Labor day came and went this week, and that usually means a day off for most folks around the nation. We take in buylists from around the globe but are still at the mercy of FedEx and USPS like many other businesses. As well, bank holidays are a bit of a mixed bag for us in the buylist department. We get a nice day off, but usually have to pay for it with a higher volume of mail to process the next day. When there's so much to slog through, it makes it all the more exciting when we get to see the good stuff!
Arabian Nights City of Brass & Alpha Forcefield
Tuesday started off with this awesome buylist, with a City of Brass from Arabian Nights and a Forcefield from Alpha! These both came in at Heavily Played, but were overall sleeve playable. While you can substitute with a Chronicles version in White Border, nothing beats the original. With the immense playability of City of Brass in Old School, as it frequently appears as a playset in many multicolored decks, picking up the Black Bordered Arabian Nights printing adds a little Wow! factor to your deck.
The Alpha Forcefield was also pretty nice. Some ink on the edges took it down to Heavily Played for us, but this is otherwise an astounding card from Magic's first printing! There's an estimate floating around on the web that only about 1100 of each Alpha rare are in existence, so it's pretty special to have even one of these!
Arabian Nights City of Brass & Alpha Forcefield
Italian Foreign White Border Tropical Island
Italian Foreign White Border Tropical Island
Speaking of Old School, here we have 2 Italian Foreign White Border Isola Tropicale (Tropical Island). They read a little different, sure, but they still tap for U or G. Note the more vibrant colors and the printing date below the artist name that set these apart from their English Revised counterparts. I had to show these to my team mate (and ABU's Content Production Manager) Joe as soon as they came through - he's a big Legacy infect player and has been working on getting his own Trops. Don't worry, he didn't get any drool on these! He had just picked up his final Trop too, so these might still be available if you go looking!
Dissension Hallowed Fountain
Venturing into more Modern territory, here's a foil Hallowed Fountain from Dissension. This one was very clean, too! As Near Mint as they come. Rob Alexander's art here is just fantastic. The Return to Ravnica and Expedition printings give us other choices for Shockland art. With Guilds of Ravnica on the horizon and Ravnica Allegiance not too far away, I'm very excited to see which artist gets to reiterate this card and what they do with it. However, for the time being, I'd consider this my favorite version of Hallowed Fountain.
Dissension Hallowed Fountain
Variety of played Alpha singles
Variety of Mostly Played Condition Alpha Singles
Last but not least, probably one of the most spectacular packages in I've had the pleasure of seeing. All round corners, all Alpha!
A good selection of commons here, although nothing too crazy when singled out. Amassed as a collection, it was a sight to behold. Most of these were of a Played variety, but any of them would make a great addition to an Old School treasure trove. Very cool to see all these in one place! I love the distinct feeling and look of the Alpha cards too, they definitely do a good job of standing out (or maybe tucking in?) in a stack of Magic cards.
That's all I've got for you this week. Join me next week to see what comes in! You can follow me on Twitter @chroberry or Instagram @chroberry to see some extra goodies from the week, as well as previews for next weeks article. Peace!