Decided to do something really dumb and crack an old Stronghold pack I had lying around…
Posted Jul 1, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC
24265
Left to right centering looks off but probably still worth grading.
29
I saw the same. It’s actually centered at the bottom, but not at the top. It’s a little crooked in that respect. I hope it can grade as a 9.5 at least then
14
That's actually worse (for grading purposes)
4
Ah - noted.
3
You can get lucky and have them see it as perfectly centered, as well!
1
Not a chance at 9.5 with that centering
1
What a beautiful pack indeed!!
7
Sell it and buy two more packs of Stronghold!
7
Not many truly pack fresh mox diamonds these days. Did you have this pack around when these were worth a lot less?
5
Got in from a coworker about 5 years ago. There is a 4.99 sticker on the back of it. It was from Hobbytown USA (what a throwback) rather than being a pack from a booster box
4
How many hobbytown usas are out there? I thought those were local to me
1
Holy crap
4
Time to cut something from an edh deck
3
More thoughts from the research I did before cracking this:
Sets used to be in 3 set blocks and the first set had way more cards. This era of sets also had an equal number of rares, uncommons, and commons. For example, Tempest has 110 rares while Stronghold only has 44. Which means that cracking the smaller sets gives you a much higher chance of pulling a top card.
However, Tempest and Stronghold booster packs are both going for roughly the same price on eBay.
3
Anecdotal evidence from the 1990’s, source: a teenaged me.
While the rate may be 1/44 for each pack, I can tell you that I opened roughly 110-115 boosters and never got a Diamond. I think the stronghold rare sheets may have had far more copies of some rares than others. (Although I can find no images of an uncut stronghold rare sheet to confirm). Congrats on the card! I wish I had your luck back in the day! Lol
2
So beautiful! God I miss the old days. Really happy they finally started printing cards in the old borders again, always thought the new borders were ugly AF.
Congratulations on an awesome pull, and thanks for taking me down memory lane. Nowhere near as thrilling, but I'm tempted to crack the only sealed old school thing I own: One Alliances booster pack lol.
3
More finance related, my question to everyone is:
- Do I grade this immediately?
- Is BGS considered the best MTG grading service? Mainly due to the helpful sub grades?
2†
None of the grading companies will take it. You will have to wait months to a year for the submissions to open up again.
6
BGS will take it at the $150 per card level still
1
I'll check it out and if they're all closed for now I'll lock it away.
0
I prefer BGS because it has higher standards. Pokémon like PSA but magic is split liking both PSA and BGS.
3
They doesn't....I always wonder where this myth comes from.
0
A Gem Mint Endangered Armodon! You lucky bastard!
2
If it's dumb and it works, is it still dumb?
1
If it's name is dumb, then yes. Yes it does.
1
can someone explain to a total noob why this was a dumb thing to do?
1
Chances were extremely good that they’d pull a bulk rare worth <$5 instead of the best card in the set. The value of the sealed pack in almost any other circumstance would have outweighed the value of the contents of the pack. In this case luck triumphed over common sense.
3
Thanks
1
[removed]
1
HE HAS THE GIFT~!
-1
Post here next time -> r/magiccardpulls r/magictcg
-2†
I wasnt able to add text to the picture post, but I'm responding to comments with more finance related discussion. Hoping to get feedback on what grading service is best, for example.
edit: this is the only magic community I love :,(
12
I wouldn't stress it. This community loves to mini-mod.
16
Strong Community moderation is key to keeping a forum/board from devolving into chaos, bullshit and endless meme-ry in a fatalistic race-to-the-bottom spiral of shit.
6†
Yeah but the dumb@ss look what amazon shipped me posts are perfectly a-ok.... I would rather see this posts all day long then half of the crap the mini-mods allow .
14
And mini-modding is generally nothing more than toxicity spreading "this isn't beneficial to me" whining. It puts off new members from the community and makes people hesitant to participate.
Report and move on. Modding the sub isn't your (royal you) responsibility.
8
relax
0†
didn't ask
-2
Cool story, bro.
-27
Bruh why take the time to be negative lmao. Guy had an awesome pack, way to go OP
10
You're in the wrong sub, we don't like to see people having fun around these parts. We just wanna see miserable specs going nowhere.
12
Ah shit you right. Someone get the chillerpillar guy in here!
5
Because while it is an awesome pack, this has nothing to do with mtgfinance.
-5†
thank god you're here to keep these filthy casuals in line. Somebody get this man a monitor sash
5
Then just move along man, let the mods find it or whatever. Just let the guy be happy
0†
What's sad is this is only worth 3x the pack itself, but only has a 1/44 odds.
I did the math and there are only 3 cards that are worth more than the pack sells for. Mox Diamond, Sliver Queen, and Volrath’s Stronghold. So 1/15 chance of breaking even.
But then I considered a gem mint card and realized there were more cards I could break even with if they had a high grade. That’s when I decided to crack it.
I sold packs of Urzas Saga earlier this year for 250, only 6 cards could be worth more than that at the time. Seemed like an easy decision.
Value of the sealed pack does not equal the contents. You have to add in the time since the product stopped printing to the valUe. Most people do not realize this when it comes to sealed product.
what made you type that
Then you looked how much it costs to grade cards.