Revisting the Grail

At BSK I finalized a trade for a particular card that I'd had my eyes on for over six months. I've wanted the card for as long as I've played, but this specific copy was the one I'd been trying to get since n00bcon. I only know about 4 or 5 copies of alpha Black Lotus in Sweden, and I've only seen two of them IRL, but this was my favorite copy of the few I know to exist :)

Roland bizing moxes, lotuses and duals (it was obviously more to the trade than the cards on the table here).

I know around 15 years of the card's history. It was acquired by a guy in Texas around 97/98, and then sold to Roland Johansson in 2005. Among it's sightings in Gothenburg, Roland played the card to the finals of the Gothcon Vintage tournament in 2007, and won that tournament again with the card in 2008. There is actually a previous picture of the card at this blog as well, from my short deck tech about Roland's machine head ponza from n00bcon 5. I wonder who opened the card, and if that person was more impressed of a Craw Wurm or something from that pack. Not an impossible scenario.

Swamp, Lotus, Scavenging Ghoul, go.

So, now my Project M deck has taken a leap forward, and few steps back. I don't have any moxes for the deck anymore, but I have the card that I though would be the by far most difficult to get my hands on. Moxes, schmoxes.

I did a post a while back about Black Lotus and Holy Grails. Alpha Black Lotus is pretty much as deep as you can go considering the requirements for a "grail", but there actually are some rarities from 93/94 that I assume could fetch a higher price than a (played) alpha lotus, if they were to be sold. Here are three examples for you trivia buffs:

• High end "pre-alpha" cards, that is playtest cards. There were three editions of the playtest cards (alpha, beta and gamma; easy to mix up the names). I have no idea how much the asking price would be for the Starburst card I showed in my post about Time Walk, but I guess it would be stupid high.
• High end Summer Magic cards. In particular Serendib Efreet from Edgar is insanely expensive.
• High end Antiquites/Unlimited double sided test prints. Just crazy.

 I don't really want to own test prints and such myself though. I want to play with my cards, and use my lotus to cast a second turn Vesuvan Doppelganger. I'm really glad to finally have it :)