By Brian Cooper |
Updated on January 8, 2024For those like me that were hoping the MTG Lord of the Rings Collector Booster Box that they have sitting on the table ready to open might contain the precious Magic The One Ring 1/1 card, think again. It has been found!
News coming out of the Wall Street Journal and the Magic: The Gathering Twitter page was that someone found the card and submitted it to PSA for grading and authentication.
As you’ll see below, the card came back graded a PSA-9 and I’m thinking the value is probably somewhere in the $2 million range for sure.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, our dreams have been shattered of finding this awesome card. Collector Booster boxes and pack prices have taken a nose dive as a result of this news so prices that were once at or above $500/box have now come back down into the $300’s.
I actually see this as a good thing for collectors like me as those inflated prices were just too much for the average (or above average) collector.
There are only so many $500 bills (is that even a thing?) out there to spend on pricey Magic lottery boxes like the Collector Booster Box so getting these back down to a reasonable price in the mid-high $300’s is a welcome end result.
So Where Do Magic Lord of the Rings Collector Booster Box Prices Go From Here?
I think the answer to this one depends on how much product is out there. There have been a few math wizards online who have calculated the print run of the Collector Booster Boxes based on the odds to find The One Ring 1/1 card (which was said to be 0.00003%.)
That calculation indicates that the approximate print run is 300K Collector Booster Boxes, which to me seems like a lot. However, the last time I checked I read that there are 35-40 million Magic players out there so that print run pales in comparison to the number of potential box-openers.
That being said, for a major set like Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, I think box prices will definitely hold up. I don’t think anyone in their right mind really thought they had a legit shot at actually finding Magic The One Ring 1/1.
For people like me, it was a pipe dream at best and I knew that there were a lot of other really great cards in the set that justified buying the Collector Booster Box.
So I think prices will drop on the news a bit like they have, but you’ll see those low $300 boxes get scoffed up pretty quick as collectors realize there is still a lot of value in those boxes. As you’ll see in the graph below which I came up with, eBay prices are already tanking to a degree on the news.
This looks to be panic selling so don’t expect this price trend to last too long.
Magic Lord of the Rings SPECIAL EDITION Collector Booster Boxes Coming Soon!
One other thing to mention here is that Wizards/Hasbro is set to release more Lord of the Rings products closer to the holidays at the end of the year. As you’ll see below, Amazon has presells for early November which includes a Lord of the Rings Special Edition Collector Booster Box.
One super important thing to mention. The Special Edition Collector Booster Box will NOT have Serialized Ring cards, including the Serialized Elven, Dwarven, or Human Sol Ring cards, nor was it intended to have the serialized The One Ring 1 of 1 card either.
With news of more Collector Booster edition packs and boxes coming later this year, I would recommend watching box prices as we get closer to November to see if the original Collector Boxes increase in demand.
Knowing the November release won’t have certain serialized cards, that should boost the original Collector Booster Boxes.
All for now. Don’t let the finding of Magic The One Ring change your perspective on the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set or on the Collector Booster Boxes. There are still a ton of great cards in that set (which we’ll talk about later) and I still think this will end up being one of the best Magic sets ever released.
Keep checking back here for more news and stories about Magic, MetaZoo and other trading card games….and keep investing in Magic!
