Magic: The Gathering and the CCG Excitement

 When I was into D&D and Heroquest there was/is a magazine that came out at the local bookstore called Games Magazine that is still being published. It had a variety of puzzle games, the 3d image that was crazy in the mid 90's and a few reviews. Somewhere in there must have been an ad for what I believe is Toad and Trolls that would send you a free catalog. Some how I ended up with a catalog at the time and among the games for sale there was a fascinating one described called Magic: The Gathering.

Shortly after the game showed up at my local game store and i was able to get one deck of revised edition but they were quickly sold out. The other game store in the local mall also got packs so I got a 2nd deck weeks later and maybe a booster or two and they were sold out. I loved the deck boxes as they looked like magic books. Here are the two decks I still have (but not all the cards that came in them). I remember getting two Nightmare cards and thinking they were common but they turned out to be rare. I also ended up with one of the fabled dual lands which are now $1000.. and once I got out of magic early on I traded it for $15-20 store credit to get a couple of wyvern decks. It's one of those things you kick yourself over now, but who knew then. After a number of months Fallen Empires finally came out for $2 a pack and everywhere had them, and I mean everywhere. You still couldn't get a revised pack. The sports card shots were now Magic shops and dabbled a tiny bit in other CCGs until Pokemon came around but I was in University by this point. 

The Magic novel Arena came up and I gobbled it up. I picked up Scrye #4 and was amazed at all the new games coming out. I grabbed the odd pack of 4th edition and by Ice age I had moved on to other games. I wish I would have dug into Ice Age more but there was so little M:TG that you could by in stores other then Fallen Empires and with limited funds I found other games like Spellfire and Doomtrooper to fill the void. And countless others along the way. So that was my CCG Start!