Best Scam Idea Ever

I was talking to this dude at work today, and somehow, the subject of trading cards came up. On one end was me with my bullshit football cards and on the other was him and his extremely bullshit Magic: The Gathering cards. (Think Dungeons & Dragons, but without the use of thought or imagination, and yet still somehow way nerdier.) He was trying to make a point about how valuable the cards were, and dropped some bullshit line about some special Magic, Duel Masters, Yu-Gi-Blah, or whatever card being worth a million dollars. I called bullshit on that immediately, since it would be beyond insane for a ten year old or newer card from a card game to be worth more than the T206 Honus Fucking Wagner card. He countered by saying that the reason was that it was one-of-a-kind, to which I simply replied that it doesn't have an actual set value then, since it's only worth what someone is willing to pay for it, there have been lots of 1/1 cards made in the last few years, and none have gone for anywhere near that much. Granted, certain people are willing to pay a lot for stuff from collectible card games, but a million is ridiculous for reasons I was too nice to say out loud. What I wanted to say was that those games are designed for twelve year old kids, and twelve year olds tend to not have that kind of cash, due to labor laws, and a fully-grown adult whose life was enough of a ruin to want to spend large amounts of money on a game for twelve year olds would typically be someone who didn't make $18,000 a year, much less seven figures. And this guy I was talking to was a grown-ass man who does in fact spend large amounts of money on a game for twelve year olds and does in fact make less than $18 grand a year. Also, I didn't say that out loud, because I'm in a hella-glass house here. I mean, even if my monthly football card spending is typically around forty bucks, as opposed to the hundreds that guy blows on his own downfall, it's not as if collecting football cards is the highly-intellectual pursuit of virile masters of humanity.

But back to the point about valuable collectible card game type cards, I did stop and think that if stunted man-children like that can afford like two thousand for an Ebay-bought Playstation 3, they can probably scrape up quite a bit for Magic cards, so I did concede the point that someone would spend as much as a few grand on one of those things. Which is pretty retarded if you think about it. I mean, in sports cards, a lot has to go right for the card to be valuable. First and foremost, the player has to do well, which is completely out of the card companies' control. Like if Reggie Bush blows out both knees and is the drizzling shits for the rest of his short career, all those high-dollar cards of his will turn as worthless as all those Ricky Ervins, Penny Hardaway, and Pat Falloon cards your dumb ass spent so much money on in the early nineties. Second, the card itself has to be rare. Okay, that's not too hard; hell that makes it easier. But third, there has to be some other special condition to make people want the card. Maybe it's a swiftly-corrected error card, but that's usually not enough to do the job in the post-Fuckface era. The more likely situation these days is that it has an autograph or one or more pieces of some part of his equipment stuck to the card, or maybe even both. That shit costs money. And if it's one of those crazy cards with stuff like that from four guys, with two of them having played in the 20s and having died in the 70s, that costs HUGE money. All a card game card has to do to be worth big money is to be rare. That's all. A thousand-dollar Yu-Gi-Nagata card takes just as much trouble to make as a forty-cent common in a Donruss baseball set. The hell, man.

But this got me to thinking further, and I concocted the ultimate scam. So if you're reading this and you have connections to whoever makes Magic and Yogi-Bear cards, you should totally give them this idea. Step one: Make a card. And only make one copy, and make it where playing the card means you instantly win the game. Like you get the power up and win the game, and the other guy dies or whatever. Step two: Hype it up huge in all the magazines as the super ultimate one-of-a-kind chase card to end all chase cards, and get people totally pumped up to be the one to find that card. Step three, and this is important: For the love of God, don't put that card in the packs. Just hang on to it. Step four: Wait a while. Step five: Get an Ebay account under an alias that can't be connected to your card company and sell that bitch for like hella-thousands. Step six: Once you've spent your thousands on donuts and whores, repeat steps one through five. It's the secret to unlock nonstop cash money.

I am nothing if not the perfect criminal.