Hey all! Welcome back to another fully black-bordered edition of the Cool Stuff We Bought This Week! As advertised, I’ll be running through a nice collection of Beta cards we picked up this week, as well as some more Old School favorites. Anyway, here’s Wall of Wonder.
Today is gonna be the day that I show you that these cards exist and that I have been plotting this awful joke for at least a few weeks now. By now, you should’ve somehow realized that this is probably the worst joke I’ve ever committed to writing. I don’t believe that anybody will find this funny at all, especially now. Because maybe, tapping your Oasis will be the thing that saves your Wall of Wonder from taking lethal damage. And after all, it’s still a Wall (of Wonder).
Awful jokes aside, let’s take a look at one of the most incredible buylists I’ve seen so far! This week, I was happy to finalize a really awesome trade for one of our customers, who was willing to flip in a bunch of Beta staples and come out the other side with some Alpha Duals. I’ll be going over a bulk of the trade with some of my favorite picks! First up is the classic Birds of Paradise. This was well kept and is one of the cleanest copies I’ve had the pleasure of seeing.
When I get the chance to see a Beta Serra Angel, it’s usually one at a time, but here we have a whole playset! A little roughed up at Heavily Played for the lot of them, but still pretty nice considering the age of the card. I bet these saw a ton of play in their time!
Similar to the Angels, these Shivan Dragons have probably closed out a lot of games in their day! Also at Heavily Played, these two are currently up on the site looking for a new home. While not as efficient a finisher as Serra Angel or Juzam Djinn in Old School, Shivan Dragon is still the premier Beta creature. If you’ve got Moxen and a Lotus to start, it’s even possible to play this thing on your first turn!
Natural Selection is one of the strangest cards, both in appearance but also in function, in Beta. There’s a part of me that enjoys looking at Old School cards just for their poor rules text and strange effects. It’s similar to the Ice Age card Portent, although missing the slowtrip draw and at instant speed. It’s a fun effect with few relevant gameplay applications, but fixing your draw step, or disrupting your opponents could win you a game here and there.
Everybody’s favorite piece of honorary power. Mark Tedin’s original art for Sol Ring is absolutely amazing, and for me beats out every other edition of the card. I’d probably opt for the Judge Foil if I were to pick one to play with forever, but for those of you who want to pass on the shinies, this is a solid choice.
Everybody’s second favorite piece of honorary power. Demonic Tutor is one of the most powerful cards in Magic’s history, and earns a restriction in every format it’s legal in. It’s hard for me to believe that this was originally printed at uncommon in the ABUR sets. I do love the classic art with the pentagram still intact, but this card has sweet art in every printing.
Could you believe that this was all in the same buylist?! I love looking at Old School collections come in for trade, and this one was one of the best I’ve seen. This altered Tundra was my favorite card from the list, with a fun Winter alter done by Jesper Myrfors. The card was definitely on the lower end of our Heavily Played grade, but still fetched a whopping $2850 in trade. That does it for that buylist, but I’ve got one more sweet pickup from the week to show off.
This last one is a sealed set of Mirage Tournament Starter decks. Sealed product of this is age is not something that you see everyday and I relish every opportunity I get to handle these in person. Like many of the tournament starters of old, these came with 50 cards including a rare and included a sweet rulebook. You’re probably looking to pull a Lion’s Eye Diamond out of one of these, but Mirage also features a ton of sweet cards including Mystical, Worldly, and Enlightened Tutor.
That’s all I’ve got for you this week. Let me know in the comments what your favorite card from above was, or some stuff you’d like to see in the future. As always, you can follow me on Twitter @chroberry or Instagram @chroberrymtg if you want to see extra goodies and spoilers for next week’s article. Peace!