6 ms·

I have a couple of boxes of Magic: The Gathering cards going back to Antiquities and Arabian Nights. I'm counting on them being worth their weight in gold when

by loudmax 13y ago

I have a couple of boxes of Magic: The Gathering cards going back to Antiquities and Arabian Nights. I'm counting on them being worth their weight in gold when I retire. Or maybe I should invest in tulips...

mathattack 13y ago
I recall hearing someone mention "Those Dragon magazines will be worth a lot some day..." If only...
fredoliveira 13y ago
Go through the trouble of separating the rares and uncommons from the rest. I'm pretty sure you know they're already worth a ton of money.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Those could actually be worth something, although most cards' value is a function of metagame more than age, so "older" does not always mean "worth more". If you actually want to try to monetize them, watch prices and sell some cards when you think those cards are particularly valuable.
notdrunkatall 13y ago
Those might actually be worth something some day. Not many people collected those, so the present supply is low, and will only decline further as time goes on. Magic was a game widely played by geeks, and I'm sure quite a few have fond memories of sitting around playing the game with friends, thus the game has sentimental value for them. Finally, geeks and former geeks will probably continue to gain more wealth over the next few decades, at least, which means that there will be a decreasing supply of something that an increasing number of people with money want. I'd definitely hang on to them.
- Slackwise 13y ago
  Sorry, but this comment is hilarious because it is written from a perspective that Magic "was" popular. Truth? It's more popular than ever [1], and the Power 9 cards are still worth hundreds, if not thousands. [1]: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/253c http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/dai...
  - notdrunkatall 13y ago
    It was popular among geeks, and apparently it still is. That just means there will be even more demand for the early cards in the future.
    - Slackwise 13y ago
      Yes/no. Card value depends on a number of factors, notably usability in one of the game's "formats". A card printed today, that is both rare and very useable in many decks and/or formats, will cost anywhere from $5 to $60. A single card. An entire deck? http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1167954 http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1167954 That's the deck that won one of the most recent tournaments. Average price of $630 for the entire set. Point being, you can blow your savings on today's cards, let alone ancient ones.
pdkl95 13y ago
You may want to check the prices on some of those. The game is still quite popular, and has keep the market prices high as newer players become interested in some of the older stuff like Arabian Nights. Due to some of the current decks like "dredge", for example, has sent the price of "Bazaar of Baghdad" into the $250-$450 range, and "Library of Alexandria" has always been in the >$200 range. As for Antiquities... a "Mishra's Workshop" is likely more useful than the traditional power-9 right now, and is /easily/ worth >$400. Given how little a single card weighs, some of those might just be worth their weight in gold. Even without those very-high-price cards, though, there's a lot of newer players that just want stuff from those older sets in general. It's pretty rare to see <$1 cards like you do with the newer sets, and /many/ are in the $15/25 range, so a couple boxes of cards could easily be worht a decent amount. Re: this article - like any investment based on fads and nostalgia like comix, MTG cards, tulips... it's only the people that got in at the beginning that get much profit out of it. Jumping on the bandwagon later on when it's now known to a lot of people is never going to work - there's obviously a lot of others people doing the same thing, and saturating the market. Those of you luck enough to have bought in before it was big, though... can get really lucky some times. I think all the beta dual-lands a good friend of mine likes to play with make any deack their in >$20k O.O /i only found out about the game during The Dark, which is just barely on th eline of "too recent", unfortunately.
Pxtl 13y ago
Yup. Getting those at launch would be the rare collector's item in the future. My guess for today's "rare nostalgia collector's item" of the far future? Those Skylanders/Disney Infinity statues, if they don't need an auth server to run. Especially the original "Spyro's Adventure" ones. Alternately, BeyBlades and the like, since those take terrible wear when the kids play with them. Then again, I can't think of many other brutalized collectible children's toy fads of my youth that are popular with collectors today - it's not like Pogs are a big item.
debacle 13y ago
Those are both worth something TODAY, but within the next 5-10 years, paper Magic cards are going to be less and less valuable - the game is moving to mostly online play, and so you're going to only have interest from collectors. My advice would be to sell them now. They aren't going to be worth much more than they are now in 10 years.
- qdog 13y ago
  I took that advice about 10 years ago, unfortunately. Currently Wizards of Coast has a no-reprint policy on most of the old high-value cards. While I don't know that I would invest in them, until that policy changes the value of those old cards is pretty steady. Paper is still the best way to play Magic, so not sure when this will change. Also, currently, Wizard's attempts at making software is like a model for the federal healthcare rollout, ie: very bad. One other difference in Magic, is that people actually use them to play games. There were actually a lot of older cards I still have that were nearly worthless for a while that shot up in value over the last few years as a certain version of Magic (EDH) became popular. Still, not something I would buy for investment purposes, but I buy a lot of magic cards just because I enjoy playing the game. Cardboard Crack, as my friends like to call it. Also, once a junky, always a junky, they all come back after a while.

by loudmax 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago

I recall hearing someone mention "Those Dragon magazines will be worth a lot some day..." If only...

fredoliveira 13y ago

Go through the trouble of separating the rares and uncommons from the rest. I'm pretty sure you know they're already worth a ton of money.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Those could actually be worth something, although most cards' value is a function of metagame more than age, so "older" does not always mean "worth more". If you actually want to try to monetize them, watch prices and sell some cards when you think those cards are particularly valuable.

notdrunkatall 13y ago

Those might actually be worth something some day. Not many people collected those, so the present supply is low, and will only decline further as time goes on. Magic was a game widely played by geeks, and I'm sure quite a few have fond memories of sitting around playing the game with friends, thus the game has sentimental value for them. Finally, geeks and former geeks will probably continue to gain more wealth over the next few decades, at least, which means that there will be a decreasing supply of something that an increasing number of people with money want. I'd definitely hang on to them.

Slackwise 13y ago
Sorry, but this comment is hilarious because it is written from a perspective that Magic "was" popular. Truth? It's more popular than ever [1], and the Power 9 cards are still worth hundreds, if not thousands. [1]: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/253c http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/dai...
- notdrunkatall 13y ago
  It was popular among geeks, and apparently it still is. That just means there will be even more demand for the early cards in the future.
  - Slackwise 13y ago
    Yes/no. Card value depends on a number of factors, notably usability in one of the game's "formats". A card printed today, that is both rare and very useable in many decks and/or formats, will cost anywhere from $5 to $60. A single card. An entire deck? http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1167954 http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1167954 That's the deck that won one of the most recent tournaments. Average price of $630 for the entire set. Point being, you can blow your savings on today's cards, let alone ancient ones.

pdkl95 13y ago

You may want to check the prices on some of those. The game is still quite popular, and has keep the market prices high as newer players become interested in some of the older stuff like Arabian Nights. Due to some of the current decks like "dredge", for example, has sent the price of "Bazaar of Baghdad" into the $250-$450 range, and "Library of Alexandria" has always been in the >$200 range. As for Antiquities... a "Mishra's Workshop" is likely more useful than the traditional power-9 right now, and is /easily/ worth >$400. Given how little a single card weighs, some of those might just be worth their weight in gold. Even without those very-high-price cards, though, there's a lot of newer players that just want stuff from those older sets in general. It's pretty rare to see <$1 cards like you do with the newer sets, and /many/ are in the $15/25 range, so a couple boxes of cards could easily be worht a decent amount. Re: this article - like any investment based on fads and nostalgia like comix, MTG cards, tulips... it's only the people that got in at the beginning that get much profit out of it. Jumping on the bandwagon later on when it's now known to a lot of people is never going to work - there's obviously a lot of others people doing the same thing, and saturating the market. Those of you luck enough to have bought in before it was big, though... can get really lucky some times. I think all the beta dual-lands a good friend of mine likes to play with make any deack their in >$20k O.O /i only found out about the game during The Dark, which is just barely on th eline of "too recent", unfortunately.

Pxtl 13y ago

Yup. Getting those at launch would be the rare collector's item in the future. My guess for today's "rare nostalgia collector's item" of the far future? Those Skylanders/Disney Infinity statues, if they don't need an auth server to run. Especially the original "Spyro's Adventure" ones. Alternately, BeyBlades and the like, since those take terrible wear when the kids play with them. Then again, I can't think of many other brutalized collectible children's toy fads of my youth that are popular with collectors today - it's not like Pogs are a big item.

debacle 13y ago

Those are both worth something TODAY, but within the next 5-10 years, paper Magic cards are going to be less and less valuable - the game is moving to mostly online play, and so you're going to only have interest from collectors. My advice would be to sell them now. They aren't going to be worth much more than they are now in 10 years.

qdog 13y ago
I took that advice about 10 years ago, unfortunately. Currently Wizards of Coast has a no-reprint policy on most of the old high-value cards. While I don't know that I would invest in them, until that policy changes the value of those old cards is pretty steady. Paper is still the best way to play Magic, so not sure when this will change. Also, currently, Wizard's attempts at making software is like a model for the federal healthcare rollout, ie: very bad. One other difference in Magic, is that people actually use them to play games. There were actually a lot of older cards I still have that were nearly worthless for a while that shot up in value over the last few years as a certain version of Magic (EDH) became popular. Still, not something I would buy for investment purposes, but I buy a lot of magic cards just because I enjoy playing the game. Cardboard Crack, as my friends like to call it. Also, once a junky, always a junky, they all come back after a while.