Paymoneywubby ‘scammed’ with vintage sealed MTG deck

Paymoneywubby was opening a vintage sealed MTG product when Twitch chat pointed out that something was wrong.

Deck and pack openings have a dedicated audience on Twitch, and MTG-enjoying streamers like Paymoneywubby can reliably draw in a crowd when cracking sealed products. As a result, many fans had formed to watch Wubby open a sealed Unlimited starter deck worth upwards of $14K.

With Unlimited being the third Magic: The Gathering set ever to release, the chance of finding an immensely high-value card from the reserved list or the Power Nine was not insubstantial. Even so, weighing the price of the sealed product against the odds of pulling rare cards is enough to ward away all but the wealthiest of hobbyists, so there was a lot of vicarious interest in Paymoneywubby’s MTG stream.

The streamer was initially excited as he began to crack open the deck, but the enjoyment of hoping for a rare find started to fade as the realization that they had been misled set in.

Paymoneywubby realized something was wrong with their sealed MTG deck

It didn’t take long for Wubby to clue into the fact that something wasn’t right about the deck, but the first signs were pointed out by Twitch chat. When Wubby pulled a mountain from the deck, it displayed the tap symbol. Immediately afterwards, Twitch commenter ForeverMalone wrote ‘REVISED MOUNTAIN’, catching Wubby’s attention.

As chat pointed out, other lands in the deck showed the word ‘tap’ instead of the tap symbol. This discrepancy was a result of someone repacking the deck with cards from other sets, meaning that all the best cards from this deck had likely already been removed and replaced with lower-value picks. All in all, other than the mountain, three other revised cards had been placed into the set from elsewhere: a Swamp, an Earth Bind, and a Wall of Bones.

Paymoneywubby hopes for a refund

At the very least, Paymoneywubby wasn’t too broken up over stumbling into the MTG scam. Thankfully, their buyer protection means that they shouldn’t have too much difficulty sorting out a refund, even for such a costly purchase. And as Wubby themselves pointed out, the vintage pack opening was for the sake of fun and to entertain their audience, not profit. “I personally get enjoyment out of opening vintage stuff like this,” the streamer said. “…it is something I purchased for content.”

Unfortunately, with a product as old as this, it’s unlikely that the scammer will ever be found. But, at the very least, the decision to open the pack on stream quickly brought the issue to light, and the repacked eck will no longer continue to circulate.