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This is a reply/reaction to an article by Noah Winston recently published on Quietspeculation. In his article, Mr. Winston adresses the subject of altered art Magic cards, which is a very interesting field from a trader’s point of view. If you don’t believe me, check out these completed ebay listings. Yes this is crazy.


However, instead of delving into the subject, Mr. Winston just writes about what kind of alterations he prefers (and I guess he still misses something there). A friend of mine has been altering cards for quite some time (you may know him, he signs as “bigup”), and he told me that by far the most difficult kind of alteration is actually the “full art” alteration as you have to meticulously mix and choose your colors so that the exactly match the original artwork’s. So I guess instead of calling it “basic altering”, one should point out that this is the most difficult alteration technique of all.


But let’s consider the economic aspect of altered cards. How much value can you “gain” when altering cards? Which cards and what kind of alterations are in demand? Could you consider investing in a “altered cards only” binder?


The most critical question is the value gain of altered cards, as it depends on so many factors like whether the alteration is well done, whether it’s unique (or “just another” Spiderman FoW), and whether the card is acutally played. I will only consider cards that are sought after by players, because we all know that the occasional collector will pay irrational prices on a card of his choice.


So the big question is “Why do players alter cards?”, which is pretty close to “Who are the players that want altered cards”. Of course, the standard PTQ grinder couldn’t care less about altered cards, he’s using the cards as a means to win a tournament and has exactly zero attachment to them. No, the typical candidates for altered cards are Eternal players: Vintage, Legacy and to a lesser extent EDH. Vintage players and Legacy player often play the same deck for several years, so they don’t need to buy new cards, so they have to find other way to spend money on Magic. They will try to “pimp” their deck by buying foreign cards (Japanese rulez!), Foils or altered cards. So, it’s in the Vintage and Legacy staples that you should look out for those alterations.


It is therefore no coincidence, that the most-time-ever-altered card is Force of Will, *the* format-defining card in Vintage & Legacy. Force of Will by itself is quite an expensive card (40€), and good alterations can sell at over 100€ (check out this monster, altered by bigup, signed in gold by Terese Nielsen).


By altering a card, the artist creates an added value that the buyer has to pay for. This value depends of course on the time the artist has spent on the card. The total price of the altered card would therefore be standard card price + alteration price. Let’s assume our artist would need the same time to alter a either a Force of Will or a Brainstorm and would value his work at 30€. The Force would be 40+30 = 70€ whereas the Brainstorm would be 1+30=31€. And this is where consumer behaviour comes into play. Paying 70€ for a Force of Will seems reasonable, as it’s like twice the basic price and that’s okay for a unique piece of art. But paying 30€ for a Brainstorm? C’mon, it’s a freaking common! You get the picture, it’s hard to get your time worth on an altered Brainstorm, although it’s tough work.


The same goes for cards like Ponder or a “simple” Forest.


So, the quick conclusion of these observations could be that the higher the card’s base value, the better the chances to sell an altered card. However, although the “pimp drive”, as we might call it, applies to all cards, not all pimp methods are available / sought after for all cards. An extreme example is the Power 9. Of course there are neither Japanese nor Foil Power 9, as these cards don’t exist, but you will have a very hard time looking for altered art Power 9. Or Workshops / Libraries / Mana Drains, although these are the backbone of Vintage, the pimp format. How come? It’s due to the very high basic card values. I mean, if you had a card that’s worth several hundreds of euros, would you ship your cards to an unknown guy on the net to have him alter the cards? Would you buy altered art Power, risking that it be a counterfeit? I guess not. That’s why we will only see altered Power if it’s altered by Dan Frazier himself.


Note: The same is true for signed cards. I would advise you to not have your 100+€ cards signed, if you’re planning to resell them.


But except for the 100+€ cards, just any Vintage card will do, like this marvelous Mana Vault.


So where does this leave us? Let’s sum up:

• Altered art cards are for the Eternal market only.
• Extended art alterations tend to add the biggest value.
• Any card except for Power/Workshop/Library will be in demand.
• The biggest demand will be for cross-format multi-deck all-stars like
  
• Force of Will
• Brainstorm
• Polluted Delta
• Flooded Strand
• Duress
• Dark Ritual

Still, the overall demand for altered cards is very low, so I guess stocking up your binder with alterations doesn’t make too much sense. Furthermore, alterations are often done on demand, i.e. players will contact the artist and define what kind of alteration they’ll like to have. So I guess the only reliable way to start making money with altered cards is to team up with an artist and build up an online-shop for personal on-demand alterations. If you’re looking to fill up your binder, regular legacy staples should be the easier and safer choice.


Thanks for reading,


Matthias




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