A man looking to diversify his stock investments for Magic the Gathering cards found the Black Lotus card highly valuable after accidentally opening a vintage package.
Talking to PC Gamer, the man – known only as Michael – used to play in the mid-90s and invested an unknown amount – probably between $ 7,000 and $ 15,000 – in a closed MTG card pack.
Even if your package could not contain the sought-after Alpha Black Lotus, the Beta variant is still highly collectible, since it will never be reprinted either.
“I read that you can search for a package and see the content without opening it,” Michael told PC Gamer. “I wanted to research it and, if I had good cards, I would open it. Otherwise, I would just hold it and let it appreciate the value as a sealed booster or keep it as a piece of history.”
But after accidentally breaking the seal after trying to sneak a peek at its content, Michael found a rare prize: the Beta Black Lotus card, which can be worth tens of thousands of dollars depending on its condition.
“I literally went blank and stared at him for a few seconds. My brain was fully connected to the loading screen,” said Michael. “The first coherent thought I remember was, ‘No. This is false. This MUST be false. There is no way …’
“After that, it was a blur of mine trying to find my bag of letters that had boxes and shouting at my life partner to stay away from the table,” he said. “She thought something was wrong based on how I sounded. You have to realize, I was literally in my underwear running around the house trying to find a box to put this thing on!”
Michael is now wanting the card professionally rated.
A rare Magic: The Gathering card recently sold at auction for more than half a million dollars.
The game’s most powerful and sought-after card, Black Lotus – which was released as part of the Alpha set in 1993 – appeared on eBay earlier this month and closed in late January, having sold for an astonishing $ 511,100. That’s three times the price paid for a card of similar quality in 2019 and five times the price paid in 2018.
It is believed that the exorbitant price was reached due to the mint condition of the card – classified as “MT 10” – and the fact that it was signed by the artist Christopher Rush, who unfortunately died in 2016.
ICYMI, the first open beta of Magic: Legends will begin on March 23, giving players the first taste of the free deck-building action RPG.
You can sign up for the beta through the official Magic: Legends website. All you need to do is create a free Arc account and click on the button in the upper right corner. Before the beta, you can also enter a slot in the closed final alpha.
Alpha and beta testing are exclusive to PC, but PS4 and Xbox One players will participate in the full launch later this year. In a deep dive into building a new deck, Perfect World gave us a better idea of what to expect from Magic: Legends and a clearer picture of how it adapts to the rules of Magic: The Gathering.
Here are our choices of best card games, best board games, and the best table RPGs right now.