This will probably be a short column, concerning a subject near and dear to my heart. Collections. My collections and yours.

Do you collect? Is there a card out there that just draws you? Maybe it's artwork? Or the name? Maybe it's the power of card, or its popularity?

For me, it started out with Deranged Hermit. I started playing around Urza's Block, and the Hermit seemed like a card packed with fun. Surely nothing could top pumping out a bunch of Squirrel tokens?

Sure I had problems with the artwork. The Deranged one's legs were so powerful, yet his arms were pipe-thin. What was with that?

Yet the artwork WAS pretty, and the card was wonderful.

Which led me on a quest for Squirrel tokens. (But that was another story, which you can read in my old columns at magiccampus.com - which, by the way, I think are still up!)

So I started collecting Deranged Hermits. At my peak I had around fifty, four of them being foil Hermits. Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

Yet there were problems. Since it only came out in one set, there were not many versions to collect. About eight foreign language ones and an English one; that was it. Not too hard to get. (Except for that German Hermit I was looking for. I've recently traded for that one, and now I have all the languages the Hermit was printed in!)

So to me, there was not much of a challenge in collecting Hermits. Maybe you've run into the same problem?

I slowly traded away my excess ones. I'm now down to around twelve of them; eight foreign ones and four English ones. I wouldn't even mind trading the extra English ones and keeing a core collection of nine.

I didn't collect anything else for a while. Oh, I traded for popular cards and at times have had over ten Armageddons and Crusades, and I currently have ten foil Blastoderms and eight Birds Of Paradise, but none of the aforementioned cards were collection cards; just a gathering of popular cards I'd either play with or trade.

Until I fell in love with Serra Angel.

For the longest time I only had 4 white-bordered Angels. But slowly over time the collection bug hit me, and I started to collect Serra Angels in earnest.

My collection grew and grew. I was happy to note that I didn't have the same problem I'd had with Deranged Hermits. There were MANY editions of Serra Angel. Alpha, beta, unlimited, revised, 4th edition, collectors edition, foreign versions, and even a Serra-Elemental misprint. (Which was hard to acquire, believe me.)

At my peak I had about a hundred and forty Serra Angels, with an impressive forty foreign ones. (At least it was impressive to me.) (No, I think that's impressive by anybody's standards - The Ferrett)

In the back of my mind was a rumor I'd heard from three different people on the net: Serra Angel was coming out in 7th edition. I've also heard the artwork for Serra is already done, and that she will come out as a rare in 7th edition.

Is the rumor true? Who the heck knows. But if it is, I'll be in a pretty good position with tons of suddenly rare Angels!

(Not a news flash, but we all now know that the Angel IS coming back!)

(Yet that's not why I've decided to diverse myself of the majority of my collection. (If I really wanted to make a profit, I'd hold onto them until 7th edition. If they came out again I'd be either rich or highly sought after, and if they didn't, I'd still have a valuable card.)

Even though there were far more versions of Serra Angel compared to Deranged Hermit, I still found it too limited.

Once you reach a certain point it, no longer becomes fun. I have just about every Serra Angel edition in print, missing only a black-bordered Spanish one, and there seemed nothing more to be done then to blindly and automatically trade for angel after angel. It became very mechanical and no longer fun.

So I've had two personal strikes in my quest for collecting. One more strike and I'm supposedly out. (Baseball, folks.)

I thought about collecting entire sets, but even though that looked to be fun, I realized I'd be forced to collect a bunch of ugly and crap cards, and where's the fun in that?

I thought about collecting foil sets, but the same thing applies. Too many crap cards and too many expensive rares to attempt this.

So what was left? Well, in the back of my mind for a long time I've admired a particular type of card. They had wonderful artwork - mostly - and were almost without exception powerful cards.

I've also used them before in tournaments, though they are usually too expensive to use on a consistent basis. Powerful, wondrous artwork, mythical creatures. Have you guessed which type of card I'm talking about?

There could only be one type of creature I'm describing?

Well...?

That's right! DRAGONS!

What's the card with maybe the best artwork on earth? I think it may be...(no, can't say right now, as I'll talk more about THAT one in another column). I'm sad to admit I've had three foil ones of the mystery Dragon in the past and have traded them away. (Of course, I'm now looking for one!)

Nowadays, the best Dragon to use - in my humble opinion - is the mighty Two-Headed dragon, and almost without exception, opponents make comments on it's power.

The other day at a tournament, my opponent picked it up right after I played it, read it for about a minute, shook his head, then picked it up again and read it for about thirty seconds more. Three turns later he was dead, flamed to a crisp.

And what about the new dragon legends? Have you seen better artwork? Crosis rivals the best of the foil Dragons in artwork, and Rith isn't far behind, along with being a VERY playable dragon!

So it's dragons for me. No collecting the same card over and over. I have TONS of dragons to collect, and I'll usually go for only one of each, unless there are more than one edition or version. And then there are the foreign versions. Hmm, I guess I had better stop writing and start the trading and collecting...

By the way, if any of you out there reading this have big Dragon collections (by big, I mean at least fifty Dragons) please write to me and share your joy. Who knows, you may be in a future Dragon column!

Thanks,

Sean Erik Ponce
Deranged Dad