In a world Gone Mad: 1 July 2020 ...3

Well, I have my Magic the Gathering cards. Andy has already said that when I die he would like them—yeah not a chance sunshine. You might be a good kid and a reformed character but if there’s any money at all to be had from them it is going to my sons.

My most expensive card has gone up this week. Last Monday it was £171.89. It went up to £175.00, and today it has gone up again to £195.99. This is for a playing card. How can a simple MTG playing card be worth so much money? It’s a piece of cardboard with a picture on it.

I’ve yet to buy a booster pack with the famed Black Orchid in it—I think that is sitting at over 38 thousand pounds.

As of this morning I have 33,911 playing cards and my total collection has a low-rating value of £1,494.47. This is the value on MTG Collection Builder. If I were to sell them, I’d put a reserve on of £3000—just enough for Max to buy another Emerald guitar. I’d expect the collection to sell for in excess of five grand.  It costs a lot more to buy them than to keep them.

For instance, I am  building the Eldritch Moon Set. It’s a modern set so the prices are reasonable.  As of this mornin, the most expensive card in the set is, Emrakul The Promised End. It is £29.99. Every card has a glittery foil version and that is sitting at £78.00, I only collect the standard cards. This time last week Emrakul was thirty four pounds at MTG collection Builder prices so it has devalued this week, it would be a good time to buy before it climbs again. I can buy it from the site for £38.01. On eBay it is selling for £46.04. But the best way to buy the cards is the way they were intended to be bought. A booster pack costs between £3.00 and £5.00 for modern sets. For that you get fifteen random cards and are guaranteed at least one rare.  The cards are graded by Common, unusual, rare, and mythic rare.  An average rare on a modern set is only about £0.20 so it’s nothing to get excited about until they go out of commission and build in value. However, in every pack you have the opportunity of getting anything. Go for a booster pack in the correct set and you could potentially be sitting  on a fortune. Nine times out of ten, you lose money on the packs. If you pay an average of £4.00 a pack, you might get cards worth £2.50—but I’ve had some good ones in the past with cards with a low rating value of £40.00. And it’s exciting watching any of the collection build over time. I’ve been collecting for six years now.

My most expensive card is the Earnham Djinn from the Arabian Nights set. It has a low rating value of £179.99 and it came as part of a 1,000 card bulk buy that I bought from eBay for twenty pounds.

The prices fluctuate daily but my collection does okay, and it makes me happy.

Playing is another matter. I’m not good  my brain doesn’t work out the possibilities as well as the other two. The game has over two thousand rules to learn and understand and can be very complicated. We have a Magic night most weeks and the arguments are phenomenal. Some of the cards are ambiguous in their abilities and sometimes internet searching can throw up rules to suit either opponent. Andy is brilliant and wins two out of every three games. But my, he’s a cocky little sod and likes to gloat. Max is prone to cheating, or at the very least manipulating the rules to his favour, and he’s competitive and hates losing. Me, I couldn’t care less and usually form an alliance with one or the other and sacrifice myself to help whichever one hasn’t done me wrong in the last game—or if I’m pissed off with Max for personal reasons.

Both Andy and Max are going back to work next Monday, I’d be like a dog with two tails if it wasn’t for the fact of being alone with Arthur all day.  I’m not going back to work until September, unless they bring the date forward, so at least I have a transitionary period to establish a new routine with him before I start work.

And in world news: restrictions are coming to an end. This week the  government are opening new travel bridges to allow holidays to certain countries without having to quarantine on re-entry. I can’t see that going well and still fear that second wave. The pubs are opening again on Saturday—but there’s no live music so it doesn’t interest me.

I run karaoke in our favourite pub and Donny, the landlord thinks it will be Christmas before people will be comfortable sharing mics and probably a lot longer before restrictions allow it—even with stringent cleaning of the mics between singers. And Max is stuffed for gigging. The work we do with our music goes a long way towards running the house, but it’s going to be awhile before we can get it back.

We had one of our music nights last night at home—just the three of us with guitars and singing.

And then at three this morning I heard Arthur going downstairs. I waited for Max to head him off, but he didn’t come out of the living room, so I went to see what he was doing.

He was trying to get into the snake vivarium. I keep the key hidden.

‘What are you doing Arthur?’

‘Well I’m….’

‘What? What are you messing with that for?’

‘Well I need to…Need to….Need to….’

‘What do you need to do? It’s the middle of the night, you should be in bed.’

He started another ten sentences without finishing any of them and got himself into a rage.

‘I need to do this….’

‘What?’

‘Change the…. Change the….Change the…..change the….’

We were stuck.

‘What are you trying to do, love.’

‘The tray….the try….I need to … The tray.’

I think he meant Ravnica’s water bath. I can only assume he was trying to get into the viv to change the water.

We’re going to have such fun the two of us when I go back to work.