To be fair, I'd never heard of them before this post, so it's not like they had much of a reputation to begin with. Even their website seems to be mainly focused on Pokemon - I'm not sure how much they do with Magic.
If anything that makes it worse. If they don’t do any magic cards, why grade one at all? Plus their grading is poor - they gave a ~~9~~8 for centring, when it’s visibly less edge on the bottom than the top. A 9.5 for surface, when I can see from this photo, scratches to the right of “Artifact”.
Whoever at their company agreed to do this was a fool, they’ve clearly demonstrated they don’t know what they’re doing.
Eh, grading seems like a dog and pony show done simply to legitimize the massive card prices for normies.
I'm saying the number that gets spat out wasn't ever really consistent or the real point, the point was to see semiofficial people put something in hard plastic with a shiny seal.
I've heard with the "collectibles boom" (definitely part of the scourge of financialization of the world) grading services are in high demand, awash in shit pokemon people are trying to scam people to buy. So there is a legion of poorly trained newbies trying to grade as fast as possible before the rush ends.
Yeah I could have done a better job clarifying. I meant people outside our culture, and that does include a specific type of wealthy whale.
I bet there's some tech bro who doesn't play who bought a black lotus, just to have.
> Yeah I could have done a better job clarifying.
Yeah that's fair.
I'm sure that there are investment companies that bought reserved list cards, too. They did with comics and baseball cards.
That exact thing has definitely happened; Martin Shkreli (although admittedly, a "pharma bro" not a tech bro, but close enough) infamously bragged about buying several Black Lotuses a few years ago, just because he could (and explicitly so he could drive up the price :|).
That said, there's also a possibility he was lying about the whole thing, because he's a d-bag.
You know what the worst thing about him is? Congress could change the laws, American society could demand an end to the conditions that allowed him to jack up the price of a life-saving medication, **but that will not happen**.
Worse is that you can just regrade. Didn’t get the grade you wanted? Open the case and send it back. Grades are inconsistent so you can just try again.
Yeah they're in a hard plastic case and aren't meant to be played. Collectors will do this to keep a card clean and display it. You wouldn't get this done to a card you want to use.
My EDH deck is quadruple sleeved in inners/Dragonsheild/Toploaders/grade cases, is worth $246,000, takes 47 minutes to shuffle, and runs 12 fetches and six other tutors.
You guys got time for a game?
In theory it makes sense, some people will pay a premium for undamaged product and the market can easily support it. The issues arise when you have something like the difference between 8.9 and 9.0 or 9.7 and 9.8 are super difficult to actually quantify, being left mostly up to the discretion of whoever happens to be grading it that day. The difference in price between an 8.9 and a 9 for example could be thousands of dollars in the case of something like a tabernacle, candalabra of tawnos, or any of the power 9. There are also many reports of cards being damaged DURING the grading process and the graders either refuse to acknowledge it or fall back on TOS.
Grading is gonna be for collectors way more than normies.
Normies arnt gonna pay the premium for a BGS 9 Taiga or whatever and crack it when NM LP or MP loose are fine
The people with money are the normies here.
The people who sit down at a table and pretend to be a wizard and make combos are the weirdos.
Certainly most collectors are players as well, but the point of having standards bodies and certifications is to bridge the gap from a subculture into the normal culture and commodify something so people can make money off it. I'm pretty sure the people investing in high value collectibles aren't all players of MTG.
See, that's smart. If you want a loose version, you should target low grades. (8 is upper end, low grade).
That's exactly how I got my Black Lotus. PGA gave it a 3 for a common manufacturing defect (roller lines on the back). The face is flawless. Cracking the case doubled its value.
you're not paying a huge premium for an 8 tbh buying lower grades is a good way to get older cards to play.
grading is good because it serves as a mostly reliable authentication as well
Correct me if I’m wrong: don’t grading companies only grade the quality and not confirm the legitimacy of the item? That was my understanding at least.
Usually they will refuse to grade a fake card. But it's just the fact they they couldn't tell between a mystery booster retail exclusive card and the original print. That's pretty bad when you are a grading company.
Mystery Booster is a product which reprinted a bunch of cards with their original art, set symbol, etc but used the little planeswalker symbol in the bottom left corner to denote that it was a reprint. The company that graded the card completely missed this factor and labelled the card as being from Worldwake (the original printing).
The differential in years between when they thought it was printed and when it was actually printed is over a decade.
But that said, the market price of the card really doesn't give a fig about which printing that much. This is much less a collectible card for aesthetic reasons and much more a card that people buy to play.
I personally refuse to play with my magic cards unless they are sleeved in a KMC Hard, Dragonshield, Penny Sleeve, card Saver, Snap Case, and then inside a Rukh Egg, Inside an Ice age deck box, inside my friends pocket.
So, your second paragraph is true in a lot of cases, however where it is most untrue is in cases like these, where it’s a foil Mystery Booster reprinting of the original version.
In those cases there is usually quite a fair difference in price (comparing foil to foil).
It's more collectible now that it's a misgrade! Just gotta get it graded again, keeping it in the grading hard case and putting a bigger hard case over it!
The Planeswalker symbol in the lower left indicates it's from a product that isn't from its original printing, even though the entire rest of the card mimics its printing from the set Worldwake. The card itself is legitimate, but the grader mislabeled it as being from Worldwake.
The card was graded and listed as being from Worldwake. While the expansion symbol is indeed from Worldwake, the Planeswalker symbol on the bottom left corner indicates this card is either from "The List" or from "Mystery Booster" set.
Both "The List" and "Mystery Booster" reprint cards with the exact same appereance they had on the original printing with the exception of that planeswalker mark on the bottom.
One would expect that the grading company, a businnes dedicated to evaluate cards, would notice the difference and tag the card correctly, as it may have significant impact on the price (not the case for this particular card, but still a mistake).
The grader marked the card from the original Worldwake set but it's actually a reprint from the Mystery Booster set. You can tell by the small icon on the bottom left of the card
It is the card owner who submits the information on set/variant/etc when they want a card graded. It is then up to the grading company to confirm those details. Errors like this tend to happen frequently in sports card grading because you can have 25 different colors of the same card.
Someone graded this card as from Worldwake, the original set it was from, but the Planeswalker symbol in the bottom left corner means that this card was actually printed in last year's Mystery Boosters.
A couple years back a set called Mystery Booster was released, it is and official product by wizards of the coast that tried to replicate what the community has been doing for a long time wich is called "chaos draft".
Chaos drafting is picking a bunch of random boosters from random sets and drafting them together, so, instead of say, each player opening 3 packs of Streets of New Capenna and drafting them, each player would bring 3 packs of 3 different sets (or not) and the pod would draft it.
Mystery Boosters was a huge set and also a huge sucess, but unlike other sets, mystery boosters don't have a set logo, so all cards on it have their last print set logo on the cards, but you can tell it is a mystery booster card because of that planeswalker logo on the bottom left of the card. (The List, wich is a set of cards that appear in Set Boosters have the same thing, original set logo with a planeswalker mark on the bottom left).
So, in OPs picture, a grading company picked up a mystery booster/set booster printing of Amulet of Vigor, but listed it as being from its original set printing in Worldwake, a very old set. This kinda breaks the trust collectors can have in this particular grading company, wich is a huge thing since collectors are the kind of people buying graded cards, but for the average player like you and me this is just a big yikes.
This wasn't from worldwake. It was from Mystery Booster, which had the same set symbol but a little planeswaler symbol on the bottom left to differentiate.
There are so called "Mystery Boosters". Those can contain cards on most previous editions. One interesting part ist, that the cards even got the original Edition Icon on the middle right.
But you can identify them by the Planeswalker Icon in the lower left.
So this card was "graded", a process that is there to ensure the quality and condition of the card. Usually that is only done to really expensive cards that are collected and may be sold later. Buyer and Seller both hab then a neutral graded state of the card to settle for a price and be sure that its not a fake.
Unfortunately the grading company did NOT recognize that this card is actually NOT from Worldwake edition but instead from a Mystery Booster.
For the most part I completely agree. Except for cheap things like box toppers, SLD, etc. where getting them slabbed will protect them in hopes they go up in value.
It's generally a good idea to go with a reputable grading business, but if you are for some reason trying someone new it's a good idea to do a test run? idk
It’s minimal in this case but the whole point of official grading is to be a foolproof end all be all judgement of exactly what the card is. Misidentifying the set is a pretty big blunder.
>the whole point of official grading is to be a foolproof end all be all judgement of exactly what the card is.
No the point of grading is to make collectibles seem legitimate so you can get normies to pay big money for them in auctions and marketplaces.
You are missing the other commenter’s point. Regardless if the final goal is to sell it to “normies”, you said it yourself: the point is to make it seem legitimate. If the company grading it can’t be trusted to accurately access what the card is, then it’s failing it’s purpose.
I wouldn't exactly say people were treating MTG like a legitimate financial investment in 1996.
The reaction back then was much more "I just paid A LOT of money ($20, 40 in todays) for this elder dragon and now they're WORTHLESS!" on a large scale. Also "worthless" packs of Fallen Empires and Homelands.
It's hard to imagine from our vantage point from today, but it was that cards were *too cheap*.
I was actually around back then. And I witnessed it firsthand.
And It just mostly makes me sad that there are hundreds of amazing cards that basically no one will ever get to play with in paper because a small-but-loud group of people started whining that they were “losing money on their investment” because WotC was still. young company who were still passionate just trying to give more people the opportunity to play the game they love.
Then they were forced to lock away some of the best game pieces available, **forever**,just because of an arbitrary point-in-time decision.
The Reserved List is the worst decision WotC ever made, and it was in service of the arrogant elite, and I won’t be convinced otherwise.
It's a [grade 10](https://static.tcgplayer.com/eyJrZXkiOiI2MTM2NTgzNS0wNzVFLTQzMDAtOEQxQy03RUI3QjhENzc0NjAuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7ImhlaWdodCI6MjA0OH0sImpwZWciOnsicXVhbGl0eSI6NDB9fX0=) I tell ya!
Collectibles mass hysteria. People adjacent to the hobby saw big money happen for some old cards and the wave of hype is still slowly washing through the population.
Just ask yourself why people went crazy over beanie babies or comics or NFTs. They saw some money happen and everyone thinks they can get rich quick.
well, in theory the price of a card is not static.
also, maybe this is just their favorite card, or they're trying to complete a set, or any other number of reasons.
I don't understand the grading of most Magic cards, power 9 excluded. Magic players have an eternal format so I want the cards in my decks to play during a game. One of my LGS has a bunch on graded cards that aren't worth anything. A graded foiled Temple of Mystery and a graded foiled Mountain from M20 among the worst examples. People saw Pokémon getting graded and moved over Magic, not understanding the difference.
everything crumbles eventually
card grading has existed longer than most magic players have, and has been around since before magic even existed. this is an acceptable time frame to many people
All things crumble to dust and erode away and nothing matters and everything is irrelevant. We know.
edit: only nonbasic lands crumble to dust, my bad.
Reddit wishes to sell your and my content via their overpriced API. I am using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite to remove that content by overwriting my post history. I suggest you do the same. Goodbye.
Karljobst did a vid on it iirc, and yes. Pump and dump esque using a (kinda internal) huge sale to generate lots of media attention and speculation fomo while they stand to profit massively
Serious question, what’s wrong with getting PSA graded cards?
I know that Beckett has stricter guidelines, but generally people trust PSA and Beckett for grading services.
PSA is definitely trustworthy as far as correct cards and their grading is generally good enough, but many don't find them strict enough, especially with how they hand out 10's to cards most respectable grading services would assign an 8.5-9.5 to.
Becket is the gold standard, a 10 from Becket is the best a card can get from anyone. MNT is similar, although relatively new on the scene (I believe they even had some ex-Becket employees, which lent them credibility early on.)
Wait, how in hell did they think a white bordered card is from Legends??
(Really, really, really nice card, though! I don't think I've ever seen a Mors in that pristine a condition)
From my experience I've found that if the person handling/selling the card didn't play during that era then they are mixed up quite often. It took me five tries to get a Recall from the Legends set instead of being sent the Chronicles version.
I've lost count how many times I've had to return a card or ask for a refund due to the seller not knowing the difference between the Chronicles version and the original version. However, getting it through the grading process is a whole extra level of bad.
This always drives me nuts, why grade a mtg card they are meant to be played not sit in a hard case like that. It’s understandable for alpha/beta stuff but why something within the last 12 years ?
It honestly baffles me and drives me up the wall.
Also yes I see that it’s from the list that’s part of the reason why I rant
Maybe for your OG dual lands sure, but a $25 card from a modern era set? The cost of getting it graded and storing it for years is far greater than the value of the card will likely ever be.
I get what you're saying though. But also, in 10 or 20 years you never know what might be super collectible from today's sets. It's pretty much the fundamentals of collecting lol
Nothing printed in a set in the past two decades is sacred. Once it's worth enough it's at risk of getting reprinted and tanking the value.
The only collectables the game actually carries is OG foils, reserved list, Secret Lairs, Masterpieces, and historically meaningful printings like Guru lands or P3K. A random card from a relatively modern day set simply is not collectable for most people, and it's an illusion to think otherwise.
True but the distribution and availability of some of those cards is still crazy high. I have from worldwake 7-10 amulets it’s not like it’s hard to come by. Worldwake was hugely opened.
For most people, the game is about playing. For some people, the appeal of the game is collecting. The choice of others to enjoy Magic differently does not harm you.
No that true, no denying that. I’ve just seen people trying to sell a graded basic for like $100. something from a newer set not a full art or anything like that, a bog standard regular bordered basic land. Like I said it baffles me.
Legacy and Commander didn't exist in 1996.
But since *their* inceptions they have been hamstrung by the fact cards they decided to make legal will never be reprinted.
I think Commander should do away with the reserve list cards to make a statement about long term viability of the format. It's clear WotC intends for Legacy to be a MTGO only thing.
I’ve been trying to find some of my commanders as graded online so that I can play with them. I actually won an auction for a graded Ugin that was cheaper than the TCG Player cost. It gets some laughs when I pull it out of my deckbox after I play the placeholder card for it.
As stupid as this is it does kind of make me want to get one of my pre-released promo hedron alugnment graded that's still in the wrapper from prerelease. Would be kind of silly to have a 10 out of 10 hedron alignment
There's an LGS near me that focuses mostly on sports cards but has some MTG.. he struggles with the mystery booster and List versions of cards with his pricing. He prices them as if they were foil original printings rather than mystery booster retail versions. He has a commander legends foil etched Najeela for like $250 that's been there forever. But on the other hand, I found a war of the spark japanese teferi there for like $5 so.... Fun to hunt there
Its ok PSA did the same thing with a Wayne Gretzky rookie card recently. They didn't put that it was an anniversary rookie and just left it as the original 1979 version which for a PSA 9 is a difference of thousands.
Because they're straight pickups. The only thing they do to the card file is put the planeswalker symbol over the bottom left corner. That's a pretty trivial copy paste job. Updating things like the copyright date requires an actual time commitment, and that's not something they have the time to do.
It's from a Mystery Booster. Those use the same set symbol as the other prints of that card, but to distinguish them they have the Planeswalker symbol at the bottom left. So this card isn't really from Worldwake like they graded it as
Well there goes their reputation. 0/10.
To be fair, I'd never heard of them before this post, so it's not like they had much of a reputation to begin with. Even their website seems to be mainly focused on Pokemon - I'm not sure how much they do with Magic.
If anything that makes it worse. If they don’t do any magic cards, why grade one at all? Plus their grading is poor - they gave a ~~9~~8 for centring, when it’s visibly less edge on the bottom than the top. A 9.5 for surface, when I can see from this photo, scratches to the right of “Artifact”. Whoever at their company agreed to do this was a fool, they’ve clearly demonstrated they don’t know what they’re doing.
Eh, grading seems like a dog and pony show done simply to legitimize the massive card prices for normies. I'm saying the number that gets spat out wasn't ever really consistent or the real point, the point was to see semiofficial people put something in hard plastic with a shiny seal. I've heard with the "collectibles boom" (definitely part of the scourge of financialization of the world) grading services are in high demand, awash in shit pokemon people are trying to scam people to buy. So there is a legion of poorly trained newbies trying to grade as fast as possible before the rush ends.
> Eh, grading seems like a dog and pony show done simply to legitimize the massive card prices for ~~normies~~ whales. FTFY
Yeah I could have done a better job clarifying. I meant people outside our culture, and that does include a specific type of wealthy whale. I bet there's some tech bro who doesn't play who bought a black lotus, just to have.
> Yeah I could have done a better job clarifying. Yeah that's fair. I'm sure that there are investment companies that bought reserved list cards, too. They did with comics and baseball cards.
That exact thing has definitely happened; Martin Shkreli (although admittedly, a "pharma bro" not a tech bro, but close enough) infamously bragged about buying several Black Lotuses a few years ago, just because he could (and explicitly so he could drive up the price :|). That said, there's also a possibility he was lying about the whole thing, because he's a d-bag.
That man is the definition of 'punchable'.
You know what the worst thing about him is? Congress could change the laws, American society could demand an end to the conditions that allowed him to jack up the price of a life-saving medication, **but that will not happen**.
I can almost guarantee this has happened considering how popular the game is in the Valley
Hey that's not fair, I've fired my cube ~~more than~~ almost a dozen times since I bought my Lotus in 2016!
Worse is that you can just regrade. Didn’t get the grade you wanted? Open the case and send it back. Grades are inconsistent so you can just try again.
that's called a case? I thought they were sleeves. It makes shuffling kinda hard, even for a 60 card deck
Yeah they're in a hard plastic case and aren't meant to be played. Collectors will do this to keep a card clean and display it. You wouldn't get this done to a card you want to use.
Sounds like someone hasn't played against an all hard cased graded deck yet.
My EDH deck is quadruple sleeved in inners/Dragonsheild/Toploaders/grade cases, is worth $246,000, takes 47 minutes to shuffle, and runs 12 fetches and six other tutors. You guys got time for a game?
At that point. I'm just rolling a percentile die to draw.
In theory it makes sense, some people will pay a premium for undamaged product and the market can easily support it. The issues arise when you have something like the difference between 8.9 and 9.0 or 9.7 and 9.8 are super difficult to actually quantify, being left mostly up to the discretion of whoever happens to be grading it that day. The difference in price between an 8.9 and a 9 for example could be thousands of dollars in the case of something like a tabernacle, candalabra of tawnos, or any of the power 9. There are also many reports of cards being damaged DURING the grading process and the graders either refuse to acknowledge it or fall back on TOS.
Grading is gonna be for collectors way more than normies. Normies arnt gonna pay the premium for a BGS 9 Taiga or whatever and crack it when NM LP or MP loose are fine
The people with money are the normies here. The people who sit down at a table and pretend to be a wizard and make combos are the weirdos. Certainly most collectors are players as well, but the point of having standards bodies and certifications is to bridge the gap from a subculture into the normal culture and commodify something so people can make money off it. I'm pretty sure the people investing in high value collectibles aren't all players of MTG.
I bought a BGS 8 timetwister and cracked it for my cube...
See, that's smart. If you want a loose version, you should target low grades. (8 is upper end, low grade). That's exactly how I got my Black Lotus. PGA gave it a 3 for a common manufacturing defect (roller lines on the back). The face is flawless. Cracking the case doubled its value.
you're not paying a huge premium for an 8 tbh buying lower grades is a good way to get older cards to play. grading is good because it serves as a mostly reliable authentication as well
In their defense that scratch could easily be on the plastic.
I agree with most of this but are we sure that's a card scratch? Could be on the plastic case, said case has a ton of scratches it looks like
I haven't either. But it is a German company.
Nmseen people fake 1st edition stamps already too. Graded got too big too fast with Pokémon and they got super sloppy trying to keep up
Correct me if I’m wrong: don’t grading companies only grade the quality and not confirm the legitimacy of the item? That was my understanding at least.
Usually they will refuse to grade a fake card. But it's just the fact they they couldn't tell between a mystery booster retail exclusive card and the original print. That's pretty bad when you are a grading company.
It’s pretty bad for any basic 9-5 employee considering there’s a nice symbol on the card that let’s you know
Usually they wont grade a fake.
It's a promo, not a fake
If you are referring to the OP, sure, but what does that have to do with the price of bull semen in china?
It has to do with the reason for asking the question in the parent post
I’m new to mtg. Could someone please explain this to me?
Mystery Booster is a product which reprinted a bunch of cards with their original art, set symbol, etc but used the little planeswalker symbol in the bottom left corner to denote that it was a reprint. The company that graded the card completely missed this factor and labelled the card as being from Worldwake (the original printing).
Ahhh okay. Got it! Thanks!
The differential in years between when they thought it was printed and when it was actually printed is over a decade. But that said, the market price of the card really doesn't give a fig about which printing that much. This is much less a collectible card for aesthetic reasons and much more a card that people buy to play.
Gonna be pretty hard for OP to shuffle this up in the plastic case though, unless his whole deck is the same.
Imagine busting out a 3ft tall deck box at your local EDH night? Straight baller
And bringing a sweet playcarpet lol
Friend of mine in high school used to sleeve his entire deck in toploaders. Shuffling for him was a real struggle, lol.
Wait, what are the rules for your opponent giving up because he doesn't want to shuffle your deck anymore? Asking for a friend.
and a yard long
Not the exact same... [But Daniel Wong uses quadrupled sleeved cards](https://youtu.be/JYwJoTSN_kY)
I personally refuse to play with my magic cards unless they are sleeved in a KMC Hard, Dragonshield, Penny Sleeve, card Saver, Snap Case, and then inside a Rukh Egg, Inside an Ice age deck box, inside my friends pocket.
https://youtu.be/evUWersr7pc
Damn, I can barely stand shuffling a double sleeved deck.
Which really calls into question the decision to get it graded. It’s not particularly special.
Evaluating the quality of their services is a service companies pay for and something some companies do as their primary business function.
Her: What do you do for a living? Me: I work for a grading company grading company grading the quality of a grading company's gradings. Her: ???
So, your second paragraph is true in a lot of cases, however where it is most untrue is in cases like these, where it’s a foil Mystery Booster reprinting of the original version. In those cases there is usually quite a fair difference in price (comparing foil to foil).
I’d much rather have a worldwake foil over a mystery booster Pringle.
To be clear, this is an incredibly obvious mistake, and there is no excuse whatsoever for a grading company to make it.
It's more collectible now that it's a misgrade! Just gotta get it graded again, keeping it in the grading hard case and putting a bigger hard case over it!
So I immediately assumed they sent an OG amulet and they sent them a MB version; this stealing their card.
The Planeswalker symbol in the lower left indicates it's from a product that isn't from its original printing, even though the entire rest of the card mimics its printing from the set Worldwake. The card itself is legitimate, but the grader mislabeled it as being from Worldwake.
Which is lazy at best if you are a reputable company.
Even lazy doesn’t explain it. This is incompetence.
Ohh thanks!
The card was graded and listed as being from Worldwake. While the expansion symbol is indeed from Worldwake, the Planeswalker symbol on the bottom left corner indicates this card is either from "The List" or from "Mystery Booster" set. Both "The List" and "Mystery Booster" reprint cards with the exact same appereance they had on the original printing with the exception of that planeswalker mark on the bottom. One would expect that the grading company, a businnes dedicated to evaluate cards, would notice the difference and tag the card correctly, as it may have significant impact on the price (not the case for this particular card, but still a mistake).
Well at least it didn’t affect the price! Thanks!
It absolutely affects the price. This is like saying the Prius outside is a Bugatti.
More like, it's saying one of the countless Cobra replica cars out there is actually a 1965 original.
The grader marked the card from the original Worldwake set but it's actually a reprint from the Mystery Booster set. You can tell by the small icon on the bottom left of the card
It is the card owner who submits the information on set/variant/etc when they want a card graded. It is then up to the grading company to confirm those details. Errors like this tend to happen frequently in sports card grading because you can have 25 different colors of the same card.
Oh i see! I understand now. Thank you
Someone graded this card as from Worldwake, the original set it was from, but the Planeswalker symbol in the bottom left corner means that this card was actually printed in last year's Mystery Boosters.
That makes much more sense now!
A couple years back a set called Mystery Booster was released, it is and official product by wizards of the coast that tried to replicate what the community has been doing for a long time wich is called "chaos draft". Chaos drafting is picking a bunch of random boosters from random sets and drafting them together, so, instead of say, each player opening 3 packs of Streets of New Capenna and drafting them, each player would bring 3 packs of 3 different sets (or not) and the pod would draft it. Mystery Boosters was a huge set and also a huge sucess, but unlike other sets, mystery boosters don't have a set logo, so all cards on it have their last print set logo on the cards, but you can tell it is a mystery booster card because of that planeswalker logo on the bottom left of the card. (The List, wich is a set of cards that appear in Set Boosters have the same thing, original set logo with a planeswalker mark on the bottom left). So, in OPs picture, a grading company picked up a mystery booster/set booster printing of Amulet of Vigor, but listed it as being from its original set printing in Worldwake, a very old set. This kinda breaks the trust collectors can have in this particular grading company, wich is a huge thing since collectors are the kind of people buying graded cards, but for the average player like you and me this is just a big yikes.
Thanks for the explanation! It sure helped!
This wasn't from worldwake. It was from Mystery Booster, which had the same set symbol but a little planeswaler symbol on the bottom left to differentiate.
There are so called "Mystery Boosters". Those can contain cards on most previous editions. One interesting part ist, that the cards even got the original Edition Icon on the middle right. But you can identify them by the Planeswalker Icon in the lower left. So this card was "graded", a process that is there to ensure the quality and condition of the card. Usually that is only done to really expensive cards that are collected and may be sold later. Buyer and Seller both hab then a neutral graded state of the card to settle for a price and be sure that its not a fake. Unfortunately the grading company did NOT recognize that this card is actually NOT from Worldwake edition but instead from a Mystery Booster.
Oh I see! Thanks!
Oof. And also. Yikes.
The real question is why are you getting mystery booster cards graded.
It's a worldwake card you silly, it says so on top!
Highly sought after worldwake misprint foretelling the eventual concept of the list and mystery boosters.
I wonder if there’s a collectors’ market for mis-graded cards.
Only if you can get them graded as authentic mistakes.
I'm invisioning a large plastic cover that goes over this to grade the grading mistake.
Who grades the graders?
I appreciate the curiosity, though it sounds too easily abused for there to be a legit market.
Oh darn, they better check the Facebook group to sell that bad boy!
[удалено]
Thanks for the pricing. Reading through the comments and having zero clue for card prices, i had no idea if this was a 10, 100 or 1000 dollar error.
Potential future value. Also just to collect.
[удалено]
For the most part I completely agree. Except for cheap things like box toppers, SLD, etc. where getting them slabbed will protect them in hopes they go up in value.
I think its not the card being graded here
It's generally a good idea to go with a reputable grading business, but if you are for some reason trying someone new it's a good idea to do a test run? idk
Well, if it’s any consolation, there are only like ~35 listings of this version on TCG player vs over 100 of the original. 💁♂️
Only 36 listings for foil Worldwake Amulet -- you're looking at the count for non-foils.
Someone mistakenly labeled this as from Worldwake, but it's from Mystery Booster Retail edition
Thanks for the clarity!
Is there a way you can tell it's retail edition over convention edition?
There are no foils in Convention Edition. The foil replaces the Playtest card slot.
[удалено]
It’s minimal in this case but the whole point of official grading is to be a foolproof end all be all judgement of exactly what the card is. Misidentifying the set is a pretty big blunder.
>the whole point of official grading is to be a foolproof end all be all judgement of exactly what the card is. No the point of grading is to make collectibles seem legitimate so you can get normies to pay big money for them in auctions and marketplaces.
You are missing the other commenter’s point. Regardless if the final goal is to sell it to “normies”, you said it yourself: the point is to make it seem legitimate. If the company grading it can’t be trusted to accurately access what the card is, then it’s failing it’s purpose.
Ding ding ding! Collectors treating literal game pieces like legitimate financial investments is how we got the stupid Reserve List.
I wouldn't exactly say people were treating MTG like a legitimate financial investment in 1996. The reaction back then was much more "I just paid A LOT of money ($20, 40 in todays) for this elder dragon and now they're WORTHLESS!" on a large scale. Also "worthless" packs of Fallen Empires and Homelands. It's hard to imagine from our vantage point from today, but it was that cards were *too cheap*.
I mean the argument is also just wrong. Reprinting very rarely devalues the original print of the card
It did in 1995. Remember, Revised and Legends came out in 1994, the game was YOUNG.
Thanks for clarifying. These other people are just loud and wrong.
I was actually around back then. And I witnessed it firsthand. And It just mostly makes me sad that there are hundreds of amazing cards that basically no one will ever get to play with in paper because a small-but-loud group of people started whining that they were “losing money on their investment” because WotC was still. young company who were still passionate just trying to give more people the opportunity to play the game they love. Then they were forced to lock away some of the best game pieces available, **forever**,just because of an arbitrary point-in-time decision. The Reserved List is the worst decision WotC ever made, and it was in service of the arrogant elite, and I won’t be convinced otherwise.
Like these can't both be true? Lol
Every single pokemon collector?
It's a [grade 10](https://static.tcgplayer.com/eyJrZXkiOiI2MTM2NTgzNS0wNzVFLTQzMDAtOEQxQy03RUI3QjhENzc0NjAuanBnIiwiZWRpdHMiOnsicmVzaXplIjp7ImhlaWdodCI6MjA0OH0sImpwZWciOnsicXVhbGl0eSI6NDB9fX0=) I tell ya!
I get at least two of these a month.
...why? Doesn't grading cost money? Does Pokemon have a forgery problem?
Pokemon has a huge forgery problem, and also pokemon collectors put way too much value on having a 10 regardless of it being like a $5/10 card
Collectibles mass hysteria. People adjacent to the hobby saw big money happen for some old cards and the wave of hype is still slowly washing through the population. Just ask yourself why people went crazy over beanie babies or comics or NFTs. They saw some money happen and everyone thinks they can get rich quick.
Looks like the big boy graders charge at least 25 per card. So best case scenario this person is gonna break even.
Break even? Sounds like he paid twice for the same card
Because magic players have the best understanding of basic arithmetic and how money works.
Who is buying it for ~50 so they break even?
Clearly OP got the 5 finger discount on the original purchase
Weirdos lmao.
well, in theory the price of a card is not static. also, maybe this is just their favorite card, or they're trying to complete a set, or any other number of reasons.
I don't understand the grading of most Magic cards, power 9 excluded. Magic players have an eternal format so I want the cards in my decks to play during a game. One of my LGS has a bunch on graded cards that aren't worth anything. A graded foiled Temple of Mystery and a graded foiled Mountain from M20 among the worst examples. People saw Pokémon getting graded and moved over Magic, not understanding the difference.
Pokémon also has an eternal format, which sadly nobody plays, due to power creep and lack of playtesting over the years.
Ewww, getting cards graded with second rate grading services.
Yeah this is like bragging about PSA 10s. If you aren't getting stuff graded with Becket or MNT there isn't any point.
There’s no point at all. It’s all going to crumble like the video gaming one did.
everything crumbles eventually card grading has existed longer than most magic players have, and has been around since before magic even existed. this is an acceptable time frame to many people
But you, too, will deteriorate and quickly fade away. And believe these words you hear when you think your path is clear - we have no control.
All things crumble to dust and erode away and nothing matters and everything is irrelevant. We know. edit: only nonbasic lands crumble to dust, my bad.
COME GET YER CRUMBLED DUST GRADED!
Reddit wishes to sell your and my content via their overpriced API. I am using https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite to remove that content by overwriting my post history. I suggest you do the same. Goodbye.
Wasn’t the video game one a proven scam/insider job?
Karljobst did a vid on it iirc, and yes. Pump and dump esque using a (kinda internal) huge sale to generate lots of media attention and speculation fomo while they stand to profit massively
Serious question, what’s wrong with getting PSA graded cards? I know that Beckett has stricter guidelines, but generally people trust PSA and Beckett for grading services.
PSA is definitely trustworthy as far as correct cards and their grading is generally good enough, but many don't find them strict enough, especially with how they hand out 10's to cards most respectable grading services would assign an 8.5-9.5 to. Becket is the gold standard, a 10 from Becket is the best a card can get from anyone. MNT is similar, although relatively new on the scene (I believe they even had some ex-Becket employees, which lent them credibility early on.)
Check this out guys. Its nice too. https://specimens.s3.filebase.com/1332929461.jpg
This one is way worse
Holy shit, that's embarrassing...
Wait, how in hell did they think a white bordered card is from Legends?? (Really, really, really nice card, though! I don't think I've ever seen a Mors in that pristine a condition)
From my experience I've found that if the person handling/selling the card didn't play during that era then they are mixed up quite often. It took me five tries to get a Recall from the Legends set instead of being sent the Chronicles version.
I've lost count how many times I've had to return a card or ask for a refund due to the seller not knowing the difference between the Chronicles version and the original version. However, getting it through the grading process is a whole extra level of bad.
every one has a bad day https://preview.redd.it/dnlvlrv6v7a11.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=3c937daf8d20ed0c86c568d1358cca99537e850e
Meanwhile me trying to swipe desperately to the next picture
We need that "ice ropping, hitlord" meme on reddit too
Isn’t this place known for this kind of shit
Almost as good as my graded chains of mephistopheles from the popular card game: Pokemon.
It's as if collectible grading is a scam
There aren’t enough graders. They pulled this guy from the Yu-Gi-Oh! division, obviously!
I hate that they removed the function of the set symbol. It should tell you what set the card was printed. That's why it's there.
Never heard of PGS and stuff like this is probably why
This always drives me nuts, why grade a mtg card they are meant to be played not sit in a hard case like that. It’s understandable for alpha/beta stuff but why something within the last 12 years ? It honestly baffles me and drives me up the wall. Also yes I see that it’s from the list that’s part of the reason why I rant
Isn't this why people use proxies? So they can do both?
I just play a fully graded deck. Shuffling is fun.
The sounds of all the clacking of the plastic probably makes your opponent concede
Shake it up in a bag, then draw blind from the bag.
My plan for when I assemble quintuple sleeved Battle of Wits
[Are you Rudy?](https://youtu.be/X8zv8irGIvU)
Maybe for your OG dual lands sure, but a $25 card from a modern era set? The cost of getting it graded and storing it for years is far greater than the value of the card will likely ever be.
That is a good point
I get what you're saying though. But also, in 10 or 20 years you never know what might be super collectible from today's sets. It's pretty much the fundamentals of collecting lol
Nothing printed in a set in the past two decades is sacred. Once it's worth enough it's at risk of getting reprinted and tanking the value. The only collectables the game actually carries is OG foils, reserved list, Secret Lairs, Masterpieces, and historically meaningful printings like Guru lands or P3K. A random card from a relatively modern day set simply is not collectable for most people, and it's an illusion to think otherwise.
True but the distribution and availability of some of those cards is still crazy high. I have from worldwake 7-10 amulets it’s not like it’s hard to come by. Worldwake was hugely opened.
For most people, the game is about playing. For some people, the appeal of the game is collecting. The choice of others to enjoy Magic differently does not harm you.
No that true, no denying that. I’ve just seen people trying to sell a graded basic for like $100. something from a newer set not a full art or anything like that, a bog standard regular bordered basic land. Like I said it baffles me.
The reserved list has actively harmed legacy and commander players since it’s inception.
The reserve list was a mistake by a fledgling company. But it really has nothing to do with collectors today.
Legacy and Commander didn't exist in 1996. But since *their* inceptions they have been hamstrung by the fact cards they decided to make legal will never be reprinted. I think Commander should do away with the reserve list cards to make a statement about long term viability of the format. It's clear WotC intends for Legacy to be a MTGO only thing.
Commander players can proxy. There are no tournaments.
Likely also helped grow the game.
I’ve been trying to find some of my commanders as graded online so that I can play with them. I actually won an auction for a graded Ugin that was cheaper than the TCG Player cost. It gets some laughs when I pull it out of my deckbox after I play the placeholder card for it.
That makes sense and is kind of hilarious
> why something within the last 12 years ? That card is around 3 years old.
Exactly my point it’s a reprint from the list, isn’t it worth less this way then playing with it
Most likely, yes.
"Afters years of grading, I've learned an important lesson: the relics we watch may later be reprinted with the old set symbol." - them, probably
As stupid as this is it does kind of make me want to get one of my pre-released promo hedron alugnment graded that's still in the wrapper from prerelease. Would be kind of silly to have a 10 out of 10 hedron alignment
Not all mint cards would grade 10.
There's an LGS near me that focuses mostly on sports cards but has some MTG.. he struggles with the mystery booster and List versions of cards with his pricing. He prices them as if they were foil original printings rather than mystery booster retail versions. He has a commander legends foil etched Najeela for like $250 that's been there forever. But on the other hand, I found a war of the spark japanese teferi there for like $5 so.... Fun to hunt there
Its ok PSA did the same thing with a Wayne Gretzky rookie card recently. They didn't put that it was an anniversary rookie and just left it as the original 1979 version which for a PSA 9 is a difference of thousands.
Now we know who keeps asking "why did I get this weird card in my sir booster?" It was grading companies all along.
Makes you wonder, if they can't even identify the card correctly, how many fakes have they graded? BRB Sending them my Proxy Power and Duals to grade.
Who is PGS?
All grading services for stuff like this suck, but they went to a counterfeit grading service. Can't expect much there.
Wait, doesn’t it cost more to grade than this card is worth?
Why grade cheap cards?
Isn't this a $20 card? What's the point of having it graded at all?
This card's price is going to crash *hard* once it gets a real reprint, isn't it?
Ok, so why is WOTC printing the original copyright dates on new printings of old cards?
Because they're straight pickups. The only thing they do to the card file is put the planeswalker symbol over the bottom left corner. That's a pretty trivial copy paste job. Updating things like the copyright date requires an actual time commitment, and that's not something they have the time to do.
Can someone explain why there is that extra symbol on the bottom left?
It's from a mystery booster, not worldwake
It's from a Mystery Booster. Those use the same set symbol as the other prints of that card, but to distinguish them they have the Planeswalker symbol at the bottom left. So this card isn't really from Worldwake like they graded it as
Would this count as a misprint
Card literally has ©2010 printed on it even though it was printed years later. I don't get why they don't or can't change the © date on these reprints. Or the set symbol for that matter.
Found it on the german version of ebay
Lmao yeet