As Wizards of the Coast continues to experiment with exciting new formats for card printings and styles, we here at TCGplayer strive to keep up with the pace of new variations to better help the community buy, sell, trade, and collect. One of the goals of our Catalog Department is to provide our sellers and buyers the ability to distinguish increasingly similar products from each other.

Modern Horizons 2 continued the recent trends of etched foil, retro border frames, and other exciting variants. Retailers and collectors alike quickly noticed variations in retro border non-etched foils, with the differences attracting social media attention and creating confusion as everyone attempted to determine how to list and trade these new cards.

To solve this, TCGplayer looked at more than a hundred thousand cards in our Fulfillment Center, analyzed the patterns found in the cards we processed, and evaluated feedback from social media and retailers. What we determined is that there isn’t a clear pattern and that there are gradations within variants that make it very difficult to describe a predictable, identifiable, and clear difference between these variants. Due to manufacturer printing inconsistencies, some retro frame foil cards have a muted look over the text box and picture, while others have a rainbow effect in those areas. Unfortunately, in addition to those extremes, there are gradations between the two different variations. 

For etched foils, their foiling is consistent and we have a catalog entry identified with the suffix “(Retro Frame) (Foil Etched)”.

For non-etched foils, it is impossible to delineate explicitly for every card due to these variations, and we have decided to include all variations under one listing with the disclaimer that you may receive cards of varying levels of foiling, unless the listings are Listings with Photos.  This catalog entry is identified with the suffix “(Retro Frame)”.

Every set has its nuances and eccentricities, and TCGplayer is committed to continuing to help our sellers and buyers identify card variations for future releases.