My name is Dudibus. That's DUDE-IBIS, but I know the natural inclination is DUD-IBUS, because hell, that's the way its spelled. I started Magic in 1994 with a starter deck of revised and I was deliciously hooked right from the start. I was young when I started, still living with my parents, so I had the money to buy a box of revised a week. After opening 10+ boxes I realized I should just be buying singles, so I started cherry picking cards. This was back when Moxes were 20$, Lotus's 75$ and dual lands 5$. Of course, while I was happy to buy boxes for 80$, the idea of spending 20$ on a card was outrageous, which still makes my heart hurt sometimes. A couple of years later I had, notably, all the power 9, libraries, workshops, bazaars, more mana drains than I care to count, three full playsets of dual lands (because, you know, swapping out lands in decks was annoying). If you came to our play group and didn't have a 1000$ deck you got destroyed.
Then my wife wanted to learn to play. She loved Limited, and through her I loved it too. Now, thats all I ever play and all the power cards got sold to help pay off my mortgage. It turns out, I love games that allow me to make my own stuff for it. And as we all know, Magic is awesome for that, so now I have made thousands of cards and multiple custom sets. I play Dominion, Settlers of Catan and Talisman, all games that I have also made my own custom content for.
Funny magic stories abound.
1) A cop pulled me over once on the suspicion I had just robbed a bank, but when he saw my backpack was full of cards and not money he came over to my place and played magic instead.
2) I was at a game where there was about 4000$ worth of cards laid out mid-game and someone spilled a huge slurpie all over it, destroying about half the cards, and then got mad at us when we yelled at him, especially since we had said no way to him putting it on the table and he had fought us on it until we caved.
3) I was at a store and I watched the crooked store owner try to sell a Fork that was literally torn in half to a eight year old boy for 20$. When I stopped the boy at the counter and gave him a free, perfectly mint Fork instead, the owner kicked me out and banned me from the store for life.
4) I was at a pre-release for Time Spiral. My opponent and I were chatting when he suddenly noticed someone was trying to steal his backpack from under the table. He yells and the guy, sitting beside me, grabs the pack and tries to run. I tackle him to the ground and, oh, six other guys or so around us all start circle kicking him. I'd be lying if I didn't get a couple of kicks in myself.
5) A new store opened in town. I went in and found out that their trade policy was "We'll take anything we don't have three of already." Think about that for a second. They had dozens of binders for all the sets of the time, and I had a mountain of cards. Four hours later, I traded them the biggest pile of unsellable, unplayable garbage for a store credit of 800$. I cleaned out their case of every cards worth 10$ or more, including 4 Gaea's Cradles.
I like to bike and do yoga, I own a hobby farm in Southwestern Ontario, read and watch all the scifi and fantasy I can get my hands/eyes on, plus I am struggling to complete my first novel after writing multiple, unpublished short stories. It's a hobby for now, but hopefully one day it will enable me to quit my IT job for the bank I work for. I have 4 cats, 2 kids and no more grandparents.
Whew. If you hung in there for the whole wall of text, I commend and thank you. It's that whole writer thing. Once I get started I have a hard time stopping. Oh oh! And I'm an over-sharer so this kind of topic is right up my alley.