It’s almost the most joyous time of year! Christmas is all about seeing family and friends while celebrating surviving another year in this crazy world. On top of this, it’s also a time to express our thanks with gifts. Sadly, as our friends get more and more gifts, it can be difficult to know exactly what they don’t already have.
Conversely, if you’ve successfully managed to get a friend or family into Magic: The Gathering, and don’t know where to start, the sheer quantity of products can be overwhelming. Thankfully, we’re here to help with our guide for the best Christmas gifts in 2024. The purpose of this guide is to point you in the right direction, whether you’re buying for an MTG beginner or a pro who has everything.
Perfect for Beginners
Magic is a very difficult game to learn. This also means that it can be difficult to teach. Fortunately, the beginner box is designed to teach a new player how to play Magic: The Gathering. Featuring a collection of 10 20-card Jumpstart starter packs, this box takes you through a detailed tutorial where every single game action is predetermined to explain basic concepts… to a point. Once you have a grasp of the rules, it’s up to you to win the game.
Featuring an instant collection, this is a great way to get beginners excited about Magic. It’s also the best way to learn the game, especially using the paper components. If you’re interested in learning Magic or playing the game in its more simplistic forms, the MTG Foundations Beginner Box makes for a great gift for the holidays.
While this product is fantastic for beginners, if you, or the person you’re trying to find gifts for, already plays a lot of Magic, it might be best to avoid this box. The cards that you get in this kit are predetermined, and to an enfranchised MTG player, they may not be all that interesting. The value of this kit is learning how to play Magic, not necessarily in providing powerful game pieces.
If your giftee is someone who knows how to play Magic, has some of their own cards, but is still very new to the game, or has a small collection, we recommend the next product, instead.
Gifts for the Initiated
The MTG Starter Collection has a huge amount of value for almost any Magic player. Offering a collection of single cards that have a total secondary market value of $115, the Starter Collection is an absolute value steal. Add on three MTG Foundations Play Boosters and a click wheel for tracking life totals, and this becomes a fantastic way for players to expand their collections.
While these cards are great for Commander players, Standard MTG players may also be interested in this. Almost every single card you find in this collection will be legal in the Standard format for at least the next five years. Not only can you experiment with different kinds of strategies in the collection, but whatever you manage to build will be legal for years to come.
The kit is designed to encompass a lot of different strategies commonly seen in Magic: The Gathering. Whether you’re a combo fanatic or want to try getting as aggressive as possible, you should be able to build all kinds of different decks with the cards in this kit.
Of all the gift suggestions in this article, this kit is going to interest the widest variety of MTG players. Even a complete beginner will become enraptured with the crazy things they can do with this collection. The only players we may recommend against gifting this to is the player who already has everything.
You can find the full card list for individual starter collection cards here.
Absurd Value on a Budget
If the above gifts are a bit too expensive for your budget, we have a solution for that, too. For just $25, these MTG tins are an incredible deal. The tin comes with two promotional cards that have a $20 secondary market value and a collection of Play Booster packs. You can read more about it here.
We were shocked when we heard how much these MTG tins were going for. Considering that the tin itself is an interesting collectible for some MTG players, many were willing to pay as much as $35 for the product.
You can find these tins at big box stores in Canada and the U.S. Walmart, in particular, should be a good place to look for them.
Gifts for the Expert
Chances are, if the person you’re trying to find a gift for is an absolute MTG expert, you probably know a bit about the game yourself. They probably have most of the cards in both of the above recommendations.
For this type of MTG player, our recommendation would just be to ask what they want, first and foremost. Chances are that this player is looking for specific MTG cards that may be worth more than you think a rectangular piece of cardboard should be. Trust us, your MTG expert will be more thankful for a single card than even a whole box of cards.
Once you have a card name, you should be able to find that card on TCGplayer. Check out prices and try to find yourself a deal!
If your MTG expert isn’t looking for any specific cards and is a collector, consider some Collector Boosters. If they are primarily a Commander player, consider preordering a Collector Booster box of Innistrad Remastered for them. A lot of the premium goodies in this set are exclusive to the Collector Booster product, which, not only makes them more valuable but can evoke a lot of joy when finding them.
Who knows? Maybe your Collector Booster is lucky enough to have a Serialized card in it! If that’s the case, you basically just gifted your friend a winning lottery ticket… at least, in the cardboard world.
