For years, I have been trying to figure out how to get rid of these 'Battle for Zendikar' 2015 sealed 80-card land packs. When released, it was a breath of fresh air for all of us, seeing as the original 'Zendikar' full-art lands were at ridiculous prices.
One sold for around £5, or $6 to put it simply, and all the ones I had were gone and sold on eBay for those stupid prices.
So I figured, buy a LOT of these, hoard them for years, sell them for a fortune, buy a private island in the Pacific along with a flirty young maid who could also be used as a dirty sex slave on demand. Good idea, huh?
@bingbabe would not agree, so part of this pipe dream falls over right away, but I find myself, 11 years later, looking at a sale price of around £15-£16. That's what I bought them for. What a fucking useless investment these were. They are also expensive to ship, being brick-shaped, which is another deterrent for prospective buyers.
Why have they not appreciated by even 3% a year, you might say? That's because Wizards of the Coast decided to include full different art lands in almost every set AFTER 'Battle for Zendikar’, thus flooding the market; fuckers.
I looked dismally at eBay, particularly at the sold items. £11 for a sealed pack; it was even worse than I expected. Some dunce had sold a vintage item for virtually nothing.
Yet these collector types were fine paying almost the same price for a set of 25. Don't you know there's a full set in each brick, you fucking idiots?
Knowledge is power; keep it to yourself @slobberchops.
If only I had some full sets, but with all my loose singles I couldn't even make a one. There was always a specific land missing from my boxes.
Some of those bricks were from 'Oath of the Gatewatch', the set immediately following 'Battle for Zendikar' and a little something told me that in those packs were 'Wastes', another card that had value and could be sold as a single.
Which of my bricks were which? I bought them from a dodgy seller I met online, and he just sent me 25 bricks or so. He's probably laughing at me now, thinking he dumped on me well.
Can you tell the difference? Both contain BFZ Full-Art lands, and at first check there's no discernible visual change between the sealed packs.
I scoured the internet, checked AI; nobody had a good answer. It was as though that knowledge had become lost in time. I found guesses, broken links and information from Mark Rosewater that was bullshit.
Yet... in my mind I had a nagging piece of knowledge. Wastes were in the OGW packs, and there were more cards than in the BFZ packs.
I picked out the weight scale, and weighed both. Sure enough, one was heavier. I checked more packs, and around half of them were the heavier type. Was I on to something or seeing things?
Now I don’t like opening sealed product, especially from donkey’s years ago, but if this knowledge would line my pockets with golden doubloons then it was going to happen.
Cursing.. I opened a heavier one, and audibly sighed with relief when the last 16 cards were ALL ‘Wastes’. So it makes sense to split these vintage dusty packs rather than to sell them sealed?
The 'Oath of the Gatewatch' bricks contain 84 cards, 4 more than 'Battle for Zendikar'. So now that lost knowledge is public once again, that's if anyone outside HIVE looks at HIVE. Now that would be revolutionary, wouldn't it?
Ridiculous, I say. Would you open a sealed box of Alpha?
So I made 3 packs of each type, including the 25 lands. 10 Wastes for £16, a bargain, I say!
So far, there's been hardly a sniff, especially concerning the Wastes. I will bide my time and will split more packs if this works out.
My Urban Exploration Tales can be found directly on the internet via my Website 'Tales of the Urban Explorer'.
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