Magic: The Gathering is the first and most popular trading card game in the world. It started in 1993. I started playing around 1996. All that history I built with the game fits right inside this box.
The mythical Power 9 (aka the 9 rarest, most powerful, and most expensive cards in the game, barring that $2M card Post Malone purchased)? Yes, I owned them. I got them when they were still affordable for players and not just collectors. I (sadly) sold them before they could’ve paid for a brand-new condo. I recognize I am privileged to indulge in this hobby, but let’s save the anti-materialism talk for another time. There’s a point here somewhere. I think
You see, just this Monday, I sold off nearly my entire collection. Suddenly, it’s not the money I’m counting anymore, but the memories those cards represent. I’ll admit: I already lost track.
I wouldn’t say I based my whole personality around Magic, but given I played both the card game and used to be an actual magician, it was a significant part of me. I have a team, for crying out loud. A team of people who play Magic cards. You don’t have a team of something if you don’t take that something seriously enough. I was one step away from going pro. Weddings, baptisms, wakes. All celebrated with fellow players and card shop owners. All those memories contained in a collection of 10,000 cards, give or take a few thousand.
Cue “maybe the real Magic is the friends we’ve made along the way” meme, because it’s spot on. It isn’t that I’ve outgrown the hobby (I still play Flesh and Blood, a competing game). Nor is it that I’ve dropped my second childhood (My Switch, Steamdeck, and PS5 tells me I still haven’t even finished my first). I never expected to be this sentimental over cards. I didn’t think that I would, for example, keep one Grim Monolith with me – not for any other reason than it’s the last of four copies I got from a friend who passed away during the pandemic.You know what else I kept? This card below. Because of course.
I come from a generation that straddles (Heh) the gap between handwritten diaries and a world where nearly everything is uploaded online. Those cards weren’t just a collection: they were pictures, and thus, thousands of words, documenting a huge chunk of my life. And now they’re gone, and I find myself waxing sentimental over what is, literally on paper. Artwork and words on pieces of cardboard. But also spells, creatures, artifacts, enchantments, lands, friends, triumphs, setbacks, stories, and so much more. And I realize that while I could spend more time trying to find the deeper meaning in it all, just realizing that it was so much more than just cardboard I’m finally cashing out on already makes it mean more than I could ever hope to even try to put into words.
So I won’t. But what I’ll do is say goodbye, and thank you, Magic: The Gathering. And for now, that will just have to do. Because I can only stop the world for so long before I have to go back to the daily grind that turns back a treasure trove of memories into little more than pieces of cardboard that maybe cost way much more than they should.
I wish all of you the luxury to find that time to stop the world just long enough, too. We could all use it.
