MagicCon Barcelona 2023

Oliver, David and I flew out to Barcelona (we are friends for over 20 years) one day before the rest of the event team, on Wednesday. There we spent the day in the Catalan capital – starting out with lunch at my favorite tapas place, La Flauta. Later we shopped for some records at Revolver Records and explored the Raval district for a bit. The evening ended at Carrer de Blai, where we indulged on tasty Pinxos (fingerfood on a stick) and copas of local cerveza.

After picking up our pallet with the sealed product and the materials to build our booth in the morning of Thursday, we met the rest of the team at the venue to set up for the event.

Everything went smoothly and soon after we headed to lunch. After that, we had an event briefing to get us ready for the weekend. That was followed by some time at the hotel’s rooftop pool. Apart from cooling off, we, of course, played a bit of Magic and so it was an afternoon well spent.

We concluded day 0 with a team dinner at Fabrica Moritz, a restaurant run by the local beer producer of the same name. More delicious tapas and of course one or the other of their brews made for a fun evening.

We caught up on sleep, and now we’re ready for day 1 of MagicCon Barcelona. Our booth is set up, and we are looking forward to seeing you in the hall!

The whole team met early to finish setting up our booth in time. The team for this event is the largest we ever had at one. It consists of our founders, Oliver, David and Wenzel, along with Ricardo, Beni, Lukas from our buying team and well as Marc, Stefan, and Max who focus on selling and assisting in buying cards from our customers. I am mostly spending time creating content and helping out selling.

The only one from our team who actually spend the day playing was David. He attended the $75,000 Limited Open. After a rocky start with his Black-Red Deck (2-0, into 2-2) he closed out the day strong, finished at 6-2 and qualified for the second day of the event.

Game Knights Live was definitely one of the highlights of day 1 and the crowd thought so too. Watch the hilarious video of the player’s intro on the left. After a long and hard fought battle, host Josh Lee Kwai took the win. You can rewatch the last live show from MagicCon Minneapolis here.

The anticipated strongest day, visitorwise, Saturday, started as advertised with lots of people flocking into the convention center, buying loose packs, sleeves, and singles of course to get themselves ready for a full day of Magic.

David had a great run at the $75,000 Limited Open, and finished the day, after two drafts of Magic’s latest set, with a record of 5-1 and 11-3 overall. However, he eventually fell short in a super close tiebreaker decision and finished the event in the unfortunate ninth place.

During the day, I had the chance to catch up with the artist who did our fantastic token designs. He was friendly enough to leave us with a couple of signed copies that we’ll give away at the booth for free. You can a short interview with him on our YouTube channel.

Our friend and Pro Tour legend Kai Budde made his twelfth Pro Tour Top 8 equivalent, and therefore become the only player with top finishes in four decades! Congratulations and best of luck for Sunday.

The night of Saturday was a long one for some, as Wooden Wisdom, a.k.a. Elijah Wood and Zach Cowie, were spinning their records at the official event party. We of course made it on time to the venue for the final day. Well, most of us did.

Marc and I played “Guess the card, get the card” with players all over the venue. They had 90 seconds to ask us yes–no questions about the card and if they eventually get it right, they got to keep the card. If you are curious, we’ll be posting the videos within the next weeks on our TikTok and Instagram accounts.

Sunday was a busy day for everyone, but even a famous planeswalker like Teferi made some time to stop by, sell some cards and of course star in some pictures at our booth.

Sunday was a busy day for everyone, but even a famous planeswalker like Teferi made some time to stop by, sell some cards and of course star in some pictures at our booth.

We of course sold, traded and bought cards until the venue finally closed its doors at 7. MagicCon was a fantastic experience, and we are beyond excited to be present at the next one, in Las Vegas, as well.