Most Expensive Magic: The Gathering Cards Ever Sold

On This Page

• Under the hammer, ranked
• Three deals done in private
• The record that lasted eight days
• Four PSA 10 Lotuses, not one card rising
• Hammer, premium and eBay
• Is there a sealed Alpha box record?
• Why I trust the smaller number
• Top Takeaways to Success
• Frequently Asked Questions

The most expensive Magic: The Gathering card is an Alpha Black Lotus graded CGC Pristine 10, at a reported $3,000,000. Nobody bid on it in public. It changed hands privately, sold by Adam Cai of Pristine Collectibles to a buyer who has never been named, and CGC announced the price in April 2024.

The highest price a Magic card has made in an open room is $2,208,200. That was a PSA 10 Alpha Black Lotus at Goldin’s Summer Goldin 100 in September 2026, buyer’s premium included.

Those are two different questions with two different answers. Most pages about expensive Magic cards answer neither cleanly, because they mix private claims, auction results and price-guide estimates into one list. This page keeps them apart.

Under the hammer, ranked

Every row below is a public auction result with a named house and a date. Prices include buyer’s premium unless the row says otherwise. All figures are in US dollars, at the price paid in the year shown, with no inflation adjustment.

#	Lot	Grade	Price	Auction house	Date
1	Black Lotus, Alpha	PSA 10	$2,208,200	Goldin, Summer Goldin 100	Sep 2026
2	Black Lotus, Beta artist proof, signed by Christopher Rush	CGC 8.5	$615,000	Heritage, lot 36014	24 to 25 Mar 2023
3	Beta artist proof set, 285 cards, signed (a set, not a card)	Ungraded	$575,000	Heritage, lot 37006	26 Jun 2026
4	Black Lotus, Alpha, signed by Rush on the case	PSA 10	$540,000	PWCC Premier	16 Mar 2023
5	Black Lotus, Alpha, signed by Rush	PSA 10	$511,100 (eBay, no premium)	PWCC, via eBay	28 Jan 2021
6	Black Lotus, Alpha, signed by Rush	PSA 10	$250,000 (eBay, no premium)	eBay	Jul 2020
7	Arabian Nights sealed booster box	Sealed	$225,000	Heritage	26 to 27 Jun 2026
8	Arabian Nights sealed booster box	Sealed	$212,500	Heritage	16 to 17 Feb 2024
9	Mox Jet, Alpha	PSA 10	$108,000	PWCC January Premier	Jan 2024
10	Lord of the Pit, Alpha	BGS Pristine 10	$105,000	PWCC January Premier	19 Jan 2023
11	Black Lotus, Alpha	PSA 8	$100,000	Heritage	26 to 27 Jun 2026
12	Black Lotus, Alpha, artist autograph	CGC 7.5	$78,125	Heritage, lot 37002	26 Jun 2026
13	Black Lotus, Alpha, signed and inscribed	PSA Authentic, Altered	$60,000	Fanatics Collect	27 Jun 2025
14	Alpha sealed booster pack	PSA 9	$44,400	Fanatics Collect	23 Jun 2023

Row 11 comes from ICv2’s report of the June 2026 Heritage sale. I could not match it to a published lot number, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed at lot level.

Black Lotus takes seven of the fourteen rows. In the results I could verify, only two single cards other than a Black Lotus have made six figures at auction, the Mox Jet and the Lord of the Pit, and both needed a perfect grade to do it.

Three deals done in private

These are the figures that top most lists. None of them went through an auction, and each one rests on a different kind of evidence.

Card	Grade	Reported price	Who disclosed it	When
Black Lotus, Alpha	CGC Pristine 10	$3,000,000	CGC, naming the seller, Adam Cai	Disclosed Apr 2024
The One Ring, serialised 001/001	PSA 9	$2,000,000	The Notable Group, the seller’s marketing agency	Announced 1 Aug 2023
Black Lotus, artist proof, signed by Rush	Not stated	$800,000	Post Malone, the buyer, on the Howard Stern Show	13 Jun 2022

The $3 million Lotus was the only Alpha Black Lotus at CGC Pristine 10 in CGC’s population report as of April 2024. The grading company announced the sale itself. That gives the figure more weight than a rumour, but the buyer stayed anonymous, and no invoice or auction record has been published.

The One Ring is the card Brook Trafton pulled from a collector box of The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth at a Toronto shop in 2023. The $2 million figure came from the agency representing Trafton, not from Post Malone. CGC later described the price as “reportedly” more than $2 million, and NPR’s headline said the card was “valued as high as” $2 million. That is three different phrasings of one unconfirmed number.

The $800,000 Lotus has the opposite problem. The price came from the buyer, Post Malone, speaking on air. No seller has been named, and no grade or lot number has been published.

The record that lasted eight days

On 16 March 2023, PWCC sold a PSA 10 Alpha Black Lotus, signed on the case by Christopher Rush in 2014, for $540,000. Bidding opened at $1,000. Hipsters of the Coast reported that the price included a 20 percent buyer’s premium, which puts the hammer at $450,000. Star City Games and Hipsters of the Coast both called it a record for any Magic card.

On 24 and 25 March, Heritage sold a different Black Lotus for $615,000.

That card was a Beta artist proof: a blank-backed copy given to the artist before the print run, signed by Rush and consigned from the collection of Jeff Ferreira, Rush’s friend and former agent. CGC graded it 8.5, with subgrades of 8.5 for centering, 9 for surface and 8.5 for corners and edges. CGC said it was the highest price for any Magic card in Heritage’s history.

A lower grade beat a perfect grade by $75,000, because an artist proof is scarcer than a Gem Mint Alpha.

Many lists published after March 2023 still give $540,000 as the auction record. It was not, from 25 March 2023 onwards, and since September 2026 neither figure is close.

Four PSA 10 Lotuses, not one card rising

Read the table quickly and rows 1, 4, 5 and 6 look like one Black Lotus going up in value: $250,000, then $511,100, then $540,000, then $2,208,200. That is not what happened.

• The July 2020 copy belonged to Daniel Chang of Vintage Magic and sold on eBay for $250,000.
• The January 2021 copy was sold by PWCC on eBay for David Edwards and ended at $511,100 on 28 January.
• The March 2023 copy was a different card. Hipsters of the Coast’s preview called it “not the exact same card” as the 2021 one, though of like kind and quality.
• The September 2026 Goldin copy had been reholdered in 2026 but not regraded, according to ICv2. None of the reports I read say whether it carries a signature.

So these are separate cards, and the rise between them shows demand for the grade rather than the gain on any one card.

The sources also disagree on how many of these cards exist. In March 2023, Hipsters of the Coast reported that PSA had graded 105 Alpha Black Lotuses and that six were PSA 10s. In September 2026, ICv2 and Star City Games described the Goldin card as one of three PSA 10s. A population report normally only grows. I cannot reconcile those two numbers from the published coverage, so I am reporting both.

Hammer, premium and eBay

The table mixes three kinds of price.

Premium-inclusive auction results. Goldin, Heritage, PWCC Premier and Fanatics Collect publish prices with buyer’s premium included. The Goldin $2,208,200 is reported that way by both ICv2 and Star City Games. It works out at exactly $1,810,000 plus 22 percent. I could not find Goldin’s rate for that sale in a published source, so treat the $1,810,000 hammer as inferred, not confirmed.

eBay final prices. The 2020 and 2021 Lotuses sold on eBay, where there is no buyer’s premium. The $511,100 is what the winning bidder paid.

A reported “hammer” that is probably not one. ICv2 described the February 2024 Arabian Nights box as having “hammered” at $212,500. Heritage publishes prices with the premium included, and $212,500 is exactly $170,000 plus 25 percent. That points to the full price paid, not the hammer.

Is there a sealed Alpha box record?

No. There is no verifiable public auction result for a sealed Alpha booster box.

Figures around $720,000 appear online. They are dealer asking prices, and Misprint, which tracks sealed boxes, says outright that an authenticated sealed Alpha box has essentially no public sale record. A listing is a hope, not a price.

The sealed record that can be checked belongs to Arabian Nights, the first expansion, released in December 1993. Heritage sold a box for $212,500 in February 2024. A second box later matched that figure exactly, according to Misprint. A third reached $225,000 in June 2026. Three results within $12,500 of each other over two years is about as stable as this market gets.

At the single-pack level, Fanatics Collect sold a PSA 9 Alpha booster pack for $44,400 in June 2023. It was one of five packs at that grade, with none graded higher.

Video game collectors have the same problem: sealed copies sell for far more than loose ones, and the record depends on whether you count the packaging. The most expensive video games page has the auction results.

Why I trust the smaller number

My read is that $2,208,200 is the real record, and the $3 million should come with an asterisk every time it is printed.

It is not that I think the $3 million is invented. CGC announced it, the seller is named, and a Pristine 10 Alpha Lotus could reasonably be worth more than a PSA 10. The problem is that one side of the deal is anonymous and the only document is a press release from the company that graded the card. At Goldin, anyone could have bid, and everyone could see the result.

The One Ring is weaker still. A marketing agency working for the seller announced the price. I’d give that figure about the same weight as an asking price.

What surprises me more is how long the coverage stayed stuck on $540,000. It stopped being the auction record within eight days of being set, and the card that beat it was in some ways the better story: a lower-grade artist proof, from the artist’s own circle, outbidding a perfect slab. Most lists missed it because Heritage’s result did not fit the headline everyone had just written.

The pattern is the one that runs through the comic book records: private sales produce the biggest headlines, and auctions produce the numbers you can check. If you want to know what a Black Lotus is worth, look at the public results. Since September 2026, those say just over $2.2 million for the best one anyone has offered in public.

For other collectibles ranked by verified sale price, see the most expensive things ever sold.