Masterpieces& inserts

In October 2015 a few Battle for Zendikar boosters opened on a full-art fetch land with a foil frame and a set symbol nobody had seen. The Zendikar Expeditions were the first Masterpiece Series: 45 lands at roughly one per case, never part of the set, there only to be found. Kaladesh Inventions did it for artifacts a year later — Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, the Swords — in an art-deco frame, and Amonkhet Invocations followed with a hieroglyphic treatment that players argued about for months and collectors kept anyway. The idea was simple and new: the chase card in a booster could be a reprint, as long as it was the most beautiful version that card would ever get.

The same idea runs through everything on this page. From the Vault boxed fifteen foils a year from 2008 to 2017 — Dragons, Exiled, Relics, Twenty — in a frame of their own. Ultimate Masters put a box topper on every box; Double Masters made them borderless and, in 2022, textured. Mythic Edition sold a year's planeswalkers in foil through Hasbro; the Strixhaven Mystical Archive gave 63 spells a second life as illuminated manuscripts and Japanese prints; the Brothers' War Retro Artifacts and the Modern Horizons timeshifts put new cards in the 1990s frame; The List tucks old favourites into set boosters. Each is the version a collector reaches for, and every one here is priced to the live market, with cards $40 and up photographed (front).