After months of writing about Magic cards week in and week out, I have something a little different to discuss this week. The topic came to mind this afternoon when I was picking through a collection my cohort Jason Alt @JasonEAlt on Twitter) and I acquired and we found one of the old Reaper metal life counters from Scrye. So few people know the value of items like this and dismiss them when trying to value collections, which can be very profitable for you when you are combing for old cards. In this market, it can be a little harder to move such items considering that the buyers are limited on items like that, but at the same time, you can usually acquire these items for practically nothing, so even waiting a few weeks to be paid for them is all right. This week, I am going to talk about the little-known gems of Magic’s older days—everything from play mats to life counters, deck boxes, and more!

Life Counters

Since I have already touched on the subject of the life counter, let us start there this week as we take a journey through Magic’s past. You can find the Scrye life counters on eBay quite frequently, coming in different colors and price ranges based on rarity and demand. Although these are some of the higher-end items in terms of life counters, they are certainly not the only ones worth money. Some of the older cardboard or plastic life counters can hold value if they are from a particular set or have a desired artwork. I don’t have a particular list of the high-end items I am referring to, as I typically just research each one individually as I bring them in, but if you come across one, don’t be afraid to pick it up and take a chance if the price is low enough. In the modern age, it is easy to pull up your smart phone and do a quick search on eBay or Google to see what you have on your hands, but more often than not, it doesn’t hurt to throw a few dollars to chance—you may just be surprised what kind of treasures you may find.

Along with the abundance of metal and plastic life counters, it is also important to remember that spin-down life counters—also known as sequential twenty-sided dice—have some value to them. At worst, Strikezone, along with some other retailers, will take them at $1 or $2 each, meaning if a collection has ten or fifteen of them, it is the equivalent of finding a Badlands among the bulk. Although they are all worth something, some have even greater value given their rarity and can demand upwards of $10 to $20 each, so it is not a bad idea to do some quick research on these as well before you just unload them all. Unfortunately, I can’t locate a good buy list for the spin-down life counters, but it is easy enough to plug individual ones into a search engine and find exactly what you have gotten your hands on!

Play Mats

Moving away from life counters and into the realm of play mats, we can see that not only do they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, but they also come with a wide range of price tags. As of late, we have seen firsthand examples of this as the community watched the squirrel play mat soar over $100 in just a matter of hours since there was such a limited supply coupled with a huge demand for one of Magic’s most popular tribes in play-mat form. Even this past weekend in Columbus, I watched the play mat start at $20 in the early afternoon Friday and skyrocket to almost $100 by the end of the day Saturday.

Some people will pay whatever it takes to get their hands on Magic paraphernalia, so just keep that in mind while you are sorting through collections. Just like cards, the condition on these items is the key to their values, so be sure to factor that in when you are looking to pick them up—this market is very selective. You may get something for a steal, but unless you can flip it, your money was wasted no matter how little you spent.

It is also important to remember the old-school play mats from Magic’s early days. Some of these mats—if still sealed—can go for well over a few hundred dollars each in the right market. There are a few manufacturers, but the most common ones I have seen are by Spellground, and even open can fetch upwards of $50 in the right condition. These move very easily from my experience and vary enough in design that some people will be seeking multiples, making the market that much more willing to soak up any extra copies by the financial community.

Recently, Jason and I found a collection that contained one of these mats opened, and other than the few that have gone on eBay over the past few years, there is very little information on this particular mat. I have found one in worse condition online for $500, but other than that, I have not found much information on the rare two player mats. Considering we paid $100 for a collection that contained the mat as well as one of the previously mentioned Scrye life counters and a stack of cards including a couple of Chain Lightnings, I would say that no matter what we do, it would be hard to come out behind. Without the mat and life counter, this collection would have probably broken us even, so knowing there is money in those types of things can really allow you to evaluate some collections in a different light and possibly have you picking some up that you may have passed on before.

Other Magical Things

I could go on for a couple of articles about all of the Magical items that are worth a pretty penny on eBay, but considering most of the information is research-based anyway, I just want to touch on a few other items that are worth looking out for before I leave you for the week.

Oversized cards were printed in various forms over the years as promotional ways to both introduce new players to the game and get existing players excited about the upcoming sets. Even some of the recent cards such as Wurmcoil Engine can fetch $5 to $10, which isn’t too shabby considering you got them for free in the Magic Player Reward mailings Wizards used to do. Before those, however, in the early days of Magic, cards were regularly oversized and can now fetch a fairly large sum of money if you can find the right buyer. Some people collect them for nostalgic value, while others try to build entire gimmick decks with them, but no matter the reason, their supply is finite, and the demand will always be there.

Magic-themed boxes have always had a reasonable secondary market, whether it is for long boxes to store your cards from the early days all the way up to promotional deck boxes such as the one from Grand Prix: Nashville. Players and collectors alike love to differentiate themselves from others, so having hard-to-find items such as this is a sort of brag in the world of Magic. The reason most of the aforementioned items are worth anything at all is due to this reason, which is also in turn why it can be difficult at times to find a buyer—although something is rare, the market may not be open for that item at a given time.

A few more of the items I want to quickly touch on include the deck of playing cards from the early nineties that have Magic backs. These decks have been known to go for almost $100 each on the secondary market, but they are worth far less if opened. Another item to watch out for from Magic’s past are the cast models that feature some of the iconic cards from early sets. Although some of these models can go for large sums of money, most of them hover around $30 because there just isn’t a huge demand for them. This does not mean they should be dismissed entirely—they do still occasionally sell on eBay, and if you have enough of them, you may be able to move them easier in a lot than as individual pieces. I am not familiar with this exact market, as I have not come across a great deal of them, but I do know that just like any other facet of the paraphernalia market, they can still fetch some decent money.

Concluding

That concludes this week’s lesson in Magic collectibles. Although I have listed a reasonable number of items, I have truly just scratched the surface. I may do some more research in the future and come back to this subject given some time, but for now, I want to know what sort of cool paraphernalia you the community have dredged up over the years. As always, leave me a comment below or send me a tweet. I am interested to see what kinds of items are out there that have been lost over the years, so please send in your feedback and let me know what you have found!

Ryan Bushard

@CryppleCommand