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Showcase Frame

Also written: Showcase · Showcase treatment

A Magic alternate frame designed specifically for one set's theme — a different look each time, not a fixed style.

ArtThe picture changes

A showcase frame is a Magic: The Gathering alternate frame designed specifically for the theme of the set it appears in. A gothic set gets a gothic frame; a set built around a folk-tale conceit gets a storybook frame. The design is different every time, which is the single most important thing to understand about the term.

You identify it by contrast, not by memory

There is no fixed showcase look to learn. What there is instead is a reliable test: hold the card next to any ordinary card from the same set. If the border style, the typeface and the layout do not match while the card is unmistakably from that set, you are looking at a showcase treatment. That test keeps working on sets printed after you stopped paying attention, which no list of frame styles can do.

It combines with everything else

• A showcase frame can also be borderless, in which case the themed design covers the whole face.
• It can be printed non-foil, ordinary foil, etched, surge or textured.
• It is the same card in play terms. The treatment changes the object, not the rules.

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