We Spent Over $20K on Final Fantasy x MTG Cards

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Three friends, $20,000, and two Chocobos later—here’s how the Final Fantasy x MTG set cleaned us out.

When Magic: The Gathering announced a Final Fantasy collaboration last October, I knew my wallet was in trouble. It’s been nearly 30 years since I collected and played Magic, but as a lifelong Final Fantasy fan, I knew I would want to pick up as much of the set as possible. So I started setting aside money, but I really had no idea how much I’d be willing to spend. Since I haven’t followed Magic that closely over the years, I didn’t really know what all the different products were or what the set might look like. All I knew was that I wanted to collect as many cards as possible.

Once the release date was announced and preorders went live, I was still a bit confused about what I should buy. For those who followed, preorders sold out pretty quickly for anything that included a Collector Booster pack, so I just preordered the regular Commander Decks and the Collector Commander Decks. Fellow FullCleared contributor KC Custodio put in preorders for as many cases of Collector Boosters as we could get our hands on, but many local stores couldn’t guarantee product. We just hoped for the best as we got closer to the release date.

Final Fantasy x Magic: The Gathering | Image: KC Custodio / FullCleared

Ultimately, we were only able to get our hands on one case (six boxes) of Collector Boosters, which KC generously split with me. Once the product from the collection actually hit shelves, we spent much of our free time scouring local stores, including Micro Center, to grab whatever we could. Initially, we bought standard Bundles, which included two guaranteed Foil Extended Art cards and nine Play Booster packs. It was a great way to get our hands on Extended Art cards while we started filling our collections with Play Booster packs. We then waited for the Gift Bundle release to get our hands on as many Collector Booster packs as possible.

The image above shows what KC ultimately picked up, while the main image at the top of the article shows all the products I ended up purchasing—plus 11 single packs I randomly found at local shops. A third contributor to our madness was Chad Custodio, who also got his hands on the equivalent of 4.5 Collector Booster boxes and several Gift Bundles. Unfortunately for me, I had to pay a markup on four of my Collector Booster boxes and 14 Gift Bundles, because local shops in Southern California were charging TCGPlayer market price. The only products I managed to get at retail were my standard Bundles, three Collector Booster packs, and the three boxes of Collector Boosters split with KC.

KC landed the best haul of the three of us, pulling a Neon Ink Pink Traveling Chocobo along with the surge foils you see in the photo above from his initial three boxes of Collector Boosters. Chad traded his initial-weekend pulls for a Borderless Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier Surge Foil, and a Neon Ink Blue Traveling Chocobo. My luckiest pulls were the Borderless Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed Surge Foil, and the Borderless Yuna, Grand Summoner Surge Foil. I wound up with thousands (in value) of duplicates, which I’ll trade to help fill out the rest of my collection.

Altogether, the three of us spent more than $20,000 trying to complete a full set. If you’ve been following the set’s news, you know how much prices have jumped on any product that includes a Collector Booster. Boxes of 12 packs shot up to $800 when the product hit shelves, then settled at about $1,150 to $1,200 soon after. Collector Boosters remain popular because they’re the only place to find the serialized Gold Chocobo—limited to 77 copies—as well as the Neon Ink Chocobos and Surge Foils. All in all, hunting down product, opening packs, sharing pulls, cataloging, trading, and seeing how close we could get to a complete collection was a ton of fun. Another FullCleared contributor, JR Custodio, flew from Texas to California to hand-deliver my three boxes of Collector Boosters.

Unfortunately, we’re still thousands of dollars away from finishing, especially as the Neon Ink Chocobos keep climbing in price, but we hope to track down the remaining cards over time. For now, though, our dreams of pulling a Gold Chocobo are on hold.

Below, you’ll find some of the most expensive cards we were able to pull, along with a gallery of our best picks.