Contest, Redux!

Well, the poster giveaway is over now, and served its intended purpose: the email newsletter had about a 50% increase in size (which sounds more impressive than "went from 20-couple to 30-couple"), so that's great. Congrats to @alithra for being selected as the winner of the Vengeful Archon poster.

I had so much giving away the poster (seriously - everything about it was cool, from seeing the email list grow, to hyping the contest on Twitter, to deciding how to randomly pick a winner, to tracking down a poster tube on Freecycle to mail the poster in) that I have decided to keep the giveaways coming!

I have had sitting around for a while now several oversized "box topper" cards from 8th Edition and 9th Edition. Recent questions on Twitter have shown me that not everyone knows what these box toppers are, so here's a brief explanation. For 8th Edition and 9th Edition, Wizards of the Coast added an oversized card to the top of each box of booster packs as an incentive for people to buy an entire booster box. [This was abandoned after 9th Edition; its most recent counterpart is the "buy-a-box" alternate-art foil promo cards WotC has been making for the last couple of sets].

Each box topper shows on one side a reprint of a card from the appropriate set (with a black border instead of white), with the flip side being a larger version of the art for the card (in landscape orientation). Below is a photo montage of the front of such a promo (with its smaller cousin beside it for comparison) and the back:


Currently I have 10 of these that have been sitting around waiting for me to decide what to do with them. I had always intended to eventually put them up for sale, but as I said - I enjoyed giving away the M11 prerelease poster, so why not continue the contest and give away the box toppers?

So, that is what I am going to do. Every couple of weeks (I'll announce specifics via Twitter - so follow me there if you want to keep up) I will give away another box topper promo until I run out of them. By popular demand (sort of - it got two votes where other cards only got one each), my Tweeps picked the 9th Edition Force of Nature to be the first one given away (which is why I chose it for the photo).

After that, who knows? I have an even bigger Thorn Elemental promo that I could give away, as well as many other nice goodies that I wouldn't necessarily be able to easily sell, but that someone would love to own nonetheless (altered art Daze, anyone?; or the strangely misprinted Words of Worship shown to the right?) - and maybe even some that I most definitely WOULD be able to sell, but am willing to give away anyway.

The 9th Edition Force of Nature box topper promo card will be given away on Thursday August 5, 2010 at 9 p.m. EDT. I picked Thursday this time instead of Friday as I know many of my followers are busy at FNM on Friday nights!

So, what do you need to do to win? It's easy - just sign up to be on my email newsletter list. Subscription is easy: at my store's home page there is a form wherein you enter your email address. You'll be sent a confirmation email, in which you click a link to confirm your subscription. And that's it! You'll be entered to win all future contests, as long as you remain on the list.

I'm still trying to decide what to do regarding past winners: is EVERYONE eligible to win, or only if you didn't win a previous contest, or only if you didn't win the LAST contest...I'll see what the poll results are (see the poll at the top of the page and VOTE, please!) before making a final decision on that one. I'll post that decision here when I make it.

Contest!

This past Saturday (July 10, 2010 for those reading this way after the fact), my older son and I had the pleasure of attending the prerelease for the newest set of Magic, the Magic 2011 Core Set (AKA M11).

At the particular site where we attended, the first X number of people to register received a free promotional poster featuring art from the M11 card Vengeful Archon [to see what this 24" x 36" poster looks like you can go here]. As my son and I were the first two in line (we arrived a bit more than an hour before the doors were scheduled to open), we each received a copy.

My son plans on keeping his, in the hopes that some day it is worth something as a collector's item. I, on the other hand, am giving mine away!

As I have mentioned on my Twitter account, next Friday (July 23, 2010) at 9 p.m. EDT, I will select one random subscriber to my store's email newsletter to receive this poster as a free gift. No purchase is necessary, no postage shall be charged - all one needs to do to be eligible is subscribe to the newsletter. So if you're already subscribed, you don't need to do anything at all!

Subscription is easy: at my store's home page there is a form wherein you enter your email address. You'll be sent a confirmation email, in which you click a link to confirm your subscription. And that's it! You'll be entered to win the poster.

So what happens to you if you subscribe? Will you be receiving hundreds of annoying emails? Not to worry - I don't send very often. When a new set is added to inventory (like the upcoming M11 addition) I send an announcement. And if anything else significant gets added to my store (like when my Revised Edition Toolkit was created), or if I have a special sale or event such as that, I send an announcement. So far in all of 2010 I have only sent out three emails (and a fourth will go out next week to announce M11). So you need not worry about me clogging up your email box!

As of this writing there are only 18 subscribers to my store's newsletter, so your odds are looking very good for winning if you sign up. And if you are already a subscriber and, for some reason, wish to NOT be considered for the drawing, please let me know. I will simply leave you out when I pick the winner.

"Revised Edition Toolkit" Revisited

Just a quick update - the Revised Edition Toolkits are now live on my store and at eBay. Sharp eyes will notice a slight bump in the price from my store to ebay ($15 vs. $16.50). This is to cover the eBay Final Value Fees.

This means smart & informed shoppers will buy them from my regular store, hint, hint.

Comments on the listing, the product, the photo, etc. are still gratefully accepted!

"Revised Edition Toolkit": A new product from The Sundry!

Okay, so for those who do not know about it, Wizards of the Coast recently released a new product they call their Deck Builder's Toolkit. Inside it are 100 land cards, 125 "semi-random" cards (all of which are Common or Uncommon) from sets that are currently in Standard, and four 15-card booster packs. They are designed to be a supplement to fleshing out existing decks, or a place for newbies to start - they provide lots of different cards from lots of different sets to meet lots of different deck-building styles. A pretty cool product that my son Sebastian and I got to test out early thanks to Adam Styborski (writer of the weekly Casual Fun article on DailyMTG, @the_stybs on Twitter, and all-around pretty cool guy). His write-up of the results of our testing can be read in this article.

Anyway, the creation of this Toolkit has inspired me to create one of my own. I have for quite a while now (well over a year, in fact) been wondering what to do with the literally thousands of common & uncommon cards from the Revised Edition core set that I have lying around thanks to my purchase of the over 400,000 card collection of Bill (about which I could have sworn I'd written before, but I can't find the post right now to link to). Now I have the answer: Don's Magic and Sundry's patented (not really) "Revised Edition Toolkit".

What I have done is taken all of the Revised Edition Commons & Uncommons that I had sitting around (not already in inventory) and culled out any cards that were beat up (they will go to be used to make Grab Bags for sale at the store). For some more popular, playable cards I allowed for more beat-up versions to stay available (very few people are going to be thoroughly disappointed to get a played copy of Lightning Bolt from Revised). When all was said and done, I ended up with 7054 Commons and 2756 Uncommons, for a total of 9800 cards.

My plan is to make 98 sets of 100 cards (generally 72 Commons and 28 Uncommons) from Revised and sell these as a package - my "Revised Edition Toolkit". They'll ship in a hard plastic hinged-top case as any 100-card order would. I'm still trying to figure out a fair price - something that you can help out with in the comments!

Here's how you can help (if you're so inclined): Below I will present the text of the description of this item as it will appear (still debating whether to put these on eBay or just at my regular store - I could do both). Please read this and offer any comments on the whole issue. Is this something you'd buy? If so, how much would be a reasonable cost? If not, why not? Is there something missing, or are you just not interested? Anything and everything constructive you have to say will be appreciated! If these prove popular enough, I may have to do the same with Fourth Edition, as I have way too many Commons & Uncommons from that set as well!

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Up for sale is a Revised Edition Toolkit. What is a Revised Edition Toolkit, you ask? Well, read on!

What you'll find in a Revised Edition Toolkit:

• 100 semi-random cards from the Revised Edition core set of Magic: The Gathering;
• Roughly 72 Common and 28 Uncommon cards from the set;
• Cards of generally NM or better condition (with some notable exceptions - see below);
• No more than 4 of any given card. You may get a playset, but not more than that;
• An amazing blast of nostalgia for some of the old-school greatness that was the Revised Edition, or;
• If you and your friends are relative newcomers - the awe and envy of your friends when you break out the old-school greatness that was the Revised Edition.

What you'll NOT find in a Revised Edition Toolkit:

• Cards in any language other than English;
• Basic Lands;
  
• Rares;
• Foils (there weren't any back in Revised, okay?);
  
• These 4 Uncommon cards: Clone, Sengir Vampire, Serra Angel, Sol Ring. I didn't have spares to put in these toolkits. Sorry! But every single common card from the set, as well as all the other 91 Uncommons are fair game and could be in your box!

So what's the deal on condition? I've done my best to get rid of any cards that showed noticeable wear from play, leaving only NM or better cards, with the exceptions of some of the more staple, "playable" cards. The following cards may be in the toolkit with noticeable wear from play, and possibly be graded as low as "Fine" or "Poor":

• Dark Ritual
• Kird Ape
  
• Lightning Bolt
• Llanowar Elves
• Animate Dead
• Black Vise
• Counterspell
  
• Demonic Tutor
• Hypnotic Specter
• Swords to Plowshares

If a card is not in the above list, it SHOULD be in "Near Mint" or better condition in the toolkit. To cover myself, I'll say it is POSSIBLE that other cards in as low as "Very Fine" condition may sneak in, but they should be extremely rare if they do.

This toolkit would be a great gift to a Magic: The Gathering player of almost any level. Those who have been playing "forever" will love the burst of nostalgia. Those who missed Revised when it was out in 1994 will love the chance to own some of the oldest cards in the game. Everyone will love the mix of cards that will allow supplementing existing decks - and many of these cards (like Lightning Bolt) are even still Standard-legal!