Editor’s Introduction: In this week’s Magic Oddica TheMisprintGuy looks at a unique misprint from the Guildpact set, where a card is missing individual letters. Check out Chapter XVI of Keith Adams‘ Magic Oddica to learn all about these unique collectibles!
One of the things that many serious Magic players enjoy attending is the prerelease. Nearly everyone there is seeing and holding new Magic cards for the first time. Also, since many of us have not spent hours memorizing each card, this is when we also are more careful and spend time reading nearly each and every card we see, especially while drafting. And during the Guildpact prerelease, something stood out from the rest.
The good cards in the set, you say? Well, yes, of course those stood out. But that is to be expected. However, one card, in its foil version, stood out because it seemed to be a bit strange. The card in question is Thunderheads, from the set Guildpact. With this card, the italics in the text box was randomly missing most of the letters “x”and “y.” Now, we can only speculate as to how something this random would happen, but even a simple spell check would have caught a few of these. I guess this is what happens when the proofreader takes a nap.
Current estimates is that about 10% or less of these cards are missing the letters. I was at the prerelease and was stopped by a few players that knew I was interested in misprints. After walking away with a couple of these cards, I never saw any new copies of them. Once and a while I see one on eBay, but I think many of us do not even know we own one. Thunderheads quickly became a card that fell by the wayside, and forgotten. You and other collectors could easily own this misprint, and it could be sitting in with your junk foils in a shoebox somewhere.
So what do we look for? Well, again, this only affects the foil version of Thunderheads. Shortly after the initial release of the set, it was corrected. Seemingly, those who did open some copies were in the Midwestern United States, but by now these misprints could be anywhere. So, dig out your Guildpact foils and start looking, you just might find one!