u/slushrusher

Wandering K town in Manhattan today and found this. So sick.

Found the charizard at a show this weekend and am really happy to have these three now. Gotta figure out how to display. But these are cards I’ve wanted for years. Cheers.

Milestone moment for the collection today: I found a super clean Gengar at my LCS, which finally finished Fossil, which finally finishes my continuous run through Jungle, Fossil, and Rocket. It’s all in one toploader binder and I’m loving how it looks. This took a pretty long time, mainly because I was particular on condition—the holos especially in here are as close to Mint as I could find (and that did cost an annoying amount lol). No plans to grade for now, because I love the binder look and PSA is a mess, but maybe someday I’ll do continuous certs or something nice like that.

Binder has a lot more space in it but this is all I had envisioned—maybe the CD Promos go in here too, or Southern Islands.

Next is finishing my Japanese Expansion set—I’m
almost done with the holos, and it’ll go in one binder next to my English shadowless base set. I’ve also got a gym binder for those two sets underway.

Thanks for looking! Always fun completing sets. Japanese vintage remains the peak of this hobby lol. Cheers all

So! I was looking for a “mint” raw copy of this card, or as close to it as I could eyeball of an eBay listing. Was willing to pay the premium for that raw copy. Then I saw this: a BGS 8 with higher sub grades, and the cost was the same as for the raw copies I was looking at. (I paid $30 for this; most NM raw copies are in that ballpark.)

My main question is: why was this so cheap? The card is beautiful; centering a touch off as noted in the sub grade but otherwise I’d have been thrilled to receive this card raw. And it’s already been certified by Beckett as an 8, which I feel like is about what you’re reasonably hoping to find raw in the wild for Japanese vintage, most of the time. Does Beckett calling something an 8 really not add any value to a vintage card in 2026? That feels skewed to me. If I cracked this and put it in my toploader binder like I was originally hoping to do, am I actually losing value? Feels like I would be, but the market is saying otherwise. Curious how people see graded value in Japanese vintage in this way.

To be clear: I’m thrilled here. Beautiful card at the price I was hoping to pay. I just feel like got it slabbed and called NM/M for free, if that makes sense.

Been playing this in Bo3 standard and am cruising pretty well with it at least so far (climbed to mythic), but would be curious if folks see an obvious card that belongs in here. Basic idea is a control deck that eventually takes over with landfall tokens from Felidar Retreat and Sapling Nursery. Lots of blue countermagic/card advantage, some white spot removal and a wipe for aggro emergencies, and green in here for ramp and, crucially, extra land drops that make more tokens. Sideboard is full of different counterspells, enchantment removal, different meta-geared hate cards etc.

Maybe the biggest selling point is that I'm crunching Izzet and Jeskai with it a good percentage of the time. can go long with them and can counter key threats of theirs.

Anyway, it's fun! I know it's not a tier-anything deck but it's interacting with the Arena metagame well, and it's been fun to play with Sapling Nursery, a pet card I think is quite strong. Let me know if you see an obvious way to improve it on its own terms! Cheers.