Topic: Card art

I've been checking art and text while cataloguing. Sometimes, the image shown by deckbox shows different flavor text than both my card and the image on Gatherer. It's happened with somewhat newer cards - Tarkir, Origins, Amonkhet, Hour of Devastation - but not older cards so far. So I've been able to easily confirm the card number and correct expansion.

I trust Gatherer more than deckbox, so I'm wondering why the deckbox images sometimes don't match? Should I mark the cards as altered art in those cases? Or is it reasonable to keep trusting Gatherer?

On a similar note, I got a copy of The Scorpion God from the Hour of Devastation Prerelease box and it has a date printed/embossed over the lower-right corner of the art which isn't shown in either the deckbox or Gatherer images. Is this typical for prerelease cards and does it affect the value? Should it be marked with the altered art flag?

Re: Card art

Can you post the names of some of the cards where you have a copy that differs from what is shown on Deckbox?  It would help to have more people check to figure out what is going on.  Deckbox usually has all of the variations of a card that exists, but they might not be listed as being from that particular set.  For example, it could be that some of the cards that you have that differ are from the Ugin's Fate promo set ( https://deckbox.org/editions/324-ugin-s-fate-promos ).

For the pre-release cards, they are tagged with the own expansion symbols as they differ from the regular set cards.  To set the proper card details, click on the edit button to change your inventory for that card.  Next, click on the box with the expansion symbol.  From there, choose "Prerelease events: Hour of Devastation" and then click on the box with the flag symbol and mark it as a foil.  Then 'save & close".

Re: Card art

I would recommend using the Altered Art flag only for cards that have truly been altered. Official variants of a card that Deckbox doesn't have in its database need to be reported as missing cards.

That said, if you're not planning on trading on Deckbox, then you can obviously use the flags to mean whatever you want them to mean. For example, in BFZ, the full art basics have the same collector number as their standard art versions. I use the Altered Art flag on the full arts so that I can differentiate the full arts from the standard arts when I export my inventory to CSV (otherwise, they look identical and get combined).

As to the authoritativeness of Gatherer, it unfortunately doesn't have a lot of the versions of cards. It doesn't have many promos, such as the date-stamped prerelease promos you referenced or judge promos, FNM promos, etc (though weirdly, it does contain the Ugin's Fate Promos). It's also missing random editions like the Anthologies box set.

So while Gatherer is authoritative on the data it does contain, third-party websites like Deckbox have to organize the data for some of these other card versions themselves, and you just have to figure out and work with that organization. Like @psrex said, post links or pictures to the seemingly missing cards, and we might be able to help you sort them out within the context of Deckbox's organization. Or confirm that they are indeed missing.

Last edited by meldon44 (2020-10-30 22:59:47)