I received a Simplified Chinese 8E Stone Rain from my friend Håkan in Sweden. Thanks Hawk!

My buddy Eric LeSavre tells me that he will be sending me the 2 French 8E Stone Rains I need. Thanks Eric!

Vinicius has found a nonfoil Portuguese 8E Stone Rain for the SRP. As he wants to trade cards, I've asked him to try and locate a foil to go with it first.

Still NO EVIDENCE that Portal and Portal 2 were never printed in Portuguese.

Well let's see, what's new... heh, what isn't new? 8th Edition is here! The bold new card face, combined with WoTC's decision not to include Disenchant in the basic set, has propelled Stone Rain to the top of the heap! Now Stone Rain truly is the most reprinted nonland card ever. Thanks to Star City Games, and Matthew McNally for providing me with the English 8th Edition Stone Rain printings for my global set.

The Japanese Portal Stone Rain that Jim Bruso of Troll and Toad located has arrived! It looks great!

I'm about *this* far from making a general statement that Portal and Portal 2 were never printed in Portuguese. Anybody care to prove me wrong (with a card scan)?

Got some cool Stone Rain oddities from Dave Wieland (potm on MOTL). Very neat, check the special printings page.

Jim Bruso has located a Japanese Portal 1 stone rain! It's currently in the mail and I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. Thanks Jim! TROLL AND TOAD RULES!!!!

I continue to hunt for the Portuguese Portal 1 & 2 printings. I still have doubts about the Portuguese versions.

My first Stone Rain print has arrived, along with some more signed Stone Rain cards and proofs! Special Printings page updated accordingly.

I continue to hunt for the Portuguese Portal 1 & 2, and Japanese Portal 1 printings. Though I am still fairly sure that Portal 1 was printed in Japanese, I have my doubts about the Portuguese versions. Nonetheless more Brazil-based sellers are showing up on eBay so I continue to send out feelers on a regular basis.

Happy Valentine's Day!

In anticipation of the arrival of the Alternate 4th Edition Stone Rain I have purchased a blacklight and taken a shot of a normal 4E Stone Rain under it. As expected, the white and light areas of the card fluoresce brightly. With the Alternate 4E, that should not happen due to the UV-resistant coating. Updated English page to show image of normal 4E Stone Rain in UV light.

Ahhh, the mail is here, and with it the Alternate 4th Edition Stone Rain (thanks Jerry!) English page updated to show this card in normal light and UV light. Because of the UV-resistant coating the card shows up very dark and it's hard for my camera to focus on it but the image is good enough to show how the card doesn't glow in UV like a normal 4E card.

Also sent out feelers to MOTL members living in Japan, Brazil, and Portugal in an attempt to find the Stone Rains I have needed so long. Responses haven't been that good yet. Hoping something will turn up. :)

Rotated the latest addition to show another of the cards received from Forrest. Thanks Forrest!

Updated the datafiles to indicate that the Alternate 4th Edition Stone Rain is on order after having confirmed with the donor, Jerry Sunkin of CoolStuffInc.com, that it is indeed on the way. Can't wait to see that one... heh gonna have to go out and buy a black light so I can take a picture of the card under UV lighting.

Links page updated.

Stone Rain printing count incremented to 123 to account for Alternate 4th Edition.

Yipee!

The Alpha-cut 4th Edition Stone Rain and Pre-Alpha Playtest Stone Rain have been RECOVERED. The donor accidentally mixed up a digit on the address but a visit to the post office by yours truly got everything straightened out. Forrest even threw in an English Tempest Stone Rain Proof signed by Christopher Rush! Very cool! So now the Stone Rain project includes even more exotic and unusual Stone Rains, including one older than Alpha!

First the bad news... :"(

The Alpha-cut 4th Edition Stone Rain and Pre-Alpha Playtest Stone Rain appear to have been lost in the mail. This is very sad considering that the playtest card was basically one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable. Once again the US Post is put to the test and once again fails miserably. I will continue to hold out hope for a little while longer but, really the chances of it turning up now are slim considering it was sent priority mail. Makes me want to cry. :(

Now there definitely are a couple of good news items to report! In June of 2002 MTGNews reported a story about a Secret Alternate Printing of Fourth Edition which was discovered by Dan Bock. This is not Summer Edition, but yet another printing of fourth that was later destroyed. A reputable source has gotten in contact with me and has agreed to donate a Stone Rain from this alternate printing of 4th Edition! This is very cool!

Another good news item, Ben Thompson, the artist who created the stunning Stone Rain artwork in Mercadian Masques consented to do a small e-interview for the Stone Rain Project. Check the Lore & Trivia page to read the interview and see some preliminary sketches for the Mercadian Masques Stone Rain! Thanks Ben!!!

The Stone Rain Project is just over one year old! Yipee!

Not a lot has happened over the last few months. I have been searching for the remaining 3 printings of Stone Rain without luck thus far. I have sent an inquiry to Wizards of the Coast in an attempt to find out more about Japanese Portal, and Portuguese Portal & Portuguese Portal 2.

However one very cool thing happened today. I was contacted by a distinguished collector for whom I've much respect. This kind fellow was able to offer me two unusual Stone Rains. The first is an Alpha-cut 4th Edition Stone Rain. (When 4th Edition was printed, some small number of cards were cut using a die from Alpha... hence there are some 4th edition cards out there with highly rounded Alpha-like corners.) The second item is basically unique. It is a Pre-Alpha Playtest Stone Rain card from an original MTG playtest deck. This Stone Rain was part of a deck played within Richard Garfield's circle of friends before MTG was unleashed upon the world. It has no card art and looks nothing like a modern Magic card, but its authenticity has been verified, making it perhaps one of the earliest Stone Rains. Looking forward to the arrival of these two cards!!!

Finally the release of 8th Edition with its redesigned look and feel looms. This set which (I assume) will include Stone Rain will likely be printed in what is now the standard 9 languages that Magic is distributed in. The set will also include foils, which means there will be 18 new versions of Stone Rain for me to acquire in order to keep the "global set" current. Current Stone Rain donors, and anyone else perusing this site are encouraged to contact me if you manage to get ahold of an 8E foil Stone Rain, or any non-English 8E Stone Rain. I fully expect that I will manage to get quite a few of the normal English variety straight from packs, but I am going to need help from my friends around the world for all the others. Please keep me in mind!

Trading News I have found another Stone Rain collector! This one lives in Sweden and has agreed to send me the Portuguese WB 4E version I need. Thanks Håkan!

Trading News The 7th Edition German foil came in today! Thanks Ralph. 15 eBay feelers sent out this morning to purveyors of foreign cards.

Trading News Wonderful miscut Stone Rain recieved from Dan Bock today! A friend of mine in Germany has acquired a 7E German Foil Stone Rain on eBay-Germany, which is now en-route to me. Thanks! Vinicius has located a Portuguese 6E Stone Rain for me which we are in final negotiations for.

Trading News The WB 4th and 6th Portuguese Stone Rains have not arrived. :( I think I can write those off as lost by now. Going to have to find a different supplier for these. Can anyone help me with Portuguese cards? The Italian White Bordered Revised Stone Rain that Peter sent me has arrived! Yipee! A new contact has agreed to send me some signed Stone Rains in exchange for extra Stone Rains he needs for his Stone Rain collection.

Trading News German Merc Masques foil Stone Rain is on the way from Barcelona! Thanks Luis! One of my Brazilian contacts has found the Portuguese 7E Foil Stone Rain! A trade looks definite.

Updated the old website to show only a redirect page that kicks the reader to this location.

Ugh... the switchover to Eastern Daylight Time has made me groggy!

Trading News Signed English Ice Age, Unlimited, Revised, and Fourth came in! Thanks Jay! My friend in Barcelona says he is getting a German Merc Masques foil Stone Rain for me! Thanks Luis!

Well I've had better weeks! In addition to being very sick this week and having a sick child, my job went nuts as I tried to get too many things done at once. Also, a bunch of very unhappy Stone Rain things happened.

First, a friend abroad pointed me to a German MTG On-Line Store where they had listed a pair of German Mercadian Masques Stone Rain Foils for sale. So I tried to order them but I couldn't figure out the site because I don't speak German and the site had no English-language option... so instead I sent them an e-mail indicating my interest in that card. When they got back to me a couple days later, they indicated that the cards were already sold. Crap. I have since sent them another mail telling them what I need and asking them to look around and see if they could find them but they are taking a long time to respond, so I don't think anything is going to come of it.

Second, another German lead that had previously looked promising seems to have fallen through. A respondant to one of my feelers to German eBay sellers indicated that "of course" he could get me German Stone Rains, and he would get back to me on Thursday. I didn't hear from him on Thursday so I e-mailed him again on Friday. It turned out he thought he only had one of the Stone Rains on my list, the Starter Stone Rain. Unfortunately, he thought that when I said "Starter" I really meant "Fourth Edition". So I pointed him at a new graphic I have put together for people who've never heard of Starter and asked him to ask around his circle of contacts but I've gotten no response so I think that is the end of this lead.

Third, my ISP (Inter.Net) decided that it was going to get out of the ISP business. This is probably a good thing for their customers who want good dial-up service, but it is a bad thing for me. They decided to sell their dial-up service accounts to another provider, a provider who can't even keep my web URL from changing when I am moved over! In addition the new provider doesn't even offer UseNet service, has no access numbers local to me, and is very expensive. Jeeze... thanks for NOTHING Inter.Net! The upshot of this is that it's time for me to go out and find a new Internet Service Provider so the Stone Rain Project is going to have to move very soon. I should be able to upload a pointer to a new location but it won't be up for very long...

Fourth, it turns out that Portal and Portal Second Age were both printed in Portuguese! So there's two more printings I need.

Fifth, I was contacted by a diligent Disenchant collector last night who informed me that there are 125 printings of Disenchant, making Disenchant the most reprinted nonland card, and relegating Stone Rain to second place. Since Disenchant appeared both maindeck and sideboard of some world champ decks, it has to be counted twice for those decks because the sideboard cards were printed with a small SB symbol. As a result, I can now only refer to Stone Rain as the most reprinted Sorcery of all time.

But despite all this, I'm not going to give up. The Stone Rain Project will go on, though I will have to move the website. My new e-mail address for Stone Rain Project mail will be srp@plastereddragon.com.

Okay, site changes: more text added to Portuguese Printings page to make mention of the two new printings needed there. Introduction page text rewritten to no longer claim that Stone Rain is the most reprinted nonland card. CSS Styles altered--I didn't like the italicized text in the news sections.

Trading News French 7E Foil, French MM Foil, and French WB RV came in! Thanks Eric! Spanish MM Foil, Spanish 7E, and Spanish P2 came in! Thanks Luis! Made a deal with a trader in Seattle for 4 signed Stone Rains. Good price! Placeholders added for them on the Special Printings page.

Trading News Japanese 7E Foil, Japanese 7E, and English Ice Age misprint cards arrived! Thanks Jim... amazing shipping speed! Doublechecked with contact in Brazil, he has definitely sent out the 4th and 6th edition Portuguese cards at this point.

Trading News Spanish 4E BB card arrived! Thanks Luis! Deal closed with Jim at Troll & Toad for 2 Japanese cards I needed and the new Ice age misprint Stone Rain. Thanks Jim!

Added "Latest Addition" segment to introductory page. Thought it would be nice if the look of the main page changed each time a new interesting printing came in. Deanonymized another donor.

I have a funny story today. I sent out some e-mails to MOTL members in Italy, trying to find someone who could trade or sell me an Italian WB Revised Stone Rain. One of the messages I got back was so ridiculous, I just had to share it with you here:

Hi, yes I can get it.
I can trade it for one of the following cards :
Cursed Scroll
Morphling
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Call Of the Herd
Bazaar of Bagdad
5 Wastelands
Let me know.
Thanks.

A fifty cent common for a Shadowmage Infiltrator. Hmmm. Can you say "abject greed"?

Trading News Sent out 11 new "feeler" e-mails to MOTL members living in Italy... hopefully this will net me the Italian WB Revised Stone Rain I am missing. The extra-red English Mercadian Stone Rain from Dan Bock came in today. Scan added to the Special Printings page.

THE BAD NEWS: My "Italian WB Revised" card is actually Fourth Edition. *sigh* And here I thought I was all done with Italian printings. :( Anybody got an Italian Revised Stone Rain with white-borders?

Trading News My friend Pirusk from Barcelona has acquired 3 more cards that I need for Spanish (7E, Merc Masques foil, Portal 2) and has dropped them in the mail! Thanks Pirusk! This puts me at only EIGHT MORE CARDS TO GO!!!

In Italian, French, and German, the WB version of Revised is often hard to distinguish from Fourth Edition. In German, the card text for Stone Rain changed between the editions, but I have been working under the assumption that Italian and French Revised were identical to their Fourth Edition counterparts. Fourth Edition is copyright dated 1995 in all three languages. But if French WB Revised is actually dated 1994, then I don't have it because my "French WB Revised" card is dated 1995. I had to confirm this, so I contacted my friend Eric in Paris and asked "Is French WB Revised dated 1994?"

Eric wasn't sure of the answer but he was confident if he dug through his collection he would find some WB Revised cards and be able to answer the question. After an hour or so he became frustrated because he could only find WB cards dated 1995 and he wasn't sure if they were Revised or not. Eric has a large collection of unopened boosters, and after some trepidation, he decided to open one of his extra French WB Revised boosters to see what dates the cards had.

Bad news... they were dated 1994.

But by some bizarre twist of fate in this one particular pack there happened to be a Stone Rain!!! Eric is sending me this card. Thank you kindly, Eric. In the meantime I have updated the French printings page to remove the current Revised WB scan and to indicate the on-order status of the card.

This raises a question however. You can distinguish a German WB Revised Stone Rain from the Fourth Edition version by its text. You can distinguish a French WB Revised Stone Rain from the Fourth Edition by its copyright date. What about Italian? Italian WB Revised has the same copyright date as Italian Fourth Edition. Is there any way to tell an Italian WB Revised Stone Rain from an Italian Fourth Edition Stone Rain? I think I have both of these printings but the cards look identical to me. Can anyone confirm or deny?

Trading News As described above Eric comes through again! The French WB Revised card I thought I had was really French 4E, but Eric has the real McCoy and is sending it to me along with the two French foils. He da MAN! Closed deal for a slightly miscolored Mercadian Masques misprint Stone Rain, and a signed English 6E Proof. Slots added in the Special Printings section. Lotta John Matson cards popping up lately! My friend Luis in Barcelona has found Japanese 7E and 7E foil Stone Rains. If my current source for Japanese 7E has no luck on his buying trip in Japan, Luis says he'll trade these cards to me. Thanks Luis, it's nice to have a back-up plan. :) The signed and unsigned German Portal Second Age Stone Rains arrived from Belgium today... very nice. Scans added in German Printings and Special Printings.

Trading News The autographed 7E Stone Rain I paid for on Jan-28 finally showed up today. Got an offer on a misprinted Ice Age Stone Rain today... trying to close that deal. Paid for the two autographed Matson Stone Rains I mentioned yesterday. Those are on order now. Slots created for them on the Master List and Special Printings page.

Trading News Concrete assurance from a reliable source that I should have my Japanese needs filled soon. My friend is going to be on a buying tour in Japan and said he had to visit like 8 stores. I said if he had trouble finding the Portal card, I'd be willing to buy a dozen or so packs of Japanese Portal in the hopes of pulling a Stone Rain. I asked the other two folks who were going to be in Japan not to bother but thanked them for offering to help. Sweet deal offered today on a signed Stone Rain proof with a sketch on the back by the artist (John Matson). Very cool. Also included another Stone Rain (different set, non-proof) signed by same artist. Trying to close that deal.

Trading News Lots of offers on Misprint Stone Rains all the sudden. More than I can afford really. Waiting to see what comes of that... maybe I can negotiate for better prices. Mysteriously 3 people have just recently mentioned to me that they would be in Japan next week and that they would try to find Stone Rains for me. I think they're all probably going to Pro Tour Osaka. Going to attempt to find out if that is the case and if so select one of them and tell the others not to bother. I'd hate to have them banging heads with each other trying to acquire the same card for me! Someone in Paris is trying to win an auction for a signed beta lot which contains an autographed Stone Rain. He has agreed to sell the Stone Rain to me if he wins.

No response from the artist. :( We'll have to wait and see.

Altered the menu frame to make it look a little cleaner, also reworked the "frameless navigation links" at the bottom of the intro page and propagated them to all the other pages. A little more descriptive text added to some of the language pages. Purchased DreamWeaver (a web design tool I use at work) and the three requisite O'Reilly books for web work (HTML & XHTML The Definitive Guide, Dynamic HTML, and JavaScript The Definitive Guide). I use these books constantly at work and would gladly recommend them to anyone.

Trading News An unrelated trade came in today in which the trader included a Spanish Tempest Stone Rain in mint condition as a throw-in. This was a very pleasant surprise because the one I had was beat.

Trading News Possible leads on Japanese and Spanish today, but only very tenuous ones. Keeping my fingers crossed there. Found a seller who has some signed foil Mercadian Masques Stone Rains. Going to see if I can negotiate a deal for one of them. Contacted another purveyor of signed cards to see if he has anything. Nothing heard back on that yet.

Trading News Sent out 14 new "feeler" e-mails to eBay buyers and sellers of foreign cards. Current total number of eBay members contacted: 167

Trading News My friend in Barcelona has located a BB 4th Edition Spanish Stone Rain for me! Hooray!

Trading News T-Chinese Portal 3 Kingdoms version arrived today from the person who was originally sending me a different version, so my friend in New Zealand doesn't have to bother. A contact in Paris says he has found a French Mercadian Masques foil for me, and is looking for the 7E foil.

Trading News The deal for the German Portal 2 Stone Rains is under way. I dropped my payment in the mail today... it's on its way to Belgium. The deal is for TWO German Portal 2 Stone Rains of which one is signed by Doug Chaffee... coool.

I had my first request by three different "donors" to be de-anonymized today! They all wanted links to their MOTL H/W page. Modified the VB app to support 6 or 7 different types of links, and to display notes about the donor under the card scan in a nice format. Worked great!

Trading News I may have found someone in Belgium who can get me the German Portal Second Age Stone Rain! Wahoo! :) The deal for the Portuguese 4th and 6th edition printings has gone ahead... I dropped my end of the deal in the mail to the trader in Brazil this morning.

Number of stone rain scans on the site is presently 34... about a third of what I need. Also, I added language sample scans for English, German, Spanish, Italian, Korean, and Japanese. The scan quality isn't very good... I'm still figuring out how to use the scanner and I don't own PhotoShop. :(

I haven't started contacting people who have donated cards to see if they want to be de-anonymized, but I think given the opportunity to have links to their auctions, online business, or what-have-you on an interesting website most of them will probably give their assent.

• Traditional Chinese Portal Three Kingdoms (Alexandra, New Zealand)
• Spanish Mirage and Spanish Portal (Barcelona, Spain).