Magic the Gathering: Sorting a Gift Box

Some of my followers from long ago may recall that I bought a rather large Magic the Gathering junk collection. I still have not managed to get through all 41,000 cards as frankly the ones I have looked at have been a little disappointing.

I can get my ROI back plus some profit quite easily but the thrill comes from finding a collection that is genuinely unsorted and has many ‘gold nuggets’ to pick out.

I was not expecting much from this collection as it was marked as ‘junk’ and was very cheap for the sheer mass.

So what to write about today?, I’m putting off my ‘drugs’ articles for the moment as they are long and take time to write, and thought I would just sort through this gift box of assorted crap to see if I could find something and explain my sorting process.

Having gone through probably 60-70% of the 41,000 cards I really was not expecting anything special in this box. What I found was much better, more so to think the seller had left this one in by mistake.

I started sifting through the middle row and came across a load of Master 25 cards. I hadn’t seen any of these until today, as they come from a rather limited expensive set.

Its not uncommon to get ‘Masters’ cards in junk collections, but it seemed the owner had picked all the good cards and stashed them all here!

Counterspells, Savannah Lions, Cultivates, Dark Rituals and a bunch of Relentless Rats.

It went from Masters 25 to original Modern Masters, a very desirable set if the right cards are present. Unfortunately Mr Seller knew what he was doing here and had siphoned off the good stuff, though he had left a few for me.

I was thinking there were a lot of uncommon cards in the box; around 50%, another good sign. Another lot of cards I found were from Kaladesh and Hour of Devastation, in the later case the special land cycle.

Considering Hashep Oasis is currently selling for £2.50 for 4 and there were 46 of these in the box I thought I was doing good. Then I noticed the stack of Ifnir Deadlands, 41 of them. These sell for £1.75 each on eBay. Someone had obviously made a mistake buy selling these to me; well their loss.

It didn’t stop there, 51 Azorius Signets (£1.75 each), 14 Dimir Signets (£1.99 each), and a huge stack of Vampire Nighthawk’s (a casual favourite).

15 Merfolk Branchwalkers, 11 Lord of the Accursed, the list of good stuff just goes on and on.

I can’t retire on my mini goldmine, but it’s a welcome change from what I was expecting and what I have seen so far from this collection.

The next job is to add them all to eBay. Quite boring but it brings in a little extra if one is patient.