Mindstage, a games store in Gothenburg, Sweden, has created its own unofficial version of Magic: The Gathering’s 30th anniversary edition, Wizards of the Coast’s celebratory anniversary product that last week enraged fans. The main difference? The store’s packs contain real copies of expensive MTG cards such as Revised dual lands, and even an Unlimited Time Walk from the power nine.
Magic: The Gathering fans were displeased with Wizards of the Coast’s announcement of its latest product, the 30th anniversary edition, which contains four booster packs of non-tournament legal Beta cards for $999. Complaints varied, ranging from the extreme price tag, to the randomised nature of the cards, to the fact that they’re ‘collector’s items’ or glorified proxies. (In other words, they’re not real Magic cards, and can’t be used in tournaments.)
William Ljungberg, who owns the stores Mindstage and SvenskaMagic tells Wargamer: “When I heard about the Anniversary packs and the honestly ridiculous price point I just thought to myself: but for those prices you can basically buy real duals and power instead of buying a couple of non tournament legal boosters’.”
Repacking cards into homemade boosters is not something Ljungberg’s stores usually do. But, for a laugh, and to point out the ridiculous price point of the 30th Anniversary edition, the store owner decided to create his own version of the product – except his cards are the real deal.
According to his post on the SvenskaMagic forums, Ljungberg’s created 40 boosters full of old-school cards and is selling them at SEK 2500 ($220) a pop. The cards are all used, so quality will vary, but the post says there are 100,000 Krona ($8830) worth of cards split between the 40 packs. The top prize are dual lands (25% chance of pulling) or a single copy of the infamous Time Walk (2.5% chance).
“I expected people to think it was a bit funny that you could actually do this, but the response has been huge with so many positive comments,” Ljungberg says. “I think that – for the first time in Magic’s history – players are all in agreement over something.”