Legends
We finally arrived at the very first steppingstones that will later (and with many stones in-between) manifest in EDH/Commander: The creation of LEGENDS!
Up until Legends, the “Legendary” type didn’t exist in Magic: The Gathering. Strictly speaking, it also didn’t exist in Legends because “Legendary” was called “Legend” back in the 1994 (as well as a few years after that) and was meant to be a Creature type only (and some really awesome Lands).
With the release of Champions Kamigawa, Wizards of the Coast changed the Creature type “Legend” with the supertype “Legendary”, allowing other types of cards to become “Legendary” as well.
Enough history, back to Legends. Naturally, Legends included a ton of, well, Legends! A total of 55 Legendary Creatures and 6 Legendary Lands were part of Legends. In addition to this, Legends didn’t revolve around a coherent storyline but rather focused on the different storylines around some of the creatures such as Carth, Tetsuo Umezawa, Palladia-Mors or Dakkon Blackblade.
Other new additions introduced in Legends were World Enchantments (powerful magic, that transports the battle to another plane all together) and mulitcolored cards. Yes, you heard that right! Multicolored cards were introduced in Legends, which is another big one for all the Commander players out there.
(Source)
Let’s take a look at Legends!
Legends introduced 310 new cards, which is a HUGE difference to the expansions we have seen before. Arabian Nights was famous for its small set size with only 78 cards, but Antiquities wasn’t much bigger with (at most) 100 cards. And here comes Legends with three times as many new cards.
We'll aim to answer a few very important questions:
- Why are Legends cards so valuable?
- What are the most expensive cards?
- What are the Lost Legends?
- Where to buy Legends cards?
Set Information: Legends
Legends was released on June 10th, 1994. This continued the fresh three month “cycle” of Arabian Nights and Antiquities. Just like Arabian Nights and Antiquities before it, Legends didn’t include any Basic Lands because the sets were not meant to be standalone expansions.
The Rarity Distribution of Legends
The rarity distribution of Legends was as follows:
75 Commons, 114 Uncommons, 121 Rares
So we went from no Rare in Arabian Nights, to some Rares in Antiquities, to Rares taking over the set in Legends! It wouldn’t be an Oldschool MTG expansion if there were no shenanigans with the rarity distribution at all, so let’s see what it will be this time:
There are five different rarities in Legends, because some Uncommons have been printed twice on the Uncommon (for example Karakas and Pendelhaven) sheet and some Commons were printed twice on the Common sheet (for example Chain Lightning and Boomerang).
R1 19.300
U1 57.900
U2 116.000
C1 212.000
C2 424.000
(Source)
What's the Print Run of Legends?
The print run of Legends was SEVEN times that of Arabian Nights and more than TWO times more than Antiquities: 35 million cards were printed in Legends. But wait, there’s more because we haven’t even started talking about the Italian reprint of Legends!
It is the first time that booster packs contained 15 cards, as we know them today. Inside were 1 Rare, 3 Uncommons and a whooping 11 Commons. In addition to that, each booster contains a rules card that explains the new abilities and card types of the set.
The Legends booster boxes contained only one half of all the available Uncommons. If you bought a booster box, it was impossible for you to get all the Uncommons of the set. That’s why Wizards of the Coast introduced the “Legends Exchange Program”, where customers could trade 100 Uncommons of one group for 100 Uncommons of the other group.
This is probably not a thing anymore!
(Source)
Most Expensive Cards: Legends
Coming after hits like ABU, Arabian Nights and Antiquities is for sure not an easy task. Rest assured, though; Legends has a few really expensive cards in its sleeve.
Here are the most expensive cards of Legends!
The most expensive card of Legends is The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. A mean sideboard piece in Legacy and Vintage, as well as useful in some (hopefully only) cEDH decks. In Legacy, you can also primarily see the card being playing mainboard in Smallpox or Loam decks.
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale will cost you between 1700 and 3000 Euros, depending on its condition!
The second most expensive card is already a lot cheaper than The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale, but is still not cheap! Chains of Mephistopheles could be more expensive if more players understood what it does. There’s a reason it was voted as one of Channel Fireballs most confusing cards.
Let us try to explain what Chains of Mephistopheles does:
Anytime a player draws a card, except for the card they draw for turn, they must discard a card first. If they can’t discard a card, they must mill a card instead and skip the draw.
Sounds easy? Now read Chains of Mephistopheles again!
Chains of Mephistopheles will cost you between 600 and 900 Euros, depending on its condition!
The third most expensive card is really close to the Chains. Moat is almost as expensive and that has got its reasons! Moat gets played in Oldschool, Legacy and Commander. Stopping all non-flying attackers for sure is useful in a lot of decks.
Moat will cost you between 600 and 800 Euros, depending on its condition!
Another really expensive card from Legends is The Abyss. More creature hate, hurray! Seems like Legends really included a lot of cards to deal with those powerful Legendary creatures.
The Abyss will cost you between 450 and 750 Euros, depending on its condition!
The fifth card we want to mention is Eureka, which got the beautiful and funny art of Kaja Foglio on it! It’s also hilarious to put Emrakul or Atraxa or Griselbrand onto the battlefield with it.
Eureka will cost you between 350 and 500 Euros, depending on its condition!
Other Expensive Legends Cards
There are a lot of cards in Legends that are worth well above or around 100 €, which is no wonder with a set size of 310 cards. A lot of the Legendary Creatures are well-beloved and even used as Commanders today.
Then we have staples like Mana Drain, Sylvan Library, Concordant Crossroads, Greed or Land Tax that were printed for the very first time in Legends. These cards will have a high price point no matter what, and some people will always prefer the original printings.
(Source: Cardmarket 20.09.2024)
All of this results in a total of 109 cards being worth 10 € or more, but only 28 cards have a value of 50 € or above.
Italian Legends
We can’t talk about Legends without also talking about the Italian Legends. It is rumored that the print run of Italian Legends is roughly 80% of the original Legends print run, so in theory about another 28 million additional Legends cards got available through the Italian print run. (Source)
From a financial stand, Italian Legends can be seen as the budget version of Legends. Let’s look at an example from our store!
That’s already a big difference, especially if you plan to play with the cards. You could easily get 3 for 1 (see what we did there) of Mana Drains if you opt for the Italian Legends version. In some cases, the card's language even adds to its flavor (for example, Underworld Dreams).
From a collectors' standpoint, you’d of course need both versions of the cards!
Lost Legends in Dominaria United
On September 2022 Wizards of the Coast gave us Dominaria United. It was introduced with an extra bit of marketing, which you can see here:
So there are hidden, real Legends cards (that WotC somehow found in an old warehouse) in 3% of Collector booster packs from Dominaria United! Don’t believe it? We opened one ourselves, check it out!
Obviously, the chances are really slim that you’ll open a Legends card in a Dominaria United Collector booster. If you still want to try your luck, you can buy the product here!
Put be aware that you can’t open all Legends cards through Dominaria United! It is a selection, which excludes certain cards because of their offensive flavor texts or certain artists.
Where to Buy Legends Cards?
You want to collect all the 310 (or 620) cards from Legends? Start by going through our very own webshop and see if there are any cards you want. Here you can find all our rarest Antiquities cards, like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Chains of Mephistopheles!
Next up, you will want to fill the blanks with all the cheaper Legends cards. You can find those cheaper cards on our Cardmarket page.
The next thing you need to do when looking for Legends cards is:
Subscribe to our New Arrivals Drop
Every Wednesday, each week of the year, we get new High-End cards. That includes new Legends cards, and you'll be the first one to know when the cards you are looking for are available!
