And the results are...

...not quite what I had expected.

The From the Vault: Dragons cards did turn out to be quite popular. The grand total raw sales came to $91 - a good deal more than the $53 I paid for the set. Once fees are taken out, I still should show some profit, which is of course always nice!

One person ended up winning 7 of the 15 cards, another got 5, a third got 2 and a final person won 1. The person with 7 had a total of around $49, so they are clearly the winner of the special spin-down life counter promised to a winner of 5+ cards. Strangely enough, since no single person won 10 or more, no-one won the box, or the free shipping. I really thought that last one would be a big draw - buy your 15 Dragons cards then go crazy buying booster packs or something really heavy, and get it all shipped for free....but I guess not!

Anyway, I certainly can't complain about the results. It was just not quite what I thought I'd see. I felt for sure someone would try to get 10+ so they could get the box. It's really cool. So I guess I get to keep it :-)

On the great relisting project, I am up to the Invasion set, and should finish getting those done tonight. That leaves only 19 full expansion sets and then various piddly boxed sets, plus some non-English stuff (Italian Legends and Chinese 4th Edition being the biggest two problems). And all of this will be put on the back burner soon as the new set, Shards of Alara, is due out this coming Friday. I hope to get the descriptions of the cards typed up and ready before the cards actually arrive, if my usual source is as with-it as he was for Eventide. And maybe I'll get as lucky as I was with Eventide and get the cards a full day before the release date!

Oh, I promised to say a bit more about Shards of Alara in this post. The biggest deal is that Wizards of the Coast has decided to put a new level of Rarity into their cards. Since the beginning of the game there have been three levels of Rarity (4 if you count "Basic Land" as one): Commons, Uncommons, and Rares. These days a typical booster pack will contain 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons, and 11 Commons (or 10 Commons and a Basic Land for a Core Set like 10th Edition).

Starting with Shards of Alara, they are replacing the Rare in roughly 1 out of every 8 packs with a "Mythic Rare" - so this small set will be even more difficult to find than (and consequently, in theory, worth more than) a regular Rare. And a Foil version of such a Mythic Rare should be insanely valuable. Again, in theory.

Also, they plan to replace one of the Commons with a Basic Land in booster packs for all sets, not just the Core Sets. The theory being that since you essentially must have basic Lands to play, then not having them in boosters makes it more difficult for new players to get started.

The final big change being made is that this set (and ones to follow) will be smaller than the sets in recent history. There are simply too many cards in the game to reasonably expect someone to be fluent with all of them, and lowering the number in newer sets will help with that. For me this means it should be easier to get my hands on all (or nearly all) with the 5-6 boxes I plan on opening. That is one thing I appreciate a good deal.