Anthologies is one of Magic's lesser-discussed box sets today, but it holds a real place in the game's history as the product Wizards of the Coast built specifically to mark Magic's fifth anniversary.
Released in November 1998, Anthologies didn't introduce any new cards. Instead, it pulled together a curated selection of reprints spanning Magic's entire history up to that point, from the original Alpha set all the way through Urza's Saga.
This guide covers exactly what's in the box, how it was assembled, and why it remains an interesting product for collectors interested in Magic's design and reprint history.
We'll also touch on the small booklet included inside, which offers a surprisingly personal look at the game's early years.
Anthologies contains two 60-card preconstructed theme decks, each built from cards spanning every Magic expansion and edition from Alpha through Urza's Saga, plus five token cards per deck. Every card in the box carries a white border and a copyright range printed as 1993 through 1998.
Rather than introducing its own dedicated expansion symbol, Anthologies uses each card's original expansion symbol, meaning a single deck can include cards spanning several completely different visual eras of Magic's printing history side by side.
Alongside the two decks, Anthologies includes a 64-page booklet covering Magic's past, present, and future as of 1998, with personal commentary from the game's creator, Richard Garfield. This kind of direct, creator-written retrospective is rare among Magic products of any era.
For collectors interested in Magic's design history rather than just its card values, this booklet is arguably the most unique piece of the entire box.
Unlike a standard expansion, Anthologies was designed purely as a reprint and retrospective product rather than a source of new playable cards. Its entire purpose was to give newer players access to older, harder-to-find cards from Magic's first five years.
That focus on accessibility over new content is part of why Anthologies still gets discussed today, even though it never introduced a single brand-new card to the game.
The Anthologies storage box was built to hold up to 350 sleeved, standard-sized cards, making it a genuinely useful piece of long-term storage on top of its contents. Many collectors kept using the box itself long after building entirely different decks inside it.
That kind of dual-purpose packaging was fairly common for late-1990s Magic box sets, treating the box as part of the product rather than just a shipping container.
By 1998, Magic had already grown from a niche hobby into a global card game with five years of expansions behind it. Anthologies gave Wizards of the Coast a way to mark that milestone directly, rather than simply releasing another new expansion set.
This retrospective approach set a template other milestone-driven box sets would follow in the years afterward, treating anniversaries as an opportunity to look backward rather than only forward.
Sealed Anthologies boxes remain a niche but genuine collecting target, prized for their historical significance rather than tournament playability. The individual cards inside are worth far more to most collectors as pieces of a specific product than as playable staples.
Understanding Anthologies as a snapshot of Magic's first five years, rather than as a competitive product, is the right lens for appreciating what Wizards of the Coast was actually trying to accomplish with it.
Anthologies was marketed specifically as a retrospective, anniversary product rather than a new expansion competing for shelf space alongside fresh Standard-legal sets. That positioning shaped how stores stocked it and how players approached it, treating the box as a one-time collectible event rather than an ongoing product line.
This framing is part of why Anthologies never received a sequel using the same fifth-anniversary format, even as Magic continued celebrating later milestones with different kinds of products entirely, from Masters-series draft sets to modern Secret Lair drops, each celebrating the game's history in its own distinct way rather than repeating the exact Anthologies formula, which itself has never been directly reused since 1998.
November 1998.
Two 60-card decks, plus five token cards each.
No, each card keeps its original expansion's symbol.
Magic's creator, Richard Garfield, contributed personal commentary.
Whether you're chasing a full sealed box or just a handful of the reprinted singles, proper storage matters for a product this old. An EVORETRO Collector Album is a great way to keep an Anthologies deck organized and easy to show off.
Sleeving individual cards first with EVORETRO Premium Card Sleeves is always worth the extra few minutes, especially for anything approaching thirty years old.
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