Squt's    Magic    Misprint    /    Error    List

Hello everyone! I've been playing and collecting Magic since '94, but about 10 years ago I found the fabled 'Serra Elemental' misprint - a card that was completely absurd: A Serra Angel with a blue border and the picture of a Time Elemental!!! This card was such a silly mistake, I thought it was WONDERFUL, and immediately set out to find out if there were more of these unusual misprint cards.

I thought it would take about a month or two to catalog all of the mistakes made on Magic cards over the years. Man was I wrong!!! To date, I have found over 500 unique mistakes made on Magic the Gathering cards with the help of many traders and players from around the world. And the list grows every time a new expansion is printed! With so many details on the cards, and so many languages to print Magic in, there are bound to be a few flubs.

This list is still growing! Please help me out if you know about any errors I've missed by E-Mailing me at Squt@Earthlink.net.

I'm sorry for the rudimentary layout of this web page, and the extra-crappy scans. This list is meant to serve a function, not look pretty! I intend to put together a list of error cards so that anyone who wishes to collect errors will know approximately what cards they still need to complete a 'set'. To that end, I do not list or keep track of mis-cuts, Summer Magic misprints, ink blotches, albinos, square, or other 1-time printing mistakes. I do collect them, but not rabidly. Feel free to offer them for sale or trade, but I probably won't list them on my site. I'm much more interested in cards that are wrong on EVERY printing - like the Spanish Revised 'Serra Elemental'!

Hope you enjoy the list, and let me know if I've missed anything! If you have a misprint to sell, trade, or just tell me about, write me at Squt@earthlink.net!

ONE LAST THING!

Please please please read the last page before you submit new errors to me. Every week someone writes to tell me about the LG Chromium error...It's not pictured, but it IS on the text list. MANY errors are on the last page that are not pictured. Please check it out, and read the FAQ at the bottom of the page before writing (but I would love to hear from you if you do!).

Table of contents:

This Page: Cards with the wrong picture, wrong casting cost, and wrong expansion symbol.

Page 2: Cards with mana inking errors, Power/Toughness errors, copyright and numbering errors, and cards with the wrong border.

Page 3: Text Errors by color: Artifact, land, black, blue, white.

Page 4: Text Errors by color: Red, green. Cards with no artist, cards with the artist's name spelled incorrectly.

Page 5: Card Name errors: Cards with the wrong name, or the same name, or a name in the wrong language.

Asia Gallery: Ultra-Rare Asian Alternate Art cards

Last Page A printer-friendly, comprehensive text-based list of misprints, which covers MANY errors not shown on the other pages. This page also has a list of links, and a list of misprints I have avaliable for trade.


Below are pics of Cards that have the biggest mistake: The Wrong Picture!!!!

Serra Elemental
In my opinion, this is the most spectacular misprint. It is from Spanish Revised, and it is actually a Time Elemental with the wrong text, power/toughness, and casting cost.
Spanish Reality Ripple
This is the most recent picture error. This Spanish Mirage card was printed with the Shaper Guildmage picture. Only half of the Spanish Ripples have this error.
Spanish Burrowing
This Spanish Black bordered card appears to be a land with a 1 red casting cost! It is really Burrowing, with the picture and border of Strip Mine.
German Wald
This error is hard to spot, but a major mistake nonetheless. This card is actually a FOREST, although some German BB forests have the a plains picture. "Wald" is German for forest, and you can clearly see the green mana symbol on this card.
Skeleswamp
At first glance, this card appears to be a White Bordered German basic Swamp. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that this card is actually a Druge Skeleton! Quite a big mistake!
German El-Pancake
Another German WB error - this card has the picture of warp artifact but the text of El-Hajjaj!
Mana Troll
YET ANOTHER German WB error - this set by far has the most picture errors! This one is Mana Barbs, but has the picture of Poopin' Troll (Sedge Troll).
Jandor's Alladin's Ring
This is one of the least-noticeable errors: Jandor's Ring with the text and casting cost of Alladin's Ring. This is the only French picture error I have found so far.
Serendib Effreet
This is probably the most famous and most common picture error in the U.S. The Serendib Effreet was printed with the Ifh-Biff Effreet picture and the wrong border.
Zombie Graft
This an error that is so far unique: A portion of S-Chinese Odyssey foil Zombifys were printed with some elements of Aura Graft. As you can see in the scan, the error version has the name, card type, artist, and number of aura graft, but has the mana cost, rules text, and artwork of Zombify.
The Jamuraa Lion issue
For some reason, the picture on the English Jamuraa Lion seems zoomed in on the lion 50%. At first, I thought that the foreign printing I had was a mistake - that they were accidentally showing more of the picture than WOTC wanted them to. After some investigation, I found that EVERY printing of the lions were zoomed out EXCEPT English. Shown here is the English one, and a Korean one, which has the same picture as the Chinese, Japanese, German, and Spanish ones I own. It is also worth noting that at least the GERMAN printing of this card has two versions- one zoomed out like all foreign ones, and one zoomed in like the English one. I have been told that the zoomed in version was made in a 'preview' printing for German Visions.

"Real" fakes:

For a while now, I have known about some really crazy picture misprints that have been floating around on the secondary market. They all have German text, the wrong picture, and a FRENCH copyright date. They also do not use the standard 'Magic' Font for the name of the card. I never have published anything on these cards, because I just couldn't figure out where they were from. I have recently aquired a copy of one, and with it a little more info.

First of all, let me preface this by saying that these cards are fakes. They do not feel as sturdy as a real card, and indeed they do not stand up to the bend test (they crease). However, I aquired one of these cards from a former WOTC employee, who insists that multiple copies of each exist, and that they are from WOTC. My best guess is that these cards are test print cards of some kind, made on an inferior card stock. They can't be just plain old mistakes, because the number of errors and the consistancy of the errors between the cards. There may be many more of these floating around out there, but to my knowlege, these three are the only ones that have turned up on the secondary market:

Raised Wurm
Scryb Pegusus
Dark Island

Special thanks to Jack Bowers and Guern for the use of their scans.

In this section, I will list the many cards I've found with the wrong casting cost...

Free Tomb
The Alpha Cyclopean Tomb is the first card ever printed with a dramatic casting cost error: It doesn't have one! Early Magic players just thought it was free. Now we know it should have been 4 colorless.

Black Sinbad
Probably the most extreme casting cost error is the Black Bordered Korean Sinbad. This card has a black mana symbol in it's casting cost, instead of Blue.
Portal 2 Extinguish
This card had a unique error - the ink around the blue drop in the Casting Cost is devoid of ink.
Anthologies Casting Cost Errors
As most collectors know, Anthologies was rife with errors. Four cards were printed with the wrong casting cost: Armored Pegusus, Samite Healer, Mogg Raider, and Warrior's Honor.
Chinese Urza's Saga Errors
Four different Urza's Saga Cards were printed with the wrong casting cost in Chinese. Like the Anthologies errors, most of them are white: ROP Land, Opal Caryatid, Silent Attendant, Hush.
Alpha Casting Cost Mistakes?
Orcish Artillery and Orcish Oriflamme were both printed with lower casting costs in Alpha - 1R. Was this a mistake, or were they changed to make the cards more balanced?
Korean CC Errors
Pictured here are two Korean errors - Animate Wall and Winged Sliver. The incorrect 3W casting cost of Animate Wall have led some to theorize that it's 'geddon with the wrong pic-NOT SO! It's just a good old-fashioned casting cost error on a regular Animate Wall.
Ice Age CC Errors
Two Green cards from Ice Age were printed with the wrong casting cost: Portuguese Pyknite and Italian Dire Wolves
Artifact Errors
One's a rip off, the other a deal! Spanish Ornithopter for 1, and free French Glasses of Urza!
Italian Breeding Pit
This card is completely missing a casting cost! This mistake hasn't been made since the Alpha Cyclopean Tomb, as far as I know. It comes from Italian 5th edition. If you look closely, you can see two black circles where the 3B SHOULD be.
Free Legion
The foil japanese severed legion is completely missing a casting cost too! There are the same holes for the CC as with the Breeding Pit, but this only happened on the foil version.

Cheap Braids
A similar mistake occurred on Portuguese OD Braids (foil only) - one of the Black symbols is missing. Thanks to Mr C for catching this one!

Squall Squabble
An astute collector will notice that there are two concurrent printings of a card with a different casting cost. Although not tournament legal, the 'Starter' set has many cards that are in other sets, but only one of them has a different casting cost: Squall. It costs 1G, not 2G as it does in Masques. WOTC denies it is an error, although there has never been another case that I am aware of that a card was printed with the same name and text, but a different cc. When pressed, I got this response from WOTC:

Since Starter isn't tourney legal, it doesn't really matter. If you want to call one a misprint, it would be the Starter version.

Koren Arctic Wolves
It wasn't until just recently that I was informed about this Weatherlite misprint - the Korean version of this WL Uncommon has a casting cost of 2GG, not 3GG. Because of it's age and relative rarity, this card is a tough one for collectors to find!
Gruuly Selesnya
In 2005 and 2006, the Spanish company Salvat was allowed to print white-bordered magic cards as a promotional item. The cards were released in packs of 12 cards a week, and after 5 weeks, you would end up with a complete deck. When the final pack of the Elf deck was released, there was a surprise inside for misprint collectors! Magic Rarities member Gregtork discovered that the Selesnya guildmage in the set had been printed with Red/Green mana symbols in the casting cost and reminder text. The shading was still White/Green, but the mountain's fire can clearly be seen where the sun should be.

This section covers cards with missing or wrong expansion symbols.

Rennaissance Legends
The most common expansion symbol error occurred when Wizard's printed a 'Chronicles' style expansion in Europe. In the French and German printings, 3 Dark cards were printed with the Legends Symbol: Leviathan, Erosion, and Mana Clash.
Chronicles/Anthologies Mistakes
It seems like when cards are reprinted, there are always expansion symbol problems. In Chronicles, Wall of Shadows (LE) was printed with the AQ symbol. In Anthologies, Carniverous Plant was printed as LE instead of DK, Mirri was printed as a common with a black expansion symbol instead of a rare, and Goblin Hero was printed with the Dark expansion symbol, although the art for the card is from 5th edition. This conflicts with the Goblin Digging Team, also from the Dark but reprinted with 5th art, which was printed without an expansion symbol in Anthologies.
Italian Urza's Legacy Lands
Surprisingly, EVERY land in Italian Urza's Legacy is missing the 'Hammer' expansion symbol!!!
Promo Cards Without Symbols
Two promotional cards were accidentally printed without expansion symbols: Japanese Nalathni Dragon (part of a Crystal Vein redemption program in JP), and Foil Beast of Burden, given to Urza's Legacy Pre-release organizers. These cards were printed without the expansion symbol, and the expansion symbol was included with the pre-release date stamp. These cards are missing that stamp, and thus are missing the symbol.
Urza's Saga Foil Island
In the summer of '99, WOTC released foil basic lands to Arena players when they paid their entrance fee. An unknown fraction of Saga Islands were missing the expansion symbol. In some regions of the country, as many as 25% of the cards were missing the symbol. In others, less than 1% were found to be this way...
Other Cards Missing Symbols
This image shows 3 other cards I know of that are missing symbols: AQ Reconstruction, Italian RN Xenic Poltergeist, and French RN Winter Blast.
Starter's Rare Goblins
In the "Starter" set, there are some cards that are available only in the two-player preconstructed deck sets. Two such cards are Mons Goblin Raiders, and Goblin Hero...and they've got the gold symbol of rares! WOTC waited until after the set hit the shelves before releasing the checklist, and these two cards are officially listed as rares. However, according to that same checklist, there are 7 rares in every color, except RED, which has 9 (never mind that making the Mon's Goblins rare is ridiculous).
Promo Lightning Hounds
WOTC released two promo cards with Mercadian Masques that appear with both an expansion symbol and a silver quill pen - these were promo cards given out with magazines. A very VERY small number of Lightning Hounds were released with no expansion symbol at all - it is unknown how rare these cards are (I have seen 3).
Double the Betrayal
It's been a long time since there was a symbol misprint, but this one is a doozy! Portuguese Betrayers of Kamigawa Callow Jushi comes with not one, but TWO expansion symbols - one where it's supposed to be, and one in the middle of the artwork!
In Spanish Betrayers, there is a minor curiosity - Genju of Cedars is printed with the expansion symbol shifted a centimeter or two to the left of where it should be. This is the only card in the set that has its expansion symbol shifted in this way.


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The last page has a complete, text-only list of misprints, as well as some links.


This list was created by Squt, and includes copyrighted material from Magic: The Gathering, a product of Wizards of the Coast,Inc. (WotC). All card texts and card layouts, card names, and graphics included here are copyright ? Wizards of the Coast, Inc. All information given herein is purely for educational use. It is meant to be a comprehensive listing of misprinted cards, and it is appreciated if anyone having any extra information that they feel should be added would email Squt. This list absolutely could not have been put together without the great help of Niels Stephan, Starr Kaplan, David Sevilla, Mario Lopez, Stefan W, Mickey Shapiro, Zappafreak, DBill, Jay Ray, Hazi-B, Trevor Robertson, Phillipe, John Bruekers, Kunbu, Uffe Hansen, Chi Ho, Seviman, Jeramy Cooke, Brian Peterson, Macone, Mr. C, Dilligaf, Gregtork, many others(!), and last but not least J. W. Bowers, who has been a HUGE resource and has a collection that rivals my own !!! Special thanks to Ray Yu of MTGNEWS.Com, best magic site on the web!!!