Throughout Magic’s history there have been plenty of print runs with glaring mistakes in them. Alpha is missing two cards, three casting costs are wrong, Mana Birds have slashes in their text box. Beta and Unlimited fared better, fixing most of the mistakes, and then came Revised. It got a lot of things right, color saturation notwithstanding, and the English printing isn’t nearly as bad as the German printing, but it still gets Plateau wrong in either art or artist credits, depending on your perspective, and of course Serendib Efreet looks like a green card in it’s green frame and with the art for Ifh-Biff Efreet, while actually being a blue card. There are loads of misprints making both the game and collecting interesting.
The misprint that I enjoy the most, personally, is this white border Mana Crypt. It may not seem like much of a misprint, because the entire Spanish print of Mana Crypt are white bordered instead of black like the other three languages. They were all printed at basically the same time, as promotional cards for Harper Prism’s new line of Magic novels, of which Arena was the first, followed by several other mediocre cards. Then came Mana Crypt! This card is busted, falling somewhere between a Mox, a Lotus, Mana Vault, and Sol Ring, it’s in good company as one of the best mana rocks ever printed. Zero casting cost, taps for two colorless, but it might do three damage to you during your upkeep. Then again it might not, and unlike Mana Vault, Crypt untaps regardless.
I remember seeing these as a kid but never owning one, despite having mailed in for Arena, Sewers of Estark, and Windseeker Centaur, while also picking up the Duelist issue containing Nalathni Dragon, so I’m honestly fairly surprised that I didn’t get a Crypt back then. Years passed, I got out of Magic, sold everything, tinkered with it a bit, shelved those, and then got back in seriously, primarily playing EDH. The Friday of GP Toronto 2016, I took a big box of cards that I’d accumulated and turned them into some cards for Legacy Maverick, a Chain Lightning for Legacy Burn, and a Mana Crypt because I wanted one. I’m a sucker for the original promos, what can I say?
Eventually the Cradle was sold and turned into a Gold Border Cradle and a CE Emerald, as I sold out of Legacy to go full in on Old School. I kept the Crypt and it now lives in my OS95 Cube. The white border Crypt is currently in an EDH deck that I don’t play too often, but I love seeing it.
If for some reason you made it to this page and don’t know about Magic Librarities yet, I suggest setting aside some time to really dig into the oddities of the mtg world.