Flip It or Rip It? A Magic Controversy, Explained

Not long ago, in the first days of Ravnica Remastered's public release, an Instagram user announced that they had destroyed a serialized copy of Godless Shrine. The image, now viral in the Magic: The Gathering online community, shows the card, numbered #076/500, ripped in half. This card is just the latest major casualty in the phenomenon known colloquially as "Flip It or Rip It".

The Origins of "Flip It or Rip It"

My research begins, as most research often does nowadays, in the Google search bar. I only had to look up "Flip It or Rip It origin" to get the earliest account of the controversial game. From the results, it seems that the earliest mention of the game in a Magic context was in 2013. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just after an event, a blogger went onto WordPress and recounted what they saw. In a description that is best described as "shocked", the blogger explains the game, relayed below:

There were two players at a table, opening booster packs and spreading the cards on the table, face down.  For each pack laid out in front of them, the players would take turns selecting cards.  One player would flip his chosen card over for everyone to see, while the other quickly ripped his card in half - without looking.  They would go back and forth until the "flip" player turned up the rare, or until there were no more cards to select.  Then the "rip" player would reveal the damage done, often eliciting loud groans from the growing number of watchers.

The blogger went on to engage in Flip It or Rip It at GP Washington a week later. His antics involved a pack of the first Modern Masters set. Interestingly, he remarked the following: "Remember, it's only worth money if you know what the card is, otherwise it's just cardboard! Right!?"

A year later, the blogger posted again about the game taking place in Ypsilanti, Michigan. A Flip It or Rip It player destroyed a foil copy of Dark Confidant (interestingly, also from Modern Masters). He even included a photo of it, proudly chronicling the shenanigans.

The Effects of Flipping and Ripping

As far as I can tell from these anecdotes, Flip It or Rip It has a somewhat opiate or cathartic quality to it. Players may play this to feel something exciting. Meanwhile, spectators might watch the damage to feel relief that it wasn't their cards being torn asunder.

In 2015, Flip It or Rip It claimed another high-profile casualty, propelling the game into a more public eye. This time, it was an Expedition copy of Godless Shrine. Soon thereafter, a local game store in Dubai banned the practice, calling it a form of gambling. In the United Arab Emirates, gambling is illegal due to the Quran outlawing certain practices.

Flip It or Reddit

Flip It went rather dark after this piece of news. However, some corners of Reddit were still playing it, albeit with a sense of quieter disrepair. r/MTGGore, the subreddit in question, was established on October 22nd, 2013. Its goal is to allow Redditors to showcase "awful, abusive, depressing, and otherwise disquieting things that've happened to cards." On r/MTGGore, you can currently see such damaged cards as an original Sensei's Divining Top made into a sharpied proxy of Convolute. Additionally, we can see yet another victim of Flip It or Rip It, this time a borderless copy of Haunted Ridge, torn twice over.

With all respect to r/MTGGore, the subreddit is remarkably hard to look at as an avid fan of Magic. It's notable, perhaps, that the subreddit does not advocate for the destruction of cards. Thus, many Redditors post there when natural causes, such as flooding or laundry mishaps, destroy their cards. However, it's still a prominent location for Flip It or Rip It players to congregate over their shenanigans.

Flip It, Today

On January 13th, a Flip It player at Better Plays Gaming, an up-and-coming game store in Stow, Ohio, tore a serialized copy of Godless Shrine in two. Now, after that now-infamous rip, Flip It Or Rip It is seeing the light of day once more. Social media largely plays a part in the spread of Flip It to fresh ears. Many Magic personalities took to Twitter to speak their minds about Flip It or Rip It after this happened. One influential post came from @SaffronOlive, who said the following:

Flip it or rip it isn't my thing, but neither is getting upset about what someone else does with a piece of cardboard they purchased.

— Saffron Olive (@SaffronOlive) January 14, 2024

Saffron Olive doubled down pretty quickly to various Twitter users' replies to the above tweet, to relatively negative effect, but also to a few mirthful reactions:

Is "I'm bored so I'll spend $300 on a booster box" in a world where people struggle for basic needs really meaningfully different?

— Saffron Olive (@SaffronOlive) January 14, 2024

In response to that Twitter post, many responded by noting the difference being "frivolous destruction", among other things. While I'm personally inclined to agree with that response, it's also not my money being spent or wasted here. Therefore, beyond chronicling this phenomenon, it isn't my business to preach about it. Personally, while I wish this wasn't something that affects serialized cards, that aspect is a) unavoidable, and b) part of the high risk of playing Flip It. Whatever your opinion is of Flip It or Rip It, this fact remains: players let this djinn out of the bottle over a decade ago. It won't ever go back to the way it once was, and them's the ropes.

I know I would appreciate hearing about more accounts of this game's effects on players. Do you have any experience with Flip It or Rip It? Have you gotten burned by the phenomenon before?