I am going to be honest, I didn't know what the hell to write about today.

Was I proud of myself for being astute and ahead of some tech from the floor of the Pro Tour?¹ Well, yes, obviously I was. Being ahead of Monday's price changes is good. Being ahead of a post on Reddit or MTGSalvation is great. Being ahead of the QS Insider e-mail is phenomenal.

Funny story, Doug hit me up on Saturday morning and asked me to put together an Insider e-mail. I was down. I'd heard from Ray about the Rabblemaster Red deck and how it would further support the increasing price of Legion Loyalist by giving you battalion without insisting on being a 5-mana enchantment. Firedrinker Satyr also seemed like a good choice given the popularity of the deck.

I cobbled together what I considered a very decent Insider e-mail and when I went to schedule it, of course, Kelly was nearly done with a more comprehensive and more official-looking one.

Shrug, Delete, Drink.

Kelly's blast was a good one and it was timely enough that a lot of people got their copies of Loyalist and Goblin Rabblemaster. You know who didn't get theirs?

Me.

My orders were cancelled. I am not inclined to check, but I have to imagine I've written an article or two about getting orders cancelled and we've talked about it on the podcast. No need to go into that here, but it was still a blowout. Fortunately for the sellers, even though they couldn't locate their $0.75 copies of Rabblemaster, they had some $3 copies in their inventory that I could have.

No sense getting salty, this happens from time to time. I've had several people on TCG Player tell me "I love the podcast" when fulfilling an incomplete order (which may be code for "please don't call us horrible people on your podcast") so I imagine I get an equal amount of "$&% that guy" when sellers notice their entire stock of 30+ copies of a card is being bought by the same guy on the eve of the Pro Tour. It sucks, but it comes with the territory.

Still, despite that paragraph, that's not really the topic I wanted to talk about.

Let's talk about something else instead.

This afternoon, QS Insider and local dealer Carter Hatfield had me meet him at the shop so I could pick up this bad boy. While Alternate Fourth Edition is hardly Summer, it's rare and I like it. Fourth Edition was when I first started playing Magic, so the set is near and dear to my heart. Not only that, I come across quite a few Alternate Fourth Edition cards because a lot of the product was sent to a distribution facility in the Midwest.

I bought a collection from someone who used to work there. He had no idea what Alternate Fourth Edition was worth, he just had it mixed in with the rest of his collection. He told me that when the order came in from Wizards to destroy all of the product, his boss told everyone to take the stuff home because it was getting thrown away. A lot of cards that were supposed to be destroyed ended up in collections in the Midwest instead. I come across Alternate Fourth all the time.

So what is it?

Alternate Fourth

In 1995, Wizards of the Coast got a little bit sick of printing the cards on foreign soil. They commissioned the United States Playing Card Corporation in Cincinnati to try and replicate the cards they were getting elsewhere, hoping to save some money on transportation by printing the cards in the United States.

It went... okay.

They look like regular Fourth Edition cards. I mean kinda. To the extent that once I glanced at a binder two seats away and saw a Land Tax that made me say, "Sweet Jesus, that's Alt Fourth!" But internally, on the off-chance that the guy didn't know what he had. They're pretty distinguishable sometimes.

The purple pimp hat on an Alt Fourth Land Tax is so purple that if you wrung it out into a glass and drank it, you'd get diabetes. It's so purple that every time I look at the card, I grimace. It's so purple that I don't have a third thing. Sorry. Anyway, it's very vivid.

In addition to being super vivid, the card stock is thicker. This is not a good way to go about making a card that is indistinguishable from existing cards.

They weren't done botching the absolute bejesus out of the process. They put a glossy coating on the cards that would prevent them from getting sun damaged. That's simultaneously thoughtful and idiotic. "We want the cards to have a niiiiice coating" they said, because I picture them as the tailor from the Hudsucker Proxy.

Too bad their stupid coating makes the cards look different from other Magic cards, which is terrible. The worst part about the coating? It makes the cards not luminesce under a blacklight. Yes, this is a bad thing since other Magic cards do.

The cards also don't have the same dot pattern. This, taken by itself, is relatively minor. No one's getting out a jeweler's loupe to scrutinize a Mishra's Factory with a white border. However, one of the ways the dot pattern is different is that there is a big obvious difference in the card back. You know the arrow in the Fed Ex sign?

Well just like you'll never unsee that, you'll never unsee the difference between an Alternate Fourth cardback and a regular one.

I'll give you a second to see if you can see it without prompting.

Sweet mother of obvious! That's all wrong!

Someone at Wizards, probably because his first job was at Atari in the 80s, said, "These are the worst. Bury them in the @$&*ing desert." The rest is history.

Alternate Fourth Edition is worth between two and ten times what regular Fourth Edition is worth, depending on the card. If you see Fourth Edition cards in binders and the front coloration looks odd, flip them over and check the tip of the A. Just say you're checking condition if you don't want the person to think they have something that's rarer than it really is and make them not want to trade it until they know what it's worth.

Despite the rarity and the cool story behind it, and the puzzling lack of a decree from Wizards that states you can't play with the cards in tournaments, the desirability of Alternate Fourth Edition doesn't extend that far beyond "certain weirdos want the cards". I think they're cool and I want them, but I'm a little nuts.

You know what's worth even more?

Summer Magic/Edgar

This fiasco can't be blamed on an incompetent printer, I'm afraid. This was Wizards, in its second year of existence, screwing up. Badly.

Summer Magic is so-called because it was printed in the summer of 1994. It was an attempt to be re-Revised. In fact, it was originally just going to be Revised. Summer Magic cards were distributed in Revised booster packs although only a few booster boxes survived their trip to the desert--much more Alternate Fourth Edition remains unscathed, which only adds to the lore and mystique of Summer Magic.

Summer set out to correct some things that Revised did poorly. Revised coloration looks washed-out and pale and no one likes it. Not only that, they changed up the art on Plateau and accidentally the wrong art on Serendib Efreet, replacing it with the art (and color) if Ifh-Biff Efreet. All in all, Revised kinda sucked. Wanting to change those errors and remove the pentagram from Unholy Strength, they commissioned a new Revised set.

It went...okay.

Just kidding, it was a total botch. The colors were too dark (sound familiar?) and they changed the art on Serendib Efreet and Plateau but left the old artist attributions. Not only that, they managed to make Hurricane blue. Blue Hurricane has been called the most sought-after card from the set, but everyone was saying that back when Underground Sea was $11 so I imagine that may have changed.

These cards are distinguishable most easily by looking like Revised cards with all of Revised's "T at a 45-degree angle Tap Symbol" but with 4th Edition's rich, dynamic coloring turned up to 11.

This is what a Bayou looks like. You may recognize it from never having seen one in person or seeing someone try to charge $25,000 for one on Facebook, of all places.

Why They Rock

These cards are beyond rare. There is way more Alternate Fourth Edition out there, but that's like saying there are way more unicorns than there are dragons. They're both pretty rare, and having Alternate Fourth Edition is nothing to sneeze at.

In fact, I put together enough Alternate Fourth Edition basic land to run them in all of my draft decks. I watched someone pay $4,000 for a Summer Wild Growth because there is just no Summer out there and Wild Growth sees play in Enchantress or some other rationale.

Nothing is going to get people excited like a blue Hurricane. Everyone has seen power and guru lands and Fruitcake Elemental by now, but how many people have seen a Summer Serendib Efreet? Even I haven't seen one of those. What could possibly be more pimp than a Summer Magic Birds of Paradise quietly sitting across from your opponent, worth more than their entire deck?

Why They Suck

Anything is better than that. I play with $30ish Japanese Foil buy-a-box Birds of Paradise and I actually had an opponent exclaim "Holy $%^!" when I put one on the mat. Meanwhile I used to play with $100 Alternate Fourth Edition Birds and no one even batted an eye. I knew the birds was super pimp, but so what? No one else even noticed, and if I told them it was Alt 4th, the one person in 200 who knew what that meant said "rad" and went back to playing.

No ejaculations of "Holy #$%*!" when I casually windmill a Birds worth as much as the Japanese foil playset. Isn't the entire point of pimping the deck for other people to appreciate it? There's a reason Wonder Woman never put sweet decals on her invisible jet. Pimp is only pimp if people agree.

Jamming a playset of Wild Growth worth more than a Prius is probably one of the ultimate power moves one could pull. Worth more than power (or most decks) this playset would be the result of years spent trying to track down sellers of a whole playset, and thousands and thousands of dollars spent. In the end, 199 people out of 200 will look at your playset and think "the rest of the deck is foiled out, why's he using crappy Fourth Edition Wild Growth" and the 200th person will see where your car is parked and break into it later.

As Carter was selling me the Library--yeah, I bought it. Sue me--we got to talking about how pimp it kind of...wasn't. It's likely not going in a deck and will rather end up relegated to my trade binder with my Land Tax and other Alt Fourth goods. Carter used to play with a Summer basic Island in his Vintage deck and people would glance at it and make a face, like he'd farted directly in their mouths by playing with a white bordered basic.

He replaced it with a foil Saga Arena island and got a compliment from literally the first person who saw it in the first game with the new island. Now, Carter knew his Summer Island was worth a ton. But is it that big a deal of no one else cares? Turns out just you knowing isn't enough sometimes.

I've found people who have Alt Fourth in their binders over the years. I've found random Alt Fourth commons mixed in with regular Fourth Edition and I've spent entire evenings in shops with stacks of commons and uncommons flipped upside down, scanning through entire 5k boxes for dark-cornered A's. I've found people who worked in a distribution facility and had nearly half the rares in the set.

What I haven't found is anyone who will say "Holy $%&^!" when I tap an Alt Fourth Forest to summon and Alt Fourth Birds. Buy and trade accordingly.

¹Being astute = I had Ray Perez text me if he saw anything.