I’ve seen damaged cards come out of packs as early as Judgment. I personally opened two Shards of Alara boxes where I would’ve graded most commons between EX and NM- and my Fate Reforged box had mildly damaged uncommons. I’ve opened minor misprints and miscuts too. The only serious issue I had was with a Commander deck where the oversized foil got bent severely. Had to send it to Wizards and got back a good looking copy and a booster.

1. The damaged cards coming straight out of the booster is a thing that is happening. The most obvious and widespread so far will be the whitening on the edges which is a real sticking point when it comes to things being NM. Having your cards bump around in a box will do that to them while having them do the same in your average booster pack wrapping is a lot less damaging.

2. There are a bunch of videos out there detailing how you can do this and how to spot tampered boosters. You just need a knife and some glue to do this. One of these videos is even linked in the article.

3. The price carries the idea that this is a premium item and with it the expectation that the quality is higher. They’ve never charged this much for a booster pack before and so it’s just par for the course when people expect a lot more when they do.

4. I honestly doubt that one.

And last, it’s not a good idea to just hand wave people off and tell them to go to WotC if they get a problematic pack or box and pretend like nothing’s wrong. If this happened to any pack and some casual or new player comes around to buy packs to find them just missing rares or having damaged cards, it’s just going to be an awful experience and might just drive them away from the game before they even bother to try to actually contact WotC.

Sure, the amount of miscuts, misprints and bad collation so far could be a thing that happens just as often in other sets and it might just be getting blown out of proportion, but there are problems with this set which are not just these alone, and WotC do need to recognise that they have to at least try to sort them out in future sets.

OK, if this such a problem, find me a pack, personally, that can be used for that?

I haven’t found one yet.

So there are some packs that can be opened undamaged. But a few years ago, every single boosterbox of return to ravnica could be mapped. Every boosterbox!!! And it was untracable if you abused that.

What’s that compared to a few boosters, just because people shared this story more?
Now we are talking about a few boosters that are not sealed correctly by mechanical error probably. And you can detect if there is a chance on fraud.

It’s not good, I admit, but we don’t need to act like this is never seen before.

Based on a few conversations: the fact that there are errors in MM is more known to people than the fact fake markets are on the market and box mapping was a thing 2 years ago.

I think this is meanly because people want to find all kind of reasons to dislike the new booster package. it’s a change, and it’s going to destroy the game again.

after watching a couple of different videos it looks like the token/promotional card is at the top of the pack so the foil would be at the bottom. Glad they went to the trouble of protecting that top common…

Having just watched the linked video it looks like it’s a token/promotional card, then the foil, and then the rare/mythic from the bottom of the pack up.

I really disagree with this comment. Sure, if there is a problem you can resolve simply by calling WotC, then you can resolve it without complaining over the internet. What if, however, there is a giant issue in the way in which packs are sealed which can cause the average player to get easily ripped off? If it’s a problem that is associated with every single pack, it’s a serious problem, and there should be a ton of backlash.

1. Damaged cards: didn’t happen to me. But happened before in old packaging.
Remember, this kind of packaging allows us to open boosters without damaging cards. If you draft sometimes, you know how people open their boosters and what damage can be the result of that.

2. I haven’t found a booster that I can open without breaking it.
But I do remember that people could predict every rare in a booster, based on their position in the booster box. I tried it myself, so I know how easy it was. Finding boosters you can open an close without damage is more difficult I think.

3. Price is irrelevant in this discussion I think.
The price is not a guarantee to have less mistakes than any other set.

4. Before you know it, rusted relic foil will be a collector’s item ;).

I’ve read this on twitter – just because we hear about it now doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before.

This hasn’t happened before because :

i) they haven’t previously used packaging that is damaging the cards;

ii) they haven’t previously used packaging that can so easily be repacked and resealed;

iii) they haven’t previously charged $10 a pack;

iv) they have very rarely put a foil into every single pack especially of premium product.

The implications for finance moving forward are significant.

Just because we notice it more on the internet now, doesn’t mean it happens more than usual.

Mistakes, happen, last year, we had a box used for drafting that had Spanish rares instead of English rares.

We solved it the civilian way, instead of screaming on the internet.

Just contact WOTC, and they solve everything very fine. You’ll be happy.

If people refuse to communicate with WOTC first, let them complain.

People on this site, are hopefully better in comunication, and someone should write an article about we should stay calm instead of following the screamers running around on the internet.

We should all ask one question to ourselves:

Did I open a pack with a mistake?

if no: why do you care?

if yes: contact WOTC directly.