I have been playing Magic for 20+ years and have cards from back then. I am new to deckbox though and have been trying to organize my cards on this wonderful system. (I absolutely love this. I was trying to figure out how to do this myself when I stumbled upon deckbox, so thank you for this.)

My issue is that I don't always know what edition my cards are. I realize that many of them have the symbols on them, but what if they do not. How do you know which edition they are from? And also, how do you know if the cards are alphas or betas?

I really only have my cards to play them, I do not really "collect" them. For the most part I do not care about the edition or value, however, if I am going to take the time to put them into this database, I feel I should do it right.

Thank you very much for your help. I appreciate it.

Here is the edition guide from ABUGames.

The two problem sets are Chronicles and Anthologies. Chronicles was a reprint set containing cards originally printed in The Dark, Legends, Arabian Nights, and Antiquities. The Chronicles versions of these cards are white bordered while the original versions are all black bordered. Both the original and reprint contain the original set symbol. Same applies to Anthologies which is all white bordered and contains reprints from about 20 different sets. Again, the original printings of these cards all black bordered while the reprints are white bordered.

The ABUGames edition guide is pretty comprehensive.

If you still have doubts, sometimes you can view all the versions by clicking on the appropriate expansion/edition symbol in Gatherer. Sometimes the text of the card changed from edition to edition and so you can narrow it down that way.

yearofglad wrote:Sometimes the text of the card changed from edition to edition and so you can narrow it down that way.

Also check the legal info / art. Plus, if you still have questions about specifics, post scans, and some of the experts can help.