A LEGEND never dies.
Nineteenninedeefour…. Whassss a Year. I had just become an Eagle Scout, doing well as a Senior in High School about to graduate with a Regents Diploma, and in July was turning 18. June 4th (today) 27 years ago was a special day. A cultural phenomenon was in the midst of exploding. The trading card game called Magic The Gathering, released the LEGENDS expansion set. Now… technically; I was supposed to be in school on this day, but a severe case of “ NEUPACKITTIS “ caused a feverish reaction in a select few students in a particular High School in which I allegedly “skipped a few classes” from on this day and was “Absent from Noon till End bell”. YES I do believe the statute of limitations for this is up, so here is the truth about that awful 1 day illness…..
At the current time, I was known as a term called “Boy Friday”. It means: occasional helper. The previous weekend I was working a show at the Polish Community Center with the now infamous Jim Bruso and Centerfield Sportscards ( which became Hudson Valley Sportscard Exchange) selling all sorts of Sports, comics, art, and other trading cards. I had just recently shown Jim how to play the game, and we had a little bit of MTG product. LEGENDS was on our order list, but a distribution network was not reliable yet, so everyone was scrambling to find boxes of it. Having been a frequenter of the now legendary Flights of Fantasy store on Ontario St. in Albany, NY. I knew Maria had WOTC product inbound. So, I only knew 2 people who could drive and had access to a car at the time, and a particular 5 of us “nerds” all split after 5th period out to the parking lot, hopped in Kim’s car and went to the bookstore that sold little packs of cardboard gold.
“Limit 3 packs per person” was the devil’s mark! Gasp! EEK ! OH NOOOEESSSS !!!! a sticky note on that beautiful sky blue box of 36 crimp sealed plastic shrines of mysterious new wonderment…..
SO, we all got 3 packs each, and gleefully opened them to see what was to be had. Now mind you, there were no “Spoilers” or even really an “internet” as of that time with any real mentionable MTG websites, so no one knew WTF any the cards in the set were, no in depth analysis, no pre-conceived notions as to what the big hitters were. Literally was akin to a kid on Christmas morning unwrapping stuff from “santa”. Squeals of glee, Oh’s Ahs, OH SHIIITTs ! were exclaimed as we sat at the big wooden table with padded benches, the 2 shop cats looking at us in absolute distain for unceremoniously thwarting their plans for a quite afternoon sunbeam slumber spot. We bought a few other packs of Revised ( 3rd edition) which had just came out a few months prior at the now unbelievable price of $2.45 a pack ( current value is over $400.00 each) shuffled up some decks and played a few games of MTG ( or as we said..” MAJ DA GADJ “ ) It was a glorious Friday… in which time rapidly slipped away and we all forgot to return to CCHS to catch the 2:15 bus back to our respectable homes. A few quick payphone calls (for you youths of modern times, we didn’t have Cells, we all used to have phones on corners that we put coins into and would allow us to report location and plans to our parental units from) and we were able to stay at FOF a while longer and play.
A benefit of Maria’s Husband David: was he worked for the Airlines. He returned from a trip this particular evening and had a few of those glorious blue plastic wrapped bricks containing slices of paper with images and words on them. We were allowed to purchase 5 more packs per person, and we went on our merry way. A week later, everyone had a bunch of Legends cards, and the trading / collecting and deck building was in full swing at many the local game & card / hobby stores. We would make the rounds to Canterbury Tales, Imagination Games, Aqualonia, Sportys, Affordable cards, Pandemonium, and a few other hole-in-the-wall book stores looking for packs. It was literally SOLD OUT EVERYWHERE!
We happily had what we had, and that was that.
LEGENDS is a monster of a set. A lot of RAREs, iconic cards and devastating effects. Enchant World spells, Amazing sorceries, Instants and Interrupts, summon “Legend” and other superb Artifacts that truly to this day are game altering and highly sought after. I was a “Set guy”. I liked having 1 of each card and was fun to trade and buy, then to put in a 9 pocket page binder to collect. Now, mind you I was 17 years old. I would mow lawns, did odd jobs, and worked for a card dealer, so while I didn’t have a ton of money to blow on cardboard, I damn sure did spend a lot of it on said WOTC MTG product.
Popularity exploded, prices went up and some cards just got out of reach, and I was never able to complete my LEGEND’s set.
Fast forward to 2017. Now an Adult (and I loosely use that term) I have a career, some spare coins in the piggy bank, and a need to occupy my mind as I had just lost my 2 feline besties of 15 years just under a month prior. I dug out my old card collections and attempted to complete a Decipher Inc. STARWARS Premiere set with the remaining 20 or so cards needed. NOT ONE LOCAL STORE even had such cards in stock anymore! WOW…. What else has changed in the near 20 years I had been away from “ gaming” ?
Apparently a lot.
Some people were at Flights of Fantasy (now located at 381 Sandcreek Rd. in Colonie NY) sitting at a table playing MTG. I had a brief conversation with them, and went to my Parents house, in the closet and hauled out what remained of my collection from the late 1990s. I returned, made a few jaws drop with what I had (mine included upon seeing the values had skyrocketed) and I was 100% sucked back into the gaming community. In the past 4 years, I went from having a derelict hodgepodge collection, to an almost compete 1993 Unlimited set, all the “Core and Blocks” thru 2003 ending at the Scourge Set.
Today, marks a huge milestone. The shambles of my LEGENDS set from 1994, is completed. Many many many people have contributed, helped, traded, sold, bought, re-sold and gifted me with cards to get all them, with the final piece (The ABYSS) coming just this past Memorial day weekend. When I started re-collecting the vintage sets, I shyed away from LEGENDS because of it’s magnitude and feared I would again be doomed to be unsuccessful. For everyone who can relate, this set is one of the toughest to get together in really nice condition as the bulk of us who played back in the day can recall (pun intended) We were hard on these cards. No sleeves, greasy pizza fingers, beer stains, sticky soda tables, Boy Scout camping trips, beach side playing on rocks and park benches. This set painstakingly took me FOUR YEARS to complete. Thank you again to EVERYONE….. for the help, and shared love of all things old that are new again! There is a huge piece of me in this binder of plastic and cardboard….. and I’m sure many of you can nod your head in 100% agreement.
So what is your story with LEGENDS ???
We are ALL Legendary today.
Cheers,
Dave “ ESPI “ Sheedy.
PS: Oh and YES, we all had Detention on Monday. We were seniors, so it was in our “lounge”… and we indeed did play MTG the entire time. It was glorious ” Punishment”. 