When you've got the virus, you don't think about the ridiculous prices paid for those stupid pieces of paper. My most expensive card is the Nether Void, worth about $30 to $40. The game itself is rather interesting, but is has become way too commercial by introducing a new set of cards every couple of months. A serious player has to update his collection with every new set if he wants to keep a tournament legal (for insiders: type II) deck. I gave up that ilusion a long time ago, so I focused more on older cards like said Nether Void or cards like the Icy Manipulator, Kjeldoran Outpost and Sylvan Library (the original ones of course). I even concentrated on collecting entire sets and even collecting cards from a specific artist for a while. However, if you put those cards together in a deck, they're fun to play with, but not against a player who's got creatures with new features like shadow, buyback and idontknowwhat. He'll either kill you in an instant or complain about the fact that half of your deck is banned or at least restricted.
The concept of Magic was strategic planning & thinking within a fantasy concept, but know it's just a matter of: who has the newest, best, most expensive cards. And that's a terrible shame.
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