Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #701: Collecting

Episode Date: January 3, 2020

In this podcast, I talk about an aspect of Magic that's core to trading card games and can influence how we design sets—collecting.

I'm pulling away from the sidewalk. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I took my kids to school today. Okay, so from time to time, I like to revisit old articles I've done. And this one actually is an oldie, back from April 2004. So this was an article called Collecting My Thoughts. And it talks about an aspect of magic that I don't discuss all that much. Collecting. I mean, Magic is a trading card game.

It is something, it's a collectible. And I don't really talk too much about collecting. So the point of this article was to talk a little bit about collecting and I did it from the vantage point of a collector. So it turns out that I have a little collecting thing that I do my own. They are called Minimates. They look kind of like little Lego figures, but I collect superhero Minimates. Mostly, I collect, like, Marvel. The company that did them for a while did some DC ones. DC's the company that does, like, Superman,

Batman, Wonder Woman. Marvel does, well, you guys probably know Marvel at this point. Spider-Man, Iron Man, you know, Captain America. Anyway, so I have been collecting these for a long time. In fact, in 2004, when I wrote this original article, I was collecting them. And now, 15 years later, I'm still collecting them. The big difference is I have a lot more of them than I had 15 years ago. Anyway, so today's podcast and the column I'm referencing is all about collecting. We're going to talk about collecting. So

let me start by making the following bold claim. I believe that everybody, all magic players, are collectors. And let me explain what I mean by that. So there's two type of collectors, what I call the completist and what I call the gatherer. So a completist is I have a goal for what I'm going to collect. Maybe I'm going to collect every card in a certain set. Maybe I'm going to collect every card in every set. Maybe I'm collecting a subset. Maybe I'm collecting all planeswalkers or all legendary creatures or all red cards or all copies of a certain card. What it means to be a completist collector is you have some goal and then you are trying to get everything that falls within the subset of what you're collecting.

Now, it doesn't mean you're collecting everything. I mean, you could be a completist that is a true completist. I want to own every magic card in existence. But there's not a lot of people doing that. That's a tall task. But I do believe that there's a lot of people who the joy of collecting is saying, okay, I collect a thing. I'm going to collect it. And then they try to get every one they can. Okay. A gatherer is somebody who says, I'm collecting, Okay, a gatherer is somebody who says, I'm collecting, but I'm not, I have no goal in mind. The act of collecting is what I enjoy. So, for example, my wife, Laura, loves pigs.

And so she has lots of stuffed pigs, lots of pig miniatures, just lots of different pigs. She collects pigs. But there's no, she's not a completist. It's not like, I will collect all the pig things. There's no way to do that. It's something that's broad enough that's like, I'm happy just having a lot of the thing. I don't need all of the thing. So for example,

let's say you're going to collect dragons. The completist dragon collector is like, I must own all the dragons. The gather collector is like, I like dragons all the dragons. The gatherer collector is like, I like dragons. I'm going to collect as many as I can, you know, where the completist is a little more about, oh, what am I missing? You know, the gatherer is just like, oh, look, another dragon. It's very much about, I'm enjoying the act of collecting them. I don't need, there's no goal

I have to reach. I just enjoy doing it. Where the completeness is a little more of, I enjoy having a goal and meeting the goal. Now, for example, let me talk a little bit about my collection. So, the reason I collect Minimates is I am a long-time fan of comics. I've been a comic reader since I was a kid. Love superheroes. And I wanted to collect something. I liked the idea of collecting. But I wanted something that didn't take up as much space.

And the thing I liked about the Minimates, which, once again, I think were inspired by the Lego figures. They're similar. Is that they're small. They're like, you know, two and a half to three inches. Maybe two and a half inches. They're pretty small. And the idea is I could

collect a lot of them and display them. So what happened is my dad does woodworking as a hobby. And so I asked him to make me some cabinets. So over the years, he's made me six cabinets. And they hang on my stairs in my house. And in the cabinets are all my mini mates. my house. And in the cabinets are all my mini-mates. Now, if you remember, my original article, interestingly, in the early days, I collected various miniatures. I collected these things called Kubricks for our Japan. I collected, DC for a while made a collectible little mini-figures of their own. I don't even remember their names anymore. But anyway, there used to be a time where I used to collect a bunch of different things. The mini-mate collection got big enough that I really focused on my mini-mate collection. So if you go look at my article, because it was very early on,

I was broadly collecting more things. You can see stuff like the Kubrick's and things. But now if you're in my house, those are gone. It's mini-mates. And just so you have some sense of, to give you some scope here, I have probably over a thousand mini mates. In fact, I might have over 2,000.

I have a lot of mini mates. So I have six giant cabinets filled to the gills. It's funny. When you see the original article, I take pictures of my collection and everything's spaced apart and there's several inches between each figure, and now they're crammed in as close as they can fit.

Enough that you can see who they are. But anyway, I am more of a completist than a gatherer. That's my nature. So, for example, I have tried to collect all the Minimates. Well, they actually make Minimates for... I collect... Here's what I

collect. I collect Superhero Minimates. So, I collect Marvel Minimates. I collect DC Minimates, the ones that exist. And every once in a while, they will make, like, one of my favorite comics is Invincible. They make Invincible Minimates. I have those. So, occasionally, when they make other Superhero Minimates that are from other places,

I will collect those as well. And, um, like recently for example, or not recently, but a couple years ago they made, like, Watchmen mini-mates. I got those. So, anyway, um, I am a completist in that I'm trying to own them all. As you will see, I'm missing a few, which, ah, but we'll get there.

Okay, so what I did is I made seven observations about things that I thought were true about collecting from my vantage point as a collector. So I talked about why I as a collector liked or didn't like something. And then I sort of talked about how does magic handle that? So it's sort of like me giving my sort of two cents from a collector standpoint,

and then me from the magic standpoint sort of saying how we do that. Okay, so observation number one. What makes collecting fun is the challenge. Okay, so one of the things that being a collector, so a little thing about mini-mates. So mini-mates, the place you most often find mini-mates is they sell them and put them in comic book stores and stuff. And they put out series of them. Usually a series has

four different boxes which each have two figures in them. So usually a series will have eight figures. Sometimes they'll do this thing where there'll be a ninth figure, they'll have a piece of the ninth figures in each of the four different boxes. So secretly if you buy all four boxes you get the ninth figure. And

the other thing that they do is sometimes they do what they call alternate looks. Like a very common thing, if they wear a mask, you can put the mask on them, but if you take the mask off, they have a face underneath so you can show them with the mask on or with the mask off. In the early days when I had more space,

I used to, whenever there was alternate versions, I would show both the alternate versions. As I've been condensing down having so many of them, I'm showing less of that. I'm showing more one version of things than two versions. But that is not the only place that you can buy them. There also is, originally they had exclusives at Toys R Us, but then American Toys R Us closed. Now Walgreens, for example, has the exclusives. So my family makes fun of me because whenever I'm anywhere near Walgreens,

I will go and check it out to see if I can find some new ones that I don't have. And when we're on vacation especially, when we're at Walgreens I've never been to before, I always stop by the Walgreens and they're like, again? But there is a great joy of tracking down and finding all the variants. It is fun.

I actually do enjoy it quite a bit. Now, you want to have some means and abilities to know what's out there. They, over the years, have done some exclusives that I've had to track down. Disney Store had an exclusive one time. San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic-Con. There's been exclusives in different places. And I actually enjoy having some exclusives. I like the idea of knowing where things are.

And a little bit of tracking down definitely is fun for me. So one of the things that I think is a truism that really, as a collector, I realized is part of the fun of collecting is if they make it too easy it's it's a little less fun at least for a completist I guess that you know having a little bit okay let me find the thing and track it down there's some fun to that that there is some fun that part of collecting things is not just the mere act of having them although I'll get to them there's some of that but it's also the the it's an activity, it's something you try to do. And I do enjoy sort of finding them.

And there's a great joy, you know, like when I'm in, checking out some Walgreens in some city that I haven't been to in a while, you know, some brand new store I've never been in before, and I find something that I hadn't found before. It's exciting, it's fun. So, you know, that definitely is something that I enjoy. And the fact that there's a little bit of effort on my part, I think is good.

And what that means from a magic standpoint is something that we've learned is for a while, we just made magic cards as was, and players kind of said, oh, well, it's not that hard. I mean, you know, I mean, obviously there's some difficulty. It's randomized. But what we discovered from people way back when was, well, it's not that hard to collect a set. If you open up a few boxes and do a little bit of trading, it's not that hard. So at some point, we decided to introduce what we call premium. You guys probably call it foil. And the idea is, OK, well, let's make a special version of the cards at a slightly higher rarity that are, you know, a little harder to come by. So now, if you want a real challenge, yes, you can collect the set.

That's a challenge. But now we're giving you another challenge, which is you can collect a foil version of the set. So one of the things that's important is there's many kind of collectors that want many different things. There's nothing wrong with having a lower bar that some people can meet. things. There's nothing wrong with having a lower bar that some people can meet. But the idea we like is, okay, if you want to just collect the normal set, okay, there's some difficulty there. For some people, hey, that's a lot of difficulty and they can have fun doing that. But we want to up our game a little bit, so we added in the premium cards. And now, you know, there's something extra. Okay. Then over the years, we have tried to do other things to add in some extra collecting.

Some of it is doing stuff like promo cards and things that show up in places that aren't in the booster packs. Judge promos are a very classic example. But there's different places. Sometimes Friday Night Magic, like Grand Prix's will have certain things. We'll do things where there's some participation stuff. And things in which you want a certain version of something, you have to sort of go find it at a certain place. And we have tried different things. So one of the things we tried was masterpieces, where we took cards and put them in the set that were old cards

that fit the theme of the set, were old cards that were kind of, that fit the theme of the set, but they were kind of splashy, and then did them in a special frame, and then made them, you know, a bit harder to get. And we had some mixed results from that. So the revamped version is what we now call Booster Fun. So the way Booster Fun works is that there are alternate versions in the set. Usually there are cards that are already in the set. Like, for example, Thorn of Eldraine.

We took all the adventure cards. We made a special what we call a showcase frame, which is like, it's got the ivy. It's made it look more storybook-y. It's got special art that's unique to it. And so there's the special showcase versions. We also have the borderless planeswalkers and the frames that go all the way to the end. And the borderless and the showcase show up in the draft pack.

The extended art shows up. Hold on one second, guys. The extended art shows up in the draft pack. The extended art shows up. Hold on one second, guys. The extended art shows up in, I'm sorry, that was just me being a safe driver. The extended art shows up in the collector booster as well as all the other versions that show up in the collector booster. So anyway, one of the things we've definitely done is we've added in other elements and other things to get. So A, if you're a completist, okay, here's more challenges for you. If you're a gatherer, here's just a fun thing that you can collect. You could just say, I like the showcase cards.

I'm going to collect as many of them as I can. I don't need to have all of them. I just like having them, and I'll collect as many as I can find. So the idea is we do want you to have fun collecting them, but we want there to be some challenge that part of what makes part of what makes um part of what makes collecting fun is is having some challenge and so we definitely we try hard to say hey we want to have a lot of things to collect so that the people who really enjoy the collecting, either on the more active completist level or the little more subtle gatherer level,

can enjoy that. And, you know, we want gathering to be a fun part of the experience. And so we definitely are trying to do that. Okay, observation number two. Hard is fun. Too hard is not. So let me tell you the tale of the golden Spider-Man. So I have collected mini-mades.

I still collect mini-mades. So one year at San Diego Comic-Con. So San Diego Comic-Con for many years had an exclusive at San Diego Comic-Con. Which is, if you were there, you would go to the booth. And multiple booths. I mean, the main people, the people that make them had it. And other people also would have it. Just while you're there, you have to go by and pick and multiple booths, I mean, the main people, the people that make them had it, and other people also would have it. It's just, while you're there, you have to go by and pick it up, and you could buy it.

And there were places that had it online, that if you couldn't actually make it to San Diego Comic-Con, there were online stores that carried it that you could get it from. Now, there was a window you had to get it, you know, you had to know it was happening, and you had to know to look for it, but if you looked for it within that window, you could find it. It wasn't an impossible thing to do or anything. But one year, they decided to do the gold Spider-Man. So what the gold Spider-Man was, they made a special Spider-Man mini-mate, all gold,

of which they made 50. Five zero. And then the way you would get it is you could show up at certain times at the booth. So you had to show up at a specific time. You would get a raffle ticket. And then one person, each of those times, one person would get raffled off and win it.

And I don't know, of the 50, I think they had maybe 10 raffles. I don't know where the other 40 went. But there was like maybe 10 raffles during that, during the event. And I went a couple of times, I got raffled it, but like what, there just was no, you know, it just was beyond. And as a completist who was like, oh, I collect every, I have every superhero mini-mate.

Uh, it was hard. It really, I mean, eventually I just decided to go, I'm not counting it. I'm just like mentally not counting it. It's not fair. They didn't put it out. You know. It didn't come out in a box that you could buy. It was its own special unique thing and I'm just not going to drive myself crazy. And I just sort of I ended up going okay I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist because as a completist it just drove me batty that it existed and for all intents and purposes it was nigh unattainable.

So one of the things that we have to keep in mind from a magic perspective is, while we want a challenge, we want something that is possible, that's doable. So one of the things, for example, is whenever we make a card that's a unique version of a card, we make sure that there's a certain number of them. So if we make a promo, for example, we make sure we print a certain number. I don't know exactly the number, but it's a number we've figured out. And something high enough that there's a realistic chance for people that want to collect them that there's enough authors that there's a chance to get them.

That if you print so few, like if there's so few and there's a lot of diehard magic collectors, what we don't want to do is make something so rare that the diehards get it and no one else ever has a chance to ever see it ever again. So we're very conscious when we make collectibles of getting some sense of how often we do them and how rare they are.

Another thing you'll notice that we tend to do is when we make things that are exceptionally rare, we tend to make them variant. So I'll get to that in a second. But one of the things that we're very conscious of is we don't want there to be a card you need for the game that is very important because it's an important part of the game and put that behind sort of a collecting wall, if you will.

That the things we want to make a challenge to collect are variants of things. It's different art or a different train treatment or something about it that is cool looking, but it's not functional in the sense of, look, if you get the normal one, you can play it in the game. We never want to hold the game hostage to the collecting. And that's very important. That we want to make sure that every card, you know, like if we're going to make a card for standard, we want to make sure that every standard legal card is something that's easily attainable.

I mean, within the realm of we can have rares and mythic rares, but those are, you can find those and get those. You can trade for them. You can, you know, there are means by which you can get them. And some of the promos that are a little harder to get, A, we make sure there's a minimum no matter what. And we also make sure that those are variants. So like, well, here's a really, really cool version of something,

but you don't need the cool version to play it. You know, the cool version is for style points and for collecting fun, but it's not for gameplay. We try not to let the collecting get in the way of the gameplay. Okay. Observation number four. We don't like having to buy the same thing twice.

So the thing here, one of the things they'll do in collectibles is I will, let's say I, you know, I want to get, oh look,

I bought a Minimate Electra. And then there's another, they could put out another box set, a box that means there's more than one of them. And they could give you the exact same thing again with some new stuff. But then, okay, I'm paying for the new stuff, but the old stuff I already have, you know.

And one of the things that I really, that they can do is, when they make mini-makes, for example, they make sculptures that go on them because they're little figures. But they also can paint them. And so one of the things that I like when they do is there's ways to make it a little bit different by just painting it differently. You don't have to change the pieces to it, which is more complex. And I always appreciate when they make me buy stuff, if the one I already have, if they just do something a little, just a little thing to make it uniquely different, I enjoy that. Now, Magic doesn't quite have this problem because it's a game.

And normally, for example, if I'm displaying my Minimates and I have a Minimate Electra in the black suit or whatever, I don't necessarily need two of the exact same thing. I'm displaying it. But in Magic, it's a game. So A, you can have multiple copies of a card in your deck, providing a playing format where that's allowed.

You might have multiple decks that use the card. You know, there is a use for having multiples. So while Magic does give you multiples, there's a lot of functionality to the multiples. The other thing that we do, because it's a commodity, meaning because there's a game that's played with them, because the cards have a secondary meaning to them, and I'll get to more of that in a commodity, meaning because there's a game that's played with them, because the cards have a secondary meaning to them, and I'll get to more of that in a second,

it does mean that they are easier to trade. So if you have things you want, I, for example, as a mini-mate collector, it's not like I have extra mini-mates and I have someone to easily trade my extra mini-mates for mini-mates I might not have. I mean, maybe somewhere there are mini-mate people who trade. I don't even know other people that collect mini-mates. It's a smaller hobby. So I don't do a lot of mini-mate trading, but Magic is a lot easier.

There's a much larger population. There's places we collect because we have tournaments and things where you know you can run into other Magic players. And because the game gives value to the cards beyond just as a collectible, there's also reasons why people want to trade with you. And that is something that we... I mean, some of these things require conscious effort on our part, like how much we print of something.

But other things sometimes are... The game sort of helps us. The fact that it's a collectible... The fact that the game has relevance and people want the cards for the game definitely solves some of the problems that people playing, you know, collecting a traditional collectible might not have.

Like my mini-mates, the real function, and I'll get to this, to me, is the display of them, of letting people see my collection. But that gives them a little less weight. It makes it a little hard to do stuff like trade, which magic cards can do. Okay. Observation number

five is too many variations get annoying. So this one, so here's the funny thing with this one, is when I made this one, my example that I gave was enough with the Spider-Mans, because at the time, I had like 15 Spider-Mans.

Let's flash forward 15 years later, and now I have like 80 Spider-Mans. And I have a lot of Iron Mans. One of the things that is true in the collectible market is, I, the die-hard Marvel fan, I'm really excited when they make a mini-made of a character that I don't have before. Not that I mind when they make variants of Spider-Man. I do like Spider-Man, but I have

a lot of Spider-Mans, especially when they make the 93rd blue and red, the normal Spider-Man. Spider-Man has a lot of different outfits he's worn over the years. It's kind of fun to get. It's Iron Spider or stuff like that. For those that know, like the normal Spider-Man. Like, Spider-Man has a lot of different outfits he's worn over the years. It's kind of fun to get, you know, it's Iron Spider or stuff like that. For those that know, that's

Secret Wars. They also used it in the Avengers movie. It's the Spider's outfit that Iron Man made for Peter Parker. Anyway, I, one of the things that definitely is a pet peeve is when I get things that are

very, very similar to what I already have. And so my comment there was on variations. I mean, one of the things that we have to be careful of, and this is something that we're conscious of, how many variations do you want of something? And like,

for example, right now for most, for most of the way we do the, fund is if it has a booster fund version, there's the normal version. There's the booster fund version. There's the normal premium version. There's the booster fund premium version. So there's four different versions. I'm not saying there won't ever be more than that because there can be.

But one of the things that we're conscious of is trying to not go crazy with how many variants we have um i will say magic over time there are definitely things that with time can get more variants if you look at something like counterspell or just something we make a lot of a card that over the years we've made a lot of um you and something that we know people play we there are certain cards, especially like the Basic Lands. There are a lot of variations of the Basic Lands. But we also know that Basic Lands are something that every deck needs and normally you have a bunch of them.

So having the variance gives people a lot of things. I think the lesson for me as a collector is and part of this is, be careful how many different, like, I enjoy, especially when things are, what I guess I most dislike about the variants is when they're, like, you have to look closely to tell they're variants.

You know, the idea, like, I have a Spider-Man in his normal blue and red suit, and this one, like, he's winking. I don't know, something where, like, oh, you gotta look really close to get the difference. Or, suit, and this one, like, he's winking. I don't know. Something where, like, oh, you got to look really close to get the difference. Or, you know, this is, like, this is him in the normal universe, and this is in the ultimate universe. In the ultimate universe, it looks really similar,

but it's not quite as intricate. And you're like, oh, you know. And so the variations that bug me at some are when they're, it's really, really hard to tell them apart. I love, for example, when it's a different Spider-Man, but like, it's a radically different Spider-Man. It's Cosmic Spider-Man. It is Noir Spider-Man. It's Spider-Gwen. I guess Spider-Gwen's a whole new character. But they're radically different costumes. I like that. So when you do variants, I much prefer that we do variants

where they're very different. And so one of the things I know that we're careful about is not to do too many variants that are too subtle, where you can sort of tell what the variant is. I mean, every once in a while, we can have some fun with stuff, but mostly I like when variants are crisp and clear, and you know what the variants are and what the differences is. Okay, number six. We like to know what we have to collect.

Okay, number six. We like to know what we have to collect. So one of the things that I enjoyed about Minimates is there's a fan community. And for example, one of the fans put together a thing called Minimate Database. And it's a database of all the Minimates. And so if I want to know if I'm missing something or something has come out, there's a place to go and look. And I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that there's a place to sort of have some sense of, you know, are there many mates that I'm missing or something? And the other thing sometimes is sometimes when I see something and I'm not quite sure where it's, sometimes I will see stuff

and I'm not quite sure what series it's from. And there's, the website has pictures so I can check things again and stuff and such. Anyway, one of the things that I think Magic, early in Magic's life, we were not so good about letting you know things and later we've gotten much better. One of the things we try to do now

is we want to sort of let you know what the variants are. Okay, you want to collect? Well, let me tell you what exists. And I know that Gatherer is our database. There are other databases out there that are very good as well. And that there's a lot of information. So if you, the player, want to know when and where and how to collect, that will help you with that. And one of the things I know, one of the wrinkles that happened with Booster Fun is we were introducing a pretty new system that was somewhat complex. We are

working on some ways to simplify it a little bit to make it easier to understand. That's one of the notes we got. I wrote a whole article about Booster Fun and one of the takeaways was, wow, that's dense. There's a lot of information there and we are looking at ways to make the collecting part of it a little more clean so you know what it is and what's where. And so there is a little bit of growing pains. Like I said, I think the response to Booster Fund has been very positive.

But one of the feedbacks we've gotten is people want a clear message of when and where and how they can get things. And we're working on how best to communicate stuff so people know what to expect where and know where to find things. And that is something we want to do. Okay. Observation number seven.

We want to know our stuff has value. So let me talk about my mini-mates a little bit. One of the things that means a lot to me is that the reason I enjoy my mini-mates, the reason they mean something to me, is I get to put them on display. So like I said, my dad built these cabinets, and I put them up.

So if you walk in my house, on my stairs, is my mini-mate cabins filled to the gills with mini-mates. And if you were, I mean, even if you have no idea who the characters are, it's pretty impressive looking. And if you know who the characters are, and most people have some knowledge of Marvel these days. It's kind of hard not to know something about Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe being so big.

And it's fun to kind of look through. And I especially enjoy when, like, for example, Aaron Forsythe, my boss, VP of Magic Design, he's a big Marvel fan. So when he comes to my house, he always likes looking to see what the new ones are. Because I have, I mean, not only do I have the major characters and a lot of variations of the major characters, I have minor characters. I have lots of villains. I have lots of, you know, side casts.

Like, one of the things about comics in general is that not only, you know, not only is there Spider-Man, but there's Aunt May. There is Mary Jane. There is J. Jonah Jameson. You know, there's a lot of people in his life. And over time, a lot of those characters also have ended up in Minimmades. I have a J. Jonah Jameson. I have Mary Jane. I have a Gwen Stacy. I have an Aunt May. In fact, I have numerous of some of those.

I have Gwen Stacy. I have Spider Gwen. You know, I have Aunt May. I have Aunt May from the movie where she's played by Marissa Tomei. They also do Marvel-mades that are tied to the movies that look like they look in the movies. So now I do have comic versions of Mini-Mate Festival it's a movie version, which is fun but anyway

one of the things that I really enjoy about my collection is that it's something I get to show off, that it's not just like I collect it and it sits locked away somewhere it's something I get to share, and every time people see it, they're like, wow! it really is, especially now that I have thousands of them, it's something I get to share. And every time people see it, they're like, wow! It really is, especially now that I have thousands of them,

it really is an impressive collection. And it's fun to show that off. And the value of that it's something that I can sort of, it's something that I can show off about. It's something that says something about me, but it's something that I can share with other people. And anyway, it's just a lot of fun. And every time someone walks in the house, especially someone for the first time, they're always like, what?

What is that? And they always think they're Legos. They're not, but they always think they're Legos. And I always go, oh, they're mini-mates. As for magic, like one of the things that is a real boon and one of the reasons that a trading card game is such an amazing thing is Richard took the idea of let's take trading cards that inherently are fun. People like trading cards. They like collecting them and trading them and stuff. And let's take games, a card game, something that people have traditionally done a lot, and merge those together. And one of the neat things about merging a trading card with a card game is it gives

a whole new meaning to your trading. Like one of the things about trading cards in general is growing up, I had trading cards. At one point in my life, I had baseball cards, I had movie cards. And like one of the things about them is usually, mostly what you do with them is you collect them. And you're just, I mean, you might be a collector. You might be a completist. You might be a gatherer. Usually it's just, like, well, I'm collecting them,

and I put them in a binder or something. I can show them off. But one of the neat things about Magic is because it's a game, they have a whole other functionality. They have a whole other, you know, they have value in a way that goes beyond the collecting. And that's something that I think is really nice, that I think you want your collectibles to mean something to the person that goes beyond that. And I mean, the reason that I collect

Minimates, you know, like I said, we're going on, I don't know when I wrote the, I don't know when they started versus who wrote the article, but when I wrote the article, they were definitely a few years old. So, I mean, they've been making them for 17, 18 years, something like that. And it's just still fun. It's still fun sort of hunting them down and finding them and collecting them and putting them up. That's just funny. I collect them, I'll get them, and then every once in a while, once I've collected enough, then I'll put them out. Because putting them out requires me reshuffling some stuff, and sometimes what happens as I get

more of them is some of the ones that I had duplicate versions of, like I have with the mask without the mask, I'm slowly condensing those down over time. And then also what it lets me do is, like, Spider-Man, one of my Spider-Mans, I can have him without his mask on, rather than having every Spider-Man without his mask on. I can pick one or two

to have, so you can see Peter Parker. I also have some that are just Peter Parker. But anyway, but, you know, it's fun. Like, I every, maybe once a month or once every other month, I sort of open up the latest batch and put them in. And then it's always fun

than walking by them and seeing the ones that I haven't seen for a while. Anyway, or seeing the ones that are new. But it has a lot of meaning. And likewise, one of the things about magic and that we understand is that one of the things about magic and then we understand

is that one of the cool things about collecting is that it's not just like you collect you then get to play with them and I know some collectors don't play with them

and some collectors are like it goes to my binder and I'm just collecting and that's fine if you want to collect for the sake of collecting I'm not going to stop you I think that's a fine thing

but I do enjoy that a lot of the way that a lot of people have fun with the cards we make with all the variants and stuff is putting them in their deck and having people see them as they play like one of the fun things about sort of you know

blinging out your deck is that your opponents get to see it and you get stories and oh let me see that and what's that oh you got this and I think that's kind of cool. I really enjoy that. And I think it's kind of neat that even once you have a deck, like one of the things about some of our formats, they're, you know, they don't rotate. They're not rotating. So something like Commander or Legacy or Modern, you know, your deck, I mean, your deck will

change over time because new cards will come up. But your deck is mostly your deck. I mean, your deck will change over time because new cards will come up, but your deck is mostly your deck. And so even people who have a deck where the fundamental deck isn't changing, the fact that we make new variants of things just gives them things to, even when there's nothing new to put in your deck, there's old things to track down, that there's always something that you can collect. And I think that's kind of fun. I think that there's, that no matter what level magic player you are, that there's always something that you can collect. That's the thing that I really enjoy where we've gotten

is that there's tiers, T-I-E-R-S, not like people crying. And that however much of a collector you want to be, whether you're a completist or a gatherer, whether you're someone that has a big goal in mind or a small goal in mind, whether you're someone that has a big goal in mind or a small goal in mind, whether you're somebody that's more a hardcore player or maybe something that's more casual that just likes collecting, that magic can speak to you in all those different levels.

Like one of the things I always talk about is how magic from a gameplay is so many different games for so many different people. I also think that magic is so many different collectibles for so many different people. That I've seen so many different people. I also think that magic is so many different collectibles for so many different people. That I've seen so many different people collect such very different things. And it's really fun to me that magic can be a collectible to lots of different people in lots of different ways. I've met some hardcore collectors that collect the minute stuff. People who collect the special cards I made at Duelist Invitationals,

you know, a decade and a half ago, or someone, I mean, somebody bought the World Championship, the 1996 World Championship, which is a unique card, there's only one of them, embedded in the trophy of the winner, Tom Champagne, and somebody bought the trophy from Tom Champagneagne because they wanted to own that card, and it's the only one in existence. Like, that's some hardcore collecting, right? I enjoy the fact that if you want to be a hardcore magic collector, that you can do that.

That you can really, really collect the most obscure of tiny things. Or, if I want to be somebody who just wants to get the latest dragon and collect dragons, that's an attainable thing that's a much easier task to do that somebody can do. And I've seen people collect all sorts of crazy things. You know, I know people that collect based on the artists, people collect based on names of cards. They have a theme they collect. You know, I, that's one of

the fun things about it is that collecting can be something that you can make your own and you can you can collect as little or as much as you want and collect whatever you want and that one of the things that we try so hard to do on our end is to make that fun for you and as somebody like i said who who is a collector who has my own collection somewhere else um i do appreciate all the time and energy that we put into making sure that magic can be fun and collectible. And I don't talk a lot about it, but it is something we think a lot about, something we spend a lot of time on, booster fun being the biggest recent example. But it is something that we're very consciously always working on.

And as somebody who talks about all the different parts of magic, this is not a part I talk as much about, but it is important. And so that's why I wanted to do today's podcast and why I wrote my article 15 years ago. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, but I am now at work. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.