Miniaturule

The card stock is also much too thick

I have no idea what this game is. Is the card (if it were real) valuable?

Have you checked your sleeve?

Yes. They're called proxies. Some people are fine with it, some aren't. It's not legal in tournaments obviously but some communities/syles like CEDH are fine with it.

The only games in which Black Lotus is legal is so that those who own an original have a place to play it.

It (and all the big Type A Tourney Guns) gives a considerable edge to whoever draws it, so games are better served by both players just agreeing not to play it.

There are periods in the game's history where various formats were well designed and balanced and thus had a wide degree of viable decks, making the game generally enjoyable to actually play at both a casual and serious level.

Unfortunately practically nobody can agree on when those times actually are.

Draft and seald formats have also been consistenly popular and they completely exclude the collection aspect.

That's how I played with my friends who didn't want to buy their own decks. I was only ever interested in the game part, not the collecting part. The game is fun. It's still my favorite card game.

Game itself is a ton of fun. If you and your friends just want to learn the game you can just print out the cards, no problem. Or if you want real^TM cards you can get a starter kit with 2*60 card decks for about 10-15$ from your local game store. (Or amazon if you are in a remote area with no Game Stores.) They are not the best decks, but they are balanced to each other and the cards are simple enough for new players to navigate.

Better Magic Cards do mostly 2 or 3 things at once and can combo with others or are just great by themselves. Not that worse Magic Cards can't combo or anything, they just need more setup or can be a bit niche in their usefulness.

When I still actively played and wanted to try new decks easily 10 of my cards were proxies. No point in spending €20 on a rare if it won't make your deck better. The people I tested with did the same. We didn't even bother printing them though. We just wrote the name down and the properties if we didn't know them by heart.

And like others stated there's many formats including ones that even prohibit rare cards.

And before WotC came out with a decent online way to play we also had an online client in which you could import all the cards ever, though I doubt it was superlegal.

Commander is a ton of fun, and it you have a cool group you can proxi some of your cards that's all good. I've personally bought only 3 cards in the last year of playing, I had a lot of fun playing, and I'm impatient to find somewhere where I can play where I am moving

Literally 😂

I know nothing about the collecting side of things and I have cards from like the second generation or so when I got into it. I am pretty sure I have some Black Lotus cards since I was a fiend for Blacks. Are they extremely rare? All my MTG cards are just loose in a big bin in my closet.

I do not suspect that lmao.