By Brian Cooper |
Updated on January 8, 2024
MetaZoo has only been on the map for a few years, but they know what drives booster box and pack sales. That’s why the MetaZoo GREEN MAN Secret Rare card is one of the driving factors pushing collectors to buy up cheap booster boxes.
If you find this super rare and expensive card, it will definitely pay for a LOT of booster boxes for sure.
But the question remains, is the MetaZoo Green Man a good investment? Is it worth spending thousands on this one single MetaZoo card and will it potentially pay off in a few years? Let’s talk about this elusive card and see if it’s worth the current price tag.
Contents
What is the Green Man?
So let’s talk about the Green Man as it occurred to me that some of you might not know too much about this card.
The Green Man is a Secret Rare card found in packs of MetaZoo Wilderness, a set that was released back on March 31, 2022.
It could be found in any pack of MetaZoo’s Wilderness set so it didn’t matter if you opened a box of booster packs, packs from Spellbooks or packs out of a Release Event Box, you still had a chance at finding this card.
MetaZoo Wilderness Green Man Secret Rare 22 of 100
Up to this point in 2022, this was not the first Secret Rare card that MetaZoo had released as previous sets also had tough to find secret rares.
- Cryptid Nation 1st Edition had the RED INK found only in the box topper packs.
- Cryptid Nation 2nd Edition had the BLUE INK found only in the box topper packs.
- Nightfall had the OLD SCRATCH Secret Rare card found in regular booster packs.
The difference with the Green Man was that it was the first serialized version of a Metazoo Secret Rare. So for Red Ink, Blue Ink and Old Scratch, we knew there were only 100 of those cards printed but they were not individually numbered.
But for the Green Man, the card was actually stamped in gold at the bottom with a unique number (i.e. 1/100, 2/100, 3/100, etc.)
When it comes to folklore behind the Green Man, the story is actually pretty interesting. And I really like the illustration that the artist Kris Kampmann came up with the make the Green Man very MetaZoo-like.
From Wikipedia, “The Green Man, also known as a foliate head, is a motif in architecture and art, of a face made of, or completely surrounded by, foliage, which normally spreads out from the center of the face.
Apart from a purely decorative function, the Green Man is primarily interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, representing the cycle of new growth that occurs every spring.” There’s also some additional information in Wikipedia that talks about the folklore of the Green Man which is very interesting and worth a read.
How Hard is It To Find The MetaZoo Green Man?
The Green Man is considered one of MetaZoo’s most rare and valuable cards and as mentioned before, it’s extremely hard to find.
The only place you can find the Green Man secret rare card is in packs of MetaZoo Wilderness. Even if you wanted to buy one, because there are only 100 of them printed, they are very difficult to locate in the open market.
What makes the Green Man more difficult to find is that MetaZoo printed the Wilderness product to oblivion.
Across all of the Wilderness products (Booster Box, Blister Packs, Spellbooks, Theme Decks and Release Even Boxes) there were approximately 5.1 million packs made! That means 1 out of every 51,000 packs contains the Green Man!
The odds might even be worse if you factor in the Target and Walmart booster packs. As far as I know there were no print numbers associated with those products so I’m sure there were many more than 5.1 million packs made.
So if you took the total amount of packs and divided it by 36 (a booster box), it’s like finding one Green Man in every 1,417 Booster Boxes!
And if you take it a step further, if you calculate that there are 12 booster boxes in a case, it’s like finding one Green Man in every 118 cases!
In fact, to date there have only been (27) documented pulls of the Green Man from MetaZoo Wilderness booster packs. The good people over at MetaZooSR.com have been keeping track of them and you can visit their site to see images of the different serialized cards that were pulled.
Yeah, the odds are pretty bad to find one, but not as bad as the lottery if you look at it that way.
Is The Green Man A Good Investment?
So the current market value of the Green Man card is all over the place. There are just very few for sale out there and very few recent sales.
There are currently THREE for sale on eBay ranging in price from $4,500 for a PSA-9 to $11,000 for a PSA-10. There have been no recent sales in the last 90-days on eBay that I can find.
There is only one listed on TCGPlayer, but that is the same PSA-9 that is listed on eBay. So that seller listed it on both platforms. Again, this is a good indicator that very few of the 100 Green Man cards have actually been found.
Considering 1,417 booster boxes would cost you roughly $75,000 (at an average of a little over $50/booster box), it’s definitely a better deal to go and buy that PSA-9 for $4,500 if you had the money. But does that make it a good investment? I’m not so sure.
I think over the short term the Green Man price will remain in that ‘couple of thousand dollar’ range. There will always be a market for really tough to find serialized cards and unless MetaZoo completely flops (which I highly doubt), this card will remain desirable and pricey over the next year or two.
Long term 3-5 years? Time will tell and it depends on a lot of things.
If MetaZoo continues to be a strong player in the TCG arena, the tougher to find secret rare cards (especially the serialized ones) will be the cards to have. Anything that can pull a high PSA grade will be even more desirable.
If the economies around the world get better in this time frame (which they will), I can see this card being a solid high 4-digit or possibly 5-digit value.
The flip side if MetaZoo fails and the trading card game market shifts from cardboard to online and no one collects anymore? Well, that means the card could drop big time. What’s the chances of that happening? NEGATIVE…NADA…NIL…NEVER GONNA HAPPEN!
Other Ways To Invest In The Green Man
Not everyone has $5K to $10K to spend on one single card. I know my better half would freak out if I told her I just spent that much on one card. But there are other ways to indirectly invest in the Green Man that won’t break the bank or get you in trouble on the homefront.
1. Buy MetaZoo Wilderness Booster Boxes at current super low prices
Card prices directly affect the prices of booster boxes and that is the case with just about any trading card set. If you cannot afford thousands to buy a Green Man, why not spend hundreds and invest in the Booster Boxes where you can find a Green Man?
I think it will take quite a while before we see Wilderness Booster Boxes much higher than the current $60 range. There are tens of thousands of unopened boxes out there that have to be opened before we’ll start to see any price increases in the sealed box market.
But eventually, it will happen and prices will start to go back up.
So one way to take advantage of the hunt for the serialized MetaZoo Green Man is to buy the booster boxes the card is found in. It’s pretty cool to think that the boxes you have sitting there MAY contain a $5K card!
Plus it won’t break the bank buying a case and stashing it somewhere in the deep crevices of your walk-in closet. Maybe, just maybe, one day when you find that case, it could be worth thousands! (well maybe.)
2. Split the cost of a Green Man MetaZoo card with a friend
Ok, maybe you have a friend that is willing to pony up a few thousand dollars to go in halfsies on a Green Man. Do most of us have friends like this? Probably not but I thought it might be an option for some of you.
It’s a long term deal and you would have to pick up the Green Man for a SWEET deal. For example, you come across a guy at a local game store who opens a pack and gets a Green Man. You and a buddy decide to offer the person $2,000 on the spot for it and see if he takes it.
Each of you pony up $1,000 to go in as partners because anything more and both of you will be disowned by your wives or girlfriends. He takes the deal and you’re both 50/50 partners in a brand new (hopefully PSA-10) Green Man. Not bad right?
It’s probably one of the few times I would suggest going in 50/50 with a friend on anything. In this situation it works!
3. Flip five or ten high priced cards from your collection and trade up into the Green Man
So this is one of my favorite ways to scale up on your trading card game collection. I like the idea of buying decently priced cards over months or years with the intent that those cards will grow in value over a short period of time. Then I sell them all and trade that money into something bigger.
For example, you’ve been buying PSA-8 and PSA-9 graded MetaZoo Kickstarter Cryptid Nation cards for a while now and got some great deals. You wait until the market is hot and you sell them all for a nice profit.
Let’s say you paid $2,000 over time on ten or twenty cards and you sell them for $4,000. You find a guy who wants $4,000 for his NRMT Green Man and you buy it.
From there you send it to PSA to be graded and it comes back a PSA-10. BOOM! You just turned your $2,000 investment into a $10,000 Green Man PSA-10 card!
That doesn’t happen every day, but that’s definitely the goal of flipping cards into something bigger.
Wrapping It Up
So I hope you now have a good idea on what the MetaZoo Green Man serialized card is, where to find it, how much it’s worth and whether it’s a good investment. I think MetaZoo as a company is still in its infancy and has a long way to go and grow. I definitely think they’ll be a HUGE player in the trading card game for years to come so buckle up!
MetaZoo Green Man Serialized Secret Rare 26 of 100
When it comes to the GREEN MAN MetaZoo card itself, I would be careful about paying current prices. There are very few of them available, but they’re certainly not flying off the shelves at the current prices. If you can’t live without one, I would try and make a deal on a PSA-9 and start your offers low.
Or if you’re the adventurous type, make a deal on a case of booster boxes and swing for the fences. It’s a SUPER long shot, but you never know.
All for now. I hope you enjoyed learning about the MetaZoo Green Man. If you have any questions or would like more info, hit me up by clicking CONTACT below! Take care and keep investing in Magic and MetaZoo!
