Aang's MTG Journey

Okay, okay, I promise I'll stop with the sealed product.

It's just that I'm missing so many non-foil TLE cards, and these can only be found in Jumpstart Booster packs. When I saw a box of 24 Jumpstart packs going cheap on Amazon, I figured it would help me cover off most of the bulk. Prior to this box, I had only opened two Jumpstart packs in total.

The thing about opening a Jumpstart pack compared to a Play Booster or Collector Booster is that it's a relatively boring affair. There is no chance of pulling a rare card from a Jumpstart Booster. The contents are not random; instead, each Jumpstart pack follows a randomised theme, with a set list of spells and lands for each theme. The idea of this format is for both players to open two Jumpstart packs each and shuffle them together for an instant deck.

Cracking 24 of these back-to-back therefore felt a bit sacrilegious. That's six drafted games down the drain, with no play value. The good news is that I made huge stonks: of the 24, I only hit three duplicate themes.

The highlight for me was pulling a non-foil version of That's Rough Buddy. I now have it in both treatments. Maybe I should look at obtaining copies in every language next?

The nice thing about so little theme duplication is that I'm now sitting on 23 of the 46 JTLA "Front Cards". These card-shaped non-playables serve no function aside from indicating the theme of the Jumpstart Booster they came from. The not so nice thing about this number is that I'm now firmly in the danger zone: there is now a 50/50 chance of hitting a duplicate theme every time I open a Jumpstart in future. Rather than face those diminishing returns, I will simply have to acquire the rest of the TLE set as singles.

Easier said than done.

I just spent the day sorting through a cheap lot of loose bulk foils I bought on a local marketplace.

The listing was from France, but the cards are in English: the remains of two boxes of English language Collector Boosters (24 packs total). This may seem strange given that Avatar UB also received a French localisation, but the only Collector Boosters that have a chance at containing the Raised Foil Avatar Aang are the English packs. There's little doubt that the seller is on the hunt for the Avatar, and is likely fuelling that search by selling off unsorted bulk for cheap.

It was quite a bit of work to sort through everything. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the lot had been stripmined of any value. It was entirely made up of TLA commons, uncommons, lands, and tokens. Not a single TLE foil to be found. I knew that the rares would've been skimmed, but I was a bit disappointed to not make any progress on the TLE front, given that those foils can only be found in CB packs.

That said, the sheer mass of bulk contained plenty of foils I was missing. I've now plugged nearly every single hole for TLA commons, uncommons, and lands.

The tokens in particular were an unexpected windfall. I have now obtained every single foil token, bar one: the foil Treasure token, TTLA #22. For anyone unfamiliar, the token cards in this set are double-faced, so for instance an Ally token can be flipped and used as a Food token instead. For my binder, this effectively means I have to obtain two copies of each token in foil, since one physical printing counts for two tokens. From what I've seen, the printings seem to be consistently paired, though there is some level of variation. Interestingly, for the missing Treasure token, I have only seen it paired with one other: TTLE #1, the Aang, Awoken Avatar (Marit Lage) token. I'm sure the very mention of TLE ensured no copies were included in this bulk lot, but it won't be difficult to track down another foil at some point. The only other TLE token is TTLE #2 (Soldier), which apparently only comes in non-foil.

I attended my first ever card show today. I brought a wad of cash and some cards to trade, in the hope of securing fat stacks of singles for my collection without paying postage. I was mostly afraid of sharks; in hindsight, what I should have been afraid of was a lack of product. The event was mostly Pokémon, with very little MTG on offer.

There were only five booths stocking MTG:

• One booth had a single binder page dedicated to MTG singles, but no Avatar cards.
• One had random sealed products (Beginner Box, Scene Boxes) but no singles.
• One guy had a small shelf of singles but left his MTG binder at home(!) and regretted it. Apparently we were the third set of buyers to ask him about it.
• One gent was kind enough to let us thumb through his loose stack of unsleeved retro bulk.
• Finally, we found a single booth stocking both sealed packs and MTG Avatar singles.

I ended up purchasing a Badgermole Cub alt art and an Appa, Steadfast Guardian prerelease stamp from that final vendor. The price of a CB booster was a little rich for my blood, but at least we didn't leave the con empty handed. Interestingly, this is actually the first prerelease card I've found in the wild. Even the ones I pulled myself came from kits I had to import after my LGS didn't save me one.

I'm glad I bought the early bird ticket to snipe what limited singles were there. It was a nice day out, but we didn't stick around.

I've been rather silent on my online singles acquisitions since my flurry of promo purchases late last year. I mentioned back in January that I had purchased a few items on Cardmarket, including a foil WPN Gran-Gran promo. Well, one month later and Gran-Gran has finally landed. Nobody warned me that collecting singles via unregistered snail mail would require so much patience.

In any case, I figured it was time for an update.

Walmart Aang is no longer stateside, having arrived last week while I was away from home trading for singles. The Spotlight Series participation promo (Day of Black Sun non-foil) also arrived the same day. With the arrival of this WPN Premium Gran-Gran today, my collection of miscellaneous Avatar promos in all treatments is now complete.

My focus has now turned completely to the Sisyphean task of completing the full 80-card set of PTLA prerelease stamp promos. Avatar UB is actually the last MTG set to include date-stamped promos, with WotC no longer including a stamped foil rare/mythic in prerelease kits starting with 2026's Lorwyn Eclipsed. The yearly stamps featured in the Avatar UB set were introduced in 2021, but prerelease promos have existed in some form since 1997.

Including the five prerelease cards I pulled myself, I am now sitting on 18 out of 80. I am trying to use Cardmarket's Shopping Wizard to consolidate shipping as much as possible, but these cards are proving extremely tricky to source. I have started acquiring these in small batches as cashflow allows, to give the market time to breathe and avoid overpaying for instant completion. Not that I could instantly complete this set even if I wanted to—some prereleases currently have zero listings. Cresting that hill will be a true test of patience.

I've targeted a mix of well-priced mythics (particularly the Sagas) and dirt-cheap rares.

The promo hunt continues, though I suspect the prerelease set will be a slow one to finish.

I made another in-person card purchase. The seller was looking to move some MTG cards fast to pay rent, so I jumped at the opportunity to save on postage.

In total I obtained 46 new cards, both foil and non-foil. The lot had a healthy mix of TLA and TLE, with the most valuable pickup being TLA #61 (The Legend of Kuruk // Avatar Kuruk).

Happy with the pickup, but this is starting to turn into something of a habit. I think I'll avoid checking local marketplace listings for now. Sure, there are deals to be had, but it's a lot of effort for cards that aren't going anywhere.

I hit the motherlode. That is to say, I actually found some MTG Avatar singles for sale in an LGS.

We happened to be on a road trip to a different part of the country today. I took this opportunity to bring my burgeoning trade pile with me to see if the singles market might be any better in a different city.

To my surprise, the LGS's trade binder was packed with singles I was missing. I picked up 10 in total. I also traded in a stack of cards for 70% value, for a total of €54 store credit. Most of this was from the 8 spare Secret Lair promos I acquired two weeks ago.

I also took the opportunity to pick up some more Dragon Shields. They didn't stock the matte sleeves I've been using, so I went with hot pink. Just a temporary measure!

Anyway, not a bad week for local pickups. I now have two stacks of cards to slot into the binder: those from today, and those I picked up in last week's street deal. Oh, and I still have a bunch of CB pulls waiting to be slotted. Hopefully those matte sleeves arrive soon.

I broke.

After seeing the retail prices of single Collector Booster packs from various outlets, I decided to pick up a box of 12 for a good price on Amazon.

Mainly I purchased these to provide some structure to the foil pages of my binders. I am badly in need of bulk foils to fill out the spines of both the TLA and TLE sets. This purchase also helped me grab a lot of the TLA foil tokens I'm missing. There is of course the added benefit of (hopefully) pulling some rarer Booster Fun variants. Maybe the Avatar himself is with us?

Spoilers: he was not. Didn't even pull a Neon Ink. Fortunately I got very few duplicates, but I suspect I am now well into the diminishing returns phase of Collector Booster openings after cracking an entire box. I also got my first few CB art cards, which were a little underwhelming to pull.

The biggest hit was the Field Note version of Wan Shi Tong, Librarian. This card's playability (and no doubt its iconic character design) is driving up prices, so I was glad to lock down this variant.

The pull I was most delighted with was actually a foil That's Rough Buddy. I can't believe this highly quotable card is restricted to the TLE set. I can't have been the only one expecting to find it in regular Play Boosters.

Unfortunately, my January acquisitions have been coming in too fast. I am officially out of Dragon Shield sleeves! Some of these pulls will have to sit raw for the next week or so until I can get more.

My collector mania continues today with an unusual meetup. I came across a local marketplace listing from a chap looking to sell MTG cards. He had a couple of Avatar cards for sale, although one had already been sold by the time I enquired. However, he actually had a handful of others I needed.

What followed was a street meetup where I picked up six foils for €5 in cash. The Field Note version of Diligent Zookeeper is of course the standout item. Honestly not sure the street deal was worth either of our time, but variety is the spice of life, I suppose. What else would you be doing on a Sunday in January?

My first couple orders from Cardmarket have started to arrive. I finally got set up to buy, which was just in time for the first Magic Spotlight Series event of 2026: the Magic Spotlight: The Avatar event that ran from January 9–11 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA and Lyon, France.

Attendees who participated in any of these events received a non-foil Day of Black Sun promo card. The Top 128 players at both events also received a traditional foil copy of Day of Black Sun. I ordered both. The much pricier foil version is the first to land, having been sent by priority mail.

I actually think the foil treatment of this card is being slept on. With only 256 copies distributed worldwide, this is a low population grail for completionist collectors. Not sure why its value doesn't reflect that. Maybe it's because the non-foil version exists and is a lot more readily available. This card's uniform traditional foil effect isn't exactly as flashy as the Raised Foil Avatar Aang.

Nevertheless, I feel a bit odd owning this. Feels like stolen valour. Hopefully my purchase will have helped fuel many more event wins for whatever player earned it in Lyon.

Another Cardmarket single arrived earlier in the week, namely the WPN Premium foil version of the Unlucky Cabbage Merchant promo I mentioned back in December. Foil WPN Gran-Gran and a few other items are also on the way; I'll provide further updates.

The Secret Lair Superdrop has arrived today in the form of the Master of All Elements Everything Bundle. This includes, as you might expect, everything.

We were actually on the road when it arrived—dumped unceremoniously on the doorstep by the courier. We had to turn back to get it, just in the unlikely event a porch pirate made off with—well—everything.

As I mentioned last week when ordering this, I opted for both the regular and foil editions. Each pack came with an extra foil-only promo, either Command Tower or Shu Jing Meteorite (Fellwar Stone). Between the ten packs, I ended up with a clean five of each. These spares will be going straight in the trade pile.

The most interesting inclusion was of course the Path of Ancestry promo, which only comes in foil. It arrived inside its own cardboard pack—very exclusive. I had my eye on this one since last year, and I'm very glad I managed to obtain it this way instead of buying it as a single.

Slotting this entire section into the binder in one go was very satisfying, and I really like the artwork. My favourite is probably Silence from One with the Elements. The card's colours work really well with the Elemental Frame design.