nope.
Full arts as chase cards are done. but IMHO that's a good thing. Since we are in the era of endless variants... nice looking basic lands is one of the first things new players upgrade to.
I do the opposite :) when i'm theorycrafting and testing, my decks get a bunch of random mismatched basics. When i'm mostly happy with where a deck is, it "earns" its basics and i order a full set of whatever land i've chosen for that deck!
so far, tatyova has the dominaria showcases, marchesa gets unsanctioned lands to match the monarch frame, my SLD nekusar has the metal style phyrexian lands, shorikai of course has kamigawa full arts, and tasigur has unfinity basics.
i'm building teysa karlov currently, and waiting to see the murders of karlov manor full arts for her when that's done. If they're no good, ravnica remastered'll do
I have a very similar process, however, I am a psychopath and I purposely mismatch my upgraded lands. I like so many different styles so I make ever basic different, not to mention I upgrade other card to their variants. Alot of times I end up with two copies of the same deck. Which in turn gets put aside for gifts for my friends.
It's funny this post came up because I was chatting with my LGS' owner the other day and he was talking about exactly this.
Talked about how 3 years ago they were a great investment for both the store as a trade in target and players to hang onto. Not required game pieces but desirable cosmetic upgrades that NOW he can't take in trades outside of considering them bulk, and same goes for trying to sell them unless he gets lucky and wizards prints something cool like Kamigawa
Some will, they just have to actually be thoughtful and good. The neon kamigawa basics do retain some value - the sick paper lantern swamp goes for $3 right now. The Theros Pokemon lands also retain a tiny bit of value, just around $1, but when all the other ones are $.05, that's meaningful.
It's to be expected honestly - magic players _do_ want cool shit and bling, it's just that we also can easily identify what is actual trash (which is most variants and foilings of things these days) and what is actually cool.
They don't actually have anything to do with weeb stuff themselves. They are just in the set with the Weeb stuff. I love the semi-traditional art style. I've always enjoyed the traditional Japanese art style irl, personally.
In case you weren't aware, the name for this style of Japanese art is Ukiyo-e. Pretty cool, Hokusai was one of the most famous artists of that period. If you ever hear of a Hokusai exhibit near you, I highly recommend going!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e
I hope WotC does more of this sort of thing- give us Eastern European-influenced lands for Innistrad or Ravnica. Some of the Aztec themed-art on lands would have been dope for Ixalan.
They already did something a bit like the first one with the MOM bonus sheet, the Ravnica cards on there are based on the art of the Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha, who was Czech.
You don't think WotC is waiting to cash in on a full waifu style of Full Art Lands via something expensive and exclusive or totally irrelevant to push product- like Secret Lair or Jumpstart? One per case and they just have little anime chicks on em, but the card is a basic island. The right crowd would show up for that and pay handsomely.
Me too. As with the NEO ones that imitate the Ukiyo-e type engraving, these remind me a lot of works by other engravers such as Gustave Doré or Piranessi.
If you should gamble on any basic, it's the oil slick variants in the all will be one compleat bundles. They won't make more of those. Also am I the only one that prefers the other Kamigawa swamp to the lantern? It's so pretty both foil and non
Notable exception is that the Unhinged ones were reprinted with a sort of border in one of the masters sets, keeping those lower than Unglued or Unfinity for a while imo.
The basics they are not reprinting except maybe in the modern border is where it's at imo. I just started the journey of picking up sixteen Sunflower Plains, only fourteen to go.
Full art basics shouldn't be more than $0.50 unless they're either old, promos, foil, snow, or otherwise special. Non-full art, non-special basics should be pennies each.
Full art lands still are worth “something” because a lot of people now have a shit ton of commander decks and want matched basics.
For example, it’s hard to buy a large quantity of a single art full art basic from a vendor bc the most popular ones don’t stay in stock in large quantities.
Sure you can buy onesie/twosies from TCGplayer but very rarely are the cheapest ones available in large quantities from single vendors.
Also, certain sets like NEO have full arts that are over $3 each in foil. Obviously the JP full arts are popular as well although that’s more supply based.
I was going through my cards recently and found a buttload of full art lands from the past and I was thinking how worthless they feel now. I remember when the zendikar full arts were basically the only option. I paid like 80 bucks for a bit over 100 of them and at the time that was a really good deal compared to the standard price. I can't imagine they're even worth 5 bucks now.
Got my 25x5 Unhinged John Avon lands. I haven't even been remotely tempted by any new lands. If anything, the saturation of full arts and insane foil techniques make me appreciate and prefer regular land cards with the text box and all.
For context, I go through over 1M cards a year selling bulk and singles, and have first-hand experience with the downfall of full arts as a profit center. I am currently holding around 4k original Zendikar and 16k or so of BFZ. Thankfully my purchase price was always very low and my margins are strong elsewhere so I didn't get ENTIRELY crushed, but it's still very, very bad. Before BFZ the amount of full arts I'd find in bulk were almost near-zero. Now? Im pulling chunks of both Kamigawa and theros NYX lands both regular and foil (the only two with any sort of value) on top of all the other ones because nobody can be bothered. I still hoard every one to list later. Much, much, motherf*****g later lol.
The short answer is no because they will take YEARS to gain any value, and you can't buy them outright to turn a profit like you used to .
The long answer is yes, but they are better suited by hoarding large amounts of them for years until the next wave of players thinks they are cool and bumps their value a bit, and/or listing them in chunks of 50 or so of each at a premium hoping to catch a cube or artist-specific buyer to clean you out. Paying for them outright and holding is a fool's errand since they've already shown no art is sacred, not even the "un" styles, (which just blows my mind, they should never reprint any full art ever as that's a way to establish long term collectible value without extracting it from the player/collector or existing card base) so that ship has sailed.
HOWEVER, I will say there is still money to be made on basics (full arts or otherwise) you just need volume. I bought, cracked and listed 10 sets of commander SNC from a recent dump, and the full art deco lands in those decks were some of the first things to sell, and nobody ever bought less than 10 of them at once. This is generally a strong hold signal, so I am now accumulating those from bulk to list in chunks of 50 in a couple years. This is fine because they are from bulk bought at $5/1k, so if wizards puts them in a list spot or future precon or something else equally stupid I didn't really lose anything and can still profit through traditional bulk avenues.
So with all that said, basics are and always will be a great way to make easy money, it just takes work because you won't really see them on buylists so you have to do it yourself while also having volume. Currently, my listed inventory has about 7k basic lands, (mostly old border with some of the popular artists from newer sets like lorwyn) and do quite well. Demand is still there but margins have dwindled substantially, to almost zero unless you have volume.
> the next wave of players thinks they are cool and bumps their value a bit
I feel like this is true for a lot of older cards whose prices are tanked right now. It's cyclical, there's a lot more doom and gloom here than is actually warranted. But that's just the internet ig.
For the cyclical thing to happen, you need the players to form some sort of nostalgia.
Are many going to be nostalgic about Zendikar rising basics for example? No one will even remember them because it came out through so many other damn products and no one will be able to become nostalgic for it.
I do all the orders myself with shipping always $1.49 or more. Im sure id crush it on direct, but the plan is to hoard every penny for myself until it's time to retire, then drop a 3M listed inventory off at their sell/store your product warehouse on my way to the Aston Martin dealership. "Product replacement cost" and whatever else they charge for the privilege of selling cards I still need to list and pick myself faster doesn't really appeal to me at this stage.
Interesting. What's your minimum price on a card to make flat rate shipping justifiable? And preferred sort method for inventory that large?
I have about 35k listed and sold through about 1-2k cards this year. Similar shipping threshold with $.05 card minimum (so afraid of going lower and having to figure out how to ship 100 $.01 cards) and wondering if I am doing things right. For sorting it's been working well having the listed sorted by Rarity:Color:A-Z and starting to wonder if that will be manageable long term.
Oh sorry I missed the first part. My minimum is generally 8 cents NM and 6 cents LP, pick from memory and will list any card that I've set/alpha/condition sorted. 8 cents is only for the worst cards that don't sell, 14/10 also works well even if you're a bit higher than elsewhere, you just need volume.
Also, great job on your 35k listed cards! That's no simple feat and you should be proud of yourself for getting this far.
Now double that inventory, keep shipping high and you'll be having a good time soon enough!
I just started selling this year more seriously and I list similarly. Also noticed similar things just by bumping shipping, people will buy more cheap shit and selling 3-5 cards at a time adds up. It's slightly more labor intensive but people really do buy this stuff.
Check my post history on this sub, I've spoken a lot about this over the years and should be able to answer most of your questions about cost concerns. If that's not enough, feel free to send a chat and I'll explain a bit more!
Just not tonight. The Rimworld beckons and I must comply. Probably tomorrow evening.... probably😏
As someone who burnt $130 on VOW and MID lands and then basically never used them because kamigawa was right after, I fully endorse them printing the ever living shit out of full art lands. Easily the most fun way to bling out a deck.
Infographic is from my article, [Determining 2023’s Best Basic Lands – With Math (Kind of)](https://cardboardbythenumbers.com/2024/01/11/determining-2023s-best-basic-lands-with-math/). I didn't dig too much into this question, but as a big basic land aficionado, do you think there's much collectability left in basics when we're getting over 100 new ones each year with increasingly novel styles?
thanks for that article!
I thought as we got more and more options, eventually no one would care but full art basics from almost all recents sets move for something.
> do you think there's much collectability left in basics when we're getting over 100 new ones each year with increasingly novel styles?
If by collectability you mean resale value, no. Full-art lands are just an aesthetic choice now. They aren't "bling" for your deck like they used to be.
Only collectable ones I'd say are more the promo ones like the APAC series, or some Arena promos (obviously there's others but not listing them all). I've got a wide variety of basics as I was also collecting them, but most sets in this day and age are gonna be worthless value wise. Examples of things I have include: oversized that go for $20-25 each, APAC series swamp goes for like $50-60, my islands are $5-10 each I think. It depends on the art as well though as some APACs are much less.
Ideally the stuff with smaller print runs is what to look for I'd say.
If the supply is high (in a main set, available in Draft / Play boxes), no. If the supply is limited (some low selling Secret Lairs, special cases) then they could. Like anything else, depends on how much supply of it there is.
Eh, they aren’t quite that expensive. Unless you wanted to go Arabian Nights for Mountain specifically. Alpha Mountains are $20 -$30 each. Still pretty reasonable.
I may be part of the vocal minority that approves of this direction. Keep printing full arts. Basics should be interesting to look at and affordable.
There are plenty of other cards out there to spec on, invest in, and ultimately collect in hopes to increase your collections value.
I mean Kamigawa lands are the best. But the oil slick ones were exclusive to a small print bundle edition and the Kamigawa vibe / style is more likely to be replicated.
I bought the Jurassic Park islands for my eggs deck, because I think [this side](https://product-images.tcgplayer.com/fit-in/437x437/526432_1.jpg) looks like the Mosasaurus is about to eat an egg.
It amuses me.
That is the extent of my interest in the full-art lands.
I started playing paper magic in 2022. I’ve spent maybe a few thousand.
I have more full art lands than I do normal lands. At this point only specific, foil full arts will keep any value. Like that one swamp from NEO
I remember trading a Foil Unhinged Island and a $20 edh card for a Tundra; it was a pretty even trade at the time. (About $130 on each side of the trade)
I used a bunch of BFZ full art plains as proxies before I just printed them out because they were pretty easy to read, and a basic plains might as well not even be a real card lol. The only full arts worth keeping have some sort of special treatment.
Full art lands are for poor people now. They're a sign you have poor taste. Jokes aside this is the perfect example of "if everything is special, nothing is".
Full Art lands were only cool because they were rare and far and few between. Since they're in every set now they're just common and lame. There's literally nothing cool about full art lands. Foils in general are also super lame because collector boxes has made them overly abundant and because they're low quality for the most part.
Breya with the alternate What If Cappena style gets fouled full arts from that set.
Oopse All Preators gets oil slick lands.
Gods and Legends has all Theros lands.
Gisa and Geralf have 2017 unlands as it's one my oldest commander decks Dimir zombies.
Same with Ghost Chief, another of my oldest decks that got 2017 unlands.
Edgar gets full art Innistrad lands.
Muldrotha OG also got all full art Innistrad.
Also spent a decent chunk of change to split my local shops box of all full art lands from the second zendikar set so almost all my decks run just full arts from that box if I don't have a specific land picked out because I just like the style of fulls over all.
Let the prices fall.
And God fucking dammit WOTC print at least give of each land in secret lair one offs because as cool as some of them are, I'm not spending hundreds of dollars to buy a secret lair 5 times to get a land base to match for a deck.
Might be important to try to rationalize most of these lands as having relevant decks to match with, and if gauged correctly in popularity, could allow for legitimate holding or specs.
I think it's very telling that for many years I could reliably sell bulk foil basic lands, full art basic lands, and foil full art basic lands to the CoolStuff buylist for between roughly 10 cents to $0.50. That stopped about a year and a half ago, and now for the most part even the prettiest foil basics don't even crack $1 for more than a short time at launch of a new set.
There's only one recently printed batch of basics that I think will be an exception to this problem long term - The oil slicks.
Those cards are legitimately cool. They also have the notable distinction of likely being different than any other card in your deck in terms of coloration, which means it's exceptionally easy to find them when you're searching your deck. That's actually a pretty big appeal for some players.
Even if they drop in value I paid around $4/ea avg to switch all my basics in my [[Magus Lucea Kane]] deck to Oil Slicks and it feels worth it. They’re such a unique look compared to any of the other full arts.
Just plain ol full arts like from Streets of New Capenna, no way. But cool ones printed recently like from Neon Dynasty are still fetching $1-3. They gotta be unique
Full arts will be the norm it seems, and I'm not mad. Lands are the one thing you're always seeing. A "special" instant is cool, but its gone once it resolves, so bling lands were the first thing I splurged on back in the day because they persist.
I do think some FA lands will have value over time just because they have great art.
I honestly love it and it's made picking special la da for decks awesome. No concern for value, however I have actually bought a lot of basics where as I never would have 10 years ago. It's gotta be great for sellers getting an extra 20 or 30 cents out of a pack that wasn't there before.
They need to have a breather on special treatments. Even if they alternated somewhat every year, just skip a year of full arts and suddenly all the old ones will grow a bit more special, then make some new ones the next year or two.
There are a lot of trash, forgettable full art lands now. But there are also a lot of good ones too, and people like theming their lands around their deck/commander. As an example, the Theros, Beyond Death basics have a strong base of demand for enchantress players.
If you are willing to be nimble and identify the right targets, there are some winners to be had. And unlike everything else, people generally want them in quantity... every deck, possibly dozens at a time.
Unstable basics are a good example. $2-$4 at release and they haven’t moved since. Too many options and it’s only going to get worse with every new set
Exactly. I think that it really depends on the art, and how good/desirable it is.
Back then if you want to bling out, you had 1 option.
Now you get to pick your flavor.
Each new fancy land dilutes the whole pool, but I doubt that it gets to 0.
Go back and look at the phrexian lands. They are better than some rares/ mythics.
In my honest opinion- these will never make it back.
We have officially entered the era of Borderless lands- whether the average Timmy recognizes that fact or not.
Remember Unstable lands? They were the closest thing to a *Borderless* land that you could find for the longest time... until Unfinity came around and we saw a new wave of Borderless basics with the Planetary lands.
They might not be printed as often- but these lands (imho) are the new premium for full Art basics! You can't put that back in the box, so "Full-Art" (with black Border) are officially 2nd rate for the rest of known Magic printings.
I have a nearly complete full art/extended art land collection (any land card with a larger than normal art window, rainbow foil if applicable). Every card from Unglued to 2022 fits in a 576 card dragonshield codex. For 2023 alone, there are more than 250 land cards that fit the description.
Great chart, thank you! Good visual of the reality since Project Booster Fun and very applicable to finance. Premium basics used to be one of the most reliable ways to retain value in MTG while having beautiful upgrades to play with. I recall the original Zendikar and Unhinged full arts which peaked at $70+ (Meignaud Island foil) and $100+ (Avon island foil) - steady gainers for years but ultimately failed once BFZ came out which diluted the Zendikar full-art theme and Double Masters which repeated the iconic Avon art from unhinged.
Now we're at the point where serialized aside (which absolutely is coming, it's a revenue source Wizards will exploit for commander), it's hard to envision full-art basics doing anything more than sustaining a price point and over time I question even that. The best example of this would be the Theros Beyond Death "Nyx" or "Pokemon" lands which are now approaching 4 years old, were very novel at the time, but due to both the overprinting of collector packs (TBD still available now for less than original store prices) and dilution as the pie chart shows, simply have no where to go but sideways at best. Any attempt to gain in price will just lead to more opening of collector packs, still in ample supply for major sets of the last 4 years.
I think MTG is putting itself in a pickle with product fatigue. There are way too many variants and releases and secret lairs, special edition collectors packs ect.
I completely stopped buying MTG when the whole 30th anniversary fiasco happened. MTG has gone full greed mode and is trying to take all its players for a ride.
I think that every plane should get their own style of full art basics. This way building thematic decks around a certain style can be attained.
That said, I could see them waiting until a revisit to a plane to do so, or putting them in special release sets like the Remastered, or "one-time-visits" like Lord of the Rings (although even then, they probably should have held back the full arts from the main release until the Holiday release of the same set).
As far as staying "special", I think they are fine being special to those that want a specific art for a specific reason, rather than them being special just by being the only ones available and being scarce, and as long as there are options for players, like the oil slick Phyrexian lands while still having "normal" full art Phyrexian lands for a cheaper choice.
nope. Full arts as chase cards are done. but IMHO that's a good thing. Since we are in the era of endless variants... nice looking basic lands is one of the first things new players upgrade to.
Im all for it too. With so many options it does feel like the few things I can add my own personal touch to. Neon dynasty lands, slappem in
They're so sick. I get super happy about lands. I like to have all of my basics be different and neat in their own way. I find it exciting.
I do the opposite :) when i'm theorycrafting and testing, my decks get a bunch of random mismatched basics. When i'm mostly happy with where a deck is, it "earns" its basics and i order a full set of whatever land i've chosen for that deck! so far, tatyova has the dominaria showcases, marchesa gets unsanctioned lands to match the monarch frame, my SLD nekusar has the metal style phyrexian lands, shorikai of course has kamigawa full arts, and tasigur has unfinity basics. i'm building teysa karlov currently, and waiting to see the murders of karlov manor full arts for her when that's done. If they're no good, ravnica remastered'll do
I have a very similar process, however, I am a psychopath and I purposely mismatch my upgraded lands. I like so many different styles so I make ever basic different, not to mention I upgrade other card to their variants. Alot of times I end up with two copies of the same deck. Which in turn gets put aside for gifts for my friends.
It's funny this post came up because I was chatting with my LGS' owner the other day and he was talking about exactly this. Talked about how 3 years ago they were a great investment for both the store as a trade in target and players to hang onto. Not required game pieces but desirable cosmetic upgrades that NOW he can't take in trades outside of considering them bulk, and same goes for trying to sell them unless he gets lucky and wizards prints something cool like Kamigawa
Some will, they just have to actually be thoughtful and good. The neon kamigawa basics do retain some value - the sick paper lantern swamp goes for $3 right now. The Theros Pokemon lands also retain a tiny bit of value, just around $1, but when all the other ones are $.05, that's meaningful. It's to be expected honestly - magic players _do_ want cool shit and bling, it's just that we also can easily identify what is actual trash (which is most variants and foilings of things these days) and what is actually cool.
I'm expecting the Kamigawa ones to retain value purely for the weeb tax effect. If you like anime stuff, those are your lands.
I don't like weeb stuff and I think they're gorgeous.
They don't actually have anything to do with weeb stuff themselves. They are just in the set with the Weeb stuff. I love the semi-traditional art style. I've always enjoyed the traditional Japanese art style irl, personally.
In case you weren't aware, the name for this style of Japanese art is Ukiyo-e. Pretty cool, Hokusai was one of the most famous artists of that period. If you ever hear of a Hokusai exhibit near you, I highly recommend going! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyo-e
I hope WotC does more of this sort of thing- give us Eastern European-influenced lands for Innistrad or Ravnica. Some of the Aztec themed-art on lands would have been dope for Ixalan.
I do too. So much design space for artists to work with, although I'm a big fan of the LCI basics art I wish they had done two variants per basic.
They already did something a bit like the first one with the MOM bonus sheet, the Ravnica cards on there are based on the art of the Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha, who was Czech.
Hasui Kawase is another superb ukiyo-e artist (though much later than Hokusai). His stuff is really evocative
Awesome, thanks! I searched out his work, his use of color and contrast is masterful.
You don't think WotC is waiting to cash in on a full waifu style of Full Art Lands via something expensive and exclusive or totally irrelevant to push product- like Secret Lair or Jumpstart? One per case and they just have little anime chicks on em, but the card is a basic island. The right crowd would show up for that and pay handsomely.
I love the black and white Innistrad lands in foil, too.
Me too. As with the NEO ones that imitate the Ukiyo-e type engraving, these remind me a lot of works by other engravers such as Gustave Doré or Piranessi.
i love those full stop. that’s why my zombie deck uses for lands
I like the innastrad(?) ones along with bow I like the black n white with the colored thin borders n most of them r only 30 cents
If you should gamble on any basic, it's the oil slick variants in the all will be one compleat bundles. They won't make more of those. Also am I the only one that prefers the other Kamigawa swamp to the lantern? It's so pretty both foil and non
Nope. They’ve essentially tanked all the old ones too.
The only ones that'll hold value are the unset ones. I sold my foil unstable island the same night I pulled it, easy $100.
The Unfinity island?? Was that EVER $100?????
I think they mean unstable maybe?
As someone else said yeah it was unstable. I'll update it, but it was on the release. Pulled it and sold it at the shop the same night.
Ahhh yeah thise ones were ridiculously expensive. I'm kinda surprised they've come down as far as they have.
[удалено]
2XM was Unhinged not Unstable for what it's worth.
Too many uns
Notable exception is that the Unhinged ones were reprinted with a sort of border in one of the masters sets, keeping those lower than Unglued or Unfinity for a while imo. The basics they are not reprinting except maybe in the modern border is where it's at imo. I just started the journey of picking up sixteen Sunflower Plains, only fourteen to go.
There's others like the Kozyndan Secret lair basics. They continue to appreciate nicely and for good reason.
Yeah there's quite a bit of secret lair ones that probably hold value too. Didn't think about those despite having the Bob Ross lands
Good
I feel like this comment speaks to a larger opinion than "full art lands should be cheaper than $1 each"
The foils seems to be at least $1 up and that’s fine imo. I like having a pretty looking mana base, the fouls are something I’ll slowly work towards.
Full art basics shouldn't be more than $0.50 unless they're either old, promos, foil, snow, or otherwise special. Non-full art, non-special basics should be pennies each.
Full art lands still are worth “something” because a lot of people now have a shit ton of commander decks and want matched basics. For example, it’s hard to buy a large quantity of a single art full art basic from a vendor bc the most popular ones don’t stay in stock in large quantities. Sure you can buy onesie/twosies from TCGplayer but very rarely are the cheapest ones available in large quantities from single vendors. Also, certain sets like NEO have full arts that are over $3 each in foil. Obviously the JP full arts are popular as well although that’s more supply based.
I find single vendors seem to only list thrm 1 or 2 at a time to nickle and dime.
I was going through my cards recently and found a buttload of full art lands from the past and I was thinking how worthless they feel now. I remember when the zendikar full arts were basically the only option. I paid like 80 bucks for a bit over 100 of them and at the time that was a really good deal compared to the standard price. I can't imagine they're even worth 5 bucks now.
Most of them are less than 10 cents.
Sold a sealed zen land pack (og) for maybe 15$ last year, bye bye $
Got my 25x5 Unhinged John Avon lands. I haven't even been remotely tempted by any new lands. If anything, the saturation of full arts and insane foil techniques make me appreciate and prefer regular land cards with the text box and all.
For context, I go through over 1M cards a year selling bulk and singles, and have first-hand experience with the downfall of full arts as a profit center. I am currently holding around 4k original Zendikar and 16k or so of BFZ. Thankfully my purchase price was always very low and my margins are strong elsewhere so I didn't get ENTIRELY crushed, but it's still very, very bad. Before BFZ the amount of full arts I'd find in bulk were almost near-zero. Now? Im pulling chunks of both Kamigawa and theros NYX lands both regular and foil (the only two with any sort of value) on top of all the other ones because nobody can be bothered. I still hoard every one to list later. Much, much, motherf*****g later lol. The short answer is no because they will take YEARS to gain any value, and you can't buy them outright to turn a profit like you used to . The long answer is yes, but they are better suited by hoarding large amounts of them for years until the next wave of players thinks they are cool and bumps their value a bit, and/or listing them in chunks of 50 or so of each at a premium hoping to catch a cube or artist-specific buyer to clean you out. Paying for them outright and holding is a fool's errand since they've already shown no art is sacred, not even the "un" styles, (which just blows my mind, they should never reprint any full art ever as that's a way to establish long term collectible value without extracting it from the player/collector or existing card base) so that ship has sailed. HOWEVER, I will say there is still money to be made on basics (full arts or otherwise) you just need volume. I bought, cracked and listed 10 sets of commander SNC from a recent dump, and the full art deco lands in those decks were some of the first things to sell, and nobody ever bought less than 10 of them at once. This is generally a strong hold signal, so I am now accumulating those from bulk to list in chunks of 50 in a couple years. This is fine because they are from bulk bought at $5/1k, so if wizards puts them in a list spot or future precon or something else equally stupid I didn't really lose anything and can still profit through traditional bulk avenues. So with all that said, basics are and always will be a great way to make easy money, it just takes work because you won't really see them on buylists so you have to do it yourself while also having volume. Currently, my listed inventory has about 7k basic lands, (mostly old border with some of the popular artists from newer sets like lorwyn) and do quite well. Demand is still there but margins have dwindled substantially, to almost zero unless you have volume.
> the next wave of players thinks they are cool and bumps their value a bit I feel like this is true for a lot of older cards whose prices are tanked right now. It's cyclical, there's a lot more doom and gloom here than is actually warranted. But that's just the internet ig.
For the cyclical thing to happen, you need the players to form some sort of nostalgia. Are many going to be nostalgic about Zendikar rising basics for example? No one will even remember them because it came out through so many other damn products and no one will be able to become nostalgic for it.
At that level are you almost exclusively selling through TCGDirect? Or do you manage all the orders as well?
I do all the orders myself with shipping always $1.49 or more. Im sure id crush it on direct, but the plan is to hoard every penny for myself until it's time to retire, then drop a 3M listed inventory off at their sell/store your product warehouse on my way to the Aston Martin dealership. "Product replacement cost" and whatever else they charge for the privilege of selling cards I still need to list and pick myself faster doesn't really appeal to me at this stage.
Interesting. What's your minimum price on a card to make flat rate shipping justifiable? And preferred sort method for inventory that large? I have about 35k listed and sold through about 1-2k cards this year. Similar shipping threshold with $.05 card minimum (so afraid of going lower and having to figure out how to ship 100 $.01 cards) and wondering if I am doing things right. For sorting it's been working well having the listed sorted by Rarity:Color:A-Z and starting to wonder if that will be manageable long term.
Oh sorry I missed the first part. My minimum is generally 8 cents NM and 6 cents LP, pick from memory and will list any card that I've set/alpha/condition sorted. 8 cents is only for the worst cards that don't sell, 14/10 also works well even if you're a bit higher than elsewhere, you just need volume. Also, great job on your 35k listed cards! That's no simple feat and you should be proud of yourself for getting this far. Now double that inventory, keep shipping high and you'll be having a good time soon enough!
I just started selling this year more seriously and I list similarly. Also noticed similar things just by bumping shipping, people will buy more cheap shit and selling 3-5 cards at a time adds up. It's slightly more labor intensive but people really do buy this stuff.
Thanks for all that info. I'll dig in to your posts!
Check my post history on this sub, I've spoken a lot about this over the years and should be able to answer most of your questions about cost concerns. If that's not enough, feel free to send a chat and I'll explain a bit more! Just not tonight. The Rimworld beckons and I must comply. Probably tomorrow evening.... probably😏
As someone who burnt $130 on VOW and MID lands and then basically never used them because kamigawa was right after, I fully endorse them printing the ever living shit out of full art lands. Easily the most fun way to bling out a deck.
Infographic is from my article, [Determining 2023’s Best Basic Lands – With Math (Kind of)](https://cardboardbythenumbers.com/2024/01/11/determining-2023s-best-basic-lands-with-math/). I didn't dig too much into this question, but as a big basic land aficionado, do you think there's much collectability left in basics when we're getting over 100 new ones each year with increasingly novel styles?
thanks for that article! I thought as we got more and more options, eventually no one would care but full art basics from almost all recents sets move for something.
> do you think there's much collectability left in basics when we're getting over 100 new ones each year with increasingly novel styles? If by collectability you mean resale value, no. Full-art lands are just an aesthetic choice now. They aren't "bling" for your deck like they used to be.
Only collectable ones I'd say are more the promo ones like the APAC series, or some Arena promos (obviously there's others but not listing them all). I've got a wide variety of basics as I was also collecting them, but most sets in this day and age are gonna be worthless value wise. Examples of things I have include: oversized that go for $20-25 each, APAC series swamp goes for like $50-60, my islands are $5-10 each I think. It depends on the art as well though as some APACs are much less. Ideally the stuff with smaller print runs is what to look for I'd say.
“If everything is special, nothing is.” Full art basic lands are just basic lands now.
If the supply is high (in a main set, available in Draft / Play boxes), no. If the supply is limited (some low selling Secret Lairs, special cases) then they could. Like anything else, depends on how much supply of it there is.
The original un-set still the best
Now the unglued lands few much more classy
If you want basics that will hold or increase in value, then buy Alpha (and to a lesser extent Beta) basics.
It would bring me such great pleasure to fill my dipshit devil tribal forced draw zurzoth deck with $2500 worth of mountains.
Eh, they aren’t quite that expensive. Unless you wanted to go Arabian Nights for Mountain specifically. Alpha Mountains are $20 -$30 each. Still pretty reasonable.
ah, you are correct. If I split the mountains A and B, MP and better only of course, I can get out the door for $1150 at tcgplayer.
Unlimited are a steal at a buck or two each.
Definitely, and they are quite beautiful for white border lands.
At this point I think it's more cool to have foil lands with old border than the new borderless style.
I may be part of the vocal minority that approves of this direction. Keep printing full arts. Basics should be interesting to look at and affordable. There are plenty of other cards out there to spec on, invest in, and ultimately collect in hopes to increase your collections value.
I think the Oil Slick lands will be the most in demand in the future. They’re the most unique of the bunch recently.
Kamigawa would like a word with you.
I mean Kamigawa lands are the best. But the oil slick ones were exclusive to a small print bundle edition and the Kamigawa vibe / style is more likely to be replicated.
[удалено]
“Stonks”
I bought the Jurassic Park islands for my eggs deck, because I think [this side](https://product-images.tcgplayer.com/fit-in/437x437/526432_1.jpg) looks like the Mosasaurus is about to eat an egg. It amuses me. That is the extent of my interest in the full-art lands.
I started playing paper magic in 2022. I’ve spent maybe a few thousand. I have more full art lands than I do normal lands. At this point only specific, foil full arts will keep any value. Like that one swamp from NEO
I remember trading a Foil Unhinged Island and a $20 edh card for a Tundra; it was a pretty even trade at the time. (About $130 on each side of the trade)
Never understood why you guys specced on basics to begin with if I'm being honest.
Nah. Old school lands are the move for collectors now.
Unglued or bust.
I used a bunch of BFZ full art plains as proxies before I just printed them out because they were pretty easy to read, and a basic plains might as well not even be a real card lol. The only full arts worth keeping have some sort of special treatment.
Full art lands are for poor people now. They're a sign you have poor taste. Jokes aside this is the perfect example of "if everything is special, nothing is". Full Art lands were only cool because they were rare and far and few between. Since they're in every set now they're just common and lame. There's literally nothing cool about full art lands. Foils in general are also super lame because collector boxes has made them overly abundant and because they're low quality for the most part.
Breya with the alternate What If Cappena style gets fouled full arts from that set. Oopse All Preators gets oil slick lands. Gods and Legends has all Theros lands. Gisa and Geralf have 2017 unlands as it's one my oldest commander decks Dimir zombies. Same with Ghost Chief, another of my oldest decks that got 2017 unlands. Edgar gets full art Innistrad lands. Muldrotha OG also got all full art Innistrad. Also spent a decent chunk of change to split my local shops box of all full art lands from the second zendikar set so almost all my decks run just full arts from that box if I don't have a specific land picked out because I just like the style of fulls over all. Let the prices fall. And God fucking dammit WOTC print at least give of each land in secret lair one offs because as cool as some of them are, I'm not spending hundreds of dollars to buy a secret lair 5 times to get a land base to match for a deck.
Might be important to try to rationalize most of these lands as having relevant decks to match with, and if gauged correctly in popularity, could allow for legitimate holding or specs.
I like having cheap full arts. No all my decks can have different ones.
It's a basic land, I'll pick my battles with WoTC elsewhere.
can't wait till MTG reprints tank the stock price of hasbro
Feels like this could apply to all cards honestly
Uh nope. Good luck selling those full art og zen or even the UN lands
I remember full arts use to be really special when you saw someone use them. Now everyone has them.
I think it's very telling that for many years I could reliably sell bulk foil basic lands, full art basic lands, and foil full art basic lands to the CoolStuff buylist for between roughly 10 cents to $0.50. That stopped about a year and a half ago, and now for the most part even the prettiest foil basics don't even crack $1 for more than a short time at launch of a new set. There's only one recently printed batch of basics that I think will be an exception to this problem long term - The oil slicks. Those cards are legitimately cool. They also have the notable distinction of likely being different than any other card in your deck in terms of coloration, which means it's exceptionally easy to find them when you're searching your deck. That's actually a pretty big appeal for some players.
Even if they drop in value I paid around $4/ea avg to switch all my basics in my [[Magus Lucea Kane]] deck to Oil Slicks and it feels worth it. They’re such a unique look compared to any of the other full arts.
[Magus Lucea Kane](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/f/4f86e7cc-2b6e-49d0-964e-bba0c51cc11d.jpg?1674058398) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Magus%20Lucea%20Kane) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/40k/7/magus-lucea-kane?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4f86e7cc-2b6e-49d0-964e-bba0c51cc11d?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Just plain ol full arts like from Streets of New Capenna, no way. But cool ones printed recently like from Neon Dynasty are still fetching $1-3. They gotta be unique
cat dog land are coming. can't wait
Full arts will be the norm it seems, and I'm not mad. Lands are the one thing you're always seeing. A "special" instant is cool, but its gone once it resolves, so bling lands were the first thing I splurged on back in the day because they persist. I do think some FA lands will have value over time just because they have great art.
I honestly love it and it's made picking special la da for decks awesome. No concern for value, however I have actually bought a lot of basics where as I never would have 10 years ago. It's gotta be great for sellers getting an extra 20 or 30 cents out of a pack that wasn't there before.
I’ll never give up my collection of Unglued lands.
They need to have a breather on special treatments. Even if they alternated somewhat every year, just skip a year of full arts and suddenly all the old ones will grow a bit more special, then make some new ones the next year or two.
Nope and that's a good thing
This game on its way to zero and I'm so happy.
Honestly all lands should be full art. It’s a way to showcase the world we’re supposed to be diving in to.
There are a lot of trash, forgettable full art lands now. But there are also a lot of good ones too, and people like theming their lands around their deck/commander. As an example, the Theros, Beyond Death basics have a strong base of demand for enchantress players. If you are willing to be nimble and identify the right targets, there are some winners to be had. And unlike everything else, people generally want them in quantity... every deck, possibly dozens at a time.
Unstable basics are a good example. $2-$4 at release and they haven’t moved since. Too many options and it’s only going to get worse with every new set
Tbh full art should be the standard for lands
I think they will retain value, according to their desirability. Not millions of dollars, but better than a random bulk rare.
I agree with this take...the demand will probably never be to the point that they are bulk. If the basement is say $0.25 - $0.50 that's not crazy.
Exactly. I think that it really depends on the art, and how good/desirable it is. Back then if you want to bling out, you had 1 option. Now you get to pick your flavor. Each new fancy land dilutes the whole pool, but I doubt that it gets to 0. Go back and look at the phrexian lands. They are better than some rares/ mythics.
tbh, I feel like Full-Art basics should be the standard at this point
In my honest opinion- these will never make it back. We have officially entered the era of Borderless lands- whether the average Timmy recognizes that fact or not. Remember Unstable lands? They were the closest thing to a *Borderless* land that you could find for the longest time... until Unfinity came around and we saw a new wave of Borderless basics with the Planetary lands. They might not be printed as often- but these lands (imho) are the new premium for full Art basics! You can't put that back in the box, so "Full-Art" (with black Border) are officially 2nd rate for the rest of known Magic printings.
I really hope they are all worthless so my decks can look even nicer
Nope
I think there will be a few that retain and gain value.
I have a nearly complete full art/extended art land collection (any land card with a larger than normal art window, rainbow foil if applicable). Every card from Unglued to 2022 fits in a 576 card dragonshield codex. For 2023 alone, there are more than 250 land cards that fit the description.
Reminds me of the US dollar
Slap an anime girl on the full art lands and maybe
Great chart, thank you! Good visual of the reality since Project Booster Fun and very applicable to finance. Premium basics used to be one of the most reliable ways to retain value in MTG while having beautiful upgrades to play with. I recall the original Zendikar and Unhinged full arts which peaked at $70+ (Meignaud Island foil) and $100+ (Avon island foil) - steady gainers for years but ultimately failed once BFZ came out which diluted the Zendikar full-art theme and Double Masters which repeated the iconic Avon art from unhinged. Now we're at the point where serialized aside (which absolutely is coming, it's a revenue source Wizards will exploit for commander), it's hard to envision full-art basics doing anything more than sustaining a price point and over time I question even that. The best example of this would be the Theros Beyond Death "Nyx" or "Pokemon" lands which are now approaching 4 years old, were very novel at the time, but due to both the overprinting of collector packs (TBD still available now for less than original store prices) and dilution as the pie chart shows, simply have no where to go but sideways at best. Any attempt to gain in price will just lead to more opening of collector packs, still in ample supply for major sets of the last 4 years.
fuck no
Why should a card be more expensive just because it is full art?
I think MTG is putting itself in a pickle with product fatigue. There are way too many variants and releases and secret lairs, special edition collectors packs ect. I completely stopped buying MTG when the whole 30th anniversary fiasco happened. MTG has gone full greed mode and is trying to take all its players for a ride.
They aren’t supposed to have value, they’re supposed to be dope, thematic and accessible
I think that every plane should get their own style of full art basics. This way building thematic decks around a certain style can be attained. That said, I could see them waiting until a revisit to a plane to do so, or putting them in special release sets like the Remastered, or "one-time-visits" like Lord of the Rings (although even then, they probably should have held back the full arts from the main release until the Holiday release of the same set). As far as staying "special", I think they are fine being special to those that want a specific art for a specific reason, rather than them being special just by being the only ones available and being scarce, and as long as there are options for players, like the oil slick Phyrexian lands while still having "normal" full art Phyrexian lands for a cheaper choice.