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John Cox
11-06-2012, 09:32 PM
In the summer of 1994 I followed my friends into the world of magic the gathering. Finding cards was hard, there weren't a lot of shops near us us so we pretty much bought what we could. I was always told to buy revised when possible since those packs had lands in them and you needed those for decks. This led to me passing up on a lot of Arabian Nights packs for the juicy revised land laden packs.
Very quickly most of my friends moved on from magic but I had a few that were die-hards like me and eventually I wanted to play with good cards. One of my friends, Devon Nauss even had a mox ruby, so I had some catching up to do. I ended up getting a job mowing my parents lawn which did help me finance magic, we lived on 50 acres (an acre being the size of a football field) and I maintained 8 of them. I got paid 15 dollars a week and after 2 months had 2 sets of the revised dual lands (10 of each), I traded for some for 4 chronicles city of brass and worked some more for three mana drains, a moat and a gravity sphere (although I thing I used a homelands bulk rare for a while in place of the gravity sphere). -my deck was a Brian Weismann control deck of the time-.
Finally all I needed was power!

I went through my traders binder and talked to Leon Emit at the hairy tarantula we worked out a trade for a beat up timetwister. You have to realize that for something to be beat up in those days it was bad, sleeves weren't used much and if a card was in bad condition it wasn't sleeved because black backed sleeves weren't around and that meant the back was different than a good condition card (IE marked). I got a reputation in those days as a guy who would take cards no matter how beat they were. I could do this because I sleeved them regardless and my friends knew I wasn't going to cheat, they usually knew my topdecks better than I did any ways.
After some more work on my parents lawn and rigorous weeding of gardens I had a mox ruby (From John at 401 convenience). This was a big deal for me because when Devon got his it cost him something like $70 in trade I had to pay $120. Magic cards were going up in price by a lot and I considered trading in my cards for power or just selling and running. In any case I got a mox pearl a month later. Doing weeding, edging, mowing, and making firewood, -then it was back to school.

I didn't bring my cards to school, they were worth too much, instead I photocopied them to show to my friends (lame I know right?), I just valued them too heavily. The following spring I took my cards with me as I mowed the lawn and would take breaks to fondle them in a smeagul like way. One such day after coming inside from mowing I threw my jean jacket (that my deck lay inside) on the bannister and went up for a shower. However when I came downstairs neither my deck or jacket was to be found. I checked the closet and all over the place, finally I asked my mother "Oh I threw it in the wash. It was covered in grass" She said, not knowing my deck was in there.

So my entire magic collection had been eaten by the washing machine!

My mother was a good person, she knew the cards had value and were important to me, at the time the deck was worth at Scrye value around $900, she gave me $200 (all I asked for) and that was that. I hadn't had the courage to buy power in a long time, just because I was worried it would disappear on me.
But I'm happy to say I'm just bought my third piece of power since that day (all this year).
I somehow have more of an appreciation for MTG now than I did then, Having worked hard for it and lost it and got it back again is really an experience that's changed me. I only get cards that are in good condition. I don't buy bare minimum, I make sure I get something worth getting, and I invest and take of my cards.

aahz
11-16-2012, 02:46 AM
Thanks for the story. I love tales from the old days. It's probably just because although I was playing from 1994-1996, I always wished I'd gotten in earlier. Sadly, I entered after the era of ABU/AN/AQ/LG availability. Maybe that's why I love those old cards so much.