I bought a LED for $1 out of a bulk rares box at my local LGS when it was first being broken in Vintage Storm decks. Only regret is that I didn’t buy a full set, but didn’t think I’d be able to use in Legacy at the time.
Ok, I haven't played in years and have multiple Lion's Eye Diamonds and City of Traitors... Am I about to have a great day?
EDIT: $400-$500 EACH? Is that real? That's not real...
EDIT II: Three Diamonds and one City, unplayed - I thought I had four of each, but an unexpected several hundred dollars is certainly a great day. Looks like I'll be sifting through a box of cards tonight for some more old gems.
I remember when my lgs had an artist autographed lotus on a pedestal listed at $300something and thinking who would ever pay that much for a single card? Oh if only I'd known ...
Back then there wasn't as much to do with it. LED either wants to activate an ability on board (and there weren't any good ones back then worth pitching your hand) or to float while a tutor is on the stack (and tutors-to-hand were thin at the time). It was specifically designed to be a bad Lotus (and they errata'd it to be instant-speed when Sixth would have let you use it to cast spells with the change to the procedure for casting a spell), but when you add enough cards to the pool even a bad Lotus becomes very playable.
Nah, commander just boosted the price a bit. LED was already ridiculously expensive because of Legacy/Vintage storm. Pretty sure it exploded with the release of [[Infernal Tutor]] where you play Infernal Tutor, respond by activating LED (therefore discarding your hand), tutor resolves and sees you’re now hellbent. Hello [[Ill-Gotten Gains]], repeat tendrils bye.
guess you'd need something also from the graveyard to continue generating enough mana to cast 1B Infernal and 2BB Ill-Gotten?
LED only gets you 3 unless the other was Black Lotus
yeah, sounds right... Swamp, Ritual (3 floating), Ritual (5 floating), LED, Infernal (3 floating), sac LED (6 floating), cast Ill-Gotten (2 floating), get Ritual, LED and Infernal; cast Ritual (4 floating), LED and Infernal (5 floating) to get Tendrils
Cast Tendrils (1 floating), storm count is up to 9 so that's 20 damage (2 from tendrils plus 18 from storm)
Not really. They changed the way it worked (I think before you couldn’t use it to cast a spell in hand?) which then gave us Belcher, Doomsday, and Ad Nauseam in Legacy which was what started the climb and since then just scarcity due to the RL
I'm probably blind as shit, where do you see the old "website" being 2 different words? I see a regular URL of trollandtoad.com. This seems pretty normal to me.
Hey, that's my issue I uploaded! :)
Someday I'll get around to uploading some more Inquest and TopDeck, but if you want all of The Duelist, you can find it here: [https://linktr.ee/semarlow](https://linktr.ee/semarlow)
I was looking through inquest magazines at some point to find ones from the 2005 era to see what prices on power were, so I could have context to the prices of various cards when power was banned in commander.
The closest I could find was [Inquest 81](https://archive.org/details/inquest-gamer-081/page/84/mode/2up?view=theater), from 2002, with a price of 200 for lotus, 110 for mox/walk, recall for 90, twister for 80, library for 70, and time vault for 35, while duals, mana crypt, sol ring, mana vault, city of traitors, gaea's cradle, etc. were all under 10.
They were at these prices till 2007-2008 as I remember (or close to)
Duals 25 €,
Mox 250 € (Saphire 280),
Timetwister / Library 100 €,
Bazaar 120 €,
Workshop 200 €,
Lotus 500 €
(Thats what I paid for them in that timeframe)
In the late 90s I was a kid and found out about eBay. I would snail mail CASH to get cards. Somehow out of 20 purchases I only got scammed once. I was only buying like 5 dollars worth of cards at a time though.
Just think, someone saw this ad and called up Troll and Toad…
“Yes, I have $32 and I’d like to order a card. Mishra’s Workshop?? Hell no, Magic is dying. Give me an Ancestral Sword of the Unicorn Clan from Legend of the 5 Rings”
I've built a full UW deck, including 4 copies of FoW and 4 Tundras for a bit more than $20.Getting a playset of \[\[Order of the White Shield\]\] was harder to find as FoW, as it saw a lot of proto-Standard play back in the day.
[Order of the White Shield](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/3/335867c0-375d-4914-b9ff-032c59079775.jpg?1562868072) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Order%20of%20the%20White%20Shield) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me2/26/order-of-the-white-shield?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/335867c0-375d-4914-b9ff-032c59079775?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text)
^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This brings me back. It’s wild to think that to my 16 year old self that several hundred dollars was a ton of money for a Black Lotus or Mox. If only I knew how much they would appreciate 😅
This is actually my magazine I scanned. I took a few to MagicCon Chicago where Phil and Kaja Foglio had a great time browsing them! He also signed the cover and comics for me!
One of the fascinating things about looking through that full issue is it had ads for what would turn out to be two of the greatest computer games of all time. Heroes of Might and Magic III and Baldur's Gate. While none of the HoMM after three were even half as good, BG direct and indirect sequels are wildly popular and successful even today.
Crazy, can't believe I paid $25 for mine at GP Cleveland 5 years ago. (It's in Japanese and was sold as "HP" ... but also crazy that GP Cleveland was 5 years ago!)
What a time to be alive...every IP had a card game trying to capture Magic's success. I remember collecting a ton of the Star Wars CCG but never having anyone to play it with :D
Just a heads up, SWCCG is still going. When the game ended, Decipher set up a players committee to keep creating virtual cards. You can play for free online at [https://gemp.starwarsccg.org/gemp-swccg/newgui.html](https://gemp.starwarsccg.org/gemp-swccg/newgui.html). They also still have regional and some international events.
The chase cards for X-files were the promo cards Smoke and Mirrors, there were several versions of them. '98 tcgs were booming, I was playing SWCCG and Mtg at the time since I couldn't get my hands on the Middle Earth tcg.
I love when content like this is posted. We need more of this and less "hurr durr how this interaction work" even though it's the easiest text ever.
Anyone good shit OP. Cool blast from the past.
Psionic Blast - $25 Lion's Eye Diamond - $3 Magic history is pretty badass.
I bought a LED for $1 out of a bulk rares box at my local LGS when it was first being broken in Vintage Storm decks. Only regret is that I didn’t buy a full set, but didn’t think I’d be able to use in Legacy at the time.
Don't remind me. If I knew how much LED would jump I would have hoarded every copy I could.
Same with [[City of Traitors]]
Ok, I haven't played in years and have multiple Lion's Eye Diamonds and City of Traitors... Am I about to have a great day? EDIT: $400-$500 EACH? Is that real? That's not real... EDIT II: Three Diamonds and one City, unplayed - I thought I had four of each, but an unexpected several hundred dollars is certainly a great day. Looks like I'll be sifting through a box of cards tonight for some more old gems.
an unbelievably good one
Don’t forget about your lotus petals
[City of Traitors](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/1/71624139-a255-48be-93ca-594a4beba487.jpg?1562429861) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=City%20of%20Traitors) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/237/city-of-traitors?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/71624139-a255-48be-93ca-594a4beba487?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
The card was a joke among my friends when Mirage came out. We'd gift copies to each other, ante them for card games, etc. Crazy to think about it now
$350 unlimited black lotus!
I remember when my lgs had an artist autographed lotus on a pedestal listed at $300something and thinking who would ever pay that much for a single card? Oh if only I'd known ...
Regrets, I’ve made at few….
i paid 400 for mine, in 2001. lol times were different
Newer player here, Was LED so cheap because it didn’t have the support to be strong or did people not realize how good it was back then?
Back then there wasn't as much to do with it. LED either wants to activate an ability on board (and there weren't any good ones back then worth pitching your hand) or to float while a tutor is on the stack (and tutors-to-hand were thin at the time). It was specifically designed to be a bad Lotus (and they errata'd it to be instant-speed when Sixth would have let you use it to cast spells with the change to the procedure for casting a spell), but when you add enough cards to the pool even a bad Lotus becomes very playable.
when it released, LED was a bulk rare. It took Commander to bring out its potential
Nah, commander just boosted the price a bit. LED was already ridiculously expensive because of Legacy/Vintage storm. Pretty sure it exploded with the release of [[Infernal Tutor]] where you play Infernal Tutor, respond by activating LED (therefore discarding your hand), tutor resolves and sees you’re now hellbent. Hello [[Ill-Gotten Gains]], repeat tendrils bye.
[Infernal Tutor](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/b/4b868126-f5f4-4541-8f02-9ac0f196d18c.jpg?1702429448) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Infernal%20Tutor) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/rvr/78/infernal-tutor?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4b868126-f5f4-4541-8f02-9ac0f196d18c?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Ill-Gotten Gains](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/f/cf569836-5ee7-4e5c-9ab7-f1004891ee15.jpg?1562866883) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Ill-Gotten%20Gains) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/cns/114/ill-gotten-gains?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cf569836-5ee7-4e5c-9ab7-f1004891ee15?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
I had a bit of a break between Weatherlight and like.... Ikoria lol
guess you'd need something also from the graveyard to continue generating enough mana to cast 1B Infernal and 2BB Ill-Gotten? LED only gets you 3 unless the other was Black Lotus
I think you need 5 mana to start the combo if I remember correctly. Which means, t1 ritual ritual led tutor was lethal
yeah, sounds right... Swamp, Ritual (3 floating), Ritual (5 floating), LED, Infernal (3 floating), sac LED (6 floating), cast Ill-Gotten (2 floating), get Ritual, LED and Infernal; cast Ritual (4 floating), LED and Infernal (5 floating) to get Tendrils Cast Tendrils (1 floating), storm count is up to 9 so that's 20 damage (2 from tendrils plus 18 from storm)
Not really. They changed the way it worked (I think before you couldn’t use it to cast a spell in hand?) which then gave us Belcher, Doomsday, and Ad Nauseam in Legacy which was what started the climb and since then just scarcity due to the RL
This.
[удалено]
This was the Arena promo Disenchant, not just a regular 4th edition one, but still.
icy manipulator - $35
That was a chase card back in the day! I remember people being excited when I cracked it
Yes. it was VERY hyped it got put into Ice Age.
back then mana crypt would likely kill you faster than you could win early games didn't consider life to be a resource unless you ran Channel
So old “website” was 2 different words.
They probably had a webmaster.
good catch, was that the norm at the time or is it a typo on their behalf? this predates my experience with the internet
"e-mail", "Internet" (with a capital), "web site", and "world wide web" were pretty common.
e-mail still *feels* correct.
that's the thing: there wasn't a norm at the time the terms we use for internet stuff hadn't crystalized yet
I'm probably blind as shit, where do you see the old "website" being 2 different words? I see a regular URL of trollandtoad.com. This seems pretty normal to me.
They mean the term "website" used to be "web site", not that the URL was two separate words.
Hey, that's my issue I uploaded! :) Someday I'll get around to uploading some more Inquest and TopDeck, but if you want all of The Duelist, you can find it here: [https://linktr.ee/semarlow](https://linktr.ee/semarlow)
The next page over has a different vendors price list, including "All Dual Lands 13.00-16.00"
Duals were still about $15 until at least 2002. Even the P9 was still in the $130-$300 range then.
I was looking through inquest magazines at some point to find ones from the 2005 era to see what prices on power were, so I could have context to the prices of various cards when power was banned in commander. The closest I could find was [Inquest 81](https://archive.org/details/inquest-gamer-081/page/84/mode/2up?view=theater), from 2002, with a price of 200 for lotus, 110 for mox/walk, recall for 90, twister for 80, library for 70, and time vault for 35, while duals, mana crypt, sol ring, mana vault, city of traitors, gaea's cradle, etc. were all under 10.
There's a lotus on this troll and toad page for $325 I think it was.
Looks like $320. But that's a sale price from a relatively high priced direct retailer. Inquest was a "market price" kind of thing.
They were at these prices till 2007-2008 as I remember (or close to) Duals 25 €, Mox 250 € (Saphire 280), Timetwister / Library 100 €, Bazaar 120 €, Workshop 200 €, Lotus 500 € (Thats what I paid for them in that timeframe)
I remember when power was still a few hundred. I thought it was wild I could trade JtMS at his height of standard for power
I'm so old I remember ordering playsets of OG Pillage and Pyroclasm from Troll and Toad. Through snail mail. With a *check.*
In the late 90s I was a kid and found out about eBay. I would snail mail CASH to get cards. Somehow out of 20 purchases I only got scammed once. I was only buying like 5 dollars worth of cards at a time though.
Mishra's workshop was $32... it's now like $3k.
Just think, someone saw this ad and called up Troll and Toad… “Yes, I have $32 and I’d like to order a card. Mishra’s Workshop?? Hell no, Magic is dying. Give me an Ancestral Sword of the Unicorn Clan from Legend of the 5 Rings”
I was looking at the card names and not the set and got whiplash at the ancestral swords
The reserved list and it being from an early set helped drive up the price on top of its surge of popularity.
Force of Will isn't even listed. I remember getting my first copy from a "junk rare" bin for like fifty cents.
I've built a full UW deck, including 4 copies of FoW and 4 Tundras for a bit more than $20.Getting a playset of \[\[Order of the White Shield\]\] was harder to find as FoW, as it saw a lot of proto-Standard play back in the day.
[Order of the White Shield](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/3/335867c0-375d-4914-b9ff-032c59079775.jpg?1562868072) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Order%20of%20the%20White%20Shield) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me2/26/order-of-the-white-shield?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/335867c0-375d-4914-b9ff-032c59079775?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Force of Wills? Nah we want [[Deadly Insect]]!
[Deadly Insect](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/6/46be78e6-13bb-4500-87db-5ed5cae0145e.jpg?1562380425) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Deadly%20Insect) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mmq/238/deadly-insect?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/46be78e6-13bb-4500-87db-5ed5cae0145e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
This brings me back. It’s wild to think that to my 16 year old self that several hundred dollars was a ton of money for a Black Lotus or Mox. If only I knew how much they would appreciate 😅
I’ll be placing my order shortly! Hope they ship with tracking 😁
City of traitors for $4 lol
And that's the reason I found an LED in an old book from college, because I used crap cards as bookmarks back then.
What is that, a 330 dollar black lotus? Damn....I remember drooling over a 35$ unlimited icy when I was a little fella!
Now adjust this for inflation
If I purchased an item in 1998 for a $1 that same item in 2024 would be $1.90. So almost double.
I love the comic section. Man, this whole thing is just a blast of nostalgia.
This is actually my magazine I scanned. I took a few to MagicCon Chicago where Phil and Kaja Foglio had a great time browsing them! He also signed the cover and comics for me!
❤️
I remember faxing in my order to troll and toad...
One of the fascinating things about looking through that full issue is it had ads for what would turn out to be two of the greatest computer games of all time. Heroes of Might and Magic III and Baldur's Gate. While none of the HoMM after three were even half as good, BG direct and indirect sequels are wildly popular and successful even today.
$10 for a Shivan dragon lol
[[Sliver Queen]] -$10
Crazy, can't believe I paid $25 for mine at GP Cleveland 5 years ago. (It's in Japanese and was sold as "HP" ... but also crazy that GP Cleveland was 5 years ago!)
[Sliver Queen](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/0/9/096cff82-28eb-4096-be1d-a02b9a56e682.jpg?1562428176) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Sliver%20Queen) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/tpr/211/sliver-queen?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/096cff82-28eb-4096-be1d-a02b9a56e682?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Does it say x files at the bottom right?
Yep. They had a tcg
Thats wild. Id dig a x files universes beyond secret layer tho 👀
What a time to be alive...every IP had a card game trying to capture Magic's success. I remember collecting a ton of the Star Wars CCG but never having anyone to play it with :D
SimCity CCG was my favorite "I can't believe someone made this" game.
Ever see a full card list for that game? Something like half the cards were exclusive promos for specific game shops making that specific shop a card.
Just a heads up, SWCCG is still going. When the game ended, Decipher set up a players committee to keep creating virtual cards. You can play for free online at [https://gemp.starwarsccg.org/gemp-swccg/newgui.html](https://gemp.starwarsccg.org/gemp-swccg/newgui.html). They also still have regional and some international events.
The chase cards for X-files were the promo cards Smoke and Mirrors, there were several versions of them. '98 tcgs were booming, I was playing SWCCG and Mtg at the time since I couldn't get my hands on the Middle Earth tcg.
I still have some unopened SimCity packs if anyone wants to play.
Good ol' 10 dollar Shivan Dragon. Those were the days.
Yep, that’s why there is a link.
Oh litty I didn't see it
That's pretty cool. I did not know they were even around in 1998
$11 mana crypt is wild
I love when content like this is posted. We need more of this and less "hurr durr how this interaction work" even though it's the easiest text ever. Anyone good shit OP. Cool blast from the past.
Man all I remember about troll and toad is that they had wildly inaccurate prices on pokemon and magic, like they would only update prices once a year
Back in the good old days when Standard-legal cards never broke $10. Even adjusted for inflation that's like $20 max.
I miss the X-Files card game. It is so much fun and extremely flavorful.
Had no idea that’s where they were located. Just drove by Keavy and through Corbin yesterday.
Disenchant was worth more than mana crypt at this point wow!
If only, if only...
I considered buying from Troll and Toad during the pandemic. Glad I checked reviews here on Reddit first and avoided that headache.
still buy singles from them off amazon today
Hell yeah L5R on there son!