Topic: Gold bordered cards and opaque sleeves

Has anyone seen a decent rationale as to why WotC bars gold bordered cards from sanctioned play, even if those cards are in opaque sleeves?

I can understand banning them if the backs are visible (unsleeved, or in translucent sleeves), since the unique backs could give the player an advantage (know what card is up next, if only a few cards in a deck have the alternate backs), but why ban them if using opaque sleeves.  They seem to be the same size, weight, and thickness. Other than just making it easier on the judges/officials, has anyone heard any good rationale why they are banned?

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Re: Gold bordered cards and opaque sleeves

HikingStick wrote:

Has anyone seen a decent rationale as to why WotC bars gold bordered cards from sanctioned play, even if those cards are in opaque sleeves?

I can understand banning them if the backs are visible (unsleeved, or in translucent sleeves), since the unique backs could give the player an advantage (know what card is up next, if only a few cards in a deck have the alternate backs), but why ban them if using opaque sleeves.  They seem to be the same size, weight, and thickness. Other than just making it easier on the judges/officials, has anyone heard any good rationale why they are banned?

If I'm not mistaken, they're from world champion winning decks and are printed and sold together so everyone would just buy one and use the "best deck in the world" so I think that they're banned for the sake of not making the best cards easy to gain by everyone who remotely wants one

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Re: Gold bordered cards and opaque sleeves

Because the gold bordered cards are incredibly cheap and easy to get.

For example, I was looking up cards like Windswept Heath and Flooded Strand on eBay last night, there was a wold championship deck that contained multiple copies of both. The gold bordered sell for about $8 on eBay for people who are probably using them in their cube. The original boxed set would have sold for ~$15 when it was released, containing what is now, hundreds of dollars worth of cards.

They don't want to make decks full of rares be competition legal because they were a much easier way to obtain huge amounts of copies of expensive cards.

Re: Gold bordered cards and opaque sleeves

You guys have the logical argument down. 

I guess I was just looking at a gold bordered Mogg Flunkies in my binder and pondering things.  You are limited to four of any card in a tournament play, and those older cards would only be valid in formats like vintage and legacy where playsets of those rarer cards are fairly common in competitive decks. 

Oh, well! I probably won't bother collecting any more of them anyway.

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