My history with Magic the Gathering is honestly complicated, and it goes all the way back to the early 90s. Like a lot of people my age, I first got into Magic around 1993 or 1994, but I wasn’t really playing the game at the time. I was collecting the cards.
Back then I was heavily into trading cards in general. I was collecting Marvel cards, especially the Marvel Masterpiece sets from 1992, 1993, and 1994, along with a full Spider-Man set. Those cards had holograms, foil cards, and artwork from different artists, and I loved them. Magic cards were something I picked up alongside those whenever I could afford a pack.
At the time nobody really thought about Magic cards as long-term collectibles. They were just cards you bought at the comic shop, opened, and put in a binder. Looking back now, that’s what makes this story hurt a little.
The Alpha and Beta Years
When I started buying Magic packs, we’re talking Alpha, Beta, and early Unlimited era. These were the cards that today sell for thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, but back then they were just sitting on the shelf like anything else.
By around 1996 I had built up a pretty big collection even though I didn’t actually play the game much. Most of my cards went straight from the pack into sleeves and into a nine-pocket binder. They were never used in decks, never shuffled, and never played.
And yes, I had the big ones.
Black Lotus, Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, dual lands, Lightning Bolt, Ball Lightning, and several of the Mox cards. I didn’t just have one copy either. I had multiples of a lot of them.
I remember very clearly having about a page and a half of Black Lotus cards. That’s eleven of them. Back then that wasn’t as impossible as it sounds now, because people didn’t realize how rare those cards were going to become. In the early days there wasn’t even a strict four-copy rule yet, and some decks would run several of the same card just because they could.
Magic wasn’t a collector’s market at that point. It was just a game people were still figuring out.
Trading Away the Collection
Around 1996 my focus had shifted more toward finishing my Marvel Masterpiece collection than collecting Magic cards. There was one card I needed to complete the set, and the comic shop I went to had it, but it was expensive. Around two hundred dollars, which at the time felt like a fortune.
So I made a decision that I still regret to this day.
I traded in my entire Magic collection for store credit.
At the time it didn’t feel like a bad deal. I wasn’t really playing Magic, I wanted to complete my Marvel set, and the shop owner gave me what felt like a lot of credit for the cards. I was able to finish my Marvel collection and pick up a few other things I wanted, and I walked out of the store thinking I made the right choice.
What I didn’t realize was what those cards would become later.
Finding Out What They Were Worth
A couple years later, around 1998, I saw people playing Magic at school again. Someone asked me if I ever played, and I told them I used to collect. They asked what cards I had, and I started listing them off from memory.
When I said Black Lotus, the whole table stopped.
One of the guys told me a Black Lotus was worth hundreds of dollars now. I remember the number being around five hundred at the time, which sounded insane to me. When I told them I used to have a page and a half of them, nobody believed me at first.
But I knew what I had.
Not long after that I went back to the comic shop, and the owner actually pulled me aside and told me he felt bad about the trade we made years earlier. He said he didn’t realize those cards would go up in value the way they did, and if he had known, he never given me such a low amount.
But the store has to make money, and given it happened not long after, I never said anything, he was honest and offer me stuff.
He wasn’t trying to rip me off. Nobody knew back then.
That didn’t make the regret go away though.
Even now, every time I see what a Black Lotus sells for, I think about that binder and the day I traded it all away.
Final Thoughts
That was my first experience with Magic the Gathering, and it’s probably the reason my history with the game has always felt a little different than most people’s.
I didn’t start as a player. I started as a collector, and I let go of cards that most people today would never even get the chance to own.
And the crazy part is, that wasn’t the last time my Magic collection would disappear.
