Magic Card Selling For $38K | Hacker News Reader

Magic Card Selling For $38K

ebay.com

13 pointsj54631 comments

Here's some context from wikipedia for non MTG fans:

"Former Pro player and Magic writer Zvi Mowshowitz has declared Black Lotus as the best artifact of all time, claiming every deck in the history of the game is better with a Black Lotus in it.[7] As such, it has since been banned from all official tournament styles save for Vintage, but even there, it is limited to 1 copy per deck, compared to the normal allowance of 4.....Black Lotus card is usually considered to be the most valuable non-promotional Magic card ever printed."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Nine

What about the Blacker Lotus? And Mox Lotus?

http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?name=Bla...

http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?name=Mox...

So the guy is selling the card for 38k and the card can't even be used in tournaments?

Seriously, I'm sorry for who really likes this game (I'm not one), but 38k for a card is inhumane and irresponsible.

Baseball cards regularly sell for well over $100k and on a few occasions for over $1 million. Even if he gets $38K for it, it isn't that much as far as trading cards go.

OT, but I find random promotional mentions of random people on Wikipedia to be pretty unfortunate.

Blacker Lotus and Mox Lotus are both part of a joke set.

I work in this industry. We recently listed a set of Magic the Gathering Alpha on eBay, all in excellent condition. No takers, but it was impressive nonetheless.

There is quite a bit of money to be made in "vintage" Magic cards. Also, I can't remember the last time that a new Magic the Gathering product was released and it didn't go up in value well beyond the suggested retail price.

Side Note, for those unfamiliar "GEM MINT BGS 9.5" means that a third party has evaluated this card and assigned it a grade based on it's condition. For BGS (Beckett Grading Services), they use a 10 point scale with half points. 9.5 is almost fresh out of pack the day it was made. There is another reputable company called PSA that does grading as well. CGC is a big one too, for comics.

Sounds like there's plenty of value to be extracted here! If only there were some kind of niche market where people could trade just these items, perhaps some kind of Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange.

Hey @mherdeg. I thought this was a really good idea.

I just checked to see if the domain name was available mtgox.com, but some weird fake money site is using it for what looks like a pyramid scheme.

Considering these pyramid schemes always come crashing down at some point, maybe we can grab the domain after them?

Also worth noting, one of the largest players in this space is Star City Games. I wouldn't be surprised if they spent a few million dollars per year buying cards from consumers. That doesn't count the money spend purchasing new product from the manufacturer.

Ever heard of MtGox, the bitcoin exchange? Guess what the name stands for.

To be pedantic, MtGox doesn't actually stand for "`Magic the Gathering` online exchange" like mherdeg was suggesting, but rather for "`Magic the Gathering online` exchange". A subtle difference,perhaps, but MtGox was never intended for trading cards like these (Alpha Black Lotuses and suchlike). Rather, it was intended for trading MTGO cards.

In other words, not an online exchange for Magic: The Gathering cards, but rather an exchange for Magic: The Gathering Online cards.

thatsthejoke

Except that it wasn't a joke.

speculators.

Just a nit: The buy it now price is $37,888.88 on a "best offer" auction. There have been 10 offers. All declined.

I don't play Magic/RPG/whatever so excuse my ignorance, but what prevents me and my friends from printing this card outselves (or at an expensive graphic shop) and using it to play? I really don't understand how this works and it seems crazy to me. So I'd appreciate some enlightenment from HN's RPG players. Really honest question. Flames > /dev/null

There are two classes of play: sanctioned and unsanctioned (or tournament and casual). Among sanctioned play, there are several "formats", which define which cards can and can't be used in a deck. Black Lotus is only playable in the "Vintage" format, which is the least restricted and therefore most powerful format. Not many people play it compared to other formats, probably primarily because the cards in it are so expensive, and because not many people play the format.

You could attempt to forge a copy for play in a tournament. However, such copies are illegal in tournaments and doing this would get you banned from sanctioned tournaments [1]; pretty much the only place where people play Vintage is those tournaments. Furthermore, it's probably more likely that your cards might be examined on suspicion since there are less people and the stakes tend to be high [2]. It's also somewhat difficult to replicate well a Magic card, so you'd probably not do well at it.

In casual play, people just print out a copy of the card and put it in front of another card in a card sleeve. Oftentimes it's less high-tech: one might scribble its name on a piece of paper or just write over a worthless card. This practice is called "proxying" cards, and such a replacement is called "proxy". You could very well just proxy it and play with your friends like that. People don't use Black Lotus in casual play because it's fairly overpowered and wouldn't make for fun games. (Though if the rest of the deck is of equal card quality, and one is playing with friends with comparable deck strength, it is still done: you would just be playing unsanctioned Vintage.)

[1]: Tournaments are sanctioned by some Wizards of the Coast organization called the DCI. They maintain a banlist of players. Local game stores register their tournaments through WotC, so basically you'd be banned from all places where you could play Vintage.

[2]: I've never been to a Vintage tournament so I don't know if they check this, or if so, how, but I'm pretty sure they'd ban you if they found a forgery.

You certainly could do that among your friends. Heck, there are a number of resources for magic card databases with high resolution scans.

However, it would be very frowned upon in public play and downright "illegal" in tournaments.

I remember a kid in my Jr. High School had one of these (about 1996). He bought it from the comic shop for about $50.

I have a 700 cards from early packages up to 1995. Are they worth finding and selling again?

I remember selling dual-lands for 10$ back in the days, probably got robbed by my older friends.

http://www.mtgprice.com/

I am wondering why the ebay card sells for so much, then: http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Unlimited/Black_Lotus

A few reasons:

1) It's from the Alpha set, the very first Magic Release. It's much rarer to find, since it wasn't as popular. http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Alpha/Black_Lotus

2) It's graded a 9.5 out of 10 for it's condition. Practically perfect for an item that wasn't initially sought as a collectors item

3) The card itself is considered to be one of the Power 9, or some of the most powerful cards in the game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Nine

Also, the card you linked is from the Unlimited set, which would be the 3rd printing of this card.

Because it's actually this one: http://www.mtgprice.com/sets/Alpha/Black_Lotus

And because it's in (graded) mint condition, which is nearly impossible to find.

And because that's just what it's listed at, no one has actually bought it at that price.

An old chess playing friend of mine had one of these. We used to play with card names written on proxy mana cards with sharpies, and our real deck in plastic in a binder next to the game. I gave all mine to my cousin when I went off to college, and he has them in storage some where - I had some decent cards, but I hope my old friend, wherever he is, held on to his lotus.

Wouldn't it be trivial to forge one of these cards?

Actually, it wouldn't be trivial, especially since this is graded and certified by a third party. I've seen quite a few attempts at fake trading cards. All are noticeable to the trained eye.

There's a lot that would be required to accurately recreate any collectible like this. Paper stock, size, printing process, etc...

But is anyone buying at $38K?

I thought the MTG hype ended when I stopped playing in the 90s. It has taken a kind of revival in recent years due to popularity of online card games. With one coming from Blizzard next year, this buy could be worthwhile if you sell it again by the end of next year.

I don't think you will get any value from it if you keep it locked up in a bank vault for centuries, though. At least, I don't see it - but I was wrong before, apparently.

Actually, Magic is one of the only games that never lost popularity. Being part of the industry, I've seen a few dozen games that were billed as the "next game to kill Magic". All of them have faded into obscurity.

Blizzard had a Trading Card Game for quite some time, first produced by Upper Deck and later by Cryptozoic. It was popular for a time, mostly due to in-game redemptions for World of Warcraft. It has been set aside for their online game; Hearthstone.

In the case of this item, it's become more like a baseball collectible; a part of the history of the game. Also, these items pop up from time to time, but the market for such an expensive card is very limited.

My company recently had a full set of Alpha in excellent condition. We listed it for auction and it failed to meet reserve. We are likely to break it up for the individual cards.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com