****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
this set is known for above average printing quality. The Japanese reprints in these packs are some of my favorite artwork in all of MTG.Tldr: the product is fun and exciting to open with cool alternate art cards that are mindblowingly beautiful. I've opened 9 of these so far and am pretty happy I did. If you don't like Japanese cards, simply don't buy this set as its clearly not for you.Cons:These are definitely a pricy box weighing in at over 250 bucks each at the time of this review. For most people the price alone will be a non starter.If you don't like Japanese cards, you won't like this set.There have been a lot of complaints about the etched foiling specifically on the Japanese variants and I tend to agree on this. It's very subtle and perhaps too much so. I would have liked maybe a bit more flashy etching.Pros:The artwork on the Japanese cards is stunning. Especially in the full foil versions.With the extra cool Japanese arts, these are likely to retain some relevance in the field of eternal formats. This can be seen historically in mtg product lines that offer gimmicks like the etched foils.The rare and mythic rare archives are very rare indeed. This helps them be less available and fetch higher prices. This can be a con to some but I tend to think of this as a bonus. I don't like how collector boxes have flooded us with foil versions. So having a hard to get foil card is fantastic to me as it ensures they'll retain some value.Overall it was a fun experience to open these boxes and find all the beautiful (not you, faithless looting) cards. If you like to gamble a bit on boxes, this can be quite a ride!EDIT: The foils still curl, DO NOT BUY. It's been about a week and all of the full foils (not foil etched) that I left out are curling aggressively. The more valuable foils I've kept pressed flat, but obviously they can't stay like that forever and be used. I think the draft booster foils are better, but these are the same old pringles. Especially annoying because half the cards in these packs are foils and they're almost totally unusable unless you're willing to go to the effort of flattening and then using the perfect hard inner sleeves.I opened a couple of these because I love the mystical archive alt-art cards, both standard and Japanese versions. I had fun seeing what I got, and even got a few desirable JP art cards (Teferi's protection, lightning bolt, counterspell, crux of fate, plus a few more). That said, you should only buy this if you know that you are, on average, paying for the enjoyment of opening them.Since WOTC makes it hard to figure out what you're going to get in these boxes, here's some numbers from actual experience. On average, my boxes each had:Japanese art mystical archive cards:2 mythic, 6-7 rare, 13 uncommonEnglish mystical archive cards:2 mythic, 7 rare, 10-12 uncommons. Note that these uncommons are rarely ever worth anything. About a third of these were full foil, the rest foil-etched.Extended Art cards from Strixhaven itself:2-3 mythic, 15-17 rare. Again, a third of these were foils. One or two mythics from each box were the alt-art borderless (i.e, planeswalker or elder dragon). That's a low enough rate that it seems to me it's not guaranteed you'll even get one of those, though maybe collation does guarantee it.Extended Art cards from Commander 2021:1 mythic, 11 rare.Regular border foils from Strixhaven:2 mythics, 10 rare.Garbage:There's a chunk of foil commons and uncommons, plus one lesson card, in each booster. These are worth about ten cents a pop. Their inclusion in an expensive product marketed as a premium pack for collectors is inexplicable except as filler - making the pack larger and heavier so the instinctive reaction is less likely to be "Seriously? You want how much? For THIS?".Long story short, averaged 9 mythics, 40 rares. As always, not a great deal compared to regular booster boxes, plus you can use those to play sealed or draft. (Though technically, as there are twelve packs in one of these, you could use it to play the world's stupidest game of sealed. Please do not do this thing.)After Strixhaven, I'm going back to never thinking about collector boosters again, unless they do something as cool as the JP alt-art again. Even with those, it's not clear that these are worth the money as anything other than the entertainment of opening packs and getting cool looking cards.The Mystical Archive (a Premium Set within a set) is where the money is. And Japanese Art variants have a demand where the price margin compared to English can be anywhere from 5-10x the price (non-foil to non-foil; foil to foil).In terms of the set itself, it is a very new set but has mechanics that will make a splash in many formats. There will be cards that will always see a demand in the set and there are some that may be low in price now while the set is in production but may spike as soon as no more supply is being pumped out.All-in-All... great value for any MtG player.Ok if you're after the Japanese cards, but otherwise not worth the price. The pack composition needs adjusting as there is too much filler content. Common and uncommons make up half of the pack at 7 cards, including the [also filler] token card. On top of that, my filler cards are not flat and suffer from warping/pringling effect, which stings extra because the foils from my boosters are flat.While the Japanese alternates are great, Wizards has gone overboard with the variations of the mystical archives: 1) plain, 2) foil, 3) foil etched, 4) Japanese foil etched, 5) Japanese foil. This makes it very difficult to collect a complete set of a given type. Even if you want to trade or sell, it creates an unnecessarily complex market. I opened a box of set booster before the collector's box and it honestly felt more satisfying. Would've given it higher marks if they had upgraded at least 2 of the filler cards. Would've been a hit if they minimized the filler and got rid of one variant, probably the English foil etched as they look very similar to the plain variant.This was the first Collectors Booster Box I have ever bought, to be honest, It was kind a dissapointment. Just 2 good cards Jap Teferi's Protection & a Foil Jap Lightning Bolt, and the rest just menial Crap that I have no use for.Instead of getting this, get all the singles you need, way cheaper and you don't end with Crap you don't need. Although, good Crap for trades.Duplication is a big issue in this set. The Japanese chase cards are what this product is all about.El producto llegó a tiempo y forma, había escuchado muchas historias de producto manipulado, pero me llegó correctamente y sellado sin signos de manipulación aparente. Al abrir los boosters me salieron cosas buenas, pero si tengo algo que decir es que abrir boosters es un riesgo, puede que te vaya bien o mal. En mi caso, al contar los cotos de cada carta por encima de dólar, la suma me dio 274 dólares por lo que le gané por poco margen.Das Display kam ohne Folie, war also nicht original verpackt. Das dreiste war, alle Booster waren geöffnet und 9-10 Karten wurden reingepackt, natürlich nur die schlechten, größtenteils Commons. So etwas habe ich bisher noch nie erlebt, eine richtige Sauerei. Ware geht zurück.Meilleur prix et arriver avant la date
