MTG player finds thousands of dollars worth of packs in grandpa’s “junk”

A Magic: The Gathering player has discovered a bunch of super rare packs from the game’s early days, including Revised & Unlimited sets.

A Reddit user claims to have discovered his grandpa has been sitting on thousands of dollars worth of Magic: The Gathering cards. The sealed packs go from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands.

In the “junk”, the MTG player appears to have found packs from the 1993 Unlimited set and 1994 Revised set. While it’s an astonishing find, some users are skeptical about it.

My grandpa let me go through his “junk” and let me have these “old cards” he never bothered to open. byu/Phantom-Z inpics

Magic collectors are quite clued up on this era of sets, due to the way they were printed. It’s fairly easy to “predict” what kind of pack you’ll get from just a few cards.

One user noticed that the rare card is at the front, which isn’t normal. Some starter decks from this time were subject to printing and packing errors, leaving them as “god packs”. These “god packs” are when the commons are filled with rares instead, as the printing error would persist throughout the deck.

However, after coming back to the comment, the same user said:

“So after doing some research it seems the location of the rare wasn’t always consistent in Unlimited starters, sometimes they were at the front, sometimes the back, sometimes near the instruction book. Early MTG had a lot of consistency issues.”

Another speculated that it’s very possible for someone’s grandpa to have unopened packs of old MTG cards:

“Considering his grandpa has no reason to have a resealed pack there is a high chance [it is] a “god pack”.”

Another skeptic also said:

“Assuming every element of this post is real, that is.”

The original poster did comment back, stating that they were dealing with the cards properly. They also added that they had been playing the game since 2000:

“I was never going to open them, and am not going to! They are being kept in a cool, dark, dry place. Many of you mentioned good options in terms of [sales], and I’m weighing my options.

“And to the guy who messaged me and said you wanted to “buy these so I can make my first deck”….lol.”

Magic: The Gathering launched in 1993. Following its Alpha and Beta sets, developers Wizards of the Coast put out Unlimited and Revised to fill the gaps around a lack of stock. While these packs aren’t worth as much as the original 1993 run, they still go for quite a bit of money.

However, while some of the cards inside the packs are worth a lot of money, the packs are worth much more sealed up. As most of the cards in these sets are junk, a cracked Revised booster pack can go from $250 (via TCGPlayer) to mere dollars.

Currently, TCGPlayer has nine listings for the Revised Starter Deck, with it ranging from $774.99 to $1699.99. As this particular deck is still fully sealed and in mostly good condition, it’d probably go for the higher end.

Meanwhile, the packs will go for around $250. Revised notably got rid of some powerful cards at the time, like Black Lotus and some of the Power Nine from the game. Hence, the prices on these packs will be naturally much lower than other classic sets.

The Unlimited starter deck, however, is where the real money might be. A nicely sealed, good condition deck and will fetch a fairly high price. However, this has been opened, but the deck itself is sealed. This will drive down the price.

According to Cardmarket, a European secondary market, if it were sealed it could fetch up to $29,000 or more. An eBay listing in America is also similarly priced.

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