I have a few valuable cards. I'd like to stick them in my safe for long-term storage. I know that moisture is a concern in most safes. What I'm planning to do is double sleeve the cards with Polypropylene inner & outer sleeves, put them in hard deck boxes, put those in vacuum-seal bags, add a few silica gel packets (color-changing), then seal them up. I'll check the packets every few months for saturation.
Is it possible to over-dry cards using silica gel packets? IE, can they become so dry that they become brittle? Anything else I should watch out for?
Edit:
Does using multiple packets make any difference, beside lengthening the amount of time before they become saturated?
@peteroupc Yes to your bullet points. The problems as I see them are:
1) "Reorder" isn't defined by the comprehensive rules, so it isn't clear whether cards that are returned to the same position count as having been reordered.
2) In 701.16c, in the phrase "any revealed cards that are reordered...," it isn't clear whether the rule is referring to cards that are "actually" reordered or, more broadly, cards that are included in a reorder effect (even if they were returned to the same position).
3) 701.16 ("...If an effect causes a card to be revealed, it remains revealed for as long as necessary...") conflicts with 401.4 ("...That library's owner doesn't reveal the order in which the cards go into the library") So, it isn't clear whether you continue to play with the card revealed while you are reordering (it's still on the top of your deck after all) - and it only stops being revealed if you would move it to another position. And if you do move it to another position, could you move it back? (undoing the move but still keeping it hidden)
4) Bonus question: As I understand it, you can shuffle a 1-card library. Can you reorder a 1-card library? Would doing so cause that card to become a new object?
Here's another real-world example that demonstrates the same issue: Temporal Aperture + any multi-card scry or rearrange effect, returning the same card to the top of your deck. This poses the same question as before - either the returned card is the same object (put face up and may still be played for free) or a new object (put face down and cannot be played anymore).
Edit:
Here's another rules reference: 401.4. If an effect puts two or more cards in a specific position in a library at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order. That library's owner doesn't reveal the order in which the cards go into the library.
It seems I'm not the only person asking questions about this stuff:
I am building a whole deck around this interaction, so I'm looking for rules references and/or a judge's ruling.
Example #1: I play Skill Borrower, reveal Snarling Wolf, use its ability, play Sage Owl, look at the top cards of my deck, and return them in the same order. Can I use the Wolf's ability again?
The trick here is that opponents usually can't know whether I have two Wolves in the top four cards of my deck. I suspect this means the Wolf become a new object?
Note: See my analysis of the comprehensive rules in comment #5 below.
Example #2: Conspicuous Snoop + Akki Avalanchers (or similar Adapted creature) + any multi-card scry/rearrange effect. Can I use the Avalanchers' ability again?
Those are my "real-world" examples, but I really want to extrapolate the rules to Yet Another Aether Vortex and Faerie Seer (on top of my deck), to determine whether I could infinitely scry through my deck.
Thank you!
Also, if my opponent Extracted a card from my deck, they might know for a fact that I only have one Wolf in my deck. That wouldn't change anything, would it?
How much bandwidth are you serving monthly? CloudFlare provides HTTPS will all accounts, even free ones. Once traffics hits a certain point though, they could cut you off. Because all your assets are static, you could set longer cache headers and you'd see almost zero bandwidth on your origin server, once everything is cached on the CDN.
Check out Magic Album by slightlymagic.net. It's run by the site admin over there. Since that's the source of all the high quality images, his pictures torrent includes everything that has been released by the team in an organized collection.
Could you post your XML files so that we could at least take a look? I'm a contributor to the SlightlyMagic.net pictures project and documenting things accurately is always an interest of ours
Great updates guys. Two issues though. The "What's Happening" topic subscription reminder emails keep informing me about recent "new posts", but in fact I've already read these posts. Also, the links in these emails send me to the first post in the thread, where it would make much more sense to link the new post itself. Thanks!
This is still the best program for getting data from Gatherer. I'd like to issue a friendly reminder that at least 9 users have requested foreign text extraction in this thread: lebenski, Ananas, Vaevictis_Asmadi, Yoann, darnovo, 4eveRS, denicristian, moxcards, & myself. It would truly make this an all-includive Gatherer extraction solution, and the only one ever needed. Thanks for your hard work!
Is it possible to over-dry cards using silica gel packets? IE, can they become so dry that they become brittle? Anything else I should watch out for?
Edit:
Does using multiple packets make any difference, beside lengthening the amount of time before they become saturated?
Also, I noticed the problem is not limited to "once each turn" effects. The same questions arise with linked activated abilities, like the ones on Muse Vessel. https://yawgatog.com/resources/magic-rules/#R607
Same goes for Nth Activation effects: https://scryfall.com/search?q=oracle:time oracle:"this ability"&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name
1) "Reorder" isn't defined by the comprehensive rules, so it isn't clear whether cards that are returned to the same position count as having been reordered.
2) In 701.16c, in the phrase "any revealed cards that are reordered...," it isn't clear whether the rule is referring to cards that are "actually" reordered or, more broadly, cards that are included in a reorder effect (even if they were returned to the same position).
3) 701.16 ("...If an effect causes a card to be revealed, it remains revealed for as long as necessary...") conflicts with 401.4 ("...That library's owner doesn't reveal the order in which the cards go into the library") So, it isn't clear whether you continue to play with the card revealed while you are reordering (it's still on the top of your deck after all) - and it only stops being revealed if you would move it to another position. And if you do move it to another position, could you move it back? (undoing the move but still keeping it hidden)
4) Bonus question: As I understand it, you can shuffle a 1-card library. Can you reorder a 1-card library? Would doing so cause that card to become a new object?
Here's another real-world example that demonstrates the same issue: Temporal Aperture + any multi-card scry or rearrange effect, returning the same card to the top of your deck. This poses the same question as before - either the returned card is the same object (put face up and may still be played for free) or a new object (put face down and cannot be played anymore).
Edit:
Here's another rules reference: 401.4. If an effect puts two or more cards in a specific position in a library at the same time, the owner of those cards may arrange them in any order. That library's owner doesn't reveal the order in which the cards go into the library.
It seems I'm not the only person asking questions about this stuff:
Example #1: I play Skill Borrower, reveal Snarling Wolf, use its ability, play Sage Owl, look at the top cards of my deck, and return them in the same order. Can I use the Wolf's ability again?
The trick here is that opponents usually can't know whether I have two Wolves in the top four cards of my deck. I suspect this means the Wolf become a new object?
Note: See my analysis of the comprehensive rules in comment #5 below.
Example #2: Conspicuous Snoop + Akki Avalanchers (or similar Adapted creature) + any multi-card scry/rearrange effect. Can I use the Avalanchers' ability again?
Those are my "real-world" examples, but I really want to extrapolate the rules to Yet Another Aether Vortex and Faerie Seer (on top of my deck), to determine whether I could infinitely scry through my deck.
Thank you!
Also, if my opponent Extracted a card from my deck, they might know for a fact that I only have one Wolf in my deck. That wouldn't change anything, would it?
Links:
79 Other creatures with "once each turn" abilities: https://scryfall.com/search?q=type:creature oracle:\: oracle:activate oracle:"each turn"&as=grid&order=cmc
118 Other multi-card scry effects:
https://scryfall.com/search?q=oracle:"scry 2" OR oracle:"scry 3" OR oracle:"scry 4" OR oracle:"scry X"&as=grid&order=name
38 Other rearrange effects: https://scryfall.com/search?q=oracle:"back" oracle:"in any order"&as=grid&order=name
@Sembiance - If you do rename the images, do you also rewrite requests on MTGImage for the old name to the new name?
@quote - here's a quick example with css. You'll have to adjust the numbers to get the proper border size. http://jsfiddle.net/skibulk/6BB8j/
Could you post your XML files so that we could at least take a look? I'm a contributor to the SlightlyMagic.net pictures project and documenting things accurately is always an interest of ours