Hello Magic Librarians,
As I'm sure all of you are well-aware, back in the good old days cards could have sub-rarities: Common 4 was four times as common as Common 1. I recently discovered (and was surprised to find) that there is no accurate record of these rarities on the Internet! At least from the sources one would expect.
- The spoiler lists that Wizards posted to Usenet are inaccurate in some places [1] and incomplete in others [2]
- MagicCards.info reports to have this information, but it is also inaccurate in many instances. [3]
- Gatherer long ago contained this information, but at some point retroactively re-assigned rarities to do away with the repetition count (U1 became Rare, C1 occasionally became Uncommon). The original data likely comes from the spoiler lists, which are again, inaccurate.
- mtgjson, the new-ish comprehensive card database, never had repetition counts, and is sourced from Gatherer in most instances (so it also has some bad data.)
Not being able to trust the closest thing I had to a primary source, one must go to the only truly reliable source: the print sheets. I've been able to find a few from ebay auctions or random websites [4], but some of them still elude me. That's where I'm hoping you all can help. If you happen to own any of the following sheets, or have pictures of them, I'd very much appreciate that you post them here. It will put me on the way to verifying the information that I have and providing what information I don't.
I've managed to find sheets for Antiquities, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Legends, Beta (Uncommon only - Low Quality), and Chronicles (Uncommon only).
Here's what I still need (if they even exist!):
- Alpha - Rare (What was in Volcanic Island's place?)
- Alpha - Common (What was in CoP: Black's place?)
- Beta - Rare FOUND- Thanks!
- Beta - Common FOUND- Thanks!
- Chronicles - Common FOUND- Thanks!
- Arabian Nights - Uncommon
- Arabian Nights - Common
- Homelands - Common FOUND- Thanks!
- Homelands - Uncommon FOUND- Thanks!
- Alliances - Common FOUND- Thanks!
- Alliances - Uncommon FOUND- Thanks!
- Alliances - Rare FOUND- Thanks!
My goal is to submit this information to be included in mtgjson, which many sites now use as a backend card database, and is among the better sources of information available today. I will additionally submit fixes to magiccards.info; I tried once and never heard back/saw changes on the site, but that doesn't mean I won't try again :-).
Thanks in advance! -JZ
[1] Unholy Citadel and Seafarer's Quay are universally reported to be U2. But if the spoiler is to be believed, then the Legends uncommon sheet would have 123 cards - obviously wrong. Inspecting the sheet shows that these are in fact U1, just like the others in the cycle; everyone is wrong in this case. In Homelands, the setlist and spoiler (both published by Wizards) disagree for many cards.
[2] In Alliances, the same cards have multiple arts by the same artist, but different rarities and the setlist/spoiler do not point out which is which.
[3] ATQ Strip Mine's are all over the map and magiccards.info incorrectly reports the Tower as C1 and No Horizon as U1 (which is backwards: they are all C1 except Tower which is U1).
[4] Some on this site, but unfortunately the image links were gone
EDIT: Mark found sheets, and again.