Grading
Overall PSA 10 GEM MINT
Graded a PSA 10 Gem Mint, this Alpha Mox Jet is absolutely stunning. Although a perfect score from PSA, it has slightly off with left-right centering and possible minor surface flaw on the back top right of the card. The more I've seen cards on the upper tiers of grading though, the more I've noticed that most (if not all) cards still have some miniscule flaws to them.
Even BGS 10 cards seem to just have the luck of the draw on grading - especially for centering which is anecdotally the most inconsistent. For example, this video by Dan of Openboosters shows some more detail to some of the many cards that he has graded.
Reference this fantastic alpha edition population report table from Joel Mick.
Rarity & Collectability
The Alpha Mox Jet is in my opinion, the King of Moxen. The only other in the similar tier as the Jet is the Sapphire, but for some reason the black Mox has the gravitas.
Although the population report for PSA says that there have been 4 graded, and in BGS 9.5 that there have been 6 total graded, the real population is actually 3 PSA 10's and 5 BGS 9.5's because one of the PSA 10's was cracked and graded into a BGS 9.5, and one BGS 9.5 was cracked to get signed and regraded to a BGS 9.
The reason why this card is extremely low population is because of notoriously bad centering issues on the card. Even a pack fresh card pulled from Dan came back grading an overall 8.5 due to the centering issues. This makes some sense as to why some people would prefer to grade the card with PSA, as they do not do subgrades, and are a little more lenient with centering when assessing the overall grade of the card.
Here is an example of a mis-centered card, that is very typical for this printing.
Impressions & Artwork
The word Mox represents a jewel that can be a continuous source of mana which is tied to the origin of its name derived from "Moxie". I absolutely adore the Dan Frazier art of the Mox Jet and is my favorite of the five Moxen. The marbled background alternates hues of pastel, giving it both a feeling of value, power and timelessness. I liked this card so much that I got a playmat that came signed from Dan off Etsy.
I also did not know until recently that another card that Dan Frazier painted, Forcefield is the other side of the card's art. I imagined that a Forcefield artifact which is meant to protect against any threat, is aiming to hold back the evil sorceries casted by the Mox Jet.
At least this is what I imagined until I reached out to the legendary artist himself, who confirmed that this was not done intentionally, but because both paintings shared the same marble paper in the original artwork for the game.
“The backgrounds for the mox Jet and Forcefield were shared marble paper. The art for these cards were done in a speedy fashion. I did not have time to play around.” Dan Frazier
Usage & Gameplay
The Moxes are completely broken by today's standard of the game. A zero cost continual source of mana that does away with the natural pacing of the game limited by being able to play 1 land per turn. Any vintage black deck was better with the Mox Jet, and it was commonly used to cast black colored staples like Dark Ritual, Sengir Vampire and of course the iconic Juzam Djinn.
Also worth mention is that black is a very popular color, especially when paired with blue. Check out this poll that shows Dimir (blue/black) being the coolest color combo in magic. It's my favorite if you can't already tell.
Nostalgia
Growing up in Illinois, many of my friends played Magic. There was a particular group of nerd-boy family friends that lived in Naperville (cue quiet unassuming suburb) that also all enjoyed the game as well (along with water gun fighting and Dungeons and Dragons). Peter was the oldest member of the group that shaped a lot of our hobbies, but moved away to Virginia suddenly. We still kept in touch as we shared a mutual appreciation for fantasy books, video games, JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) cars and of course Magic the Gathering.
One summer, we took a road trip out to visit him, and checking out how much his Magic card collection had grown was like watching a scrawny pre-pubescent teenager morph into a 250lb MMA fighter. I remember heading into his upstairs bedroom with the other kids, and seeing his cards laid out all across his bed. I'm pretty sure this is how all kids take size of their net worth, by the way.
Here I was fucking around with a revised edition tropical island thinking that was valuable enough to trade for 2 happy meals at McDonald's, and Peter had a black bordered Mox Jet, an icy manipulator with OG art, a Mox Ruby, black bordered dual lands galore and even a misprinted blue Serra Angel (which didn't end up being very valuable but I still thought was the coolest shit outside of 160 horsepower Hondas on Volk Racing wheels).
Writing this memory here prompted me to reach out to him after losing contact for roughly 15 years, and he still remembered his collection.
"Back in the day I had the whole set of moxes and lotus in beta plus some other of the rare betas. [I] Sold them all for $1000 at a convention...They were also like [$]90-110 then so it wasn't really that huge [of] a deal. I remember one time a guy came into the game store in VA with a huge box of beta cards, selling them for 5-10 dollars each."
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