Another mystery signature...

Here's another mystery signature. I have four copies of this Wall of Roots (from Mirage) with a signature (initials, really) that looks like "LB":

But the artist on this card is John Matson, whose initials are clearly not "LB". And it just so happens that I have another card from Mirage, Purraj of Urborg, with art by John Matson that is signed by him:

So I think it is quite clear that the Wall of Roots signature is not Mr. Matson's. So, whose signature is it? Any ideas?

Can you help me ID these?

Okay, here's the deal. I just got done processing a bunch of photos of what I am calling "Specialty Cards". These are cards that are signed (some non-English), or misprinted, or miscut, or crimped, etc. In other words, cards that appeal to a more limited audience than your normal Magic cards.

While working on these, I came across three cards that have proven themselves a mystery to me. The biggest problem with the signed cards is that all of these have come to me from collections that I have bought in the past. This means that I cannot, 100% for certain, verify that the signatures are indeed the actual signatures of the artists involved. I will be certain to state such when I list them - I don't want to mislead anyone.

But these three cards CLEARLY are not signed by their artists. The signature is identical, but all three have different artists. Instead, I figure these may be signed by someone "famous" to Magic, perhaps even the designer of the card.

That's where you, hopefully, come in. Can you identify whose signature appears on these three cards? Please comment to the post if you have any ideas or suggestions!

"You're giving away WHAT now?"

In my latest Blog Poll, the option of "Box-toppers? Really? Don't you have anything ELSE to give away?" narrowly edged out the 9th Edition Hell's Caretaker box-topper for the next giveaway prize. This meant I had to go find something besides a box-topper to give away (which I would have had to do eventually, once I ran out of them, but I thought I'd have a few more months).

Then I remembered that I had a box of these beauties sitting around:
These are cardboard punch-out counters and tokens intended to accompany the Fallen Empires set. They were originally included in an issue of The Duelist Magazine (issue #4 to be exact). Here's the Magic Arcana article from Daily MTG that covered these for those possessed of incurable curiosity.

Fallen Empires was a set notorious for generating lots of different token creatures (1/1 White Citizens, 1/1 Green Saprolings, 1/1 Blue Camarids, 0/1 Black Thrulls and 1/1 Red Goblins) from lots of different cards (such as Icatian Town, Elvish Farmer, Homarid Spawning Bed, Breeding Pit and Goblin Warrens, respectively). It also made lots of different counters (Spore, Credit, Time, Javelin, Net and Tide as well as -1/-1, +1/+1 and a variety of +/- combinations that are no longer used in Magic at all) for lots of different cards (Spore Flower, Icatian Moneychanger, Tourach's Gate, Icatian Javelineers, Merseine, Tidal Influence, respectively, as examples).

So, to help with all these different tokens & counters, WotC included these in with The Duelist.

When I rediscovered these, I Tweeted to my followers the above photo and asked if these were junk, or an awesome giveaway. The overwhelming response as "awesome giveaway". So, this coming Thursday (October 28, 2010 for those who may be reading this later) I will be giving away some subset of my collection of these beauties to a random winner chosen from amongst the subscribers to my email newsletter (I say subset because according to my inventory & this handy website detailing the exact contents of one of these sheets, I have 2+ sheets worth of these guys).

Not already a subscriber? Visit my home page at www.DonsMagicAndSundry.com and sign up - it's free and easy and I promise not to overfill your email inbox (I typically send less than a newsletter a month).

All listings - Activate! (?)

Back in the Great Speculator Debate, I explained that my biggest issue with the process was that if these "hot" cards were out of stock in my inventory, they no longer loaded up into Google shopping, and therefore I would miss out on potential business from people searching for these cards.

There were several suggestions on how to deal with the issue, including never letting my inventory drop below 1 (which I find somehow a bit dishonest). The one best solution, I think, is one that I have been debating about with myself for a while.

I could, I believe, with a simple click of a check box, keep inventory active even when out of stock. This should mean that they would still get uploaded to Google, and would definitely mean that they would show up in any search within my store.

So, you may ask, why haven't I done this already? The reasons are many-fold:

1. The biggest impediment is that, since I use only photos from my own "virtual collection" of Magic cards, if I have never owned a card before, I have no image to go with that listing. This is particularly a problem with foils, as I am nowhere NEAR close to finishing off my collection of those. As I explained in this post about potentially trading with me, I am fairly close to completing my virtual collection of non-foil Magic (my current needs list can be found here). So a giant hurdle I need to overcome is what to do with the listings I don't have pictures for yet. Do I make a "image forthcoming" placeholder for these? Do I raid images from magiccards.info or Gatherer? I'm not sure what to do for these.
2. There are many stores out there (I suppose it would be unprofessional of me to name them) that list every possible card, even if they're out of stock. Most of these somehow tell you right away [like it will say "Quantity in Stock: 0" or something like that) but on some you can't even find out until you try to put the item in your shopping cart. Fortunately mine would show Quantity: 0, but not until you got to the listing. So if someone Google searches for something & sees my listing, then clicks on it only to find out I'm out of stock - would there be hard feelings, like they were somehow tricked into my store?
3. Searches of my store (theoretically) would take longer. If I normally don't have a card in foil, only regular, then when you search for it you only get one hit. But if everything is active you'll be guaranteed at least two hits for any card since they started making foils. That's more stuff to filter through looking for what you want.
4. Second biggest headache: I have trouble enough as it is keeping up with the current prices for what I DO have in stock - if I keep everything active I need to keep track of prices of stuff I don't even have available (or mislead folks if I just don't keep up with them). Perhaps I just have a policy that an out of stock item has a price of $0?

So, anyway, these are the hurdles I need to overcome before I make every card active regardless of whether it's in stock or not. Any and all comments & especially suggestions on getting over these hurdles are massively welcome!