational and educational for other companies and enterprises.
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CHaPuZaS
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Post by CHaPuZaS » Wed Mar 25, 2015 11:53 am

Woah! Nice piece of history!

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Post by cataclysm80 » Wed Mar 25, 2015 9:11 pm

I agree, Thanks Gary!

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Re: starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

Post by The_Antiquarian » Thu Jul 02, 2015 10:46 am

Why does this card carry so much value? Tried searching on google and besides the fact that it has alternative image, thanks to Communist China, I couldn't find any reasons that explains its pricing.

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Re: starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

Post by Magic61983 » Thu Jul 02, 2015 3:23 pm

They are pretty rare and tough to find. S-Chinese Portal wasn't printed in mass quantity and booster boxes command a premium.
BGS 9+ Alpha set 282/295 (97.29%) Avg 9.41
BGS 9.5+ Beta set 283/302 (93.71%) Avg 9.58
BGS 9.5+ Arabian set 35/92 (38.04%) Avg 9.62
BGS 9.5+ Antiquities set 82/100 (82%) Avg 9.64
BGS 9.5+ Legends set 279/310 (90.00%) Avg 9.61

The_Antiquarian
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Re: starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

Post by The_Antiquarian » Fri Jul 03, 2015 5:13 pm

Magic61983 wrote:They are pretty rare and tough to find. S-Chinese Portal wasn't printed in mass quantity and booster boxes command a premium.
Interesting. Thank you!

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Re: starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

Post by mmgun » Sun Jul 05, 2015 11:04 pm

THIS might be another reason for the price of this card..... ( not mine)

Image

Alphafoil
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Re: starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

Post by Alphafoil » Sun Jul 26, 2015 5:41 pm

mmgun wrote:THIS might be another reason for the price of this card..... ( not mine)

Image
That makes a lot of sense. I find this card very overvalued. I know Simplified Chinese is very rare, but it's just a regular uncommon! We aren't talking about a foil old rare in a rare language.

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Re: starcity has 1 starlit angel chinese in stock!

Post by dragsamou » Mon Jul 27, 2015 7:50 am

Alphafoil wrote:
mmgun wrote:THIS might be another reason for the price of this card..... ( not mine)

Image
That makes a lot of sense. I find this card very overvalued. I know Simplified Chinese is very rare, but it's just a regular uncommon! We aren't talking about a foil old rare in a rare language.
Hi All

The binder with the 18 Startlit Angel has nothing to do with the actual price (By the way, what's the actual price ?), back in the years, I sold my very few extras to Angel Collectors for 250$, extremely fast and buyers were happy to be able to get one. Point is that most people, don't know nothing about Portal when it comes to foreign languages, and how hard it is to get a complete set. A regular Portal booster box in any languages (6 different) is 36 boosters (15 cards), I have opened at least 40 of them, in order to get complete sets, and even after that I could have missed few Rares singles (55 different Rares in Portal), a Simplified Chinese booster is 60 boosters (10 cards), and out of of 60 boosters, if you get 2 Alternate Art Starlit Angel be happy. Even for regular languages Starlit Angel is not an easy Uncommon to get, and there's a technical answer for this, Starlit Angel is not on the English Uncommon sheet (11 X 10), there's only 2, as well as others Uncommons on the Uncut sheet A Of Portal Strategy cards.

http://www.magiclibrarities.net/558-rar ... index.html

English portal is:

215 Regular Cards (55 rares, 55 uncommons, 85 commons, and 20 lands)

+2 List Cards
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/558-rar ... -list.html

+10 Strategy cards
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/564-rar ... ategy.html

+2 Tip cards
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/571-rar ... s-tip.html

+1 Rebate card
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/572-rar ... ebate.html

+7 Cards (Alternate Text cards)
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/129-rar ... -game.html

+6 cards (Demo Game cards)
http://www.magiclibrarities.net/129-rar ... -game.html

Meaning a total of 243 cards for a complete set, placed on 8 different Uncut Sheets (Printed by Yaquinto).
The 6 Demo Games cards , Tip and Rebate cards are part of another sheet(s).

Hope this help, understanding why this Uncommon is not a regular Uncommon and why it's so rare in Simplified Chinese. The Simplified Chinese Uncut Sheets are definitely different as only 6 different Alternate Text cards exist, bringing the total of 221 cards for a complete set.
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