MTG Salvation

Hello everyone!

I'm in the process of making my first pauper cube. One of the problems, though, is that a few of the cards I'm including, for example, Flood, have never been printed in foil. What's the standard protocol for dealing with cards like this when you decide to make your cube pretty? Alters and signed cards immediately come to mind, but I'd like to hear what you guys do, too. Thanks!

Like you said, alters and signatures are pretty standard for non-foil versions. If you have enough of a combination of time, money, connections, and/or luck, you can go for miscuts/misprints/crimped versions of cards. Depending on how well your group knows the cards, some go for foreign versions. Still others choose certain printings of a card, such as the original printing vs. a reprint with different art.

I'm in the process of fully pimping out my peasant cube. My cube consists of 390 cards and I have 361 pimped out so far!

My plan of attack is to get every old school foil (the star foil) for every card that can get it. If a card can't get the star foil, then I just for a foil or a promo of that card (preferably the earliest set if it's a reprint).

For the cards that can't get foiled, I get altered. Alters are so sweet.
For example:

Fyndhorn Elves is an exception, considering I hate the FTV art.

Alters and signed versions. So nice.

I recently did these for a guy and have noticed more and more people hitting my up for $.05 junk card alters.
From my very warped point of view, this seems to be a pretty popular way to deal with it.

That Dauthi Horror looks really nice, Gal. I'm sporting a couple of your alters in my cube too.

It was about 2 years ago that I started seeing people looking to have $.05 junk from Tempest painted. I couldn't figure out what would compel someone to spend money on a card I saw no point in even owning - I'm not the most expensive painter out there, but I charge enough to make an altered Dauthi Horror look like a strange investment. It was being dragged into the Cube Community via altered cards that got me to build my own... sort of a strange "How I met your Cuber" story I guess.

It sounds like signed cards and alters are the most common way to go. Thanks for all the input! Gal, those alters are very professionally done and you actually included quite a few cards in my pauper cube in that sample you posted. Don't be surprised if you hear from me once I get around to pimping out my pauper cube!