Magic’s 30th Anniversary Edition Is Available To Trade
Steve Heisler • September 18, 2025
Regeneration | Art by Quinton Hoover
Three years ago, Wizards of the Coast took the unprecedented step of reprinting cards listed on its Reserved List…in a way. The company's 30th Anniversary Edition included a selection of nearly 300 cards from MTG's earliest days, many of which hadn't been seen since the mid 1990s, including Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, Wheel of Fortune, the Moxen, the original dual lands, and Black Lotus.
Also: Benalish Hero, Earth Elemental, Wall of Ice.
The cards arrived in boosters, allowing players to throw on some TLC and crack packs like they've traveled back in time.
The catch was that these cards eschewed the traditional card back and replaced it with one created specifically for the 30th Anniversary Edition, rendering the cards unplayable in competitive formats, effectively treating them like proxies. However, Commander has always been a format that welcomes all sorts of cards, traditionally legal or otherwise. So long as players engage in a Rule Zero conversation.
Cards from 30th Anniversary are perfectly acceptable in these circumstances, making them excellent pickups for Commander players blinging out their deck with retro style or casual players who'd like to feel what it's like to sleeve up the Power 9.
Many of these cards are now available to trade on Cardsphere, sporting a variety of visual treatments.
Modern Frames
No longer will Fork suffer from wonky formatting decisions. The 30th Anniversary card selection includes classics reimagined to visually resemble cards printed and templated today. Cards like Balance look cleaner, allowing the art to really pop, and super-strong inclusions like Mox Jet and Tropical Island seem more imposing with minimal text and readable card names.
Squint hard enough, and it'll appear as if a recent Masters set dug deep into the archives for inclusions.
Classic Frames
Each card is also given the classic frame treatment, though with a few modern flairs: Counterspell is an instant, not an interrupt, and Dark Ritual makes no mention of the "mana pool," as examples. The game's rules have been tweaked over the years, but the charm of its old borders has never faded.
Anything But
The one exception to the above is the way 30th Anniversary Edition treats basic lands. While the modern looking versions contain the gigantic pip popularized today, those receiving the retro treatment are worded as they once were: "Tap to add to your mana pool." Your opponents might become so fatigued from checking your lands' text boxes that they'll forget to check how your commander operates.
At Cardsphere, we take those Ws.
Here's to 30 More
Since its inception, the game has evolved in ways Richard Garfield - probably - could never have imagined. It's nice, amid the deluge of endless preview seasons, to step back and honor Magic's history with these 30th Anniversary Edition inclusions.
Which cards are you picking up?
