A new Magic: the Gathering record was set last night when a Gem Mint PSA 10 Alpha Black Lotus, signed on the case by artist Christopher Rush, sold on eBay for $511,100. The card was sold by the high end card retailer PWCC on behalf of the card’s owner, David Edwards. The auction ran for 10 days and accumulated 123 bids throughout the offering. The auction winner is still unknown at the time of writing.
The final state of the auction.
The auction began at 9 PM Eastern on Sunday January 17, and during the first 12 hours of the auction, the card received bids in excess of $1 million. These were soon removed as they were unable to be confirmed.
In the 48 hours that followed, the price bounced several hundred thousand dollars at a time, up and down, as the auction continued to verify bidders, until the price plateaued just over $300,000 for most of the week. Bidding on the final day was restricted only to those bidders that were confirmed by PWCC, and in a monumental final push, this lotus bloomed in the closing seconds to a final price of $511,100.
This Black Lotus more than doubled the previous sales record set in July of 2020, when another Gem Mint PSA 10 Alpha Black Lotus, also signed by the artist, sold on eBay for $250,000. The owner of that Black Lotus was Daniel Chang of Vintage Magic, one of the vendors where this Black Lotus was possibly acquired more than a decade ago.
David Edwards’s Black Lotus.
The card’s previous owner, David Edwards, owns DM’s Alpha Set on the PSA Registry, a complete set of graded Alpha cards where only 32 cards are not graded at Gem Mint 10, and many are the top or only graded Gem Mint 10 in existence. He has been an avid collector of PSA 10 graded Alpha magic cards for the past 13 years. You can find more information in our pre-sale interview with Edwards about his decision to sell this Black Lotus.
Will this sale bring additional high grade Black Lotus and rare Magic: the Gathering cards to market? Only time will tell. Stay tuned.