One ofMagic: The Gathering’s most iconic cards, the “Black Lotus,” has broken its own sales record twice in the span of a month. ThroughoutMagic: The Gathering’s storied history, the beloved card game from Wizards of the Coast has seen no shortage of highly valuable cards.Cards like Mox Ruby and Ancestral Recallfrom the game’s earliest sets have fetched tens of thousands of dollars at auction. However, the Black Lotus has long been the most iconic of these valuable cards.
Black Lotus has taken on a legendary status among collectors and even casual fans ofMagic: The Gatheringas one of the most valuable cards in TCG history. The powerful card providing three mana of any color has seen often seen sales upwards of $100,000 for its most sought-after versions. Graded copies of Black Lotus can often topple that price with some going for several hundreds of thousands of dollars for pristine copies of the legendary card. Now, the card’s previous sales record set in 2021 has been smashed not once but twice during the past month.
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The first of the two records set by Black Lotus during March came midway through the month with a Gem Mint 10-rated version of the card’s Alpha version selling through PWCC Marketplace. The card, featuring a case signed byMagic: The Gatheringartist Chris Rush, sold for a staggering $540,000 during the auction on March 16th. While that sale had broken the card’s record set two years earlier, a signed Artist Proof copy of the card graded at 8.5 sold for $615,000 on Heritage Auctions on March 24th.Artist Proof cards are unique copiestypically meant solely for the artist, printed with a white back.
Magic: The Gathering’s growing popularity as a collector item has even seen Wizards of the Coast looking to get in on the collector’s frenzy. Alongside the reveal of its newestLord of the Ringscollaboration, Wizards revealed that the set would include a card based on “The One Ring” with only one copy of the card in existence. The extremely rare card has already seen collectors offering high bounties months before its release, with one fanoffering $100,000 to whoever acquires the card.
Magic: The Gatheringwould not be the only game to see a frenzy of collectors coming into the game in recent years.Pokemonhas recently seen its classic TCG products selling for exorbitant prices with boxes of oldPokemonsets typically fetching tens of thousands.Yu-Gi-Ohalso made waves recently when “Tyler the Great Warrior,” the game’s lone one-of-one card, surfaced with an auction planned for next month. Even nearly 30 years after its release, “Black Lotus” remains the holy grail of collector’s items forMagic: The Gathering.
