Bluetracker
Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.
Pulling the Wool - Ever been duped in a trade when you didn't know any better?
I first started playing during Alara block and even though I dove in pretty hard, I had little sense for what made a card valuable or even powerful and the two decks I had were made purely out of cards I pulled from boosters and few freebies my friends threw me.
Back then, I was pretty trusting of veterans in the playgroup in my town, sadly I shouldn't have been. One 'friend' was looking at a couple boosters I had just cracked. He pulled me aside, away from actual friends who might have prevented this and started talking to me about trades since I had some stuff he wanted. He weasled the following off of me for dirt cheap simply by convincing me that it wasn't worth much in the current market (had been playing for about 5 days at this point. Read: clueless).
- Path to Exile (at the height if its standard usage)
- Bloodbraid Elf
- Foil Sphinx of the Steel Wind
- 3 Blightnings
- Master Transmuter
- Progenitus (The idea of a 5 color deck was staggering to me so it wasn't hard to convince me that this wasn't going to see any play)
Now he must have had some semblance of a conscience because he didn't give me absolute shit in return, just nowhere near the actual value of the cards. I can't remember all the different ways that he convinced me on each card, but he had been playing since Revised so I took everything he said to heart as the grizzled veteran. He moved shortly afterwards and it was only a few weeks that I realized how badly I'd been swindled. I was pissed for awhile, but he was long gone so I eventually moved on.
So, everyone was an oblivious newbie at some point. Share your stories about where someone successfully swindled you or someone you know. Even better share the stories where they got caught. I stopped some guy from weaseling a couple Titans out of some 11 year old kid at M12 prerelease. Guy got in my face and the owner threw him out which made me respect the owner a bit since the guy was a pretty high spending regular.
So let's hear em.
EDIT: Wow this really blew up, thanks for all the great stories guys!
bdrago
We first started playing Magic in the fall of 1993 after seeing it demoed at Origins in Fort Worth that year. We were able to get a bunch of boosters, but only one starter deck per person.
That night a Mox Pearl was traded for two Unlimited Forests, because Moxes were "basically lands" to us. That same night the guy who received the Pearl started the game with Plains, Mox, White Knight and we all realized just how good they were.
Story is 100% true. I was neither party of the trade (they were two brothers), and we still joke about it.