Well, I seem to have gotten excited about Magic again. Over the course of the last month I bought myself some boxes of cards as a reward for getting through a tough time at work. So, part of that was that I bought some of these bulk boxes on amazon. In case you don't know, these are boxes of roughly 1000 cards sold by third parties. They are mostly cheap commons but all three of them came with some special cards.
The first box was by a company called 6A Games, the item is still up and everything is the same as before but for some reason the company name on the listing has changed to NCC & Games. This box was the cheapest at roughly 30 dollars. It comes with a pack of ten foils and 10 rares. The foils were all commons and there was one duplicate. There were many duplicates in the box but only one card had 5 copies, and that fifth copy was damaged. This really depends on buyer's preference. There seems to be a legitimate argument for providing playsets (4 of the same card which is the maximum amount allowed in most Magic formats). But if what you want is strictly variety then this box is less good. It was fine but it got a bit boring to go through as I got deeper in the box because a lot of the fun of going through these cards was seeing and reading new cards. So at the beginning I was going slowly and just enjoying the process but as I went on the it became more mechanical and just work to enter them into Archidekt. A lot of the cards were from reprint sets, particularly dominaria remastered and ravnica remastered. The other cards were from slightly older sets but not like really old. Basically from around when I started playing which was right around the time midnight hunt dropped. So there were a lot of cards from adventures in the forgotten realms, midnight hunt, crimson vow, and kaldheim, overall there wasn't a big range in terms of set symbols. There were only 4 uncommons in the whole box. There were exactly 1000 cards but one of those was damaged and there was an extra cat token. All the cards in the box were normal magic cards legal in eternal formats. For me it was overnight delivery (meaning at no extra expense) but of course that probably varies depending on where you are. So if you are just playing pauper then this box could be good because it was pretty close to exclusively commons and it is the cheapest box.
The second box was by Star City Games. This is a real brick and mortar card shop that is one of the biggest dealers in Magic cards in the US. They are also responsible for organizing a lot of tournaments. This box costs $50 but it advertises that it comes with 25 rares and then 25 special cards. The box actually contained 54 special cards (meaning a mix of rares and foils). These special cards were together but unlike the other two boxes these special cards weren't in an envelope or anything. It's not a big deal but it might matter to some people that they weren't protected. Obviously even though they are rares and foils etc they aren't really valuable cards. Also the box was advertised as containing 1000 cards total but actually contained 1,101 which is pretty far over the advertised total. So it seems there were 299 uncommons in this box. So a lot more than in the first box. Which is fine if you are looking for variety but could be a downside if you are exclusively interested in pauper cards. The range of sets was extremely wide. It went way back to the some of the very early sets like Homelands and Ice Age. The latest cards were from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which is a set released this year. Again this really depends on what you are looking for. If you are exclusively interested in eternal formats then all these cards could be interesting. But at the same time, obviously these are all cards that aren't popular or valuable. There were also a lot of cards from commander sets. So obviously if you are interested in formats like pioneer or modern then a lot of these cards are literally unplayable. For me it was really great because it was like getting an education in Magic history to see all these old sets and old mechanics and to ask google and claude questions about them. There were some duplicates but much less than in the first box. But of course if you want a playset of a card here you will have to order the extras yourself. This box did contain a small number of unset cards, (probably less than 10 total), which I didn't really like but is not a big deal. (unset cards are cards that are meant to be really goofy and silly and are played by themselves and are not legal in most magic formats.). There were also some non-basic lands. Obviously this one varies depending on your interests. Non-basic lands seem valid because they are legitimately cards that you would have to buy if you wanted them as opposed to basic lands which are just filler and can often be had for free. Some boxes advertise that they contain no lands whatsover. I was fine with them being in there. This box was also overnight for me. (Again meaning at no extra expense). Overall I would say I enjoyed this box a lot more than the first box.
The third box was by Four Knights which seems to be primarily an online company that sells on Amazon but they do have a social media footprint and have a youtube channel. This box also cost $50. In some ways this was the most professional of all the boxes. Again the actual totals were higher than advertised. I understood there would be 50 special cards but there were actually 67. These special cards were packed in three separate sealed packs. One was 5 mythics of which two were foils. One was a pack of 31 rares. And one was a pack of 31 special cards. There were no doubles in these 67 cards. The special cards were 7 borderless Lord of the Rings foils and 24 regular foils. So, obviously just like the other boxes, these special cards are nice but aren't really valuable or anything. So it seems there were 1,075 cards total in the box. There were doubles in this box but again much less than in box 1. There were fewer uncommons in this box than in box 2 but not by a huge margin. There were some cards that had appeared in either box 1 or box 2. I counted that as about 52 cards total so overall I was lucky that I didn't see a lot of duplicates over the three boxes. One negative that I will say about this box is that there was an issue with the cards being in different orientations. So all of them had their face in the same direction but they were pretty random about being one orientation or the other. I didn't think this was a big deal but it was kind of annoying to have to fix this while I was going through the cards. And it stuck out as being different from the other two boxes. This also had a very wide range of sets. The earliest being the revised edition (3rd edition). The latest cards were from Kamigawa Neon Dynasty I believe. But, just from my feeling I feel there was a little bit less variety than box 2 in that there were fewer total sets represented. But I didn't actually count that. Also I believe there were a lot less or possibly no exclusively commander cards in this box but I won't swear to that. I also believe this box didn't contain any lands at all. There was one Japanese card in the box.
So overall I felt satisfied with all three boxes in the sense that they were what was advertised or better and I had a lot of fun reading all these different cards and learning about the history of magic. So if that kind of thing appeals to you then definitely you can look at buying these boxes. Obviously strictly from the variety perspective the Star City box was the best. But maybe if you are looking for cards that will be legal in formats like modern or pioneer then you might be better off with the Four Knights box although there are obviously also cards that are too old in there as well. From the point of view of the special cards included I would say the Four Knights box was the best.
