I read that we can use a Mr. Clean magic eraser to remove the waxy feeling on the proxies. Can someone give specific details on this?
Like is it one pass with the eraser or several, and any other pertinent instructions.
A: Yep. I recommend the pink erasers. None of the soft erasers with mechanical pencils and what not. Rub firmly, but not too hard as eventually you can start to take off the ink. Rinse repeat.
B:
The coating used on cards from company to company is a trade secret, hence, even though proxies are coated and protected, the handfeel is significantly different. This has nothing to do with solid vs fluid inks but instead a combination of coating and the card stock itself. From an Inking stand point in fact arguably the move to digital printing by WOtC and the general variation that you can now find set to set makes proxies much easier to disguise in decks as small variations in color don’t stand out as much in modern sets as they do on high-scrutiny Grand Old Cards (like Moat for instance).
The mr clean magic eraser should be rubbed lightly in a circular pattern over the card. Start with the back to get a feel for this. You’ll notice that with medium pressure the sheen from the proxy coating begins to come off in a fairly short order. Pressing too hard will leave a fair amount of white residue from the eraser itself. You want to just take down the shine. Keep in mind, even doing this, almost all proxies will fail immediately unsleeved and in the hands of someone with passing knowledge. To mitigate, find an old beat up card in your collection and put it side by side. Handle both as you go until you feel like the proxy is hard to distinguish from the real just rubbing the surface of the cards.
Then go wash your hands. Just as with sanding wood, particles of fine eraser sanding dust can get onto your fingers and dull your sensitivity to the finish. After washing, let your hands dry completely before handling your cards again. Then repeat the process until you feel fairly certain that a stranger handling your proxy For A Few Seconds would not be able to tell the difference based on surface feel.
A word on roughing:
When using this technique, do your best not to abrade the face of the card. Roughing a card on a surface does Not approximate what normal card wear looks like unless you are trying to make the card look purposefully high play for proxy humblebrag (“Yeah I picked up this Time Walk for $500 a couple years back, just to say that I own one, but it’s totally beat to shit”) Counterintuitively, with newer cards especially this can actually draw More scrutiny to a proxy where people will stop to examine the damage. After removing the coating the Best thing you can do is shuffle your proxies, unsleeved, quite a lot, with dirty hands. This not only provides natural wear but also helps bring the level of snap in the black core cards more into line with your precious blue stock collection.
There are other tutorials here for edge aging etc, but with Mr Clean and some good dirty shuffling, you’ll breathe much easier. Keep in mind that neither of these things really matters much if you play smart and keep them double sleeved with smoke colored backs.
shoot email to blacklotusmtg vip @outlook.com if you wanna buy mtg proxy cards.