- An incredibly rare Magic: The Gathering card from a new expansion was found on Friday. It could be worth seven figures.
- The owner has remained anonymous, but the card could sell for over $2 million.
The hunt for the one ring is over and aspiring ring bearers from across the land have called it quits.
This isn't a brief summary of "The Lord of the Rings." Instead, it's all to do with Hasbro's trading card game, Magic: The Gathering, which released an expansion this month that crosses over with JRR Tolkien's beloved fantasy series.
The new set of cards includes a one of a kind copy of the "One Ring", the object of untold power from the series that sets off an epic struggle among men, elves, dwarves, and orcs. There are versions of the card throughout the set, but the one of a kind version is printed with the Black Speech inscribed on the ring in the books and the movies.
Commonly sold in "booster packs" of 15 cards, the discovery of the "One Ring" was authenticated on Friday morning by the grading company PSA, and given a "mint 9" grade. Its holder has remained anonymous.
—Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) June 30, 2023
While the search is over, the card's ownership may not be settled. According to The Wall Street Journal, two seven-figure bids have already been made, with the highest amount coming from Francisco Rubio. The owner of card shop Gremio de Dragones in Valencia, Spain, he has offered over $ 2 million for it.
The second eye-popping offer comes from Buffalo, New York, where Adam Martin, owner of Dave & Adam's Card World, had previously set a $1 million dollar bid, but has declined to enter into a bidding war.
Such offers will make the "One Ring" Magic's first seven-figure card. According to Hasbro, the odds of finding it were less than 0.00003%, fueling unprecedented interest among both players and non-players.
Its search had also sparked unparalleled price points for Hasbro. When the new set was released on June 23, the value of collector boosters — a box that contains 12 packs of cards — roughly doubled from prior sets, earning a peak of $518.45. But, with the "One Ring" card's discovery, the prices have since fallen by over $100.
Hasbro's pricing has been a prior point of contention among fans and commentators. Players have increasingly shown frustration with the costs associated with keeping up with the game, with many viewing Magic as increasingly a luxury hobby. The breakneck pace and high costs of new releases has also been an issue for local game shops that sell Magic: The Gathering cards.
"There's a lot of wallet fatigue," Brooklyn-based Action City Comics owner Eric LaGaccia told Insider earlier this year. "In order to be competitive, you want the latest cards, and the cards you just spent a lot of money on are now obsolete."
In November last year, Bank of America downgraded Hasbro stock to "underperform" and reiterated the call in February, on concerns that the company was diluting the long-term value of Magic: The Gathering by overproducing new content. In April though, the bank upgraded the stock to "neutral" after earnings showed revenue from the card game surged in the first quarter.
The stock closed at $64.79 on Monday.
Correction: July 5, 2023 - an earlier version of this article stated incorrectly that Hasbro was downgraded by Bank of America in April. The stock was first downgraded in November 2022, with the call reiterated in February. Bank of America upgraded the stock in April after first quarter earnings.