If you have followed me for a couple of weeks, you'll have noticed that each Monday I post a picture of a Magic the Gathering card and usually some of my thoughts on it. Today there is the internet which will tell you all you need to know about the various cards, from price to all the info about it. However back in the 90's the internet was just getting off the ground and we still relied on magazines to give us previews of upcoming cards, sets and any price changes.
I used the magazine Scrye as my fount of knowledge. It came out a couple of times a year and it was usually a pretty thick publication. It had to be, since it was a big old price guide. If you look at the cover featuring the Star Wars cards, you can see the blurb in the upper left corner "Complete Price List for Mirage", which was the latest MtG set. Scrye also covered a multitude of other CCG's (collectable card games), as you can see from the cover. There was Star Wars, X-Files, Middle Earth, Legends of the Five Rings, Star Trek, Netrunner, DC comics and other various card games that came and then usually went. It was the Wild West time of the CCG's.
While the price list part of the magazine was the biggest draw for me (it did take up about 3/4's of the magazine), the articles were a good read too, especially if you weren't into a particular other card game. You could learn about the game, see some of the cards and in most issues, get some promo cards. They were all mass produced junk, but it still gave you an idea of what the game was like and how it differed from Magic.
I think I only ever bought two, maybe three of these magazines. They were expensive (compared to a comic book that cost you $1.25) and only came out every couple of months. I know I bought the one in the featured image (the greenman impression) and I'm pretty sure I also bought this Star Wars one. So I bought two in a row and realized Magic prices didn't change THAT much in a couple of months and the articles didn't really apply to the type of Magic me and my friends played, ie, casual kitchen table Magic while the articles were more about Competitive Magic. I didn't want to dominate my gaming circle, I just wanted to have fun. And when all you focus on is winning, the fun goes right out the door.
I do remember though seeing one of my cards having gone up 5 or 10 cents and that I had like 10 of them. I was elated! I had just made a whole dollar without doing anything. Man, the sky was the limit at that point, hahahahahaa. I hadn't yet realized that those prices were what the cards were selling for in a store, not what "I" could sell them for. But what it did do was help me and my friends when we were trading. It was not a 1 for 1 trade. The prices took into account how good the cards were and since we didn't really understand that, it helped us to keep parity.
That is about all I have to write here. Enjoy your weekend :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment