This happened yesterday. I mean

I bumped into some unexpected value on the street.

Almost literally - it was on the sidewalk between a parking lot and the subway station near my residence. And minutes later I thought of the moral of the story and how it applied to Steem.

One of my favorite arts found on cards in this collection - done by Terese Nielsen

This is a story about Magic:TheGathering, a trading card game; about Steem, the blockchain; and about value. But I will be talking about Magic:TheGathering and value only, letting you make the comparisons and find similarities or differences in relation to Steem, which I mention for the last time in this article. But you think about it when you read. Because I mean it.

I felt as if I were in one of those stories on Discovery where people buy mystery boxes at auctions or flee markets...

To find treasures inside!

So, I was going for the subway train to bring me to down town Sofia where I had three meetings scheduled, two of those about private lessons in photography that I teach...when something totally unexpected caught my eye. It was this collector's binder full of Magic:TheGathering cards, standing open among used books somebody was selling in front of the station. And I had the luck to be the first one there to recognize this item for what it was.

Magic:TheGathering cards are sold and bought on a secondary market, becoming printed assets.

Valuable only to players of one specific game which requires specific knowledge. Still...

More than 35 million players worldwide. But it took decades to build official tournament history and competitive culture. Immense variety of strategies. And so, mass adoption. While collectors are not that many as a percentage, you know that certain cards will be desired by people who just want to win more. Actually, the same principles exist in @steemmonsters. Those of you familiar with it will know that.

But the re-seller of used books didn't. I don't know how he came by this collection. But he supposed, correctly, that it needs some rules for the game to make sense. He thought maybe a book. Thing is, the rules have some history and they fare much better online than in a book. Simple manuals have been printed with the up-to-date core rules, of course, but they will not teach you about the value of the cards. Experience would. The cards he was selling could not be played on their own even if you knew the rules. Because they were out of context. A collection of one thousand still doesn't make one complete playing set of 60 and you need two if you still want an opponent. Or you could attack the wall at home with cards.

They needed a shell to put them in.

"I hoped somebody would find these useful somehow," he said.

"Oh, I will," I replied. I have the shell. And the experience. And contacts with players.

What was the cost of this binder?

Only 10 Euro!

More than your average used book, to be sure. But if there was some reasonable percent of good cards, a lot less than what I expected from a binder this thick:

It contained about one thousand singles! I expected some 80 % to be worthless but the rest...

And I was able to browse through the binder, see what it actually contains. This is such luck by itself! Cards are first sold in booster packs where they are randomized and you always get at least one Rare card but that does not mean it has value. Of course, before buying, I was able to only glimpse at some pages since I did not want to be late and miss a train. But I saw enough and now I plan to make an experiment - get at least five times more for those of the cards I am willing to sell. I didn't expect to find the best of the best in a discarded collection, of course, but still there had to be more than enough neglected cards which had value to somebody.

So, I had the time to dig into it once I boarded the train. Sitting between other adults, I was the only one with colorful pictures in my lap, below my heavy camera body and 70-200 lens hanging from my neck.

Anyway, I even saw a card that I played a copy of last Friday. The title image of this post and also found here:

Magic:TheGathering - My Friday Night Magic Report #1

Well, it's not such a powerful card but I had included it in my fun deck for love of the art and some small possible value it added to my strategy back then. Still, in the proper context it could do the job. It would have won me last Friday's finals if I were only able to cast one more creature and get out of range of lethal damage. Here's what it does:

The Art in Magic:TheGathering attracts attention. The value of the cards makes you buy.

What makes a card valuable?

Some of it is

Rarity

This could mean two things - card rarity within a set, but also limited print.

M:TG cards are collectibles, alright, but most of them in print in huge numbers. Only cards from the earliest editions before 1994 are really scarce.

And the oldest ones in this binder were 1995. Still, it's a 24 year-old card. A lot of the players are quite younger than this :)

These are commons. Powerful side board cards (see my previous article, linked above) in the formats in which they are still legal, Especially in Pauper where you can play only commons, no matter how old.

So also,

Playability

Are they useful? Then they are desirable. But are they also the best option? Then they are expensive.

Do they fit in a lot of formats and strategies? At least one? And I mean doing something extraordinary. Something that gives you some edge. Some advantage. Well, some cards are pretty specific. They have some ability that at some point goes well with another ability of another card they would issue and then some crazy combos happen and the price of the older card spikes...

This dudette suddenly creates infinite amount of mana after they printed another creature who says "Your creatures don't receive -1/-1 counters" so the druid does not die after a couple of untaps (a process, making it possible to use it again the same turn.) but lives on and taps for mana again and again...

It was woth more than 6 USD a few months back. Now it's a bit out of fashion... but I still have 4 new copies of it in that sleeve :)

Another situational card - I decided on definitely buying the binder as soon as I saw this monkey because it enables a lot of strategies relying on casting something before its time. Normally you have access to one mana on Turn 1 and with this dude you have access to 2 mana.

Power

They do something game-ending or threatening to end the game at least...

Well, among the cards in that collection, old classical Reanimate is among the best options there are. And thus, its value when I checked yesterday was 9 Euro on average on the European decentralized market, located on a centralized site with independent vendors on it. The lowest cost of any Reanimate of any edition was 6.5 Euro. And I have 2 copies in this binder. So only the Reanimate-s cost at least 13 Euro which is more than what I paid for it all.

Why is it a cool card? You can cheat a huge creature into play on a very early turn, as early as turn 1 or 2.

Some of the cards I found in my treasure chest have at some point been deemed the reason for a deck to be too powerful so those key cards were or still are banned.

Nobody wants to cast the Golgari Grave-Troll. It's been played in Competitive for its high Dredge ability value - a way to put more cards in your own graveyard play zone if you had the reason to want to do so. Which the so called Dredge strategy, named after the ability, does.

---

What else made my finds valuable?

Some of them were special editions. They came as prize in certain months throughout the history of the game and were mostly references to people's all time favorites.

This is such a page:

I had a couple of these and then some lower value among them.

Alternate arts, full arts, replacing the frame, text-less cards...which should be well-knownb by heart by the community, etc.

Disenchant has many editions. It says "Destroy target artifact or enchantment."

---

Price references

It's common to check the market trends before trading a card and we (in Bulgaria) use two main standards - a large store in the USA such as cardkingdom.com and the European trend on the multiple-vendors market I mentioned. So I will give you an idea of the best cards that I recognized among the collection I bought yesterday and I will share both prices - in Euro and in USD.

Top 15 price holders in the binder:

Shattering Spree 1x 3 Eu/ 5 USD

Simian Spirit Guide 4x 1.25 Eu / 4.5 USD

Reanimate 2x 9 Eu / 11 USD

Golgari Grave-Troll 2x 1.20 Eu / 2 USD

Chainer’s Edict FNM 1x 6 Eu / 4 USD

Lotus Bloom PRE 1x 4 Eu / 10 USD

Vexing Shusher 1x 3 Eu / 8 USD

Devoted Druid 4x 1.45 Eu / 1 USD

Ponder 4x 1.35 Eu / 2.5 USD

Ghost Quarter 5x 1.5 Eu / 1.5 USD

Swarmyard 1x 5 Eu / 15 USD

Ancient Den 4x 1 Eu / 2.5 USD

Harmonic Sliver 3x 1 Eu / 4 USD

Welding Jar 4x 0.8 Eu / 2 USD

Shadow of Doubt 3x 2 Eu / 5 USD

Bear in mind, that all this...I mean the whole binder was what was discarded by someone who used to play quite a lot and knew the game pretty well. The chaos was not entirely random, I just can tell by the obvious selections. They were organized by play sets (a deck can hold up to four copies of any unique card except for basic lands which produce mana - you can have as many as you want of those.) And the collection hints at somebody who had a lot more and more valuable cards of greater rarity. Probably sold or kept. Also kind of obvious to me from experience.

How am I certain they will sell?

Among M:TG players, the value of these cards is undisputed in general. SOmebody might not agree with some single or might simply not need it, but let me offer half the regular price and they are gone as soon as a small local club's population is able to afford them. Or... who knows? Maybe tomorrow Magic Paper Money have no value compared to Regular Paper Money ;)

I'll keep you updated on my quest.

Good luck and have fun!

Yours,

Manol