Consider This the Opening Scroll

February 12, 2020

unbidden – adjective : without having been commanded or invited

I previously talked about beginning to understand the concept of a “bobo rare” before having a name for such cards. Now I’ll start actually trying to define what a bobo rare is. Note that I say “start” because the full explanation turned stupid long and I knew I couldn’t inflict it on anyone wholesale.

Upon discovering Magic, I began buying any Magic product I came across. New cards were exciting. Always. I even enjoyed opening duplicates of Fallen Empires commons if I got a version with art I didn’t already have.

• 

• 

After some number of months of happily opening boosters of all sorts of sets, and always being thrilled with what I got because there was always something new, I eventually began to group some of these cards into “decks” (term used quite loosely.) To do that, some rudimentary card evaluation had to be done, though it was done with my admittedly terrible grasp of (or complete ignorance of) basic Magic concepts. Such as what makes for a good Magic card.

Soon being “new” ceased to be an automatically positive attribute for a rare card. I began wanting to open “good” rares I could put in decks instead of “new” rares I might never want to play. And when I opened something useless or clearly bad, especially if I was seeing it for the second, or third, or sixth time, that experience began to grate. And eventually that experience came to be known in my brain as “opening a bobo rare”. You might know it as “feelsbadman” or whatever the kids are saying these days.

The moment I heard a bad rare referred to as a “bobo rare”, I instantly understood the concept. But what makes a rare a “bobo rare”? Truthfully, defining a bobo rare isn’t nearly as much fun as simply declaring a card a “bobo rare”.

Carnival of Souls? Bobo!

Mudhole? Bobo!

Tombfire? Bobo!

See? Fun!

But what really qualifies as a bobo? Some initial caveats I’d like to cover first:

Commons and uncommons: being as they are (and always have been) quite plentiful compared to rares, these are never bobos. Occasionally a common or uncommon will be strong enough to transcend the rest of their ilk and attain value above the rabble. But it doesn’t work in reverse. In any given set, virtually all the commons will be valued within a few pennies of each other, regardless of how “good” or “bad” they are. For all but the earliest sets, there are simply too many copies in existence for good commons to fetch a premium over the rest.

Uncommons are quite similar, with an average uncommon and a terrible uncommon from the same set being worth about the same amount. There are uncommons you will be happy or unhappy to see in a pack, but unless you’re using that card in draft or sealed deck, they’re rarely little more than nice bonuses to whatever your rare is. There are all-star uncommons, but no bobo uncommons.

---

Foils: being shiny doesn’t mean diddly over squat. A foil bobo is just a bobo with a bow. It’s worth a little more, but if you were going to be fortunate enough to open a foil rare, there are lots of cards you’d rather have seen. Alternate or extended art, as are becoming more commonplace with the recent advent of Collector Boosters, also mean zilch when the underlying card is trash.

Mythic rares: these didn’t exist until 2008, and their introduction certainly added a wrinkle to my bobo rare concept. Mythics do, of course, have the same range of outcomes as other card types: strong or weak, flavorful or bland, exciting or groan-inducing. If you get one in place of your rare, is that automatically a good pull? The average pack has only a 1 in 8 chance of containing a mythic. And with very few exceptions, the worst mythic in a set will be likely be worth as much as an average rare from the same set.

In my pack-cracking past simply not getting many mythics, or opening only the lower-valued or less-useful mythics, went hand in hand with my curse. But when defining a bobo rare, I don’t think mythics, even the worst of them, ever count. I’ve certainly opened a pack with a mythic and wished I’d gotten a better one, but I’ve never opened a pack with a mythic and wished it had been a bobo rare.

---

Source: bobo rares are only bobos if you open them from a pack. If someone gives you a terrible rare, well…you got a free rare. Try not to whine about it.

If you buy or trade for one, that’s just on you. If you didn’t know it was a bobo, then you have some learning to do. Hopefully the cash or cardboard you forked over was of commensurate value.

With those items out of the way, I will finally move on to what makes a rare a bobo. Next time.