Magic the Gathering question. How can I determine which edition my some of my cards are from?

Question

What I mean is, I have about 2500 cards that I bought in the early 1990's (all brand new as they came out) and I'm trying to determine insurance value on them. I've never played most of them. I know beta cards are much more valuble than later editions. So, how do I determine what edition they are?

Answer 1

I would check into www.magicthegathering.com to see what edition your cards are and to see the value I would look at ebay, or scry magazine for an accurate amount.

Answer 2

I assume you only have up to Unlimited/ Revised cards.

Alpha and Beta are very similar.  The only difference is that Alpha is a little smaller than Beta (card size-wise).  Beta will be the size of current cards (if you don't have one, just compare it to playing cards, they should be pretty close.)  Aplha will be a bit smaller.

Unlimited and Revised are pretty much the same as Beta except that they are white bordered.  The difference between them is that Unlimited has a "double" border.  If you look at the border right inside the white border, you will see a "beveled" edge.  The Revised version does not have the "beveled" edge.

Here is an example.

Unlimited:

http://magiccards.info/un/en/109.html

Revised:

http://magiccards.info/rv/en/109.html

Fourth edition cards will be the same as revised except it will have a 1995 Copyright date on the bottom.

http://magiccards.info/4e/en/135.html

If you want to know how much the cards are worth, then I would suggest:

http://www.magictraders.com/

Just put the card name into the "Search a Price Guide" block and it will bring up an average of what the cards are going for online.  It searches all the online sales, so you will know how much people are buying the cards for online.

Hope it helps.