How many Duals do exist?

[Lim-Dul]

Due to the reserved list the total number of duals is limited...there is a certain amount of dual land on this earth..and this number is not goint to change..some might even get lost or become unplayable..so the number is decresing on a very low rate..


what is the total number of dual in the world? how many have been printed/sold?

what is the distribution between the different kinds of duals (Plateau, Taiga...)?


how many peolpe are able to own a 40dual-set?

i am sorry if this question is allready answered somewhere...

Proper capitalization, punctuation and grammar are required on these boards. Please use them when posting in the future. -zilla

[swoop]

over 9000

[Lim-Dul]

of each typ?

this means ONLY 2250 playset exist...wow..that is not much...

do you know anything about the distribution, cause some (i think Volcanic island) came later than the others

thanks..

Proper capitalization, punctuation and grammar are required on these boards. Please use them when posting in the future. -zilla

[plus_ten]

over 9000

What?! Nine thousand?! There's no way that could be right!!

[lordofthepit]

At least 300,000 of each, not including foreign copies. Some may be lost or destroyed though.

Edit: "Over 9000" is a bad meme that has been running for years now. Those of you who had this go over your head are fortunate never to have been exposed to it.

[SpikeyMikey]

It's posted up at Crystalkeep. It's a discussion we've had before, but honestly, it's a meaningless number. If half of the original duals have survived to today, I'd be shocked. People tend to underestimate how much bad shit happens every day. However, I would guess that there are more duals out there at this moment than there were in 1995. Counterfeiters will go to great lengths to create and pass $20 bills. Dual lands are significantly easier to fake and more valuable. So the real answer is that nobody has the slightest clue. Not enough, that's for damn sure.

[dontbiteitholmes]

At least 300,000 of each, not including foreign copies. Some may be lost or destroyed though.

Edit: "Over 9000" is a bad meme that has been running for years now. Those of you who had this go over your head are fortunate never to have been exposed to it.
I'd estimate at least 1/3 of all dual lands are either lost or damaged beyond use (like holes/water damage/grinded in concrete/ect.) and I'd say this is a pretty conservative estimate.

I mean you have to consider how many have been accidentally thrown away by mom's/wives, lost in fires, caught in flooded basements, left at the park by kids back in the day, this is a big one left in attics where they get moldy and start to disintegrate, another big one lost during shipping, kept as collectibles never to be sold and then thrown away as junk by relatives after passing, ect. This kind of stuff has been happening for almost 20 years. It was probably worst for Alpha/Beta/Unlimited when the duals weren't as well known to be worth cheddar which is why Revised duals seem to outnumber those sets 100 to 1. It still happens to. Sad to say that I've had a Tropical Island get lost during shipping (luckily I had it insured), 2 more Trops got tossed by mom dukes when I went off to college, and 2 Savannahs met a bitter end by a friends little cousin under my watch. I've also heard several people tell me they recently lost large amounts of dual lands to flooded basements which is a common problem in this part of the US.

Fact is duals are a threatened species. There will be less tomorrow then there are today and they aren't making anymore.

The estimate I hear tossed around was 500 million cards for Revised, 40 million for UL (this confirmed by WotC), then about 10 million for A&B combined, then who knows for foreign. so divide those #s accordingly and I'm gonna guess double Revised for all the foreign editions put together and that's about your # of originals. Still not all of the originals have been opened of course, there are still plenty of Revised packs floating around but most of the unboxed packs have been searched and I wouldn't count on getting a dual land out of an unopened loose pack.

[luckme10]

All I ever seem to hear about is the loose old revised packs lying around. You think there would be more demand for starter pack boxes considering they were unsearchable and everything.


Here's the meme reference. I suppose it's only befitting that a tv show released in the late 80s which somehow managed to stretch poor a story line over 500 episodes would still be recognized today as a crappy pop culture punchline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiMHTK15Pik

[sdematt]

There's about 3000-4000 total of each Beta/Alpha dual in the world, but for the others, no clue.

-Matt

[Olesch]

You mean estimated as of today?


There's about 3000-4000 total of each Beta/Alpha dual in the world, but for the others, no clue.

-Matt

[Malakai]

I am glad that we've established that nobody here knows what they're talking about.

[dontbiteitholmes]

I am glad that we've established that nobody here knows what they're talking about.

Please enlighten us then...

[sdematt]

No, that was at printing.

-Matt

[The Wolf]

However, I would guess that there are more duals out there at this moment than there were in 1995. Counterfeiters will go to great lengths to create and pass $20 bills. Dual lands are significantly easier to fake and more valuable. So the real answer is that nobody has the slightest clue. Not enough, that's for damn sure.

See this. People in this community love to talk about fake power and then pretend like there are no other fake cards running around. Ive seen some pretty amazing cards that my friends printed up just as proxies. If those morons can do it, then 1/2 my duals were probable printed in some guys basement.

[dontbiteitholmes]

See this. People in this community love to talk about fake power and then pretend like there are no other fake cards running around. Ive seen some pretty amazing cards that my friends printed up just as proxies. If those morons can do it, then 1/2 my duals were probable printed in some guys basement.

Ummm, even fake power about 2/3 of the time you can tell something is off the second you get it in your hands, then things quickly fall apart under examination. Then 99% of the time you can easily tell by doing 2-3 simple tests (none of which involve bending the card or putting water on it unless you are an idiot). Your friend's proxies may look good to you in a sleeve, but you probably tell they are fake from holding them and looking at them closely.

To have fake cards that are almost impossible to detect you would basically need to be a professional printer.

[dahcmai]

And of course plenty of people thought of that and decided it was worth it to spend the money to print free money. There's plenty of fakes out there that I can't tell the difference despite knowing it's a fake and I've been dealing with cards for a really long time. There's quite a few very, very convincing fakes.

[Stinky-Dinkins]

To have fake cards that are almost impossible to detect you would basically need to be a professional printer.

More than that, you'd need Cartamundi's specific printers and manufacturing processes.

[SpikeyMikey]

More than that, you'd need Cartamundi's specific printers and manufacturing processes.

Or, you know, an actual Magic card. Eraser/acetone the front off, print whatever card front you want on it. Or hell, just take a nice Beta swamp and make an altered Underground Sea out of it. Full-card alters are not uncommon and people will even pay premium for them. And I have to assume there are a lot of people out there more imaginative than I am. I used to make proxies by copying my power at Kinkos, but the cards were definitely thicker. You start playing with a 50 proxy deck and it stacks noticeably higher. So I started sanding the fronts of the proxy cards down and then using glue sticks to attach the paper to the front. I imagine if you wanted to shell out for high end supplies on the paper and glue, you could probably do a passable job that way too.

But I think erasing the front of the card and reprinting it would be the most cost-effective. It would take a few runs to get it positioned right, but once you got that down, you could print off a couple dozen copies in the time it takes to finish your morning coffee. It's not like we're still working with dot-matrix printers anymore. At $70+ a card, you could easily make around 5 figures a week. 20 Trops a day at $280 a playset is 20*70*7=$9800/wk. You'd have to make sure you distributed them through enough different chains that you didn't raise suspicion (eBay, direct sales to internet vendors, LGS, major tournaments, etc.) but with that kind of cash behind it, it's a pretty high return process. If you split it out over the dual lands, you're talking ~180 playsets a year of each dual which isn't enough to increase the pool a noticeable amount. But if you figure an average price of $55/dual (given that Plateaus and Bayous and whatnot are worth less and Seas and Trops are worth significantly more) that's $400,000/yr. that you're making for maybe 2-3 hours of work a day. Compare that to the $54,000 I made last year working 2 jobs and averaging ~60-65 hours a week...

Edit: Oh, and the amount of each transaction is small enough that it's not like you'd have to report it on your taxes. So really, as long as you're careful about where you stash the money and you don't go out buying big ticket items that might tip the IRS off, you can figure that's the same as roughly $530,000 annually if you were paying taxes. That's kind of depressing actually. I could make 10 times as much money with maybe 1/10th of the effort I put in now.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Or, you know, an actual Magic card. Eraser/acetone the front off, print whatever card front you want on it. Or hell, just take a nice Beta swamp and make an altered Underground Sea out of it. Full-card alters are not uncommon and people will even pay premium for them. And I have to assume there are a lot of people out there more imaginative than I am. I used to make proxies by copying my power at Kinkos, but the cards were definitely thicker. You start playing with a 50 proxy deck and it stacks noticeably higher. So I started sanding the fronts of the proxy cards down and then using glue sticks to attach the paper to the front. I imagine if you wanted to shell out for high end supplies on the paper and glue, you could probably do a passable job that way too.

But I think erasing the front of the card and reprinting it would be the most cost-effective. It would take a few runs to get it positioned right, but once you got that down, you could print off a couple dozen copies in the time it takes to finish your morning coffee. It's not like we're still working with dot-matrix printers anymore. At $70+ a card, you could easily make around 5 figures a week. 20 Trops a day at $280 a playset is 20*70*7=$9800/wk. You'd have to make sure you distributed them through enough different chains that you didn't raise suspicion (eBay, direct sales to internet vendors, LGS, major tournaments, etc.) but with that kind of cash behind it, it's a pretty high return process. If you split it out over the dual lands, you're talking ~180 playsets a year of each dual which isn't enough to increase the pool a noticeable amount. But if you figure an average price of $55/dual (given that Plateaus and Bayous and whatnot are worth less and Seas and Trops are worth significantly more) that's $400,000/yr. that you're making for maybe 2-3 hours of work a day. Compare that to the $54,000 I made last year working 2 jobs and averaging ~60-65 hours a week...

Edit: Oh, and the amount of each transaction is small enough that it's not like you'd have to report it on your taxes. So really, as long as you're careful about where you stash the money and you don't go out buying big ticket items that might tip the IRS off, you can figure that's the same as roughly $530,000 annually if you were paying taxes. That's kind of depressing actually. I could make 10 times as much money with maybe 1/10th of the effort I put in now.

If it were that easy everyone would do it. First off try erasing the front of a Magic card and running it through your printer and let me know how that works out. Second, I've acetoned many cards doing alters, it does more than remove the ink, it removes the top layer of the card. Good luck getting that "semi-gloss" back. Anyone who knows anything about Magic cards would spot a fake like that in 2 seconds. Now you want to talk about running hundreds of fakes a week for cash and not telling the IRS? ROFL, this idea just gets worse and worse. Good luck passing 100 fake duals unless they are spot on perfect. After a while people start to catch on, next thing you know you are in prison for 100 counts of mail fraud. That pretty much means you'll be giving any money you made back to the state to pay for your jail sentence.

Most of the real attempts at running fake power seem to come from foreign countries or have very small runs for a reason. The stakes are high. You may think selling fake collectibles for cash wouldn't be a big deal, but the FBI would probably disagree if you were clearing thousands of dollars a week. Hell I used to collect arcade games and there was this one guy in Florida who would make fake SNK games. Remember the big red arcade machine with multiple games, they all come on a cartridge about the size of a VHS tape that plugs into the SNK arcade machine like an old SNES game. Well this guy would buy the SNK games that were ultra common for around $5-10 and take off the ROM chips and put on custom burned chips from a +$100 game then slap on a fake label and ship them out. Sure SNK no longer sold these games retail and the only difference between his version and the official version is a slightly faker label and non-factory ROMs. If you were playing the game you'd have no idea. Literally the only way to tell the difference was to crack open the cart (you have to unscrew it and break a seal) and compare the serial number on the ROM chips to a database of official SNK serial numbers known to be on legit carts. So what's the harm he thought... until the FBI raided his house. He probably sold less than 200 of these BTW, you can imagine the demand for slightly collectible out of print mid-late 90's arcade games that require an arcade machine to play.

Not to mention people on Ebay will pay for "proxy" cards and Ebay doesn't seem to give 2 shits so why would anyone bother to go through the trouble of printing realistic cards and pass them as real when one wrong move and the FBI knocks down your door. If you want to print money make a "proxy" cube, you could probably get a mint on Ebay for it because people are stupid. Well stupid people are stupid. If you are pasting fake fronts onto cards you aren't going to fool too many people. Like I've said before, very few fake cards can pass a flashlight test and close visual inspection.