ISSUE 02 · JULY 2026 · 7 MIN READ
I love Magic, but I play almost exclusively with proxies, not because I don’t value real cards but because it lets me focus on collecting. Playing and collecting answer two different needs, and I, along with my wallet, respond much more easily to the second one.
I’ve been collecting long before I started playing Commander, or Magic in general. Before that, I’d already been collecting Pokémon for much longer, and I’m still very proud of that collection. I didn’t grow up playing until the cards fell apart, that idea never clicked with me. Even as a kid, I always set things aside and kept them in good condition, because that’s simply how I am. The feeling of opening a full, well kept binder still hits harder for me than winning a game ever did.
Collecting, though, has to be done a certain way, and I want to tell you about it.
The “Resist it ’till you can” method
I don’t collect based on rarity or price, I look for cards that have something to say. Let me explain better. A Smothering Tithe Confetti Foil is extremely rare and expensive, but it doesn’t tell me anything more. It’s a nice piece of art with a decent treatment. I find the SpongeBob Secret Lair version far more interesting. Mr. Krabs gets the card’s whole theme of greed across much better (and let’s be honest, it also makes me laugh a lot).
There’s also a whole modus operandi I use for every big purchase (we’re talking about cards over 200 euros). Before buying a card, I always try to talk myself out of it. I look at dozens of photos, compare prices, wait for weeks, and try to figure out if I still want it once the novelty has worn off. Maybe I romanticize this hobby a little too much, being in it up to my ears, but I find this whole research process genuinely electrifying. If after all that I’m still thinking about it, the card probably earns a spot in the binder. Knowing myself, once I start this whole process, it usually ends with me buying the very thing I’ve been thinking over.
There are a few cases, though, where I ended up walking away. One of the clearest examples is the dual lands. They’re iconic pieces, heavily played and hugely famous. But there are seven versions of the same card (not counting collector editions), and only two of them, for me, are actually worth collecting, and both are out of reach right now (Alpha and Beta). There was a short period of time where I was fixated on the Revised edition, and after almost two months I let it go, because sure, it’s iconic, and it’s on the Reserved List too, so it’s anything but a plain reprint, but with the same art as six other versions, it still ended up being just “one of many.”
Another time I said no was with the First Mystical Archive from Strixhaven. Beautiful theme, beautiful cards, but once I saw the treatment in person, the desire just faded. The opposite happened with the Silver Scroll version. I’m working on that one, and I hope to tell you about it soon.
The “Who do I have to resist to?” way
What I just described is how I decide whether to buy a card. What to look for is a different question altogether, and it comes from more than one direction at once.
There’s rarity, but not the kind measured in money, that one’s already off the table. The Reserved List fascinates me because it promises that a card will never be printed again, and it’s that promise that tells a story, not the price tag that follows from it. The same goes for serialized cards, rare because of how they’re released, or for artist proofs, unique because of the one-of-a-kind sketch on the back of the card.
There’s nostalgia, which rarely has to do with the card itself, and more with whatever an artwork connects me to outside the game.
And there’s how well something fits a theme. All my binders have their own sub-themes. Sometimes they’re split by color, not mana color, the color of the illustration, other times by the actual subject of the artwork: a whole page of fantasy themed cards, another for ocean themed ones, and so on.
The “so called” time machine
The binder, for me, is an archive that tells the story of my evolution as a collector. The cards are always organized around some specific sub-theme, but the one thread that never changes is the order I acquired them in. Collecting this way stops being just a pile of shiny cards, it becomes a calendar marking out the periods of my life.
I can still remember the stretch when I was obsessed with Bloomburrow. The anthropomorphic creatures and their whole style reminded me so much of Brambly Hedge (still recommend it, if you liked Bloomburrow), which I used to read as a kid, and it ended up being one of the first sets I ever collected. The same thing happened with Final Fantasy and its Surge Foils. Nostalgia is a powerful engine for collecting, but it’s not the only one. To me, this is the real strength of this hobby: it’s not about grabbing whatever costs the most, it’s about buying, and carefully searching for, the next piece to add to who I am.
What you’re reading right now comes from that same need. GOBLINGOBLIN is nothing more than a second binder, made of words instead of cards, where I add one piece at a time with the same care. Every article I write is a “card” I decided deserved a spot, for the same reason the SpongeBob Secret Lair earns its place over the Confetti Foil.
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