In Defense of Collectors' Edition

Newcomers to Old School tend to have a lot of questions. Questions about format legality, deck construction, the meta, etc. Often, one of those questions is some variant of “Can I use Collectors’ Edition (CE) cards?”

Whenever this subject comes up in the OS Discord, someone will inevitably inform them that CE cards aren’t “real Magic cards.”

This statement is not only flawed, but frequently used in a derogatory fashion toward players who are budget-constrained. It is less a good-faith question of authenticity, and instead a pointed attempt to distance “the poors.”

This is not an attitude that I can condone, and runs counter to the overall acceptance of the old school magic community. So let’s dive into the rabbit hole of CE and put this nonsense to rest, shall we?

A Little History

In an effort to meet the unexpected demand of Magic: The Gathering™ (and to quell public outcry about the difficulty of acquiring all the cards), Wizards of the Coast (WotC) decided to print a “Factory Set.” This set, named the Collectors’ Edition, was released in December 1993, within days of the release of the Unlimited Edition. It retailed for a price of $49.95 and contained a full set of all cards released in the Limited Edition of Magic.

Players quickly purchased the available supply of CE sets, with many flocking to the then-new rec.games.deckmaster Usenet group in search of their own, or to sell theirs for profit. At no point did any WotC representatives refer to these sets as “proxies,” “fakes,” or “unofficial.” In fact, the packaging has this to say:

This special collectors’ edition of Magic The Gathering contains all 302 cards from the original Deckmaster series of playable trading cards.

The Arguments

When confronted with the fact that CE is an officially-printed Magic product, the people who make disparaging comments about the set always fall back on the same arguments to support their position.

“They’re not tournament legal”

Official tournament rules for Magic didn’t exist when CE released, and were not formalized until the release of the Duelists’ Convocation Magic the Gathering Tournament Rules¹ in January 1994. That document banned their usage to prevent cheating, stating:

Under no circumstances will cards from the Collector’s Edition factory sets be permitted in tournament decks. They are easily distinguished from legal play cards by their square corners.

Later revisions of the same document also conditionally banned the Alpha set for similar reasons.²

If sleeves are not used, Alpha cards may only be used in decks that consist of Alpha cards exclusively.

Today, CE is still banned from WPN tournaments. Those same tournaments also ban other Old School format staples such as Chaos Orb and Crusade for non power level reasons, yet their authenticity is never called to question.

“They have different backs.”

So what?

We predominantly play with opaque protective sleeves on our cards. This serves not only to protect them from the hazards of spilled beers, or the terrors of greasy fingers, but also to obscure their backs. With proper sleeves, CE card backs are indistinguishable from the standard card backs.

Oddly enough, the original intent³ was for each set to have a unique card back. In that regard, CE is closer to Richard Garfield’s vision than any other Old School set.

Modern magic has introduced the concept of the “double faced card” which has a card front as its back. Not only are they perfectly legal for play and considered “real,” but some of them have been format staples. If a different card back was enough to brand a card “fake” then modern magic would look completely different.

“They have different corners.”

Magic has long had variations in the corner radii, with the Alpha printing of Limited Edition having extremely rounded corners when compared to the Beta printing. CE being the third printed set⁴ just means that all the original Magic core sets had dissimilar corners.

Much like the card backs, this argument doesn’t hold much weight due to the widespread use of opaque sleeves, and its inconsistent application.

“Collectors’ Edition was sold as a full set.”

While CE was the first fixed distribution product for Magic, it would not be the last. Today, some of the most popular Magic products are pre-constructed “Commander” decks, or “Secret Lair” sets, both of which have non-random distribution.

While some players may jokingly refer to these sets as “not Magic cards,” no one would ever argue that they were not authentic.

“Nobody wanted it when it came out.”

This is just patently false. Demand for the set was extremely high, and Wizards had no problem with selling their available inventory to distributors. In fact, the demand was so high, that they added the International Edition just to meet the demand, with former WotC CEO Peter Adkison having this to say on the matter:⁵

Originally we were only going to do 10,000 factory sets, and we announced it that way. But then sales started coming in for WAY more than that. And then it started to take off in Europe. So, we decided to print another 5,000 for distribution primarily overseas, and call those the International Editions. Originally we intended to sell the Collectors Edition ones only in the US and Canada, and the International Editions only overseas.

But then the printer shorted us nearly 10% of the print run, i.e., nearly 1,000 less than what we ordered, on the Collectors Edition cards. And, as I said, we had orders for way more than 10,000, to begin with, so the distributors (and consequently the retailers, and consequently y’all) were already pissed off (or would have been) at being pro-rated. Rather than pro-rate them again, we substituted in some of the International Editions.

In Summary

Collectors’ Edition is an interesting piece of early Magic history, and while it is not officially a tournament playable product, the cards are officially Magic cards. They have always been referenced by WotC as such, and were printed at a time where things such as tournament playability were not major concerns.

Particularly with Old School being a community-supported format, there are very few arguments against the use of CE cards in events. With recent changes to current Magic, the only barriers to official tournament legality are historic precedent [which has already been removed for Alpha] and the lack of interest/support for eternal formats outside of Commander.

While I can’t speak to what the future will hold, there is increased interest in these “not tournament legal” sets such as CE, International Edition, World Championships, and M30 for use in both casual and organized events⁶. CE/IE are legal for play in most Old School events, and World Championships cards are commonly used in Premodern events. CEDH actively encourages their use. We just need Wizards of the Coast to codify this trend as part of the tournament rules.