All Magic the Gathering players own a fair number of duplicate commons, particularly draft staples from the sets we most enjoyed drafting, but few of us aspire to build a collection around them. And then there’s CEO-TendiesTrading (his Reddit handle), a long time player who owns over eight hundred copies of the red common creature ‘Kird Ape’.
Kird Ape made its debut in the 1994 Revised set, the same year that Tendies started playing. It “was one of the first cards I encountered when playing MtG way back when”, Tendies says, “I just thought the power level was insane”.
Kird Ape is a 1/1 ape creature that costs one red mana and gets +1/+2 if you control a forest. It would be on the very border of playability if it made its way onto the MTG release schedule now, but it was an absolute powerhouse in 1994. You can pick up a copy from $0.25 on TCGPlayer right now.
Tendies actually started a collection of the apes “in the late 90s”, and had racked up 250 before he sold out of the game “around 2000”. In a move that will make fellow collectors wince, he also sold off “a complete set of four of every original dual land” for “$12 each”, now among the most expensive MTG cards on the market.
He restarted his ape collection “during the pandemic in 2021”, with the simple aim to grab as many copies as he could. “It was quite easy at first”, he says “TCGPlayer had individual sellers with 30-60 of them that I could scoop up in one go”.
Tendies “would definitely like to collect one from every printing”. Kird Ape has appeared in a number of MTG sets, not to mention niche products like Beatdown Box Sets and Duel Decks. “I am lacking a Summer Magic Kird Ape, so that is on my to-do list”, Tendies says.
As a writer hanging around the internet in 2021-22, “collecting apes” is indellibly associated in my mind with Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. I checked with Tendies to find out if he’s a member – he’s not. He jokes that he’s launching his own NFT in 2025, which will feature “Kird Ape Tokens that will be redeemable at any time in the future for one physical copy of an actual Kird Ape MTG card”.
If the thought of your bulk stockpile is making you shudder, can we recommend MTG Arena? You’ll never have to make room in your closet for MTG Arena decks. Make sure you check out our guide to the MTG Arena Codes that still work so you can get some free boosters.
Source: Wargamer
