Every year or so, I will go through the old cards buried in my closet. This week, I did some deep cleaning and buylisted cards I haven’t looked at it years. Our fabulous sponsor Card Kingdom has a great interface for selling cards, offers incredible bonuses for store credit, and makes it easy to recoup some of your stale Magic investment. The best part, however, is the huge nostalgia trip you get.
In honor of Dominaria and the prevailing spirit of nostalgia in the Magic community, I offer a tour through some old gems I found while selling some cards. Nothing too fancy, but fun nonetheless.
Karplusan Forest is one of John Avon’s many iconic landscapes. The old illustrations pale in comparison. It’s kind of funny to go look them up. That’s how I knew this card back in the day, but I discovered Avon’s awesome version when I joined Magic: the Gathering Online a decade ago. I chose the art as my background in the old client, and I played a lot of games online with this background. Of course, it popped into my opponent’s playfield half the time, but what can you do?
How is this card from Legends instead of Arabian Nights? They put all sorts of random stuff in Legends. I can’t imagine wanting to spend ten mana for this effect, but Kaja Folio provides a classic illustration nonetheless. They don’t make rare artifacts like they used to, thankfully.
The original MtG Arena! This was the first promo card you could get from the new Magic novels 24 years ago. Rich can fill you in on the novel Arena, but the card seemed pretty cool when it came out. I’ve even seen it played here and there in Knight of the Reliquary decks, though it seems clunky. It gets high marks for nostalgia, though.
Red Time Walk was pretty cool when it got printed. I love how Final Fortune is an instant. Please don’t cast this at the end of your opponent’s turn. The deep color on Mirage cards was a nice change of pace after the washed-out printing of sets like Revised and Ice Age. I don’t think I’ve ever cast this card, but I’ve held onto it for more than twenty years just to look at. We had a good run!
Choke on this, green mages! The card itself has seen better days, but it’s still a quirky rare from Legends that people want to buy. It feels weird, as a powerful planeswalker, to harness Acid Rain affirmatively, like it’s some tool in your kit. “I will invoke industrial pollutants against you!” Yeah, blue mages are jerks.
This dude is tracking around the forest, wrestling dryads and elves. He will find you, and he will inflict a moderate amount of damage. Creature fighting was a popular effect to explore in the early days of Magic. Eventually they figured out it was better to put it on spells than on durdles.
Frankenstein’s Monster is not really on point for Magic flavor, but the old days were full of random cards. For six mana, you can build an 8/2 or a 4/5, or an 0/11 if you are playing a Doran, the Siege Tower deck. Well, that’s assuming you have four creatures in your graveyard to exile. Now they print cards like Tasigur, the Golden Fang and laugh at this clunky version. Early Magic provided often proved that looking cool does not imply playing well.
Now here’s a creature that has aged well. Grim Lavamancer does work to this day! I’m sad to part with the original art, but he deserves a better home. I trust Card Kingdom will make that happen.
Carrie O’Hara is Editor-in-Chief of Hipsters of the Coast.