Raise Dead - Revised Test Print (REV)

Around 1994, Wizards of the Coast produced a test printing of six different border colors for consideration in future products. This test used cards from the Revised Edition common card sheet. The possibility of using colored borders was interesting from both a design and a production perspective.

From a design perspective, colored borders could differentiate cards from those in prior editions or could differentiate cards that were permitted to be played in different formats. For example, Wizards later produced the Unglued and Unhinged sets with silver borders on cards that were not permitted in tournaments, but retaining black borders on basic lands which were permitted.

From a production standpoint, having color between cards would keep the ink density more balanced during the printing process. There were a lot of color problems between the first printings and 4th Edition, for example the washed-out look of Revised Edition and the overly-color-corrected Summer/Edgar printing). More balanced ink density would make it easier to color correct the cards during production. 

At the time of this test, Magic cards were printed on 4-color presses, using the ink colors cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow, and black. Three of the border colors tested, blue, pink, and yellow, were pure builds of the three non-black inks. The other three were pure builds of 2 colors, purple which is cyan plus magenta, green which is cyan plus yellow, and red which is magenta plus yellow.

This Raise Dead test print shows the purple border produced by using a pure build of cyan and magenta ink.