In this week's Flashlight, Reilly introduces some very special guests, Jake is intimidated by game store employees, and we discuss the meteoric rise of Wizards of the Coast. We also get into the economic situation in the 1990s, the Canadian political system, and how our podcast production works behind the scenes. The bit about unpaid interns was a joke, we promise.

We compare and contrast WotC with its predecessor TSR, so it might help to listen to our Flashlight on the history of TSR as well.

Also, in this episode Jake says "top quintile" without defining it. This just means "top 20%". Sorry about that.

Here are some links that we used in research for the episode:

• You can see those original rules for Wizards of the Coast’s first publication The Primal Order here.
• Here’s a detailed history of the history of Wizards of the Coast through the 1990s.
• This review of the very first Magic: the Gathering World Championships isn’t the very first use of the word “metagame” but it’s an interesting read and an early discussion of the concept.
• Here’s a forum thread on early Magic: the Gathering card prices - we didn’t talk about this in the episode, but it’s interesting history.
• Here are the Consumer Expenditure Survey tables we used to get historical spending on hobbies.
• Here’s WotC’s patent on collectible card games.
• Here’s the Bulbapedia page on the WotC Pokemon card era. As always Bulbapedia is one of the most comprehensive sources of information on anything anywhere on the Internet.
• Here’s a thoughtful critical review of the Homelands MtG card deck.

If you like the music on the show, go check out more of Reilly's music.

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