Part Three of my Adventure to Collect all the Final Fantasy Magic Cards

In the last post about my adventures trying to collect all the Final Fantasy magic cards I mentioned that I had placed large orders with three proxy creators from China.

The cards have all arrived and here’s an update about where I am now.

I placed three large orders with Gail Cao, Villa Zheng and Ron after I learned from my test orders that their quality was excellent and there was really no difference between each of their cards.

I went over each of their spreadsheets listing out their available cards and tried to order as many of the Final Fantasy cards I could.

It is a little bit frustrating trying to navigate each person’s spreadsheets to order what I need. I did end up ordering some double cards despite my best efforts to get just one of each but that’s not a huge deal.

The cards all arrived nicely packaged in boxes that were all plastic wrapped and sealed. There was no damage or anything from shipping.

Cards from Gail Cao

The cards from Gail Cao were all fantastic.

I was able to get several of the borderless character cards I needed.

As well as a fairly large assortment of surge foil cards as well.

Here’s a bunch of the two sided cards I ordered. Since these are going in a binder where only one side will be visible I ordered two of each so I can display both sides.

That serialized gold Traveling Chocobo card is ridiculously expensive and there’s no way I’d ever be able to own a legit one. I’ve seen sites listing it for as much as $30,000 which is ridiculous.

I also enjoy that of all the numbers I received they sent me 69 which is nice.

Several more borderless cards I ordered as well. The printing quality here is stellar, and cards like Buster Sword and Nibelheim Aflame look fantastic.

I was able to pick up the borderless versions of all the elemental crystal cards which are also unusually expensive for some reason.

Gail also sent me these 6 bonus cards which was a very nice touch. The Life from the Loam and The Great Henge cards I especially like.

Overall Gail Cao’s quality and service is excellent and I’ll definitely order from him again.

Cards from Villa Zheng

When I was communicating with Villa Zheng about this order they asked me if I wanted the foil version of any of the cards on my list if they had it available.

It was a nice thing to ask because I didn’t think of that and again, navigating the spreadsheet with the giant list of cards isn’t super easy to do. So you’ll see a lot of the cards in these images are foil versions and the quality on them all is also fantastic.

Villa Zheng had a large number of the special Secret Lair Drop and Promo cards that are pretty much impossible to find so I grabbed as many of those as I could.

I was also able to pick up a bunch of the more regular cards that are normally weirdly expensive as well.

Here’s several extended art cards I was able to pick up, I’m not sure how I ended up with two of those Cloud, Midgar Mercenary cards though.

You can see many of these are the foil versions as well.

I was able to grab several more of the borderless cards too.

Weirdly enough though the code in the bottom corner on that Jill, Shiva’s Dominant card is wrong. It’s the code for the surge foil version while this is just the regular print one which has a different code.

That’s the only mistake  from this order though so not a big deal.

A few more interesting cards I needed.

Here are several more nice borderless character cards I got, mostly in foil versions.

And I was also able to grab a fair number of extended art cards for the collection as well.

When making this order I started exploring outside of the Final Fantasy cards, looking at some other interesting cards that I liked.

These are some of the ones I picked up including some very popular Secret Lair Drop cards that are not easy to get.

Finally Villa Zheng included this huge assortment of bonus cards which was unexpected and a very nice touch.

Cards from Ron

Lastly I went through Ron’s spreadsheet and tried to find everything I could that I hadn’t already ordered from Gail Cao and Villa Zheng.

I was able to get a ton of the Final Fantasy Through the Ages (FCA) set from him and I also branched out and picked up a bunch of other non-Final Fantasy cards as well.

I think I was able to get over half the entire Final Fantasy Through the Ages (FCA) set here, and most of them are foil too which is a bonus.

I was able to get a handful of scene and promo cards from him as well.

Here’s even more promo and Secret Lair Drop cards that would be pretty much impossible for me to get under normal circumstances.

Ron also had a fair number of the Bloomburrow set cards and I think once I finish collecting all the Final Fantasy ones I might just have to try collecting those. There’s much less of those so it should hopefully be much easier.

Interestingly enough none of these cards were listed in Ron’s spreadsheet but I discovered he had a Pinterest page and they were all in a gallery there.

I reached out to Ron and asked if it was possible to still get them and he said no problem so I ordered them all.

They’re all the nice rare foil ones.

I ordered these from Ron too, even though I also got them all from Villa Zheng.

Kind of a mistake on my part but they’re great cards so I don’t mind too much.

Here’s a few more neat looking cards I found in his spreadsheet and included in my order.

And then finally Ron sent me all these cards as a nice bonus.

What’s Next for My Journey?

My next step is to get everything organized and figure out what I’m missing.

I ended up purchasing three of these faux leather card binders and they’re super nice, I highly recommend them.

I’m currently organizing everything into these binders leaving spaces for the cards I’m still missing.

Then I’m going to compile a list of what I still need, check my local game stores for the cheaper options and take another look at the proxy sellers for the more expensive ones.

I should also mention that Ron added a fantastic new tab to his spreadsheet that has every card listed out that’s way more organized and easy to use than the spreadsheets everyone had before. It’s even got links to Scryfall and you can mouse over them and see an image of the exact card so you make sure you’re getting the right thing.

So I’ll most likely be using that and ordering whatever else I can from Ron and I’ll update how my adventures are going in a future part 4 post so stay tuned!

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Images in this post were photographed by the author