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My earliest memories of playing Magic was at high school in the late 90s, and that memory is sustained with one particular card - Lord of Atlantis. The deck I played with strongly featured Merfolk (including the 'ridiculously powerful' aforementioned Lord), and it is safe to say the enjoyment these unsleeved, unbridled games brought me, firmly established the presence of Magic in my mindset. I even remember designing my own custom magic deck expansion.
Fortunately I retained these cards, even though I fell away from the game for quite a few years. And so it was then in 2013 when a friend suggested a few of us re-explore Magic again, did I rekindle my interest (which led to me attending a few GPs in the 2010s - see my Modern deck for more details). But it was when that same friend brought me two foreign-printing copies of Lord of Atlantis from a trip to Japan that something else kicked into gear in my brain. I suddenly wondered if I might be able to collect every single Merfolk card in the game?
And so began my quest - already boosted by my existing Merfolk cards - I decided to clarify the parameters of the collection: It would only be in English language (despite the two Japanese versions of the Lord I had been gifted), and the word Merfolk would either have to appear on the card, or be part of it's oracle text (back when Gatherer was the source of all this).
More recently, these parameters have been updated, and now state in the collection:
A comprehensive collection of all 'Merfolk' named, typed and text cards in the 'Scryfall' Magic the Gathering database; including all foil, prerelease, promo, extended, alternate, retro, etched and showcase versions - but not foreign, nor unique-serial-numbered versions
This neatly avoids me having to try and track down copies of the infamous 'Summer Magic/Edgar' printings of Lord of Atlantis and Merfolk of the Pearl Trident; plus the insanely priced individually-serialised Merfolk of the Pearl Trident from the '1 in 295' Secret Lair.
This whole decision to collect was probably most cemented when - for my 30th birthday - a bunch of friends clubbed together and bought me an Alpha edition Lord of Atlantis. This was expensive at the time (maybe £100+), so not quite as an outrageous a purchase as that might seem today - but still an overwhelmingly generous gesture, that effectively made me say 'well if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right!'.
Below you will see all the cards I have currently in my collection. As of today (August 2026), I am only missing 20 cards - in greyscale below - but that number can always fluctuate; especially with the release of Nauctis next year in which I expect a great number of Merfolk cards in a number of printing variants... Onwards!
