Collectibles from the Dollar Store - Card Game Edition

In my previous post, I covered dollar store comic books. Those packs included some "trading cards," but nothing of collector value or really even a current trading market of any kind. I have also seen packs of sports cards, both major brands and nobodies, alongside stickers and cartoon character cards at many stores. A few times, I have also seen cards from games like Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic: The Gathering. I don't play the former, but I may have mentioned the latter once or twice.

I decided to buy five of these packs and see what they really had to offer. The packages included the cover insert shown above with its claim that there is a rare card in each pack, and that the cards are genuine. Let's see what I got.

The cards don't appear to be counterfeit, and there are indeed six rares in the bottom left column. What surprised me most was that most of the cards were uncommon rarity, with only about two commons in each pack. One rare and three uncommons is what most official retail packs contain anyway. Only the dual-color lands in the top left and most of the cards in the bottom right column are common rarity. Most are from relatively recent releases, including the Conspiracy set, but that one white-bordered card is from back in 9th edition, too.

So, is it a good deal? As with the comic books mentioned previously, there isn't anything especially collectible about these rares, and there are no foils, but these could be useful for anyone building up a collection or looking for trade wampum. I plan to update a few decks to use these cards, and the rest could be useful for trades on Pucatrade. It's useless if you play Standard, but I don't. It's not going to net anyone any Masterpieces or other high-value cards, but it's a fun and inexpensive hobby purchase if you play Modern or Commander.