Post lock-down post

197 days. That's a pretty long time without restaurants, pubs, or social gatherings of note. But now, just the other day, Oslo started to open up for social discourse. The news around here are already talking about 26th of May as a liberation day of sorts. Movement is afoot.

As a small footnote in the book that is the lock-down, the closed border led to six months since my last proper #mailday. And it's not like I've stopped trading or doom-shopping cards, but rather that most all my stuff has been on the other side of the Swedish-Norwegian border. I frequently use my parents place in Sweden as shipping address rather than my home in Norway, as e.g. MKM doesn't really work outside of EU (and Norway isn't part of the EU).

But I haven't been able to cross that border for close to sixteen months, and so a pretty substantial pile of random cards have been accumulated at my parents' house. This is not that mailday though. This mailday is rather all the oldschool cards I've accumulated at KungMarkus place in Arvika over the last six months; my second harbor of cards. Our hero Markus got to cross the border the other day for work, and we met up for a secret handshake and exchange of cardboard. Actually an exchange, as I had a few cards for him to bring back to Sweden. Dude is the pony express of the 21st century.

Traded these to Bonnie Myrbacka who's building something strange and funky. They've served me well over the years, but it was time for a new home.

And Markus had this box for me:

Mystery box! Could even be a boat! (Word on the street is that Bonnie sold his Lotus to buy a boat btw.) Let's check it out.

First we have a Jihad. This was the last "rare" missing in my Arabian Nights set. Now the only cards left are a light version Wyluli Wolf and a light version Stone-Throwing Devils. While I'm not generally that into signs, I do find it a bit amusing that this card is signed. I wonder if Snoddy still signs Jihads, or if that conversation got awkward after the card got banned.

Next up are some Scryb Sprites. These cards are wildly powerful and they've been missed in my toolkit. I only had a single copy before (an Unlimited one for the set), so these were very much acquired for tech purposes. They are Alpha, but mostly because Alpha versions were available for sale at the time and Beta were not (and the price tag even for Alpha Scryb Sprites weren't that bad considering it mise well be a top10 creature in the format).

This MF never had an option for any other set though. I usually don't have a strong preference regarding Alpha or Beta printings of Limited Edition, but Force of Nature - with its glorious "GGGG" type-setting error - is one of the few cards where Alpha is my top choice by miles. And Alpha Force of Nature mise well be the card that have been the longest on my want list, probably going on ten years or so without finding a good enough chance to pick one up. This exact copy also comes with some additional sweet history. And it was the second to last card needed to fully black border the Lord Magnus EDH / Brothers' Highlander deck.

Here's the meat of what I got from Bonnie for the strange Transmute Artifacts shown at the top of this post. Also got a sum of cash, which led to a few of the other cards from this mailday. Never had a Nether Void before, so it feels supremely sweet to pick that one up in particular. But these are all superior cards. That Craw Giant will chew face alongside Force of Nature in the Brother's Highlander deck, and you can never have too many 93/94 Shivan Dragons (unless you have more than four I suppose, which I don't).

As Bonnie is a way too kind man (and he argued that I may have over-valued some card of his in the trade), he added some absurdly sweet throw-ins (which I was unaware of until I opened the box). Starting with this one, the George H.W. Bush card from Operation Desert Storm trading cards. Hot stuff :)

Then we have this! A Chaos Orb proxy which I did not have. I knew about it, but was yet to find one for my collection. And now I surprise-have one! Rad. It is a proxy from the first Urza's Chalice.

Backside. Just stellar stuff.

And then Bonnie included this one. And this is absolutely not a card one should get as a simple throw-in. While not one of the original Mox Crystals made by the 5CRC, this one got printed up by Brother Markus in early 2019 (when he made the first Alpha cube), before the first "official" Ante 40K tournament at n00bcon 11. Mox Crystal is a card closely associated with Ante formats, and this one was made for the right reasons by the right person. So I'd like to argue that this card should be legal in 40K. I mean, the best way to part with a Mox Crystal is for ante after all.

The sweet mailday, all at once.

So that's it for today. While writing this, I got inspired to do a quick post about typesetting errors in Alpha, as well as one about "miscuts" and sheet misalignment errors. Those might be coming soon.

Thanks a lot for taking such good care of my mail Markus!