Alpha and Beta cards are some of the most coveted Magic The Gathering cards for collectors. MTG cards from these sets are notorious for selling for large amounts of money due to their scarcity on the secondary market having been printed almost 20 years ago.
However, it’s important to be able to tell the difference between Alpha and Beta cards as depending on which version you have can drastically affect the value of the card. So let’s look at the difference between Alpha and Beta MTG cards.
Alpha vs Beta MTG Comparision Table
| Feature | Alpha | Beta |
|---|---|---|
| Black Borders | ✔ | ✔ |
| No Expansion Symbol | ✔ | ✔ |
| No Copyright Date | ✔ | ✔ |
| 2mm Rounded Corners | ✔ | |
| 1mm Rounded Corners | ✔ |
What Is the Difference Between Alpha and Beta MTG?
Alpha and Beta cards are often considered to be some of the hardest sets to tell apart from each other.
The reason is, in general, the cards between the 2 different sets are almost identical. This can be pretty stressful for collectors as the difference between having an Alpha card vs a Beta card can be well over $1,000.
However, all hope is not lost. There are is one definitive way to be able to tell the difference between the 2 cards, but you need to know what you are looking for.
Although Alpha and Beta cards both have black borders, Alpha cards have significantly more rounded corners.
Beta cards are black border cards that have a rounding to the card’s edges that most Magic players will be far more familiar with.
On average, an Alpha edition Magic card will have rounded edges with a 2mm radius. Beta cards and most other printed MTG cards have rounded borders with a 1mm radius. Placing a Beta card on top of an Alpha makes it easier to see the difference between the different types of rounded edges.
However, you may be interested to know that there are specific cards in Alpha and Beta that are extremely easy to be able to tell which set they are from.
The reason is, there were quite a few mistakes made when Alpha was originally printed and some cards were even accidentally often to be printed at all!
I’m not joking. In Magic’s Alpha set 295 cards were originally printed, but when we look at the Beta set, 302 cards were printed.
There are a number of cards that need to be corrected during Magic’s second print run and because of this, there are some cards that are extremely easy to identify which set they are from due to these errors.
Omitted Cards from The Alpha Set
The following cards were accidentally forgotten by Wizards of the Coast to be printed in the original Alpha set. Therefore, their first printings were in Magic’s Beta set and no Alpha version of these cards exists.
Cards Altered from Alpha to Beta
The following list of cards had various different changes between their Alpha and Beta printings.
Alpha Cards Changing Mana Cost
- Cyclopean Tomb had no casting cost, instead of a casting cost of 4. (Source)
- Orcish Artillery had a casting cost of 1R rather than 1RR. (Source)
- Orcish Oriflamme had a casting cost of 1R rather than 3R.
Alpha Cards Credited to The Wrong Artist
- Death Ward incorrectly credited Dan Frazier as the artist rather than Mark Poole.
- Sedge Troll incorrectly credited Jeff A. Menges as the artist rather than Dan Frazier.
Alpha Cards Missing Mana Symbols
- Force of Nature was printed with the letter G in its text box rather than the green mana symbol, and the artist’s name was spelled incorrectly. (Source)
- Phantasmal Forces was printed with the letter U in its text box rather than the blue mana symbol.