I consider myself pretty new to MTG period. My wife has bought the occasional packs and decks so we have about 1,000 cards spread all over from About Core 2015 to Kaladesh the most recent but I have yet to take anything serious. I not only like to play but I love the cards designs and would like to collect at least 1 of every card as well. Now obviously I am "tardy to the party" and can never collect all the cards in MTG history, but I'm looking to hear from people with a good bit of MTG experience....
What should I do to collect them all?
Is it really even an attainable goal?
If I decide to slowly go back in history to collect, advice on where to begin?
I have been known to spend some money for cards as I collect a little bit of everything as I child I collected baseball and Pokemon and didn't really know of MTG until I met my wife. So within reason money is not object
collecting them all is not an attainable goal, there are 16449 differently named magic cards, and the most expensive one of them is at the cheapest from a quick search is $6500 and out of stock.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"If you knew anything about the lore you'd see that they were clearly hinting that the madness on Innistrad was caused by Uncle Istvan wearing Urza's Power Armor ... tainted with Phrexyian Oil"
Graham from Loading Ready Run
Now would you recommend buying like a booster box with 36 packs in and the buy what's left individually? Or is there some secret way to accomplish this?
@OP, There are over 70 expansion sets, there are 18 core sets(if you separate Alpha and Beta), plus other releases. Most recent sets can be obtained complete for @ $120 USD. Older sets however start to go up in price. Many complete sets average @ $350 USD. Many of the earliest sets could run over $2000 USD.
Have you gone on ebay and priced out complete sets, usually cheaper than trying to collate sets piecemeal.
You have to ask yourself why you're collecting. If you're collecting to collect then you only need one copy of any given card. If you're collecting to play then you'll need four copies.
If you're a player then you need to hammer down what formats you want/can afford to play. Older cards can be expensive, and are only going up in price as time goes by.
My advice is to grab up the most recent sets as cheaply as you can find. Then work your way back in time until you hit the price barrier you can afford. Because unless your disposable income for
Magic is enough to by a house, there are just going to be things not worth purchasing.
Are you just looking for regular cards or do you want foils. Check out the prices for "Expedition" Lands or the Kaladesh "Inventions". Big price tags there. Even decent Modern staples can run
$20 on up a piece, with many in the $50 on up category. Looking for Legacy and/or Vintage staples, you can spend hundreds to thousands of dollars a piece for some of the "basics".
Have fun but be realistic with your income. Nobody needs every card, just collect what is feasible within your budget. Do some research, find out about the different formats. Find out what cards for those formats cost. Magic collecting is a huge undertaking especially for those just getting started, happy hunting.
Now would you recommend buying like a booster box with 36 packs in and the buy what's left individually? Or is there some secret way to accomplish this?
If you only want to collect one of each card, then I would recommend only buying individual cards, to reduce cost.
However, if you and your wife want to play with the cards, you can always buy a box of boosters, open some packs and play with them before you start collecting the set.
Booster packs are super random. After opening two booster boxes, you should have every common in a set, and all but maybe one or two uncommons, but the rares and mythics are all over the place: you'll end up opening 5 Deadlock Traps, but never getting a Fleetwheel Cruiser. If your goal is to get every card, then opening packs is not the way to go. Just buy the set complete.
The other thing to consider is that opening booster packs is super fun. That's why most people buy sealed product, even though it is generally not as cost-effective.
If you wanna be a mega-collector, you have to start with the old stuff: get your dual lands now, because in 5 years, they'll each cost 100$ more than they do now. I wouldn't recommend this unless you are truly truly wealthy.
If I were you, I'd try to complete Kaladesh before I went too crazy with anything else. Open a box or two, then fill out whatever you don't open with singles. If you want to feel like a badass, you can even collect all the masterpieces, like Crucible of Worlds.
The number of people who actually own every Magic card (besides completely unobtainable ones) can probably be counted on one or two hands. You probably don't really want to be one of those people.
Wizards puts out a product every winter that features the newest set. It holds roughly 2500 cards I believe. It's their gift box. It comes with dividers so you can sort them how you see fit and if the cards are sleeved the lid still shuts all the way. I would recommend going that route. They cost around $25-30 and come with 2 or 3 booster packs and a foil promo printing of a card from the current set. They're all the same promo card so it won't help you to buy multiples. The other option is going with a binder and card pages. Depending on the size of your collection and how quickly you buy will depend on how fast you fill up those pages so I don't have a set price on that for you. The plus to the binder option is you can easily flip through and see all of the cards. You also have the option to sort them by number so you can see what you're missing from the set if you buy a booster box then get the singles that you're missing.
I consider myself pretty new to MTG period. My wife has bought the occasional packs and decks so we have about 1,000 cards spread all over from About Core 2015 to Kaladesh the most recent but I have yet to take anything serious. I not only like to play but I love the cards designs and would like to collect at least 1 of every card as well. Now obviously I am "tardy to the party" and can never collect all the cards in MTG history, but I'm looking to hear from people with a good bit of MTG experience....
What should I do to collect them all?
Is it really even an attainable goal?
If I decide to slowly go back in history to collect, advice on where to begin?
Any advice period?
It's all appreciated.
Thanks
Graham from Loading Ready Run
So yeah, Amonkhet or Kaladesh will be a good place to start.
Have you gone on ebay and priced out complete sets, usually cheaper than trying to collate sets piecemeal.
You have to ask yourself why you're collecting. If you're collecting to collect then you only need one copy of any given card. If you're collecting to play then you'll need four copies.
If you're a player then you need to hammer down what formats you want/can afford to play. Older cards can be expensive, and are only going up in price as time goes by.
My advice is to grab up the most recent sets as cheaply as you can find. Then work your way back in time until you hit the price barrier you can afford. Because unless your disposable income for
Magic is enough to by a house, there are just going to be things not worth purchasing.
Are you just looking for regular cards or do you want foils. Check out the prices for "Expedition" Lands or the Kaladesh "Inventions". Big price tags there. Even decent Modern staples can run
$20 on up a piece, with many in the $50 on up category. Looking for Legacy and/or Vintage staples, you can spend hundreds to thousands of dollars a piece for some of the "basics".
Have fun but be realistic with your income. Nobody needs every card, just collect what is feasible within your budget. Do some research, find out about the different formats. Find out what cards for those formats cost. Magic collecting is a huge undertaking especially for those just getting started, happy hunting.
If you only want to collect one of each card, then I would recommend only buying individual cards, to reduce cost.
However, if you and your wife want to play with the cards, you can always buy a box of boosters, open some packs and play with them before you start collecting the set.
The other thing to consider is that opening booster packs is super fun. That's why most people buy sealed product, even though it is generally not as cost-effective.
If you wanna be a mega-collector, you have to start with the old stuff: get your dual lands now, because in 5 years, they'll each cost 100$ more than they do now. I wouldn't recommend this unless you are truly truly wealthy.
If I were you, I'd try to complete Kaladesh before I went too crazy with anything else. Open a box or two, then fill out whatever you don't open with singles. If you want to feel like a badass, you can even collect all the masterpieces, like Crucible of Worlds.
The number of people who actually own every Magic card (besides completely unobtainable ones) can probably be counted on one or two hands. You probably don't really want to be one of those people.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.