The Stone Rain Project

I'm Not Dead

Chuck — Fri, 12 May 2006 11:35:00 -0400

And neither is the Stone Rain Project! You might have thought so, but that's only because I've been occupied with other things lately. Here's what's happened with the project lately...

Seven in a Row!

Chuck — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 11:39:00 -0500

I posted a new photo to Photos.

eBay -- The Collector's Best Resource

Chuck — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:29:00 -0500

Well this morning I was lucky enough to win an auction for a foil Japanese Champions of Kamigawa Stone Rain. This means I need only two cards to finish Japanese and only six cards to finish the set.

This is of course assuming the Italian Stone Rains ever come. Which by now, I think, is unlikely. In another 7 days time, if they still haven't arrived, I'm going to mark them as missing again which will jump the need list back up to 11.

The Stone Rain Project Down for 10 Hours

Chuck — Sat, 11 Mar 2006 18:43:00 -0500

There is a maintenance window scheduled tonight on BlogHarbor, running from 10 PM to 8 AM. During that time The Stone Rain Project will not be accessible. Please check back in the morning. Here's the relevant portion of the message from BlogHarbor which I received a week or so ago:

Maintenance Window 2006-03-11 ----------------------------- We will be performing maintenance on our network during the following period: * 2006-03-11 (Sat.), 10:00 PM - 8:00 AM EST (2006-03-12 0400 - 1400 UTC) During this period, both weblogs and the admin control panel will be offline as maintenance is performed. While there may be up to 10 hours of downtime as a result of this upgrade, we will do our best to bring your blog back online as soon as possible.

Thank you for your patience, and sorry for the inconvenience.

A Spanish Boon!

Chuck — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 22:35:00 -0500

My contact in Spain, Gregtork of the Pete Venters Project, says he's found 4 of the 5 Spanish printings of Stone Rain I need! Hopefully those will be arriving soon...

Cool Miscut

Chuck — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:58:00 -0500

Check this eBay auction out! This stonie should be in the project binder soon, I put up rudimentary scans on the Special Printings page using the pictures from the auction listing. I'll replace those with better versions later. I'm very excited about this acquisition!

The On-Order List Grows Short

Chuck — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 09:44:00 -0500

At this point I am only waiting on the 5 Italian Stone Rains from Musampa. I still have heard nothing on the 11 Stone Rains I still need, although I've found a lead in Spain who might be able to help, and a world-trader in France who says he is going to look for me too. I've been too busy to look myself recently but I'll be sending out another round of feelers soon.

Another Batch Comes In

Chuck — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 09:31:00 -0500

Picked up four of the Portuguese cards I needed, and 3 of the S-Chinese cards I needed. Thank you donors!!! I'll upload scans tonight...

Interview With Matt Sestak -- Global Set Collector

Chuck — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 08:08:00 -0500

Since restarting the Stone Rain Project I've discovered a number of other Global Set Projects have popped up on the 'net in the interim. I think this is very cool, especially since every new person who tries a hand at a global set takes a fresh perspective and comes up with a new spin on the idea. For instance...

A Lead Pays Off...

Chuck — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 09:57:00 -0500

The Simplified-Chinese lead I found a while back has come through and found the two remaining cards I need for S-Chinese! Negotiations are underway, stay tuned!

Japanese is Going to Be a Problem

Chuck — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 06:25:00 -0500

I can already tell. There is no eBay Japan, and my previous biggest lead for Japanese cards apparently has no interest in participating this time around.

I sent out 3 feelers on eBay for Japanese, and also 8 feelers on MOTL (to members living in Japan).

I sent out a dozen feelers on eBay.es (Spain) this morning. So far the responses have all been duds, but hope springs eternal, and there's always Mexico if Spain doesn't pan out.

Italian Done?

Chuck — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 10:02:00 -0500

My feelers on eBay.it netted me a lead who says he has all the Italian Stone Rains I needed! A deal has been negotiated and the cards are officially on order. When they get here Italian will be done. That's pretty good for the language which I was worried about 4 days ago.

Japanese and Spanish are still in dire straights. Going to look into those soon.

Site Work

Chuck — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:22:00 -0500

Minor stuff really. I cleaned up the footer a little and added a disclaimer which I shamelessly stole from another global set site (which I hope to be writing an interesting article about soon.) Also the Useful MTG Links page has been updated to be more current. All the dead links have been removed or repaired.

eBay.it

Chuck — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:08:00 -0500

Ebay has sister sites around the world, and apparently if you are registered on one you are registered on others. So today I went to eBay.it, the home of eBay in Italy and searched on Pioggia di Pietre. I found a bunch of sellers selling stone rains, and a couple had some of the ones I wanted (but shipped only to Europe.) So I sent out 6 feelers on Italian eBay this morning to sellers who had stonies in stock. Hopefully something will come of that!

Followup: My Italian eBay feelers have netted me a lead in Italy who says he has 5 of the 6 Italian Stone Rains I need and possibly some of the Japanese! Stay tuned!

The First Batch Cometh!

Chuck — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 05:47:00 -0500

Four of my on-order stone rains came in today, Russian 9EBB, French CK, Japanese CK, and the English RV miscut!...

25 and Counting!

Chuck — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 03:39:00 -0500

Thanks to a MOTL member from Russia, I'll soon have a Russian 9E Foil stonie and a signed beta stonie. Yay! Things are getting quiet with the leads... I may need to send out a new set of feelers soon. I'm also scheduled to do followups later today on six leads...

Project Status Added to Sidebar

Chuck — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 03:54:00 -0500

Just a little polish for the site, now the project status is visible in the sidebar no matter what page you are on, and is also javascript driven. Seems to work in both Mozilla and IE. The image at right shows what it looks like in my browser. Obviously for any other browser there are no guarantees.

Multiple Lines of Inquiry

Chuck — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:52:00 -0500

I've found myself explaining the phrase "Multiple Lines of Inquiry" to potential Stone Rain donors lately, so I figured I should explain it here so people know what to expect. Chasing down a global set of any card (particularly one with 173 printings) is a lot like trying to solve a missing persons case... it involves multiple leads, and most of them do not pan out...

A Language Primer

Chuck — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 01:20:00 -0500

One of my leads sent me an e-mail saying he was having trouble distinguishing the languages. I understand that frustration only too well. So I threw together this little "language primer" to help folks distinguish between languages, specifically for Stone Rains, but also in general. It's not great, but it might prove helpful for most cards...

Getting By With A Little Help From My Friends...

Chuck — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:17:00 -0500

Needed printings count is down to 26 this evening thanks to a couple helpful individuals. Namely "pickle.69" from the Magic Library Forums and Paulo Sureck who responded to one of my Brazillian eBay feelers...

Foily S-Chinese 9th Edition!

Chuck — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 04:30:00 -0500

Found this on eBay shortly after the other two S-Chinese cards. Yay!

12 new eBay feelers sent out tonight to sellers in Italy, Singapore, Portugal, and Switzerland.

Found a contact over on MagicLibrary who says he should be able to supply Japanese 8E, Russian 9E Foil, and French 9E, 9E Foil, and CK Foil. Obviously that would be GREAT! Chance to cross 5 stonies off the list!

Interesting Evening...

Chuck — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 02:41:00 -0500

What a peculiar night I have had. First the good news: I located a seller on eBay who had 2 S-Chinese Stone Rains in hand (9th and Champs of K) and was selling them at resonable prices (fifty cents, and a dollar). Bagged both of those... down to 33 printings needed! ...

New SRP Site Up and Running!

Chuck — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 15:08:00 -0500

All lists and gallery displays are diven from javascript. To update the whole site I just set a few javascript switches and upload the new data. Most of the pages create themselves on the fly when viewed from the latest data.

I'm beat, but happy!!!

Now to redirect the old site to here...

Foily Champs of Kamigawa!

Chuck — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 21:43:00 -0500

Got my English Champs of Kamigawa foil today! Yay! English is done at this point. Cards in hand...

I Love eBay

Chuck — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 05:06:00 -0500

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what I call an "eBay feeler"...

9E English Foil Arrives!

Chuck — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 02:04:00 -0500

The 9E English Foil came today. Also I got in touch with a contact in Brazil and began discussions of getting Portuguese stonies I need.

Heard more responses to my initial feeler emails. Looks like I may be getting some of the French and Spanis versions I need.

Getting My Bearings... 37 Printings Needed

Chuck — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 07:13:00 -0500

Okay at long last, (guess folks have had time to puzzle this out in my absence), it is confirmed that Portal and Portal 2 were printed in Portuguese only as starter-set gift boxes, and these boxes did not include Stone Rain. Therefore the Portuguese Portal that I was chasing forever, never existed. My thanks to fellow Stone Rain collector Jeb for clearing that up for me.

This knocks the number of printings down to 173, but still keeps Stone Rain at the most reprinted nonland card of all time, and it also means that I only need to acquire 37 printings to finish. The best part? They're ALL NEW. 8E, 9E, and Champions of Kamigawa (CK). Since they are new, I have to believe finding them will be a lot easier than trying to find the older sets was. Here's the skinny on what I need:

Language	8E	8E Foil	9E	9E Foil	CK	CK Foil
Chinese (Simplified)	have	need	need	need	need	need
Chinese (Traditional)	have	have	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
English	have	have	have	on order	have	on order
French	have	have	need	need	need	need
German	have	need	need	need	need	need
Italian	have	need	need	need	need	need
Japanese	need	need	need	need	on order	need
Portuguese	need	need	need	need	need	need
Russian	n/a	n/a	on order	need	n/a	n/a
Spanish	have	need	need	need	need	need

I plan on recontacting all my previous donors and sending out a new round of feelers (first ones in 2+ years!) to see if I can scare some of this stuff up. Considering some of the excellent people I've met over the years in far flung places, I think my chances are good. I even made contact with a donor who lives in Moscow, and hopefully he can help me with the Russian 9E printings.

Other interesting news is something I read the other day on the Magic Rarities forums, which I was tipped off to by scanning Eric LeSavre's excellent Unopened Boosters Collection page. Apparently in 2004 it came to light that there was a copycat production of Magic Cards in Australia. These cards were fakes and not made by Wizards of the Coast. One of the sets faked was Eighth Edition, implying that there should be faked 8E and 8EF Stone Rains out there. I've managed to find somebody who has some of the fake product and I am tring to work out a deal with him to see if I can get my hands on a "phoney stoney". Apparently they are visually different so I'd be pretty excited to get one. Hopefully something will come of that.

Apparently, after Mirrodin, Wizards stopped producing cards in Traditional Chinese! So there are no 9E or CK printings of Stone Rain in that language! Has T-Chinese (like Korean) fallen by the wayside?

It's Baaaaaaack!

Chuck — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 07:11:00 -0500

Wha' happen? Basically, I quit magic altogether for over 2 years as I got into other things, and the Stone Rain Project slept as the number of printings of the card swelled from 141 to 175! Stone Rain was reprinted in 9th Edition, and also in the standalone set Champions of Kamigawa in the meantime.

Some people were very nice and continued to send me stone rains here and there... I acquired perhaps 4 or 5 more after quitting. They've been crudely scanned and added here and I have attempted to attribute the appropriate donors. Thanks folks!

And now I have 40 printings left to go to finish the global Stone Rain set. Can you help!?

Historic Stone Rain Project News Entries

Chuck — Sat, 30 Aug 2003 06:51:00 -0400

These articles began in January of 2002 and ended in August of 2003. I may at some point go back and break them out into individual articles to present a more accurate (and more accessible) picture of the Stone Rain Project's history...

Interview with Ben Thompson -- Stone Rain Artist

Chuck — Fri, 07 Feb 2003 07:57:00 -0500

In the Magic: the Gathering discussion forums at Wizards of the Coast's website, a forum was recently added for the esteemed artist Ben Thompson. Mr. Thompson is the artist who created the wonderful art on the Mercadian Masques version of Stone Rain. I couldn't resist asking Mr. Thompson if he would mind answering a few questions about his work on Stone Rain, and he very kindly agreed to do so. Thanks Ben! ...