Hasbro is ramping up the amount of product that Magic: the Gathering receives yearly. Because there are a ton of products being released into the market, it can become challenging to make each one feel special in its own right. As a result, many different foil treatments have been introduced to add unique collectability to each set. With this, a ton of varying foil and art treatments, like the Galaxy Foil, were added to Unfinity’s chase cards. These treatments have ‘broken the straw on the camel’s back,’ so to speak. Sellers are struggling to distinguish between these cards, and buyers are upset.
What are Galaxy Foils?
This probably isn’t a question that a source that just sold you a Galaxy Foil Shock Land should be asking. To quickly recap, a Galaxy Foil is a special treatment from Unfinity that makes the card look like it’s shining with stars from outer space. There are Traditional and Galaxy Foil treatments available in Unfinity. That said, there is a rarity difference between these that is massive. This can be seen by the price difference between a Traditional Foil and Galaxy Foil Shock Land from Unfinity. If you look at a Traditional Watery Grave, it comes out to about $50 according to recent sales. A Galaxy Foil is selling for between $150-$175! There’s a huge difference here, with one Galaxy Foil Watery Grave worth three or more Traditional Foil ones.
The Problem
Redditor ALongOverdueSpanking started a thread where they complained about the status of an order of Unfinity cards they received:
“I ordered a bunch of Unfinity cards, all in galaxy foil, and whether by intention (hoping the buyer didn’t know) or by seller error, 5/8 of them came as regular foil. This is from 4 different sellers. And this includes one of the shocks pre-sale and now it costs 3 times more. So sellers, please figure it out, and buyers, beware. It might be worth buyer on Ebay instead, where you can be sure you’re not getting the wrong product.”
Needless to say, this is a gigantic problem. While the difference in foil treatment value for the above example was only three times, there are instances where a Galaxy Foil treatment can skyrocket a price by 2000 times. Either way, should this individual have bought cards with a significant disparity in value, they could be out a ton of money. Five Galaxy Foil Watery Graves are worth $750, but five traditional ones are only $250. That’s a $500 difference due to a seller’s negligence.
Unfortunately, it seems like this isn’t an isolated incident. Other Redditors shared their experience in the comments:
“Similarly, I ordered the cheaper ‘planetary’ galaxy foil lands, and received a mix of those and the more expensive ‘orbital’ ones.
On one order in particular, I ordered 10 islands, and received 4 of the more expensive orbital ones in place of the cheaper ones. Those 4 islands are worth more than double what I paid for all 10.” – pokepat460
“I’m a relatively high volume secondary market buyer (mostly TCGplayer) and stuff like this has gotten to be more frequent than I’ve ever seen: mislabeling or misunderstanding inventory, sending the wrong version of a card, sending a reprint instead of the original set printing, cancelling the order once the seller realizes they actually never owned that card, holding the shipment after purchase to see if the price goes up and then cancelling, etc.
It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen..” – Royaltycoins
“Yep. I’ve ordered a couple of copies of Comet, Stellar Pup. Each regular version I’ve ordered has been replaced with a foil one. (Because foils are in a race to the bottom.)” – Jaccount
It’s safe to say that Unfinity’s treatments are all over the place for sellers. These variants have a lot of similarities, and differences are proving challenging to distinguish. Sometimes these errors are in favor of the buyers. This can be seen in pokepat460’s situation, where they received the more valuable Basic Island variant available in Unfinity by accident.
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Is this Intentional?
A lot of Redditors were quick to jump to the conclusion that these ‘mishaps’ were actually malicious intent:
“Yup. They know exactly what they’re doing. You have the obvious different foiling and the different card number to differentiate. I give them zero benefits of the doubt.” – GreatZong
“A seller 100% did this to me when I tried to buy the Foil Demonic Tutor box-topper. Picked it up for around $60 and it jumped to $80 overnight. He reported that “it probably got lost in the mail”, and I had to get TCG Player involved (hate having to do that) in order to get my money back.” – ProbablyNotPikachu
“Don’t they have a different Collector number? Pretty egregious mistake for them to send the wrong card!”
“I think they know, and they’re not happy to sell galaxy foils at low price…” – goofydubois
As pointed out by various Redditors above, the Galaxy Foil cards in Unfinity have different Collector’s Numbers. This is a categorized number at the bottom left of the card, which indicates it as something entirely different from the other variants of the card. Pictured above is _____ Goblin, a card with such a massive difference between its Traditional Foil and Galaxy Foil variants that it created a whole different story. As can be seen, by the pictures above, these are easily distinguishable from one another. With this massive of a difference, players are skeptical that these shipping mishaps are genuine mistakes.
Were You Affected?
If you’ve ordered some secondary market Unfinity singles, regardless of the source, make sure the cards you receive are the correct ones. Some malicious sellers may make it difficult, or even impossible, to get the accurate versions of the card you ordered, especially if you ordered the Galaxy Foil cards before they saw a massive price spike. If the card was rather expensive, reach out to the marketplace platform you used to buy the cards. They probably have some methods to discourage this kind of dishonest business. They don’t want their platform’s reputation to suffer due to a few rotten eggs.
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