Posting about this for three reasons. One, I think it's a really cool MTG story that folks will appreciate. Two, I feel like it needs to be shared as sort of a time stamp since it just happened, and three, I am personally curious about the collectability/value of the card. Also have to note that this is not a card I own, it belongs to my friend who was at MagicCon as well, let's call them "Alex". So, story time...
This past weekend, Alex and I were at our first ever MagicCon. It was awesome. I have plenty other stories besides this one, but you didn't come here for those. Yesterday was the last day of MagicCon, and Alex and I were signed up for the Gavin Verhey Unknown 2-headed giant event. We had no idea what this was going to be.
We sit down, Gavin reveals what we're doing, and it's a commander sealed event with 6 packs and a pack of "playtest" cards that are cards that just have a blank, white sticker over the front with a mix of fun, goofy, interesting, weird or just downright bad mechanics. Super exciting!
We open our cards and start trying to figure out our deck and about 10 minutes into doing this, Alex shows me this card. I immediately looked at them and said, "we gotta get out of here." We packed up and left for artist ally.
This event started at noon, so it was roughly before 1pm when we got to artist alley. This is the last day of the con, so doors are closing at 6pm. On the way, we were talking about who were some of the OG and/or favorite artists we could have sign the card. The rest of the day was lines and there were some cool interactions and stories along the way, but I'm going to skip most of that.
At around 5 pm, we've got 4 signatures on the card and we get in Chris Rahn's line behind about 6 other folks waiting BEHIND the "line cap" sign. Basically, we only get a signature if the 12 people in the actual line finish getting their signatures and they decide to let more people through. and at around 5:40pm they start letting the us through one at a time for 1 signature each (2 if you are getting a single color).
We get through the line just shy of 5:50, we get our "I survived Chris Rahn's line sticker" even though most folks earlier in the day waited hours for that, and most importantly he signed Alex's card. So we're elated at this point. We take our time moving through the con, looking for the last 1 or 2 cards we were hoping to buy before 6:00pm rolls around and they announce the con has ended.
As we start to exit, we are weaving through booths, and just before we reach the end of the main floor, we turn past the last booth and see Gavin wrapping up a chat with some other folks in that booth. Alex races over, marker in hand and asks for the signature on the bottom. Gavin looks a little stunned when he sees the card, but he signs and we tell him the elevator version of what went down since we were handed the cards and bailed on his event (which we apologized for but it had to be done). We said our thank you's and made our exit.
And that was how our first ever MagicCon ended. Pretty epic. And I feel like Alex now own's likely one of the most unique cards that a person could own. They might put it into a deck to replace a command tower or and just rule-zero-warn folks that it's in there and I think most people who appreciate magic will get a kick out of it.
On the collection side, and this purely my curiosity since Alex has no intention of selling this card, I'm wondering if there's any real value to something like this? I'm assuming so, since I have seen folks selling playtest cards signed by Gavin online. But I've never seen something like this where the signatures are part of the mechanic of the card. Since I am a casual player and collector myself, I'm just curious if anybody who knows more about it could provide some insight.
The signatures on the card are:
W: Dan Frazier
U: Mark Poole
B: Douglas Shuler
R: Chris Rahn
G: Rebecca Guay
Bottom: Gavin Verhey
Thanks to everybody who attended MagicCon, whether we bumped into you or not, for the good vibes and a great weekend. Hope you all have some cool stories as well.
TLDR: My friend pulled a playtest card that sent us on a side-quest to get artist signatures at MagicCon and we somehow pulled it off. No