The Glimmer | 25 Years of Foil Magic Cards
This essay traces a 25-year history of the production, development, and evolution of foil Magic cards.
Watch the full presentation here
This video is sponsored by Card Kingdom. Go to cardkingdom.com/studies to pick up your favorite foil Magic cards. From the treasured classics of 7th Edition, to the timeless pieces in the Masterpiece Series, and even contemporary hits like the Gilded foils, there are countless ways to elevate your favorite Magic deck. I’m partial to the Mystical Archive series and that subtle touch of gold trim. For all your Magic needs, Card Kingdom provides high-quality products and responsive customer service, and will ship your entire order in one package.
This video is made possible by partnering with BASILISK, the mission-driven eSports organization founded to inspire scientists through difficult gameplay. The members of BASILISK are drawn to games that reward curiosity, study, and process like Chess, Starcraft, and Magic. To align with their mission, here’s a fun science fact I learned while researching this video: holographic film can be cut into pieces, and each segment will still recreate the entire image according to its orientation. Pretty cool, huh? Thank you again to BASILISK for the partnership and support.
• A Flash of Lightning
Over the weekend of September 25, 1998, players around the world headed to their local game stores to try out the latest Magic set a week before its official release. Awaiting their arrival was something special, something never seen before: a promotional card that shined in the light. Shooting across the text box was a reflective star, a nod to the company’s logo, a stylized signature of sorts.
This was the very first foil Magic card.
Those playing in the prerelease that weekend were each gifted a date-stamped copy of Lightning Dragon to take home. Perhaps the players didn’t yet realize, but this card represented a paradigm shift in the printing industry and a nascent revolution for collectible trading cards. With a simple flourish of a sophisticated technology, Wizards of the Coast changed the game forever, to the delight and dismay of all involved.
• A Brief History of Holograms
“This is a hologram. Holograms have little in common with traditional photographs, except that both use film.”
In 1947, after fleeing Nazi Germany and settling in Britain, Hungarian physicist Dennis Gabor invented holography through experimentation with electron microscopes. In 1962, two years following the invention of the laser, Soviet Physicist Yuri Denisyuk discovered a method to optically record objects in three-dimensional environments. These holograms could be reproduced with beams of normal, white light. In 1971, Professor Gabor won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work in the burgeoning field.
“Holography is based on the wave theory of light.”
Within the following decade, holograms entered the commercial market and captured the imagination of popular culture. The March 1984 issue of National Geographic pushed the limits of magazine printers with an emblem of a three-dimensional eagle on the cover. Artists started experimenting with laser light in galleries in New York City. MasterCard began using the new technology as a weapon against counterfeits and fraud. Hallmark recognized the aesthetic appeal of holograms and claimed that “the possibilities were endless.”
At the end of the ’80’s, a new startup called Upper Deck entered the sports hobby market with their inaugural set of baseball cards. The company took notes from MasterCard’s playbook and included tiny holographic stickers of the teams’ logos as proof of authentication. Before long, the flashy treatment would be applied to the players themselves, making Hallmark proud and other trading card companies electric green with envy. By 1994, brands like Donruss together with Leaf Candy Company were implementing similar treatments to their product line. Glimmers of Magic’s first foils can be seen here on Ken Griffey Jr’s All-Star card.
Holographic laminates weren’t reserved exclusively for baseball cards. 1994 also marked the first time that foil packaging would accent a box of toothpaste. Holograms appeared on drivers licenses in California and event tickets at Wembley Stadium. They were on bank notes and tax stamps and the inner rings of CDs. By the end of the millennium, Professor Gabor’s invention had overrun the consumer market, conflating the perception of quality and glamor in the process.
This association was made most evident in October 1996, when Media Factory released the first base set of Pokémon cards in Japan.
• Test Prints and Business Partnerships
There’s a symbiotic relationship here between the early years of Magic and Pokémon.
In 1993, Wizards of the Coast released Alpha at GenCon in Milwaukee. Magic over-performed on all metrics and became a national gaming phenomenon, but was very slow to spread outside of the United States.
In 1995, during the development of Pokémon Red and Green for the Nintendo Game Boy, Creatures Inc. producer Tsunekazu Ishihara was ideating on ways to expand the franchise beyond video games. He looked directly at Magic as the model of excellence.
In 1996, the first Japanese Trading Card Game released to an unsuspecting audience. The game was a bit slower to catch fire the way Magic did, especially outside of Japan.
Although the IP’s were different, the business models were identical: both companies wanted to sell individual booster packs containing randomly distributed playing cards. Magic pioneered the formula, but Pokémon upped the ante. Pokémon had something that Magic did not:
In 1997, Media Factory raised the bar again with a second expansion. Of the 10 cards appearing in every Japanese Jungle booster pack, one was a guaranteed holofoil. Demand for cards increased. With rising cartridge sales and the premiere of the Pokémon anime in April, 1997 became the breakout year for the growing global phenomenon.
Across the ocean, Wizards of the Coast was taking notes.
A year later, just as these Boeing 747’s were taking flight to promote the worldwide release of “The First Movie,” licensing deals were shaping up in offices behind the scenes. Media Factory was searching for a company to handle the distribution of Pokémon in America, and the excecs in Renton had made their case for the rights. In August 1998, both parties went public with the agreement.
A month later, a foil Lightning Dragon appeared at the Urza’s Saga Prerelease.
And 18 years after that, an extraordinary object resurfaced, one that perfectly embodied this trans-oceanic business partnership. This is a foil test-print Blastoise printed on Magic card stock. It is one of very few in existence.
Considering the curious timing of these events, it appears to me that the looming Pokémon acquisition in 1998 inspired Wizards of the Coast to implement foil treatments on Magic cards. Media Factory’s success with the concept in Japan must have lit a fire; that old adage of “a good artist copies, a great artist steals.” No doubt that part of the negotiations was the responsibility of producing holofoil cards: by that point, Magic had no proof of concept that they could successfully replicate Pokémon’s products at their factories in Belgium. But the business deal forced their hand.
So they began test-printing foils with Cartamundi.
Among the four forensically-certified, test-print Blastoises in existence, three featured a prototype of Magic’s first foil laminate. The fourth was printed on a different card stock with a blank card back and the galaxy holofoil pattern signature of Pokémon’s first base set.
And the fifth test-print Blastoise, discovered in 2019, had black borders, and was found sharing space on an uncut foil sheet with none other than Lightning Dragon.
Curious.
• Sheets of Rainbow
Magic’s first foils presented some fundamental differences to the Creatures Inc. models.
First and foremost, Pokémon cards were quick to be called “holographic” due to the galaxy pattern present on the base set cards. The illusion of tiny stars floating in three-dimensional space was achieved by embossing microscopic grooves into a thin sheet of PET polyester with a laser. The laser must be of a single wavelength to create a useful interference pattern. Approximately 2,000 structured grooves occupy every millimeter of this plastic sheet, which is then metallized and coated with layers of lacquer. When white light hits these grooves, called “fringes,” it is then refracted into a spectrum of colors.
The foil treatment on Lightning Dragon and the test-print Blastoise showed off a smooth rainbow effect with no visible stars or patterns. To further differentiate their pride and joy from Pokémon, Wizards of the Coast inverted the foil treatment on Magic cards: while Pokémon rendered holographic the backgrounds behind its characters, Magic focused on illuminating the card frames. These styles traded spaces in subsequent years as the games continued to inform one another’s aesthetic choices.
The final difference was found in distribution. The Media Factory Jungle packs promised a holographic card in every booster; Magic was far more gun-shy to print its debut premium products in such high quantity. In the opening pages of The Duelist Issue 35, which featured none other than Pikachu on the cover, Mark Rosewater sensed a potential apprehension toward foils from the player-base. He wrote:
“…we announce the introduction of premium cards to Magic. This is a touchy issue for many people, so I felt it was important to take this month’s column to address concerns people might have.”
Rosewater noted the decline in collectibility as the primary motivator to print foil Magic cards, emphasizing that normal versions would still be readily available for folks who had no interest in collecting. He reinforced this position by stating that foils would be extremely rare: approximately one common in every 12 packs, one uncommon in every 20, and one rare in every 40. “Assuming premium cards are worth more than their normal counterparts,” he argued, “players simply get extra value for no extra cost.” He concluded the article with a hypothesis:
“The biggest shock will probably be that some players will realize they are also collectors.”
In the same issue, Jennifer Clarke Wilkes reported that “The commemorative Lightning Dragon…was well received and heavily traded after the event,” and “If player response to Lightning Dragon is any indication, they will be hugely popular.”
Both of these predictions would soon prove true.
• The 7th Edition Paradox
In February 1999, booster packs containing Magic’s first golden tickets were released to the world. Among the original chase foils was Ring of Gix, the spiritual successor to Icy Manipulator and a popular piece in artifact-based combo decks of the era. Comparing this card side-by-side with Lightning Dragon, a subtle difference emerges: the shooting star is significantly thinner.
But the overall template remained unchanged. Magic’s first foils featured a thin layer of unpatterned, rainbow laminate that lit up the card frame from within. This treatment became the stock standard.
Because Wizards was so conservative in distributing their premium cards, the company could effectively use foils as special rewards for participating in events and tournaments. As established with Lightning Dragon, foils could help draw players to Prereleases: the two sets following Urza’s Saga offered foil stamped promos to attendees and the tradition continued henceforth. Foils could also encourage casual players to attend Friday Night Magic. In 2000, River Boa became the first foil to be handed out at FNM, and by 2003, FNM promos would be branded with their own holographic watermark. The Magic Arena league also had their own promos, the most notable of which were reprints of select 6th Edition cards that otherwise would never have received a foil treatment. And the Judge Gift Program was introduced at the end of 1998: Lightning Bolt, Stroke of Genius, and Gaea’s Cradle all earned retroactive foil treatments and were shipped to official judges of the DCI in acknowledgement of their hard work.
Similarly, in December of 1999, Wizards began incentivizing young players to participate in the Junior Super Series tournaments with foil promos of Thran Quarry and Serra Avatar. Like the FNM promos, cards for this event would develop their own visual style in the coming years. Volcanic Hammer in 2002 debuted the JSS watermark, and by 2005, these promos would enjoy a completely unique holographic treatment. The sunburst pattern found here on Sakura Tribe Elder was originally tested for the release of Fifth Dawn, and has not been reused since the program’s cessation in 2008.
In the two years following Urza’s Legacy, Wizards printed six expansions that featured randomly distributed foils in booster packs. Most players embraced the concept of premium cards, and by 2001, foils became a mainstay of set releases. Among the most coveted cards released during this period was Brainstorm in Mercadian Masques, the flex piece of many a Legacy player, and Metalworker, a pricy penny beloved by Vintage players and Cube enthusiasts alike.
Then, in April 2001, 7th Edition arrived, an anomaly of an expansion that sold poorly for more reasons than one, but has paradoxically become the crown jewel of collectors for those very reasons.
To begin, 7th Edition was a core set and the first to feature foils. Every card included was a reprint from a former expansion, which meant that many cards from Magic’s history were receiving the deluxe treatment for the first time. Unlike previous core sets, however, Wizards commissioned new artwork for every single card in the file. This killed the nostalgia factor for enfranchised players who preferred the original illustrations of their favorite game pieces. Imagine reprinting base set Pokémon with new images of Charizard and Pikachu. That’s how players felt seeing these versions of Shivan Dragon and Serra Angel, despite them both featuring paintings by living masters.
Secondly, the power level of the average Core Set was considerably weaker than its neighboring expansions. Tournament grinders and limited lovers did not draft these sets nearly as much, especially because they released during the summer months when Magic competed with other lifestyle hobbies. As a result, fewer than average booster boxes were purchased and opened.
On top of that, foils in 7th Edition were scarce, equating to about 1 rare in every booster box. Considering there were 110 rares in this large set of 330 cards, this meant that pulling a specific rare in foil was even more unlikely. A set with fewer rares in comparison means a higher probability of finding their foil counterparts.
Finally, Magic: the Gathering Online launched a year later and supported cards from 7th Edition onward. To reinforce paper Magic, Wizards of the Coast initiated a redemption program that allowed players to convert their digital cards to physical ones. To do so, they had to collect every card from a single set in Magic Online and submit them for redemption, at which point Wizards would send them a sealed box of the set and delete the collection from the customer’s digital account. The redemption service for any given set was only available for a limited time and in limited quantities, and given the previous factors, it meant that very few players ever exchanged their digital collection of 7th Edition cards for physical versions. Even fewer redeemed their foil sets. Added to this was the fresh novelty of playing digital Magic: players weren’t exactly cashing out of Magic Online at its launch.
This confluence of factors has elevated 7th Edition foils to be among the most treasured collectibles from the premodern era of Magic. This sentiment is further evidenced by sales.
On July 24, 2021, a sealed foil set of 7th Edition from the Magic Online Redemption Program sold at Heritage Auctions for $33,600.00.
A foil City of Brass graded 9.5 is currently listed for just under 5k.
And the most valuable, ungraded foil in Magic history is 7th Edition Birds of Paradise. This card has become the Black Lotus of foils, the holy grail of holographic Magic cards.
There is yet another wrinkle to 7th Edition’s allure. Despite Wizards’ onslaught of reprints in recent years, foil counterparts of some cards are still exclusive to this set. Players seeking premium versions of cards like Stronghold Assassin, Crimson Hellkite, and Final Fortune have but one option. Even the set’s iconic vanilla creatures command a respectable price tag, since they haven’t been reprinted anywhere else. Added to this is the inclination to acquire the oldest versions of cards: retro-framed Goblin Matrons could never hold a candle to the original, and the prices reflect this preference.
A common misconception about 7th Edition foils is that they are higher quality than others of the time period. Players often gush about how beautiful these cards are, claiming their superiority to other foils with old frames. Empirically speaking, this isn’t true, but cultural belief is a powerful filter.
There is one final detail to address: cards from 7th Edition, like all reprint sets from this time period, were printed with white borders. Except the foils.
This is true of subsequent core sets, too, even after the 8th Edition card frame changes.
In fact, in the 30-year history of the game, there has never been a foil Magic card printed with white borders.
Why?
This tiny technicality became an obsession in my research, one that drove me deep into the minutiae of manufacturing trading cards, and the limitations of offset printing onto holographic laminates.
• The Question of White Borders
Written in black marker on the uncut Lightning Dragon and Blastoise sheet, there reads:
“POKEY TEST. 8 COLORS. WKCMYWWK. 1 PASS.”
Each letter here refers to an individual toner that is layered one at a time onto a sheet of cardstock during printing. The order of these letters provides insight into the printing process for foils, and how production for these cards is more labor intensive compared to their non-foil counterparts. Returning to the Duelist Issue 35:
“Producing the premium cards presented unique difficulties…Opaque areas required a base of white ink, and black and white inks had to be double-printed for readability. Instead of the normal four- or five-color process, premium cards required eight separate color plates.”
WKCMYWWK. These are the eight plates.
The first plate in the process establishes the white under-printing, commonly abbreviated as the “WUP.”
To understand the “WUP,” we can use this grayscale vector of Gideon, Champion of Justice for reference. For every Magic card from 8th Edition onward, a graphic artist works with an art director to decide which parts of a card will be accented by foil. These are indicated by the lightest sections of this image – the eyes, the whip, and the Gatecrash set symbol. The darkest sections, in contrast, will not show any foil, and thus will need an extra layer of ink applied at the base to render them more opaque.
Confusingly, the black sections of Gideon specify where the first layer of white ink will be printed. The black sections indicate the “WUP.”
This misprinted Zombie token shows what this looks like on a Magic card. The white ink creates a somewhat blotchy texture, one that provides a rough foundation for the colors that will eventually be printed on top.
Next, the card receives its first layer of black ink. The border takes the darkest value of black, while certain text elements like the mana bubbles require a much lighter layer of gray. This is achieved in print by distributing black ink at varying opacities.
Then, the three main layers of color – Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow – are printed individually in sequence. Mixing these layers to various degrees provides a brilliant spectrum of color options, and is the preferred method for industrial offset printers that use vegetable dyes in high-volume orders.
Following the color applicators, foil cards require two more layers of white ink. On the early foils, this white ink was applied to text elements like the card title and the power and toughness numbers. After 8th Edition, white text on Magic cards was virtually eradicated, appearing only on the artist credit, collector numbers, and copyright information along the bottom edge.
Finally, the foil sheet of cardstock passes through the eighth roller for the last layer of black ink.
After the cards are printed, they are treated with a thin layer of plastic laminate sealant for long-term durability, they are cut up, and they are sorted into booster packs.
Non-foil Magic cards can be printed using only four plates of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. White ink is not involved at all. Instead, offset printing companies take advantage of the vibrant, white card stock to do the heavy lifting, creating the illusion of white ink without ever having to lather up a roller. Every line of white text on this 7th Edition Wrath of God, for example, is just negative space left blank from the other colors. This is also true of the white borders: they are not printed onto the cards, they are the cards.
This meant that moving the same template to foil presented a major issue: if left unprinted like normal, the borders and text elements would be holographic. Expanding the offset production process to include white ink thus became a necessity. But white ink is notoriously translucent: a single layer still leaves foil shining through. Even when applied multiple times, it can appear misty and grainy. So Wizards’ solution was to minimize these disadvantages by printing foils with black borders and double passing white ink onto the tiny text elements where imperfections would be virtually invisible.
Returning to the question, then: why are there no foil Magic cards with white borders? Because white ink is fickle and generally non-compatible with holographic laminates. Instead, it’s better served as a base layer for other colors. Mystery solved.
The development of the white under-printing layer marked another paradigm shift in the production of foil Magic cards. The “WUP” began as a printing necessity, but it opened the door to endless creative potential for premium treatments. To realize that potential required another leap of faith.
• Shiny New Technique
On July 29, 2003, Wizards of the Coast celebrated Magic’s 10th anniversary with a major overhaul to the game’s visual design. Eighth Edition introduced new card frames, and in their tandem, new possibilities for premium treatments.
Two stark changes from the premodern foils took effect in 8th Edition. No longer would cards feature a shooting star across the textbox to denote foil treatment. This stylistic flair has appeared on select, exclusive products in the decades since, but 8th Edition was its unofficial retirement party. Secondly, foils would expand beyond the frame to include the entire face of the card for the first time, brightening up the text box and, most importantly, the illustration.
As seen with Gideon, Champion of Justice, this meant that all foil cards henceforth would require custom-made and hand-tailored, white under-printing plates for production. Offset printers are extremely precise, which allows designers to work at meticulous levels of detail when choosing areas of an illustration to accent with foil. Sometimes this means focusing on select characteristics, like the golden armor of an opulent sphinx (Arbiter of the Ideal). Other times, it means leaving the subject opaque in the foreground against a fully holographic background. Cards like Suntail Hawk are reminiscent of those base set Pokémon cards in this way. When the white under-printing layer is poorly designed, certain cards can leave players longing for more; I remember being underwhelmed by the treatment on Archetype of Imagination. Sometimes the translation from digital vector to print does not produce the intended effect.
As seen on the JSS and FNM Promos, white under-printing could also be leveraged to create stylistic watermarks for worldbuilding and immersion purposes. The first Ravnica block in 2005 featured the ten icons of the city’s factions glimmering in the textboxes of gold cards, signets, and shocklands. Mirrodin Besieged and New Phyrexia used foil watermarks to reveal the ongoing war between the Mirrans and their invaders. Khans of Tarkir used foil watermarks to divide up its clans, and Fate Reforged featured a unique holographic treatment that hasn’t been repeated since. To communicate its time-traveling narrative, Wizards printed Crux of Fate and the five cards of the Siege cycle with a foil watermark that shifted between the Khans and Dragons set symbols. Although flavorful, this area appears garish and distorted in print.
These flourishes exemplified the company’s desire to provide something more to foils, a visual twist, an extra reason to collect the premium versions. 10th Edition’s release in 2007 reinforced this sentiment: select foils from this Core Set removed the reminder text and added flavor text as an appeal to invested players. Among its most evocative foils is Time Stop, which simply reads “End the turn.”
The most significant experiment with foils from this era came in 2008 with the release of From the Vault: Dragons, a new premium product aimed directly at collectors and sold in limited quantities through local game stores. These supplemental box-sets contained 15 cards of a common theme and featured an all-new holographic treatment, the first of its kind. Described by associate brand manager and project lead Mark Purvis, From the Vault cards were “printed on a foil stock that was twice as reflective and treated with a varnish that gave them a very unique look.”
Player response was divided. On the one hand, this extra layer of varnish was effective in differentiating these cards at first glance from their traditional rainbow counterparts. They were unmistakably shinier, even to the untrained eye. On the other hand, critics lamented that they looked gaudy and cheap, often comparing them to the packaging on hygienic products like tissue boxes and toothpastes. In their excess, they became uncanny knockoffs and fell lukewarm in favor. The product line was discontinued in 2017 after ten installments.
Aside from the contention over their visual appeal, adding an extra layer of foiling came with a price. The primary downfall of the FTV cards was curling, an issue that persisted even while sealed in their original displays. Much like printing with white ink, the phenomenon of curling underscores the physical complications of combining foil laminates with paper cardstocks. Understanding these complexities became another obsession in my research.
• Playing with Marked Cards
Presently on the Cartamundi website, there is an interactive map of the company’s locations as they are scattered across the globe. From the east coast of Japan to the Western reaches of Europe, they have established design studios and printing facilities to supply markets across four continents. While browsing this map, I noticed something curious: every single factory is built in medium-gray areas. There are no locations in the lighter gray, arid regions, or in the darker gray, muggy zones. Digging deeper, I found that the yearly average humidity of every single location ranges between 66% on the low-end in Dallas and 80% at their flagship site in Turnhout. Cartamundi seems to set up shop exclusively in temperate areas that fall within this sweet spot of humidity.
Paper cardstock is a breathing material. Like the curved and contoured woods of an acoustic guitar, the fibers within a Magic card will expand and contract ever so slightly with the moisture in the air. In high-humidity environments, these fibers will absorb water, widen, and become denser, and in low-humidity environments they will dry out and shrink. Like any guitar shop with an acoustic guitar room, Cartamundi claims to maintain a climate-controlled environment in their printing facilities. This is to ensure, as best they can, that the cardstock holds a uniform rigidity and size throughout the printing process.
When foil laminates are glued to one side of the cardstock, the gradual expansion and contraction of the paper conflicts with the polyester layer, which does not respond to humidity in the same manner. When the card expands from exposure to a higher humidity than its point of origin, the face bends inwards and the corners rise, resulting in concaving. When the card contracts from exposure to a lower humidity than its point of origin, the face bends outwards and the corners fall, resulting in convexing.
Foil trading cards have always been prone to curling, even in the earliest years when quality control was stricter. This Japanese holographic Poliwrath from 1996 arrived in my mailbox slightly curled. The 7th Edition Thorn Elemental that I’ve had in my binder for 22 years also has its own curve. While you cannot prevent the slight warping that is caused from two materials naturally interacting, you can mitigate its effects. It comes down to calibrating the moisture in the air.
In a thorough study conducted in 2021, Tawnos from MTGGoldfish explored methods to dehydrate the concave cards and rehydrate the convex cards in their collection. This involved placing the cards into deckboxes along with two-way humidity regulators from the brand Zuut. These packets were set to three degrees of humidity control [55%, 62%, and 72%]. Cards from the first batch dried out slightly and curled outward, the second batch remained mostly flat, and those in the third batch began to curl inward. Tawnos also tested the extremes by leaving some cards to sit with silica desiccant, which removed most of the moisture from the core and caused them to arch. Leaving these dried-out cards in an environment with 100% humidity rehydrated and flattened them in only 48 hours.
Finally, Tawnos double-sleeved some cards with perfect-fits and re-exposed them to the desiccant. Remarkably, they didn’t arch like their single-sleeved counterparts, and only after two weeks were there any noticeable changes as the moisture slowly dissipated from within.
Equally-thorough studies have been conducted by other curious Magic players. In late 2020, Reddit user Zaphodava wrote up an insightful report on their results, which included photo and video evidence of how cards morphed when exposed to varying degrees of humidity. Community member Logan Isch has also been running similar experiments on Twitter for some time. Five days in a ziplock bag with a 65% humidity control packet from Boveda successfully flattened some foils from his Commander deck. To this tweet, Proxy Guy responded “Now cook ‘em,” alluding to a much riskier method that he’s been employing to good results. Prox first de-curls his foils with humidity packets, then places them on parchment paper sandwiched between two sheet pans. 10 minutes in the center rack of the oven at 225º Fahrenheit produces a permanent fix to curling. Proxy claims no liability, of course, but it does make me wonder how exposure to above-boiling temperatures changes the chemistry of the cardstock.
Motivated to test these theories myself, I gathered a few curled foils from my collection, tossed them into clear plastic bags with Boveda 65% humidity packs and zipped them up. After a few days, two of my cards flattened out nicely. This From the Vault Wall of Blossoms, however, didn’t change at all, which means I probably need to dehydrate it below 65% humidity to see any results. To that effect, a common misconception about curled foils is that placing them beneath heavy objects like books or free weights can help in the flattening efforts. This approach has proven ineffective, as it misunderstands the symptoms of the curling in the first place.
I tested one final card in this experiment: a heavily-warped Prismatic Piper which I purchased specifically for this video. This card came from Commander Legends, a set with notoriously pringled foils that the community has rightfully berated since its release [Cardboard Crack / Tales from the Mana Crypt comics]. From photos of cards standing upright, to binders that look like accordions, to full-on Stonehenges of defective Magic cards, the quality of cardstock for this product was an unacceptable insult to Magic players in late 2020. The Prismatic Piper, listed correctly or not as “Near Mint,” put me back 6¢ and arrived in the same condition in which it was printed. After three days in a bag, it became only slightly less parabolic in form, and would certainly warrant a game loss if I ever attempted to play with it in a sanctioned tournament.
Despite their status as collector’s items, subsets of players actively avoid premium cards to reduce the risk of cheating allegations in tournaments. Some foils that curve too much can be considered marked cards at the discretion of judges. The most notorious case of an honest player avoiding a match loss due to foil curling happened at GP Orlando in August, 2018. At the time, Nexus of Fate was heavily played in Standard, but as a buy-a-box promo it was only available in foil. So the player asked the Head Judge to create a proxy, who then scribbled the card’s name and casting cost onto a basic Mountain to include in their deck:
This minor event put a spotlight on the growing issue with curling foils. The release of Commander Legends amplified it tenfold. Although the admiration for older foils is partially rooted in nostalgia, they are undeniably sturdier and more integral than some of the company’s recent offerings. Many Secret Lair foils have been lackluster and curvy, more and more cards are arriving in boosters already damaged during production, and players are actively reading the packaging information to vet the manufacturing locations of the cards within. As of now, cards printed in Japan are typically favored over anything made in America.
Perhaps these are symptoms of the post-COVID expansion and exploitation of Magic by Hasbro. Or maybe it’s been a much slower pivot from treating foils as bonuses in boosters and gifts to players for attending events, to seeding them as lottery tickets in high-cost products.
• Premium to the Premium
Pascal Maynard was bullied and harassed for picking a foil stamped Tarmogoyf during the Top 8 draft at Grand Prix Vegas in 2015. He did so because the card was worth $400 at the time of the event. A year prior, foil copies of Jace the Mind Sculptor were nearing $600, and throughout the 2010’s, foil Zendikar Fetchlands sat comfortably between $150 and $200 each. There are many examples of similar price trends.
High-value foils are nothing new to the game: they have always been supplemental to the business model, an explicit incentive to buy booster packs. They are also integral to the consumer model: box and pack openings have been the bread and butter of video formats for trading card games since the early years of YouTube. The unexpected surprise of finding a $50 card in a $4 pack is a universal thrill. Rosewater understood that in 1998, and Media Factory understood that in 1996.
Despite their shortcomings, the From the Vault series set an important precedent and proved there was a market for direct-to-collector sales. Wizards could cut the middle-man of randomness from the equation and deliver foils in box sets with flashy themes. They could also develop ancillary products that catered to other subsets of players. In 2009, Wizards debuted the Premium Deck series, a short run of 3 precons targeted at the Legacy crowd. Then came Commander’s Arsenal in 2012, which appealed to the growing population of EDH enthusiasts. In 2013, the San Diego Comic Con exclusives followed in suit and continued annually until the 2020 lockdowns. The primary hook of all of these reprint products were their new illustrations and snazzy, foil treatments.
Meanwhile, on the main product line, Wizards was slowly increasing the drop rate on foil cards in booster packs. In Time Spiral, it became possible for the first time to open two rares in a single pack. Beginning in Conflux in 2009, 1 in every 67 cards was guaranteed foil, which dropped again to 1 in 45 with the release of M20. This meant that foils were appearing over twice as often compared to those in the first Urza’s block, which hit once every 100 cards. In January, 2010, Wizards pitched a royal send-off to the Shards of Alara Block with the first-ever all-foil booster pack. These sold for $11.99 MSRP, a costly mark-up at the time. They were extremely unpopular due to the low power level of the cards within, the sheer range of possible cards in a pack with 539 total across the block, and the ongoing competition with Zendikar, the main event at the time of release. Despite the flop, the company would assuredly return to the concept with much more intent.
Three years later, in the summer of 2013, the booster pack and box set concepts converged, and the paradigm shifted once more. Modern Masters was the first draftable booster product aimed at enfranchised players and sold at a premium. Taking a note from the earliest years of Pokémon, this experimental set guaranteed a foil in every pack. Unlike the Jungle boosters, however, foils could appear at any rarity, and given the higher price tag and lower supply on boxes, they preserved their value in the secondary market.
Tarmogoyf was the marquee card in the set. Upon its release, foils eclipsed $400.
The release of Modern Masters kicked off the 20th anniversary of Magic: the Gathering. Yet, beyond the JSS promos and the From the Vault double foils, Wizards had not changed anything to the fundamental design of their premium cards. The rainbow foil found on Lightning Dragon was stylistically the same rainbow foil found on nearly every card printed since. Pokémon, on the other hand, seemed to have no limits to their holographics. In the first ten years of the 2000’s alone, they experimented with everything from reverse holos to matrix foils to energy symbol holograms reminiscent of those baseball team logos from Upper Deck. Even excessive patterns like “firework burst” and “cracked ice” made it to print.
But Magic never felt like it needed such gimmicks. 20 years along, the core concept had not grown stale – pack foils carried the same intrigue and exclusivity as they did in the decades prior. When Eric Froelich showed up to Pro Tour Return to Ravnica with a blinged-out Jund deck, he did so to communicate his dedication to the archetype and passion for the game. The aesthetic value was less important than the cultural value: such a deck would not have been more meaningful if his Dark Confidants were sunbursted or mirror foiled or whatever else. These cards were the de facto reference point for luxury and status because there were no alternate treatments. When there is only one mountain, everyone understands what it means to reach the top.
Three years following this tournament, in October 2015, the landscape changed again, and a new peak emerged. Accompanying the two sets in the Battle for Zendikar block were a collection of 45 deluxe lands called “Expeditions.” The preview event that took place at Pax Prime felt like one of the last significant moments in Magic when all eyes were locked on one, individual release, and the entire community was collectively celebrating together. The excitement for these cards was outstanding, even more so when Fetchlands and Shocklands were announced to be part of the series.
Expeditions appeared less often than mythic rares, but more often than mythic foils, equating to about one in every 120 booster packs. The foil treatment was slightly shinier than that of a normal card, but took on a glossier finish that elevated their look. Opening an Expedition in a booster pack provided an unforgettable experience, especially in limited events like Prereleases where neighboring players could partake in the fun. The market reflected the cards’ novelty upon release, and prices have only matured since.
As a direct result of the success of the Zendikar Expeditions, Wizards formalized the concept under the banner of the “Masterpiece Series.” The following block Kaladesh contained 54 Artifacts called “Inventions” that featured golden filigree on some of the highest-profile cards in the game’s history. Like the Expeditions, the foil treatment was elevated from the traditional rainbow pattern and concentrated on the intricacies of the card frame. Beloved pieces like Sol Ring and Mana Crypt have steadily appreciated in the secondary market, and the majority of these cards have become prized collectibles and player-favorite versions. I’m partial to the Swords cycle myself.
The Masterpiece series was short-lived, concluding with its third and final installment in the following block. The Amonkhet Invocations were 54 spells centered around the plane’s deities and the chaotic return of the God-Pharaoh Nicol Bolas. They were the first tournament-legal Magic cards to lack a black-border, with their frames resembling stone monuments and their text boxes mimicking Egyptian hieroglyphics. Accenting the edges were razor-thin layers of gold foil. The community response to these cards at release was antagonistic and extremely critical; I still remember the attacks toward Forscythe and company. Never before had Magic taken such a departure from its traditional design language, which fueled comparisons to Yu-Gi-Oh! and the promo Ancient Mew. Despite the ire, these have grown to become my favorite premium Magic cards in the game’s history. The Blue spells from the series are especially mesmerizing.
The Amonkhet Invocations marked a significant step forward for foiling. These were unconventional in their manufacturing and offered a new blueprint for holographic application. No longer was Wizards conceptually bound to the two main formulas: these cards blended the card frame treatment from the premodern era with the white-underprinting techniques of 8th Edition onward. They also proved that gold foiling was possible and desirable. Like the Inventions and Expeditions, they were finished with a much glossier lacquer, a subtle way to communicate a new level of luxury to players.
The Masterpiece Series was slated to continue with the release of Ixalan, but was cancelled sometime between art commissions and printing. Wizards claimed that the essence of the series would be diluted if it accompanied every major set release. This premature cancellation was, in my opinion, a significant mistake.
First of all, Masterpieces provided a thrilling pack-opening experience, which fulfilled the role of the foil Magic card as it was conceptualized in 1998 to the utmost degree. Their rarity marked a perfect sweet-spot in the collation of booster packs. Opening a Masterpiece was akin to hitting a 7th Edition foil rare; you had to get lucky of course, but it wasn’t exactly winning the powerball. A certain amount of scarcity can lead to memorable moments without the feeling of missing out.
Secondly, Masterpieces created a perfect counterbalance to normal foils. Given their bold designs, they were unique enough to attract their own admirers and dissenters. This division is healthy. To this day, there are players who outright refuse the Invocations, and will only play with pack-foil versions of their favorite Amonkhet cards. Just as many are those who are slowly acquiring full sets; I’m about halfway through my own collection of Invocations, an ongoing side-project that has taken six years and counting. In that regard, roughly 50 cards is a perfect quantity for a mini-series of this nature.
Finally, Masterpieces provided an anchor point for the community. Speculation about card selection and frame treatments fueled organic excitement for upcoming sets. Proxy artists could create ambitious mockups while collectors crossed their fingers for select reprints. Assigning these cards a core theme also connected the worldbuilding of a plane to the physical product. Strixhaven’s Mystical Archive and the Retro Artifacts from The Brothers’ War are recent examples of how a curated selection of spells can elevate the texture of a Magic set in a flavorful way. They also reflect how returning to this concept sparingly, and not in every set, can mantain the novelty.
Nevertheless, the series was axed just as quickly as it was established. Maybe to a fault, Masterpieces were too commercially successful. They proved the existence of a deep market of players and collectors who were anxious for alternate foil treatments on premium cards. The success of the Modern Masters experiment reinforced this perception, and the conclusion of the From the Vault line left a void that needed addressing.
So Wizards went back to the single most important asset in their arsenal: the booster pack. Ravnica Allegiance released on January 25, 2019 and introduced the prototype of an all-new pack-opening experience. Later that year, Mark Rosewater announced “Project Booster Fun,” signaling the end of a centralized identity for Magic and the beginning of its fracturing into multitudes.
• Project Booster Fun
Up until this point, there was an implicit hierarchy of perceived value in Magic culture. To return to the metaphor of the mountain, foils represented the summit, typically competing only with certain offshoot exclusives or a card’s oldest printing. The card’s visual appeal was subjective and secondary to its treatment; the foiling in itself superseded individual taste.
Furthermore, foil versions of high-profile cards that were central to the game’s history took on a supplementary role as trophy objects. Their demand and collectibility was an organic extension of the culture that produced them. Rarity mattered, but their historical and social value mattered more. Communities within niche hobbies like Magic will naturally ennoble certain objects over time. These objects become shorthand representations of the subculture, totems that make those communities proud when they are described in coffee table books and displayed in museum exhibitions.
Prior to 2019, the authority to decide which objects were important and valuable still belonged mostly to the players. Pascal Maynard does not pick the foil Tarmogoyf without the presence of this hidden power structure. Modern Masters laid bare the company’s dependence on the consumer to create these value systems around premium treatments, without which the product would not exist. This is proven by Tarmogoyf’s irrelevance in contemporary Magic tournaments and thus its exclusion from recent reprint sets.
Masterpieces began to muddy this dynamic between the players of the game and its custodians. Wizards intentionally selected cards for Expeditions, Inventions, and Invocations that already carried significant cultural and monetary value. The cards’ custom frames and novel foil treatments were supplemental to the series’ success, not its cause: this experiment does not work without reprint capital. The Masterpiece Series was the direct progenitor to Project Booster Fun and the Secret Lair initiative, both outlets that, in less than five years, have rendered obsolete the significance and allure of traditional foil Magic cards.
The release of Throne of Eldraine in Fall 2019 marked the beginning of this transition from the community to the corporation in deciding which objects to exalt. It began with extended borders, showcase frames, and the Collector Booster writ large, which took the once rare and exclusive foil card and made it commonplace. This, once again, was observable in the markets.
It started as a numbers game. The prototype for Ravnica Allegiance guaranteed two foils of any rarity per pack. Throne of Eldraine’s Collector Booster designated these two slots to one foil rare or mythic and one foil token per pack. Theros Beyond Death saturated the foil drop-rate to an extreme: 13 of the 15 total cards were guaranteed foil, with various frame treatments distributed across the card types and rarities. The Ikoria Collector Boosters that followed reduced this hit-rate slightly to 10 or 11 depending on your luck, and Zendikar Rising Collector Boosters complicated the formula further with the chance of hitting on the second iteration of Expeditions. The Masterpiece Series was revived here for a moment, but foil versions were reserved for the most expensive packs.
Beyond their price points, the main challenge working against these packs has been one of optics. From the outset, players have struggled to clearly identify what exactly appears in any given Collector Booster. Not only have the distribution numbers repeatedly fluctuated from set to set, but the seemingly infinite possible combinations of foil and frame treatments have resulted in mixed signals from brand representatives and marketing departments. In November 2020, Commander Legends multiplied the permutations with the debut of an all-new type of foiling. The bullet-point list of the set’s accompanying Collector Boosters grew longer and even more confusing.
This new treatment, officially named “Foil-etched,” marked the first significant departure from the traditional rainbow style. Characterized by a flaky texture reminiscent of film grain, foil-etched cards appear coarse but are smooth to the touch. While the aforementioned traditional foils from this set struggled to maintain a playable rigidity due to poor quality control, foil-etched cards stayed perfectly flat and straight. This is because the effect is achieved not with a layer of polyester laminate, but with printed metallic inks. Removing these metallic inks with acetone reveals the normal white cardstock beneath. As such, this treatment offers an alternative solution to the curling problem that plagues newer Magic cards.
The following April, the foil-etched treatment appeared again in the Mystical Archive, Strixhaven’s psuedo-Masterpiece series. Cards from this collection were also printed in non-foil and traditional foil, as well as with alternate art versions exclusively in Japanese. The foil-etched treatment here was far more subtle than in Commander Legends, illuminating only the golden bevels along the card frame. While some players found these versions underwhelming, I believe this is where metallic inks work best, as accents rather than bases. The MSCHF Secret Lair version of Cut to Ribbons provides another tasteful example of the foil-etched treatment in gold. When applied with restraint, it elevates the artistry of the illustration.
The development of the foil-etched technique for Commander Legends and its subsequent repurposing for the Mystical Archive set a new precedent for Project Booster Fun. Wizards of the Coast took another page from Pokémon’s playbook and extended the possibilities for foiling ad infinitum. No longer were they bound exclusively to the traditional rainbow foil that had defined the previous two decades of premium cards.
The company could theoretically develop a new foil treatment for every major release, then recycle the treatments on exclusive cards in later sets. In essence, new foils could manufacture new demand.
Together with showcase frames and cameo appearances of characters and locations from outside of the Magic IP, the most important card inside any given booster pack became decentralized and undefined. What once was a single mountain was now an endless range of peaks.
• Every Frame a Foil
Printing technology has advanced considerably since the mid 90’s, and the market for foil laminates has followed in its wake. Every pattern imaginable is now being sold for industrial use, with brands like Nobelus and FoilCo offering pages and pages of stylistic options to clients. From business cards to wedding invitations, and still more boxes of toothpaste, foil laminates are omnipresent in everyday life. Even my gift bags at Christmas this year were stuffed with holographic tissue paper.
In the past few years, Magic has capitalized on the availability and expansion of polyester laminates and significantly altered their product line as a result. Since 2020, there have been at least fifteen new foil treatments introduced to the game, each one offering a thematic tie-in to the identity of the plane visited and a ready-made sales pitch for the marketing department. More often than not, these new foil treatments appear exclusively in Collector Boosters and high-end supplemental sets. Long gone are the days of opening Masterpieces in Draft Boosters.
Modern Horizons II released a couple of months after Strixhaven. The product’s target audience of old-school players inspired Wizards to revive the pre-modern frame and foiling for Project Booster Fun, which included the iconic shooting star from the late 90’s. Staples like the Zendikar Fetchlands and select time-shifted cards from Modern Horizons I were reskinned with retro frames. However, due to printing inconsistencies, the faces of some cards were covered entirely in foil rather than staying constrained to the frame like the classics they sought to emulate. Mistakes like these really spoiled the callback. These retro-framed cards were also available as foil-etched versions, which made for a strange mashup of old and new.
Next came Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Magic’s first complete crossover set to feature an outside intellectual property. As part of the “Love Your Local Game Store” initiative, Wizards sent all premium members of the WPN five beloved, retro-framed cards in foil, one for each color of mana. Stores also received two foil copies of every Rare and Mythic in AFR with the D&D ampersand overlayed on top. 80 cards in total adapted this treatment. This Sphere of Annihilation is just a bit glossier than the normal foil, and by my eye, the ampersand outline was produced with a thick layer of white under-printing. Like the Fate Reforged double watermark, this idea looked better in concept than in print.
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow closed out the final months of 2021, but their special foil treatment would be reserved for the Double Feature release in January. Instead, the final novelty of the year was found once again in the Secret Lair: MSCHF collaboration, which released at the end of November. Along with the elegant use of foil-etched gold was a unique application of silver laminate. This Grim Tutor is technically considered a traditional foil, but the extra substrate has muted the rainbow pattern and given the card a shining, mirror-like quality. Stare close enough and you can see your reflection in the skeletons, which I like to think was a poetic choice.
This same technique was repurposed for the Silver Screen foils of Innistrad’s controversial collector set. Although Double Feature endured some well-deserved criticism, this subtle and understated foiling emphasized the darker tone of the Gothic plane, and shifting the frames and illustrations to grayscale made for some individually memorable cards. Neonate’s Rush captured that cinematic look reminiscent of old Hollywood, and Tapping at the Window evoked those silent horror flicks when rendered in black and white. Legibility issues aside, nothing here was worth the higher price tag. I did love the booster pack design, but that’s a video topic for another time.
2022’s first major set release was in February with Neon Dynasty, a vibrant return to Kamigawa that brought new showcase frames, ukiyo-e lands, and a futuristic foil treatment. “Neon Ink” was featured exclusively on Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos and appeared in four colors of ascending rarity. Yellow was the designated WPN promo for the set, while Blue, Green, and Red appeared only in Collector Boosters at less than 1% per pack. Furthermore, Wizards stated that there would be half as many green versions as blue versions, and a quarter as many red versions as green versions. Reddit user Humeon ran the numbers for these cards and deduced that the odds of opening Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos in Red Neon Ink was 1:1300.
Stylistically, these cards were defined by fiery streaks and frame bevels that glowed under ultraviolet light. Given that the standard four colors of offset printers cannot produce this effect, neon inks had to be silkscreened atop the finished cards and thus appeared matte against the foil. In general, players accepted the company’s gambit of turning an otherwise average and un-impactful card into the chase collectible of the set. Now, nearly two years removed, the Neon Inks Hidetsugu have become a memorable icon of Neon Dynasty’s rollout.
In the same vein, this was the first major instance of Wizards overtly manufacturing artificial rarity for select foil cards. While the Hidetsugu experiment was more or less harmless to the ecosystem, it introduced yet another dial to turn within the Collector Booster. Prices have followed the drop rate, with Neon Red Ink copies running nearly $1,000 for a card that has no tournament playability or historical relevance. This was not a Fetchland or a Sol Ring or a Blood Moon – it was a brand new creature specific to Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. It was the company, not the players, that decided it deserved an arbitrary deluxe treatment, and it was the company that fabricated its availability. Given enough time, the company will repeat this approach and push its boundaries to further extremes.
• The Serialized and Printed 500
Following the celebrated release of Neon Dynasty was Streets of New Capenna, and with it the debut of Gilded Foils. To match the art deco atmosphere of the fictional city, Wizards developed a decorative showcase frame with ornate panels running along the edges. Gilded Foils elevated this design by slightly embossing the frame with a layer of reflective gold foil. According to senior creative director Lisa Hanson, this was achieved with a three-dimensional hot stamp, one never before used in Magic. This treatment looks magnificent and resulted in a shining example of combining worldbuilding with product design.
Streets of New Capenna also had foil-etched versions, traditional foils, five alternate frames, region-specific box toppers, full-art Metropolis lands, and even a Phyrexian frame for the wayward Urabrask. The era of product saturation has required that every set be released with an in-depth article explaining where to find every possible combination of foils and frames. The infamous Collector Booster infographics have all but tempered the confusion, and the quantity of product types per set has multiplied the options further. No longer are foil Magic cards enough – they have to be supplemented by a new frame and pedestaled by an exclusive and costly collector commodity. When everything is special, nothing is: this maxim will define the ongoing era of over-abundance.
Nevertheless, production carried on full steam ahead. Double Masters 2022 was the next release in July. The primary gimmick of this draftable reprint set was that every pack would contain two rares and two foils, a playful riff on the year of its name. Foil-etched cards returned again, establishing themselves as a now mainstay of the Collector Booster experience. The set’s novelty treatment was found on five, borderless mythic rares with textured foil card faces that appeared in 3% of all high-end boosters. The webbed pattern resembled thousands of tiny engravings that refracted the incoming light into rays, like those of a setting sun. Presumably, this embossed texture was achieved with a 3D hot-stamp like the one used on gilded foils, but no press release could confirm this.
Two months later, textured foils appeared again in Dominaria United on 41 Legendary creatures depicted in stained-glass. These cards were hybrid amalgamations of the glossy Masterpiece foiling paired with white text on colorful frames. The textures were not uniform across the card: the line work from Double Masters 2022 appeared behind the title line, type line, and power and toughness box, while the text box and black border took on a granular feel that sparkled like glitter. The treatment was so subtle that it could easily be mistaken as foil-etched. If ever you need confirmation, check the artist credit and collector information along the bottom edge. Traditional foiling on the M15 card frame will shine through the letters, since the text is no longer being double-printed with white ink, while foil-etched cards will appear matte like their non-foil counterparts.
In October 2022, Magic took its first voyage to space and returned with yet another new foil treatment. Exclusive to Unfinity was the so-called Galaxy foil, which appeared on an array of lands and spells found in Collector Boosters. Embedded in this pattern were tiny stars and swirls and suns, with jagged edges like those from 8-bit video games. This laminate is virtually identical to the 2nd Edition Pokémon holofoil, which makes me wonder about proprietary rights and trademarks of such things. Galaxy foil was also used on the “Totally Spaced Out” Secret Lair that complimented Unfinity’s launch, and to date it has only appeared on cards set in the cosmos.
In the same month, Magic ventured into the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Each Collector’s Edition of the precons featured a fully-foiled Commander deck sporting a new holographic pattern. Surge Foils moved from corner-to-corner with a rainbow refraction, and their pattern resembled the gentle ripples of water on a lake. This treatment is glossier and much shinier than traditional foils, and has reappeared on two subsequent Universes Beyond products in Tales of Middle Earth and Doctor Who, which may signal a pattern for future collaboration sets. Like most foil treatments, some cards look better than others: the brilliant gold frame on this version of Sauron, the Dark Lord is quite pretty.
Closing out the year was a journey back in time to the beginnings of Dominaria and the battles between Urza and Mishra. The Brothers’ War was a thematically rich Magic set defined by archeology and the unearthing of ancient relics. To compliment the narrative, Wizards hand-selected 63 memorable artifacts from Magic’s history, retro-fitted the cards with the old brown frames, and scattered them across every type of booster pack available in the product line. Like the Strixhaven Mystical Archive spells, these cards could be opened in a designated slot in every normal draft booster, and as a result, they played a pivotal role in the limited metagame. To raise the stakes for the Collector Booster, Wizards took a huge swing on a new concept that is common in other collectible hobbies. Each of the 63 schematics would be numbered out of 500 and printed as a double rainbow version of the traditional foil. Doing the math, this meant they printed 31,500 serialized artifacts in total. Writer Cliff Daigle estimated the pull rate to be less than 1%, equating to one serialized card per two cases of Collector Booster Boxes.
Serialized cards, like the Neon Inks Hidetsugu, marked the second overt example of manufactured scarcity in Magic. The concept was first tested and seeded in various Secret Lair products on a reverse-text Viscera Seer, with only 100 copies stamped and printed in late 2021. Collectors quickly narrowed in on these drops, and current listings suggest the floor is set at roughly two grand. The Brothers’ War schematics have more variance to their price points, with listings ranging from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand. Some cards are inherently more desirable than others due to playability or rarity. Sales are difficult to track because of the sporadic nature of their appearances in the market, and the community has speculated that certain numbers like 069 and 420 will always carry a certain meme tax, while 001 and 500 will demand equally special price points.
I find serialized cards pretty uninspired and too obviously targeted. While booster packs have always been physical loot boxes, they have never been so blunt in casting their lure. Normal foils can theoretically add a layer of collectibility, but serialized cards feel totally arbitrary in their appeal. Once again, it is the company that is making the decisions about what is special here, not the players, and I can’t see beyond the contrivance. Wurmcoil Engine #247 is no different than Ashnod’s Altar #195, and no more meaningful to Magic culture in the macro. I’d much rather have the Draft Booster equivalents that I pick up while playing the game – at least those will evoke good memories of great times with friends.
Just as well, Collector Boosters were proving to be short-term money-makers at the cost of long-term sustainability. Around the same time as the release of The Brothers’ War, Business Insider journalist Matthew Fox reported on an alarming call between Bank of America and Hasbro. Analyst Jason Haas claimed that Bank of America downgraded Hasbro’s stock due to mismanagement of the Magic: the Gathering franchise, warning that the company was overprinting cards and effectively killing its golden goose. The target stock price fell from $73 to $42 following the call, and year-to-date in November 2022, overall stock was down 44%.
Nevertheless, a new year was approaching, and with it more opportunities to deepen the cache of foils.
• The Eventuality of Plastic Lunchboxes
In April 2014, Magic crossed a major milestone with over 5,000 judges officially registered and active in the Judge Program. To celebrate this achievement, Wizards sent out foil promos of Force of Will with new art by Matt Stewart to all judges who had onboarded and certified other members after 2005. Foil copies of Greater Good supplemented the communal theme of the celebration. Rounding out the year’s loaded batch of promos were a few Commander staples, a retro-framed Sword of Feast and Famine, the first of its kind, and in my opinion, the single coolest card the program has ever produced: a foil Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite printed in the highly esoteric Phyrexian language. Beyond its aesthetic flair, this card was a powerful, multi-format all-star that appealed to grinders, collectors, lore-lovers: the gamut of Magic fans far and wide. For four years, you couldn’t find a copy under $500.
The beginning of 2023 marked the first return to Phyrexia, a metallic world corrupted by glistening oil that converted biological creatures into cybernetic monsters. Phyrexia: All Will Be One explored the innards of this hellish plane and further entrenched the Praetors as Magic’s quintessential villains. To honor their glory, Wizards went all-out on foils and frames, resulting in an overload of alternate treatments and an overwhelming series of infographics on where to find them.
Two innovative foil treatments appeared in All Will Be One. The first, named “Oil slick,” was a continuation of the embossing technique from New Capenna and Double Masters 2022. Five, full-art lands and the set’s 20 mythic rares featured black silhouettes raised against silver backgrounds. These looked and felt the most plastic of all Magic cards ever made, with the basics being notoriously difficult to differentiate on the battlefield.
The second novel treatment was preluded by the Secret Lair Showcase: Step-and-Compleat Edition. 67 cards ranging from commons to mythics across four separate frames populated a slot in Collector Boosters. This foil laminate shows off the Phyrexian “phi” symbol evenly spaced in vertical rows over an iridescent background. The surface is extremely glossy and easily captures smudges from fingerprints, with a texture that feels less like a playing card and more like a sticker. Both the Oil slick and Step-and-Compleat foils were thematically resonant treatments that worked better in card sleeves, proof that developing new foil techniques for Magic cards is an ongoing, push-and-pull process.
In the narrative, Elesh Norn endowed herself with the title “Mother of Machines.” To reflect her noble status, her card was printed with three foil options, four illustrations, and five frame treatments. She appeared in prerelease packs as a promo, in both bundles, and in all three tiers of boosters. The card singlehandedly marked just how egregious and incomprehensible these products were becoming, with no real way of knowing which of the countless versions mattered more than the others and where exactly they would show up. The set also had three separate series of full-art, basic lands. There were borderless Manga Planeswalkers. Even the Phyrexian language appeared in remarkably high quantity for the first time since the Judge promo, including on Elesh Norn, but was overshadowed by all the other special stuff.
March of the Machine arrived in April 2023, and with it the climactic conclusion of a story arc that began back in Kaldheim. In a villainous attempt to conquer the entire Multiverse, the Phyrexians invaded nearly every plane in Magic. Rising to the defense of their homelands were a series of distinguished Legendary creatures from every realm outfitted in showcase frames from their respective sets. Like the Mystical Archive spells and the Retro Artifacts, these legends appeared in every draft booster and sometimes in traditional foil. In Collector Boosters, they took on a new treatment called Halo Foil, a swirling pattern that looked like moving paint on water.
March of the Machine also returned to the double-rainbow, serialized cards for the Multiverse Legends and the five Praetors, dropping in less than 1% of Collector Boosters. Thematically, this set was successful due in part to the showcase frames. Opening draft boosters and seeing cards from all the previous planes in one pack was flavorful and fun. The quantity of alternate treatments made narrative sense and justified the excess, and these reprints elevated the limited environment to the power level of a cube. March of the Machine was the rare case of indulgence for indulgence sake, a well-earned capstone to a multi-year endeavor.
All Will Be One and March of the Machine sketched a new series of blueprints for the product architecture teams. Their designs would be put to test for the release of Tales of Middle Earth, Magic’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings and the debut set for the Universes Beyond initiative. Every stunt and scheme harkening back to the beginning of Project Booster Fun would be utilized for this release, which by all measures was incentivized to hit record-breaking sales as proof of concept for future crossovers. Tales of Middle Earth does not exist without Project Booster Fun, without the slow and subtle prying of the bonds between players and collectors, without the dissolution and repackaging of what is special and important.
Tales of Middle Earth was an average-sized Magic set of 281 cards. By the end of the year, following the Holiday bundle release with new frames and foil options, these same cards would be reskinned and retreated, bringing the total to 854 cards not counting traditional foil on normal versions. All together, there were Showcase Scroll frames on Double Feature’s Silver Foil. There were Borderless Poster cards. There were Serialized Borderless Poster cards. There were Borderless Hildebrandt cards. There were Borderless Panorama cards. There were Serialized Realms and Relics cards. There were Surge Foil Realms and Relics cards. There were Surge Showcase Ring Cards and Borderless Rare and Mythic Rare Lands. There were Surge Foil Extended-Art The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Rare and Mythic Rares. There were Surge Foil Full-Art Middle-earth Map Lands. There were Surge Foil Double-Faced Tokens. There were Scene Box Rare and Mythic Rares. There were Non-Foil Extended-Art New-to-Magic Jumpstart Volume 2 Rare Cards. There was a Rampant Growth Play Promo. And there was an 8,000 word article on where to find all these special cards and special treatments, with special percentages and graphics and flowcharts.
The Lord of the Rings is tentatively a tale about human greed, and to reinforce that metaphor, Wizards printed Serialized double rainbow foil Sol Rings mocked up as the Rings of Power. There were 300 printed for the Elven-kings, 700 for the Dwarf-lords, 900 for Mortal Men, and a One-of-One ring to rule them all. Of all the ruses in the books, this was far and beyond the most abhorrent, a marketing gamble that goes completely sour if the collector who found the card wasn’t linked up with the most generous and humble and happy millionaire the world has ever known. The frenzy to find The One Ring sold tons of Collector Boosters, and again, there were infinite scenarios where this resulted in bad publicity or personal harm or theft or general widespread distaste. Instead, Tales of Middle Earth was projected to hit $200 million in revenue last year on its way to surpassing Modern Horizons II as the best-selling Magic set ever.
All that without a fancy new foil.
But the year was not over yet. Commander Masters released in August 2023, bringing foil-etched and traditional foils back to the lineup, plus a sequel to the Double Masters 2022 textured foils. The same engraving pattern was applied to nine, high-profile borderless Commanders, as well as the crown jewel of the collection in EDH’s favorite Lotus. Textured foil copies of this card are currently in line with the prices of Masterpiece Sol Rings. On a personal note, I would rather these be called etched foils, and the current foil-etched cards be renamed something like metallic ink foils. The etched texture is the marquee characteristic after all. To that effect, Halo foils look much more like an oil slick than those Phyrexian basics do.
Following Commander Masters was a return to the fairy-tale land of Eldraine in September. Once again, a dedicated slot in the draft booster would be filled with a beloved enchantment reprinted with new frames and storybook art. Borderless anime alternates were produced for Project Booster Fun, with some sporting an all-new Confetti foil. This treatment is extremely subtle unless exposed to direct light, with the foil refracting into thousands of tiny sparkles. To date, only 20 cards total have been printed in Confetti foil, with Rhystic Study being the most valuable, but that will undoubtedly change by this time next year.
The final premiere Magic set released in 2023 was Lost Caverns of Ixalan, a second visit to the Mesoamerican-inspired land of pirates and dinosaurs and buried treasure galore. The product landscape was similar in shape and scale to that of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, with full-art, plane-specific basics, showcase frames, and another series of Neon Ink cards to seek out in Collector Boosters. Like in NEO, the colors denoted rarity, with yellow being the most common and a new, three-color treatment usurping Red at the top.
Unlike in NEO, this Cosmium-Ink treatment was printed on two, high-profile, heavily-played and collectible cards in Cavern of Souls and Mana Crypt. The former card provides a unique case study to carefully watch over time: currently, the three-color Neon Ink version is the most valuable, but how long until it is reprinted with the latest foiling technique, in the rarest Collector Booster, with a serialized number denoting its scarcity? How long until this treatment becomes one of many and falls by the wayside, like the Expedition Cavern of Souls, or the Double Masters Borderless Cavern of Souls, or the Planeswalker-stamped Promo Cavern of Souls, or the Foil-Etched Cavern of Souls, or the Ultimate Box Topper Cavern of Souls? Everything is special, but only for a little while.
There was one new type of foil produced in Lost Caverns of Ixalan. But it wasn’t applied to any traditional Magic cards. Instead, in 0.3% of Collector Boosters, you could open something special from the Jurassic World collection in a newly-dedicated slot exclusive to Universes Beyond products. Embossed across these mechanically-unique tie-ins was the Jurassic Park logo, with a reflective crystal pattern reminiscent of staring into a geode. I thought I’d quote Dr. Ian Malcolm here, with that infamous saying about the coulds and shoulds of people in charge who make impactful decisions just to package and sell plastic lunchboxes, but the metaphor was too poignant and too fitting.
Besides, this is just a card game.
• 25 Years of Foil Magic Cards
A couple of years ago, I took it upon myself to fully foil my Feldon of the Third Path EDH deck. Slowly, I acquired pieces from vendors and through trades and by playing in drafts. Like many, I wanted to signal my commitment and passion for the game in a somewhat excessive way, but in a way that the community understood and respected. It is through such signs that we communicate our enthusiasm; a foiled-out deck means something in the collective semiotics of Magic culture.
That deck is now a time capsule of a different era, one that cannot return. Nor do I want it to – Magic’s greatest success is its ability to constantly evolve and reinvent itself. Stagnant and nostalgic, this game is not.
In looking at the past 25 years of this game’s history, from the printing of Lightning Dragon, to the black borders of 7th Edition, to the Masterpiece series, and later the forcible insertion of external media franchises into the Magic subculture, the baseline of what we admire and define as significant has changed. The paradigm has shifted countless times, be it with the introduction of new printing materials, or the twist of an artistic flourish, or the fancy dressing-up of our favorite game pieces. For a long time, most foil Magic cards signified a step in from the entry point, a flashy souvenir for veterans who wanted to show off, or a memento of a lucky pull from a booster pack. Foils were self-evident in their ornamental appeal and needed no explanation on where or how to find them. They were the rarest form of any given card, the flag at the top of the mountain. But times change and taste does too, and entertainment companies must innovate on tradition to survive.
Every Magic set from the past few years has offered countless options to appeal to every individual who plays the game. The company has cast the widest net possible in hopes that, with every release, one treatment will resonate more than another, that any given card could be the perfect card for someone in particular. What is compromised with this approach is the sense of togetherness that we all used to experience from the presence of a singular point of reference. These treatments all have their own artistic merit, they are all individually appealing. But there are far too many of them, far too often, and none can make an impact before another takes its place. Magic has always been many different games, a hub for many different communities, but never before have I felt such distance between all the nodes.
I keep thinking about that introductory letter from The Duelist 35 about players and collectors. For a long time, it seemed that players preceded collectors, that cards were only valuable later if they first were powerful or useful in a deck. Unlike Pokémon or baseball cards for that matter, Magic’s collectibility always depended on the richness of the game and the coming together of those who played it. Rare was a Magic card collectible for its own sake. Rather, it needed to be proven in competition in tournament halls or on kitchen tables to be relevant to the culture. Coffee table books and campfire chats depend on good stories, and those stories mean something to people. You can manufacture artificial luxury, but you cannot manufacture artificial memories. Eventually, even the dedicated will start to notice the wool in their eyes.
As caretakers of delicate gardens, we must water the flowers slowly, and let them breathe.
• Oddities and Odd Printings
As early as 1995, Wizards of the Coast was testing possibilities for printing 3D holograms onto Magic cards. They experimented with a holographic render of Dragon Whelp, one of Richard Garfield’s favorite cards, that was printed as a sticker and overlayed onto the art box. The project was nixed because the thickness of the stickers conflicted with shuffling and the art was impossible to see unless viewed at the correct angle. Three printed copies of the hologram Dragon Whelp from Revised and one copy from Fourth Edition exist in the world. In 2014, Amy Weber, the artist of the original Dragon Whelp, sold a hologram sticker that had not yet been applied to a card.
In 1993, Wizards was approached with the concept of embedding hologram verification stickers onto Magic cards to prove their authenticity. These emblems would be pressure-stamped into the backs, but in testing, they left a noticeable impression on the card face. They were also considered marked cards: this was in the era before sleeves were used in tournaments. Furthermore, counterfeits were not yet high quality, and the culture of collectibility for Magic was still in its infancy, so Wizards declined to move forward with the concept. In 2014, holofoil stamps made their return to Magic on rares and mythics as part of the M15 card frame changes. Counterfeiters are much savvier now, and even these have been reproduced fairly successfully in some cases.
The foils from the Might of Galadriel Scene Box received a lot of criticism due to their washed-out and virtually invisible backgrounds. Cross-referencing the cards with their non-foil counterparts, it is clear that Alexander Mokhov’s gentle paintings were not strong candidates for the foil treatment. The White Under-printing Layer was applied to the prominent characters in the foreground, but given the lack of contrast and the extremely light color palette in the middle and backgrounds, there was little chance of diffusing the foil laminate underneath. Understanding the printing process can help explain why these look the way they do, but then again, they never should have approached these cards with the traditional methods. Instead, they would have made a good case for the foil-etched treatment.
Invaluable to my research for this project was Tavis King’s videos on his YouTube channel, Emma Partlow’s ongoing article series on foil treatments at TCGPlayer.com, and MaxMakesMagic’s archive work of the Mothership articles on Github. I’ve linked their work throughout in the sources below. Thank you to my Patrons for their patience and ongoing support, to my partners Card Kingdom and BASILISK, and to you for watching all the way to the very end. I hope you learned something today.
• Sources
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Foil_card - MTG Foil Card Wiki
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Holofoil_stamp - MTG Holofoil Stamp
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Holofoil - Pokémon Holofoil Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractor_card - Baseball Refractor Card Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography - Holography Wiki
https://www.reddit.com/r/foilmtg/ - Foil MTG Reddit
https://tinyurl.com/d53k3uws - Cardmarket - History of Foils
https://tinyurl.com/hn9tm9zu - The Luxury and Innovation of Foil Playing Cards
https://tinyurl.com/eb9zzanp - Holographic Foil Types
https://tinyurl.com/4595yh86 - Holographic Foils vs Foil Stamps
https://tinyurl.com/2whvefed - 1984 NY Times - Holography
https://tinyurl.com/howmtgismade - How MTG is Made
https://tinyurl.com/3d9wky42 - Every Foil in MTG (2023)
https://tinyurl.com/7xpy7hj9 - A Look at Old Foils (2018)
https://tinyurl.com/4ehc6mhf - Dragons of Tarkir Foils
https://tinyurl.com/aypfdkc7 - Foil Errors
https://tinyurl.com/muj5fbs4 - Hologram Baseball Cards
https://tinyurl.com/44awuukm - Refractor Baseball Cards
https://tinyurl.com/3w462cs9 - Hologram Baseball Cards History
https://tinyurl.com/382pn9fa - Designing for Foil
https://tinyurl.com/5dzuuypd - Printing White Ink
https://tinyurl.com/foilhistory - What is Foil Pressing?
https://tinyurl.com/7jcfuw9n - Hot vs Coild Foiling
https://tinyurl.com/4bbamk2x - Users Guide to Holographic Stamping
http://tinyurl.com/5n6eemaa - FoilCo
https://tinyurl.com/bd6z5jhz - Rainbow Holografik Overlaminate Film (Nobelus)
https://tinyurl.com/5n7dm76z - Rainbow Holografik Overlaminate Film (Specs)
https://tinyurl.com/fn9djc6y - Holography on Credit Cards
https://tinyurl.com/494kuhz8 - History of Holography
https://tinyurl.com/dtd4wte - Hologram in Master Card (1983)
https://ihma.org/milestones/ - Holography Milestones
https://tinyurl.com/yfw8w29e - Holographic Film Description
https://tinyurl.com/27pdvptn - MTG Foil Types
https://tinyurl.com/yfh3394a - Foil Types Pokémon
https://tinyurl.com/38dbf6zv - How WotC Can Fix Their Foil Problem - SCG
https://tinyurl.com/mrjuwbpf - 5 Foil Treatments - Chase Carroll
https://tinyurl.com/yckz6v76 - Masterpiece Series (2016)
http://tinyurl.com/3th9uve2 - Project Booster Fun
https://tinyurl.com/yux5deau- Booster Fun: MH2
http://tinyurl.com/3x9fu2h7 - Hasbro Killing Golden Goose (2022)
https://tinyurl.com/5bdpyryf - Foil Differences Between American and European Masterpieces
https://tinyurl.com/324z9kmn - Foil vs Gilded Foil
https://tinyurl.com/3yu36jah - Misprint Back Foil
https://imgur.com/i5zYBS3 - Misprint Back Foil - Video
https://imgur.com/pxLGCdD - Incomplete Zombie Token
https://tinyurl.com/ms2s59v7 - Remove Foil Layer
https://tinyurl.com/bdh3vub2 - Topps Chrome History
https://tinyurl.com/33precum - Cardboard Crack - Foil
https://tinyurl.com/2dn8rnyy - Where the Foil Goes
https://tinyurl.com/365jaa2z - Halo Foil - No Ink
https://tinyurl.com/y2c7c6n4 - Custom Textured Foil using Cricut
https://tinyurl.com/3h8fkzz3 - MTGO Foil Effects
https://tinyurl.com/4c794wsh - Building a Card (WotC)
https://tinyurl.com/thfrz86h - 7th Edition Foils: Tough Sells
http://tinyurl.com/3knnd9xz - Hidetsugu Neon Ink Odds
https://tinyurl.com/yckpdc2h - MTGO Redemption Program
https://tinyurl.com/3ahy5es7 - Built to Last: Magic Card Tough
https://tinyurl.com/77ef5e3x - Pokémon’s Origins in Japan
https://tinyurl.com/wsjx43n8 - Test Print Blastoise
https://tinyurl.com/evx63ws8 - What Counts as “Premium?” - Blogatog
https://tinyurl.com/3h3pu465 - Magic’s Changing Foils - Rob Bockman
https://tinyurl.com/yc8n9urh - How to Uncurl Foils
http://tinyurl.com/2m7z7kwn - u/zaphodava Uncurling Foils
http://tinyurl.com/3an55aur - Digimon Foil Curling
https://tinyurl.com/4tbzpw8t - Tawnos’ Toolbox - Foil Curling
http://tinyurl.com/2bstst4u - MTG Price - Uncurl Guide
https://tinyurl.com/hth2e36s - seraph_six - Uncurl Foils
https://tinyurl.com/4veff3hn - seraph_six - Uncurl Foils
https://tinyurl.com/2khnetpz - seraph_six - Uncurl Foils
https://tinyurl.com/5vejttfz - ProxyGuy - Heat Method to Flatten Foils
http://tinyurl.com/4rsmsrdw - Nexus of Fate Proxy
https://tinyurl.com/yyhvzjn7 - Keithulu Cards