by Dylan Foley
In the stale air of the St. Paul River Centre at the Twin Cities Card Show, among the thrumming crowds of attendees, there’s a batch of three tables dedicated to Magic: the Gathering that a long time player and Yinzer has spent decades cultivating. The silvery blue cases of sleeved wonders, stacks of sorted binders, and color coded budget single bins threaten to spill onto the neighboring booths who advertise Pokemon cards trapped within numerically assigned resin tombs. Whenever I’m standing behind these three tables selling Magic cards with my friend Matt of Bulkamania Cards fame, I’m standing in one of my favorite places in the world. It’s hard to describe the complete mixture of feelings when you’re on the dealer side of the tablecloth. You get to be a salesperson of a product you believe in, a showman boasting peculiar wares and cracking jokes with the crowd, someone’s personal guide through a dense jungle of cardboard, and the ace stunt pilot of a brain so recklessly wired that you can recall the name of a forgettable draft uncommon given only a vague description of the art…but can’t remember what you had for breakfast an hour ago. Since I know that behind the booth is not somewhere that everyone will get a chance to stand, I wanted to write about some of the phenomena observable from the bazaar, and what the game we all love looks like in our little corner of the world.