MTG Misprint Mayhem in Tarkir: Dragonstorm

Last updated on April 16, 2025

Inkling Summoning – illustrated by Scott Murphy

Tarkir: Dragonstorm is striking it big. From sold out prelease events to Magic's Head Designer Mark Rosewater revealing that the newest Magic set is an overwhelming success, pretty much everything you can see about TDM screams that mostly everything about these dragons has been a home run.

Not everything, though – as TDM has been marred with an unusually high number of reports about misprints. Everything from slight smudges and ink smears…

Source: Reddit

… to cards clearly marked “Rejected” by Wizards of the Coast's own Quality Assurance (you can see the big “R” scribbled on the card art), yet bundled anyway inside Play Boosters and Collector Boosters:

Source: Reddit

“We've been seeing a lot of major defects from specifically rares and mythics this set,” notes u/KenKouzume in the thread discussing the R-rated Arid Mesa. “We're seeing major offsets, random indents, inking issues, and smudging much more often than usual, but this one might take the cake for most unusual (assuming it's real.)”

Rejects R Us

There are two main types of misprints among Magic cards: Either an editorial mistake, or a printer error.

Editorial mistakes are when something written in the card is incorrect – one classic example is the 3rd Edition Plateau:

You can look at this dual land all day and find no mistake… unless you know that the actual artist is Cornelius Brudi, rather than Drew Tucker. Tucker had illustrated the original Plateau from Alpha, and somebody forgot to update the artist's credit when they used Brudi's art for the 3rd Edition print.

In this case, every copy of the card has the exact same mistake.

But when players talk about “misprint”, they usually refer to card that was botched somehow during the printing process. For example, these swamps from The Brothers' War come with blue ink smears:

Source: Reddit

These printer mistakes can be everything from a tiny smudge, to badly cut cards, to some really grievous bleeding.

In TDM's case there are a lot of reports of all sorts of misprints. “There have been some tweets from companies doing mass openings,” notes u/Ramses_Overdark, “and this seems to be a common problem so far with specifically the mythics and rares.”

Source: Reddit

Like the Arid Mesa we saw before, this Misty Rainforest has a giant “R” scribbled on the art. What happened here was:

• The card was misprint,
• Somebody from QA actually realized it,  and scribbled “R” on it to mark the card as rejected, but
• There was a second mistake down the line, and the card was shipped anyway.

Still, as sometimes happens in Magic…

… what may seem at first glance like an unlucky top deck sometimes may be your best draw. Because some of these botched prints are actually sought after, and for some collectors they may be worth more than the regular, unblemished print.

Source: Facebook

The Worse It Is, The Better It Gets

In their A Misprint Collector's Guide to Tarkir post, u/ImmortalCorruptor notes that, the worse it is, the better for you. Tiny, common mistakes have no worth for collectors – but, “If the error is very obvious at a glance, it's likely worth something,” u/ImmortalCorruptor says.

Notice that the line between what's obvious and what's not can get quite blurry, above all for the untrained eye, so if you find yourself a misprint you should probably check with the MTG misprint community about what you've found. But, as a quick primer, here's u/ImmortalCorruptor's advice:

Small Mistakes – No Premium

If your misprint just has some minor smears, you're out of luck. These are (sadly!) super common, and of no interest to collectors.

Source: A Misprint Collector's Guide to Tarkir

As noted above always, make sure to confirm with the misprint community before thinking, “Meh, bad luck, this is worth nothing!”, but tiny mistakes are of no big interest.

Medium Mistakes

Something like major smearing, on the other hand…

Source: A Misprint Collector's Guide to Tarkir

… or a missing (or badly misplaced) stamp at the bottom…

Source: A Misprint Collector's Guide to Tarkir

… that would fall into the “Actually worth more than a regular print.”

Botched, Big Time

If the printer really ruined the pouch, though – you're actually in luck!

For example, a cutting error makes this basic borderless Swamp…

Source: Reddit

… into quite the delicacy for misprint collectors!

“Miscut full art foil swamps, [you] could expect $25-30,” says u/Opposite-Occasion881, answering to the owner of the misprinted swamp. “That's what I've paid for mine in the past.”

And then you have the really weird stuff that some collectors will be willing to pay for – including things that really don't look like a Magic card at all, save for the stamp by the bottom!

Source: Reddit

“Hey guys, just pulled this in a Tarkir Dragonstorm Display,” says u/kafuro90 about their barcode misprint. “Do you know if this is worth anything? Got the pull on video as well. Thanks for your help!”

“Very interested in this!” replies u/I_upvote_aww. “I collect fillers and always on the hunt for new fillers for my collection!”

It goes to show, there's always a market for pretty much everything!

Law of Big Numbers

Bruvac the Grandiloquent – Illustration by Ekaterina Burmak

Judging by social media, Tarkir: Dragonstorm does seem to have a higher number of misprints, although it's hard to say if the percentage of mistakes has gone up. For starters, nobody posts about their perfectly printed basic land, so there's a bit of survivor bias here. And it may simply be that TDM looks indeed like a blockbuster – if folks are hugely happy about this Magic set and are cracking packs non-stop, then we're bound to find more misprints than in a set that's a flop and nobody opens.

But the main takeaway here, above all for those not in touch with the misprint community, is that the worse the misprint, the better it may be for you – somebody may be willing to pay a pretty penny for it.

So don't throw away those misprints: first be sure to ask around first and find out how bad it is!