Aang's MTG Journey

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.

The product opening continues today with a less-than-exciting arrival: the Beginner Box.

I am not a new player. I was fortunate enough to be shown how to play MTG in-person by friends who were already familiar with the game. However, this product is a pretty good solution for anyone who wants to learn to play solo. Not sure why you would want to do that, but to be fair I know a lot of folks whose eyes glaze over when you start explaining the rules of a card game to them.

In any case, this is not a product review. My main purpose for ordering this box is for the exclusive (and very underwhelming) cards that can be found inside. Mostly this box contained a lot of bulk TLA and TLE that I had to sort through. It also came with two cardboard play mats and a bunch of "front cards": card-shaped tutorial objects that are not actually playable. These will sit at the end of my binder system, alongside the similarly-useless theme cards that come out of Jumpstart packs.

The most fascinating exclusives come from the two pre-constructed Aang and Zuko tutorial decks. These decks are designed to be stacked in a particular order rather than shuffled. This way, the written tutorial can be easily followed to emulate a scripted game. What's interesting about these tutorial cards is that they are essentially copies of existing cards from the set, distinguished only by their card number and the small line of text along the bottom that confirms the stacking order for reassembling the tutorial deck.

Together, these tutorial reprints form a contiguous block of 40 cards at the tail end of the TLE set. Slotting these in has given rise to the most ridiculous binder page to date: a full page of nothing but Mountain and Plains basic lands.

It was nice to complete such a large chunk of the collection, particularly at such a good price. The Beginner Box is cheap, though it's really only worthwhile for completionists or players completely new to Magic.

It's been a busy few days for Avatar collecting. My Commander Bundle landed today and I spent a good bit of time sorting it into the binders.

My reason for purchasing this sealed product primarily comes down to the set of 13 TLE cards found exclusively in these Bundles. These are all reprints of classic MTG commander staples. Only five of these cards are included in each bundle: three guaranteed, two random. The guaranteed cards are Arcane Signet, Sol Ring, and Swiftfoot Boots. The two random cards are pulled from the remaining set of 10, some of which are worth more than others.

I pulled Flawless Maneuver and Fierce Guardianship. Pretty happy with that result, but if I'm serious about obtaining all 13 I will need to acquire the rest as singles. The retail price on Commander Bundles is already climbing, so opening a second one would be an expensive gamble.

The bundle also came with nine Play Boosters, a tasty Collector Booster, a stack of guaranteed land cards, and a very nice box to store them in. My collection is really starting to come together; these booster packs and lands helped me complete my first five(!) 4×3 pages across the three binders.

The next product to arrive should be the Avatar-themed Beginner Box. I expect it will be here later this week.

Oh God. I didn't know Secret Lair drops were like this.

I had heard these products were selling out instantly, with buyers stuck waiting in a virtual queue ever since WotC changed from a print-to-demand model to limited print runs. Fortunately, it seems this was not the case with the Avatar: The Last Airbender Superdrop. Preorders went live on November 17, 2025, but I only started looking at these in January. Somehow, all of the products are still available for purchase on WotC's website.

Unfortunately, the price is still high even when ordering direct-to-consumer. The Superdrop is in fact composed of five separate products:

• A Lot to Learn (4 cards)
• Everything Changed (4 cards)
• My Cabbages! (5 cards; corporate loves this meme)
• One with the Elements (6 cards)
• The Ember Island Players (5 cards)

Each of these products come in a foil and non-foil edition. It was time to decide: am I serious about collecting all treatments, or should I give the foils a miss? The markup would be far worse if I ended up looking for these on the secondhand market.

Ultimately I got my answer when I realised the Path of Ancestry promo is only available if your order exceeds the qualifying threshold: €224! The only products that meet that price tag are:

• the foil editions; and
• the Master of All Elements Everything Bundle, which included every single card in every treatment.

You can guess which option I ended up going with.

In other news, I just discovered I'm missing a Walmart-exclusive Aang promo. I've ordered one on eBay, but I'm starting to realise I should've been hunting for promos on Cardmarket. Prices seem to be a lot better on TCG-specific sites.

Following on from my initial attempt at a home prerelease event, I invited the gang back to the kitchen table for round two. It took a little while to fit everyone's availability, but the drafted decks finally got to see some proper use. And this time, they're actually sleeved! I've gone with matte clear Dragon Shields as the sleeve of choice for this collection going forward.

My victory last time must have been a total fluke. I went 0–3 this time, with my attempt at a mono-green build losing to every other deck.

Just like last time, the star of the show was the prerelease-stamped Avatar Aang. He got to see some serious play, including a brutal transformation straight into my face.

It ultimately felt a little bittersweet to begin disassembling the decks at the end of the night for inclusion in the binders. I've purchased three Vault X binders (4×3 layout, 624 cards) to hold the full collection, which should be more than enough. I started sorting the loose cards into them over the Christmas break, but now I can finally slot some of the nicer pulls from the prerelease kits.

Alas, I am a collector at heart, even though it was nice to give the decks one final outing.