General Forum

I FINALLY found my stack of Magic The Gathering cards. I knew these were from the mid-90's and now I have them in-hand for proof. BUT, I have no idea exactly what I actually have, so I can't list them here yet. My stack was given to me back then and appears to be a starter set b/c it has 60 cards. But the cards don't all seem to match. Most of the cards have a 1996 copyright date and there is a small booklet that says Fifth Edition (which should be 1997?). But there are 8 cards that don't match the copyrights of the others. One card is a Mountain card with a white border and no copyright at all. Five of my cards have a 1995 copyright (1 black border and 4 white borders) and 2 more cards have a 1997 copyright (both white borders and Mountains).

Can someone with extensive knowledge of the game and cards PM me to help me figure out what exactly I have in my possession? Any help would be appreciated.

There used to be a real cool website devoted to MTG some 10 years ago or whenever they started that mess (20 years ago?)

I found this site: maybe it will help: http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx

This site defines the symbols:  https://www.cardkingdom.com/catalog/magic_the_gathering/by_az

This site has the symbolas well as every checklist: https://deckbox.org/editions

Without these, I would have been lost when I wasscanning my sons collection.

If you still have any questions on what you have after checking out the links, let me know.

The trickiest can telling the difference between white border sets with no set symbol - Unlimited, Revised (3rd edition), 4th edition and 5th edition.

Unlimited - no copyright line, darked ink, inside border is double beveled

Revised (3rd Edition) - no copyright line, lighter ink, inside border is single beveled

4th Edition - 1995 copyright line

5th Edition - 1997 copyright line

If you are lucky enough to have a black border card without a set symbol, it is likely an Alpha or Beta card (the first two sets of Magic cards released). Alpha cards have very round corners whereas Beta are "normal" or similar to the rest of the cards printed after that.

I hope that helps.

Best guess is that the black border Mountain with the 1995 copyright is an Ice Age mountain.

3 versions from Ice Age and probably one of these.

http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/105286/cid/7303092/1995-Magic-the-Gathering-Ice-Age-340-Mountain?PageIndex=1

http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/105286/cid/7303093/1995-Magic-the-Gathering-Ice-Age-341-Mountain?PageIndex=1

http://www.tradingcarddb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/105286/cid/7303094/1995-Magic-the-Gathering-Ice-Age-342-Mountain?PageIndex=1

If you want any help identifying any MTG cards at all, one quick scan (no need to crop nicely) and I can get you an answer right away. I've played the game and collected the cards for over 20+ years.

I've been putting off sorting my MTG cards mainly because I can't remember what set they came from.  The links in this post will be very helpful.  Thank you all!

Thanks for the replies guys. I think I have enough info to work with now. I still haven't gotten around to it yet, but I will very soon.

The reason that I said I FINALLY found them is pretty funny. My nephew has gotten into the game and back at Christmas he got some as a present. We got to talking about it and I told him I had a stack from my late-teenage years. We looked for about an hour in every place I could possibly think of looking to find them with no luck.

Then last Saturday night, I was clearing off some room on a shelf for the new albums recently added to my STL Cardinals collection. Most of that space was taken up with large bubble mailers (used). When I pulled those off the shelf, my old Dungeons & Dragons books and folders fell over. Sitting there in a little nook between the outside of the shelving and a D&D book was the stack of MTG cards! Seems completely logical NOW that I would have put them there. I just never thought to look there. They've been sitting there for no more than 5 years b/c I haven't had those shelves longer than that.