The Magic Librarities

BenBleiweiss: Thank you for your offer to provide images, but this request has become obsolete in the meanwhile. Let us see what others may argue against your theory. I have notified Dan Bock about this discussion. Maybe he feels compelled to join. It would be wonderful if Dan could throw in his th...

However, I disagree with his assessment that there was no demand on these cards.  I have had multiple (in the dozens) of people asking about our supply of Alternate 4th Edition cards over the past few months, especially once I began re-stepping up my efforts to acquire these cards.  People knew I was building a supply for these cards, and they showed their interest in buying or trading for these cards from me.  In addition, literally everyone who had Alternate 4th Cards, for the past few months, has frozen their collections and gone into buying mode as a result of the Alternate 4th Birds going from $37 to $251 within a couple of weeks on E-Bay.  People weren’t sure if this was a fluke (a card mistaken for Summer Magic) or if there was a growing demand for Alternate 4th Cards.  I believe it to be the latter – we’ve already sold multiple Alternate 4th Edition cards since yesterday.  

As a note to Hammr7 – I do not believe there was any pilot release.  I believe that these cards were fully manufactured at the US Playing Card plant in Ohio and never left the company until they were slated for destruction pending the WOTC/USPC lawsuit.  The cards, all packed in Starter (Tournament) decks were then destroyed.  The ten case figure comes from the product that was saved somewhere along the lines of this process.  I also do not believe that we are trying to take any advantage of a vacuum in knowledge – this is why I’m having a completely open discussion here on Magic Rarities to determine whether my figures are correct or incorrect.  The longer that this discussion has gone on, the more I am convinced that my figure (60,000 surviving cards) is correct – no huge stockpiles of these cards has been found, we can only account for half the print run, I have people who have given me solid numbers (10 surviving cases), and there has been absolutely nothing to refute these numbers (or to even cast doubt on them) beyond “well, I think they’re a lot more common than thatâ€￾.   I’m putting forth concrete numbers to support my claims.  I would be more than happy if anyone could put forth concrete numbers to contradict my numbers, which would be entirely within the realm of possibility if they could account for anything beyond the 30,000 Alternate 4th Cards that nobody has their hands on.

Ralph:  When I get into work on Monday, I will happily scan you all six sides of an Alternate 4th Starter – I can’t do that from home!

Again, I want to thank everyone for the great discussion on this topic.  I completely understand the backlash that I’ve gotten on the Alternate 4th Edition subject, because I’ve basically said “everything you thought about Alternate 4th Edition is wrong and they are rarer and worth much more than everyone assumed.â€￾  I would never, ever have done this unless I believe my information and statistics were correct.  I do believe that only 10 Cases of Alternate 4th Edition survived destruction.  I look forward to a continuing discussion on this subject over the coming weeks on this board!

Ben Bleiweiss
General Manager, StarCityGames.com

Let’s assume for a minute that Dan Bock has 7,420 Alternate 4th Edition cards squirreled away (and I believe his collection is much smaller than that) – then after two years of alternate 4th Edition being made public, we would be able to account for 30,000 cards total.  This includes every major dealer in the country keeping their eyes open for these cards, multiple rarity members in the Midwest soaking the cards up from local collections, and people stumbling across surviving unopened product in stores and from distributors.  Think about this for a second:  If everyone has been scouring collections for two years now and have only come up with approximately 30,000 Alternate 4th Cards, wouldn’t that indicate a very low print run?  It would account for half the cards that we posit are still in existence.  How many more Alternate 4th Cards are out there?  Let’s go with my figures for a moment:  we can account for 30,000 cards.  We cannot account for another 30,000.  Beyond that, are there any more Alternate 4th Cards out there?  Think about the number 30,000.  Given how long it’s taken with people looking to find approximately the first half of the surviving print run, do you think that there are hundreds of thousands of other surviving Alternate 4th Cards beyond what we believe is the surviving print run?  If so, where are these cards?  We can’t account for half the cards that we think survived the initial destruction of the set following the WOTC/US Playing Card lawsuit.  Why would there be any reason to believe there are more than we claim?

Regarding the comments about pricing:  As I stated above, I believe our prices are low given what I believe is the print run of Alternate 4th Edition.  The reason I priced these cards at the level I did is because I truly expected this sort of resistance to a sudden price jump on Alternate 4th Cards.  I’ve been acquiring Alternate 4th Cards from a few sources over the past year and a half, and people have not valued these cards at much beyond the regular prices of 4th Edition cards.  I’ve put a lot of effort into trying to figure out the print run (both initial and surviving), into tracking the cards down, and into placing value into these cards.  Whenever I offered “Xâ€￾ for Alternate 4th Cards to those who traded me Alternate 4th Cards, they either said yes or no.  I only had one person come back with a counteroffer, and nobody had put any concrete value on Alternate 4th Cards.  I do not understand that opposition to the prices I have set on the cards – in fact, I applaud Van8888’s post, which I believe to be very sensible.  We did jump the market on Alternate 4th Cards drastically.  If the demand does not match our prices, then the market will adjust.  

Ralph:  We’ve already done away with the summer label on alternate 4th – we’re sorry for any confusion that may have caused.  We had thought that it was a common practice to refer to it as both summer and alternate 4th, due to posts on both the Rarities message board and in E-bay auc...

There is also no question that the initial supply was limited to the midwest and slowly radiated out from there.  Hence Dan Bock, in all his midwesterness (cheese head dontcha know), was the first to notice it. So, while the marketing might be aggressive, it's not way over the top from what th...

I don't see why these numbers are unbelievable.  These cards literally have never surfaced outside of the American Midwest, no sealed product has ever been discovered in a large quantity, and that which has been discovered has been only in the American midwest - it literally has not shown up an...

Our estimated numbers came from the following figures: However, an estimated ten cases of Alternate "Summer" Fourth Edition starter displays are believed to have survived. * Estimated number of each Alternate "Summer" Fourth Edition rare in existence: 25 * Estimated number of each Alternate "Summer"...

Boys & girls (okay, boys) this article is unbelievable bullshit. For those of you living anywhere hours away from me you may be having a difficult time finding these cards, but if those figures are correct I've seen about 1/3 of all the Alt. 4th cards in existance. I even just 'happened' upon a sta...

Mep... $10 is a lot for it. Most medallions have this error. At my local cardstore, the medallions are all either $4 or $5 a piece, yes the charlie browns' sold out awhile ago. But still... they aren't "rare". This is likely false.  We've gotten in hundreds of Sapphire Medallions over the past...