A rare card from Magic: The Gathering was sold this week for over $87,000 on eBay. That’s about €74,500. What makes the card so special?
How much was paid exactly? This week, a total of $87,672 was paid for a card from the original release of Magic The Gathering on eBay.
What kind of card is it? The card is “The Black Lotus” from the Alpha version. As the US site Kotaku knows, the card was produced in 3 editions of Magic and all were released in 1993:
- In Alpha, there were 295 cards with black borders
- In Beta, some errors were corrected and 7 cards were added
- And Unlimited was basically the Beta for the mass market, here the border became white.
25-year-old card – almost perfectly preserved
What makes this card so valuable? This card was from the Alpha of Magic from 1993. Only 1,100 of this card were produced.
Moreover, despite its 25 years, the card is almost perfectly preserved. A service that grades cards rated it 9.5 (out of 10). This makes it one of the best-preserved “Black Lotus” cards in the world. A card like this is extremely rarely offered.
Additionally, “Black Lotus” might be one of the most well-known Magic cards in history.
One of the first major balance killers
What does Black Lotus actually do? In Magic, you have to play land to obtain resources, the mana. With the mana, you can then play other cards. However, a player can only play one land per turn. This severely limits how much mana can be spent in each turn.
The trick with “Black Lotus” is that the card provides three mana without consuming any mana itself. This allowed players to have over four mana available in the first turn, granting a significant advantage just because they had this card.
The Black Lotus early on shattered the balance of Magic.
That’s why “the Black Lotus” was never printed again after 1993 and built a legendary reputation that was now worth a collector so much money that one could have afforded a luxury limousine with it.
At least the card in Magic can still be touched, but virtual items can also fetch huge sums:
