The Magic Librarities

There is an auction up right now that claims:
"The cards where packed by CartaMundi in belgium with the instruction from wizards to add 20 lands to each starter...and as the duals are also titled land (German = Land) it happened that some starters had duals mixed in the standard land section ;-). As soon as you open one or two starters of a box you immediately know if you have one of these boxes, but as loong as it is still sealed this information is not revealed to you. "

Is there any truth to this claim?

l0qii wrote:There is an auction up right now that claims:
"The cards where packed by CartaMundi in belgium with the instruction from wizards to add 20 lands to each starter...and as the duals are also titled land (German = Land) it happened that some starters had duals mixed in the standard land section ;-). As soon as you open one or two starters of a box you immediately know if you have one of these boxes, but as loong as it is still sealed this information is not revealed to you. "

Is there any truth to this claim?

Maybe but I doubt it. Three things come to mind.

1) would German have been colated differently than French and Italian? Can't think of a reason why.

2) how many extra rare sheets would they have printed and then took out the duals and threw away the rest so they would have bunches of duals to drop into the "land" hopper for the colation.

3) The instructions would have been really odd for CM as lands were intentionally mixed into boosters and decks anyway--the only source of lands in those days. I don't remember 20 lands in any US revised starter decks--but I never opened any German ones.

The most logical thing I can think of is that this is an attmpt to hype up raising the price on some starter decks.

In Fact ,this is said to be true . I have no proof or Picture, but there were many rumors arround that time from many sources here in Germany, that these Godpacks exist. But still quite rare, not so often as you might think.
So Expect 3 Rares in the Rare Slot and many Basiclands everywhere else :)

mmgun wrote:In Fact ,this is said to be true . I have no proof or Picture, but there were many rumors arround that time from many sources here in Germany, that these Godpacks exist. But still quite rare, not so often as you might think.
So Expect 3 Rares in the Rare Slot and many Basiclands everywhere else :)

Third edition certainly did have it's "golden boxes/packs/etc" at least in English. There were reports of just about everything from complete box of rares to no rares at all.

In the above the instruction part to CM is what I question and the inclusion of duals with basic lands intentionally or in any way consistantly.

The only colation error I got was a box of homelands that the top half of the box did not have any uncommon cards in any of the boosters.... darn.

My theory would be that these starters are "normal" errors (you can call it random packaging errors or whatever you prefer) and the story about instructions for CM is just an explanation people came up with as a guess.
Everybody heard about "golden [whatever]"; I personally owned seven-rares Zendikar packs and a twenty-rares Lorwyn tournament pack.
Maybe these German starters were common enough (just few reports would be grounds to call this "common enough") that people thought there must be a reason for that, somebody invented this CM explanation and the gossip spread. Now it's impossible to track the source, but everybody heard from somebody that it's true...

I would believe it if they just said rares were mixed in with the land, but to have specifically dual lands makes no sense. Either they would have to print extra rares sheets and throw out everything else (as mystical_tutor tutor suggested) or print a special sheet of just duals? Neither of these is very likely.

I have my doubt. I don't believe that such a starter exists.
There were endless rumors about different 'God packs' that time. But no one has ever seen such a pack. And the existence of all God packs was never confirmed. Imagine, when you will find such a pack, you would publish this.
Never anyone published such information.
So it is a nice story, but not more. And, may be, a secret unfulfilled wish of every player that time. When I started with Magic end of 1994 I dreamed often of such packaging errors...

Mister Foilcard wrote:...And the existence of all God packs was never confirmed...

The only god packs that I have witnessed in person are Revised Edition starter decks. I personally opened with a friend 2 boxes of starter decks that each contained all rares. Unfortunately for me, the boxes were owned by my friend, so he kept all the rares. But it was fun to open! I do remember, at the time, saying stuff like "...ah man, not another Savannah, this is bogus!". We were quite displeased when we would get a bunch of duals in a deck, they were almost worthless to us then. We were pretty happy to open a Birds, Wrath or Disk however. Oh those were the days.

berkumps wrote:

Mister Foilcard wrote:...And the existence of all God packs was never confirmed...

The only god packs that I have witnessed in person are Revised Edition starter decks. I personally opened with a friend 2 boxes of starter decks that each contained all rares. Unfortunately for me, the boxes were owned by my friend, so he kept all the rares. But it was fun to open! I do remember, at the time, saying stuff like "...ah man, not another Savannah, this is bogus!". We were quite displeased when we would get a bunch of duals in a deck, they were almost worthless to us then. We were pretty happy to open a Birds, Wrath or Disk however. Oh those were the days.

As I posted previously in other Topics, I personally witnessed all-rare ENG Mirage starters sold and opened in Rome, Italy.

berkumps wrote:

Mister Foilcard wrote:...And the existence of all God packs was never confirmed...

The only god packs that I have witnessed in person are Revised Edition starter decks. I personally opened with a friend 2 boxes of starter decks that each contained all rares. Unfortunately for me, the boxes were owned by my friend, so he kept all the rares. But it was fun to open! I do remember, at the time, saying stuff like "...ah man, not another Savannah, this is bogus!". We were quite displeased when we would get a bunch of duals in a deck, they were almost worthless to us then. We were pretty happy to open a Birds, Wrath or Disk however. Oh those were the days.

My Brother-in-law came to where I was playing one Sat long ago and showed me what he had just opened which was a Revised booster with rares in the place of the rare and the three uncommons. We dived into the box and about half of it was that way. Yes, Wrath and 'gedden were hot but duals ALWAYS brought smiles too--now Kudzu, purelace, etc.... were easy to trade for (if you wanted them).

At my local shop about a year ago they got in 4 french 4th edition starters. They sold them for $10 each to 4 of us. I witnessed 2 starters opened that contained all rares in the common slots. The uncommons and regular rares were there as normal, just the uncommons were all rares. Obviously I was NOT one of the people to open the rare-ified starters. 4th edition did not have many money cards so it was not like revised but I was still pissed.

mystical_tutor wrote:...
There were reports of just about everything from complete box of rares to no rares at all.
...

I still have a booster left from a Booster box of revised that had No rare in it. we scanned all the packs and well we were jung and dumm and opend all (we I include pp) we opend them to complete our sets, I remeber giving two to collectors and I still ahve one laying arround.

There was a sideevent( sealed PTQ) at a European GP (in Brussels if i remember right) when Zendikar was new, and several players opened Booster packs with Rares ( and Mythics) only.
They were allowed to keep the cards ( but not to play with )
and got a new sealedpools for free.
Win-Win situation (;

mmgun wrote:There was a sideevent( sealed PTQ) at a European GP (in Brussels if i remember right) when Zendikar was new, and several players opened Booster packs with Rares ( and Mythics) only.
They were allowed to keep the cards ( but not to play with )
and got a new sealedpools for free.
Win-Win situation (;

I believe this was GP Paris 2009. I was judging there and I heard "interesting" booster packs were found during a PTQ. They gave out rest of the packs as extra compensation for judges.

I confirm GP Paris 2009, and in my packs there was 1 rare only (still a lot of fun mini-master-ing them all!). :(