Magic Card Selling For $38K

Here&#x27;s some context from wikipedia for non MTG fans:<p>&quot;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.&quot;<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Nine" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Power_Nine</a>

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.<p>There is quite a bit of money to be made in &quot;vintage&quot; Magic cards. Also, I can&#x27;t remember the last time that a new Magic the Gathering product was released and it didn&#x27;t go up in value well beyond the suggested retail price.<p>Side Note, for those unfamiliar &quot;GEM MINT BGS 9.5&quot; means that a third party has evaluated this card and assigned it a grade based on it&#x27;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.

Just a nit: The <i>buy it now</i> price is $37,888.88 on a &quot;best offer&quot; auction. There have been 10 offers. All declined.

I don&#x27;t play Magic&#x2F;RPG&#x2F;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&#x27;t understand how this works and it seems crazy to me. So I&#x27;d appreciate some enlightenment from HN&#x27;s RPG players. Really honest question. Flames &gt; &#x2F;dev&#x2F;null

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

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&#x27;t it be trivial to forge one of these cards?

But is anyone buying at $38K?