The Black Lotus

Marv Albert: ...Between the Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz and for more information on these two clubs, let's check with Ahmad Rashād. Rashād: Very good, thank you Marv. At 3:30 this morning, Michael Jordan woke up with flu-like symptoms: he had a stomach ache and a headache and couldn't go back to sleep. He vomited all night and, as previously reported, missed a round of shooting. He was in bed all day and kept vomiting. Marv: Okay, thanks Ahmad... Sam: In the summer of 1997, a ball boy from Utah sat in a dark locker room with the sport's biggest superstar.

On the brink of one of the biggest games of his career, Michael Jordan was as sick as a dog, and Preston Truman, an ordinary teenager caught in an extraordinary circumstance, had the nerve to ask him a simple question: “Hello. , Michael. Do you have any plans for your shoes after the game? Announcer: Feint, freeze the defense, the jumper, the net, then stagger back to the bench almost exhausted, ready to fall... they put the ice pack on his neck... he doesn't even want to drink the Gatorade” Sam: The Bulls won that game and then took the championship and as promised, MJ signed the shoes and gave them to Truman. 16 years later, in December 2013, the infamous Air Jordan 12 Flu Game sold for $104,000 at auction.

Announcer: First and third, two eliminated. To left field. Number 70! How much more can you give us, Big Mac? Number 70! In 1998, Mark McGwire broke the single-season home run record with this hit, and the game ball he swung at sold at auction for $2.6 million. Todd McFarlane was the buyer. The entrepreneur and creator of Spawn also purchased Sammy Sosa's 66th home run for $175,000 that same year. In 2003, he completed the trinity of his collection with the addition of Barry Bonds' 73rd home run for $517,000. Three baseballs, three million dollars. But if you know anything about these guys... June 2014. Stuart Weitzman, world-renowned shoe designer and entrepreneur, purchased the legendary British Guiana 1-cent stamp for $9.7 million at auction.

Weighing 0.04 grams, it has been cited as "the world's most valuable item by weight." For three years, between 2015 and 2018, it was on display at the Smithsonian, giving the public access for the first time to one of the rarest collectible curiosities in history. Weitzman: ...and I love geography, so it gave me a little bit of an education. Very funny... It was something from childhood. You know, I finally quit. "You thought you had abandoned him." Weitzman: Well, yeah. Sam: In May 2016, another beloved stamp hit the public market. Inverted Jennys have always been coveted, but this particular one sold for $1.3 million in New York to a private collector.

Another day on the lot. "This is the Jenny plate block, it's worth about 3 million dollars." "Three million dollars". Sam: Focusing on geek culture provides similar stories. Action Comics #1, the book that introduced Superman to the depression-stricken United States of 1938 and in the process introduced the concept of superheroes to the world, is the comic book version of Inverted Jenny. Its most pristine copy was preserved as a mummy in a dark, dank cabin in the mountains of West Virginia for decades until it hit eBay in 2014. Final sale price: $3.2 million. In the world of trading cards, there are some names that move in hobby circles like urban legends around a campfire.

For those steeped in baseball cards, everyone knows the myth of the Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner. Already an extremely rare card in every sense, this has a story of its own. As the story goes, the first recorded transaction occurred between Alan Ray and Bill Mastro, who then quickly flipped the card for four times his investment to buyer Jim Copeland. Copeland then sold the card to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and LA Kings owner Bruce McNall in 1991 for $451,000. High-profile figures brought with them sharp, skeptical eyes who noted the card's unusual exterior shape, eventually leading to Bill Mastro's trial for having altered the edges to increase his commercial appeal. “Bill Mastro cut the edges of that card with a paper cutter to make it look neater, to make it look better, and then he sold the card or participated in the sale of that card on numerous occasions without disclosing it to anyone in the market. "that he had manipulated the card." Sam: In 2013, Mastro confessed in federal court to clipping the T206 Honus Wagner, and then served prison time for using bidder schemes in his auctions of other memorabilia.

After Gretzky, however, the Wagner passed through a few hands and eventually ended up in the collection of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick for the hefty cost of $2.8 million. He still has the card. T206 Honus Wagner equivalents are present in all three of the most popular trading card games, but have yet to match such a high price. In Yu-Gi-Oh, the Tournament's Black Luster Soldier is rumored to be valued in the millions. This card is a unique stainless steel print and was awarded to the winner of the game's first tournament in Japan in 1999. However, until it is sold, that price is just a number.

However, Honus Wagner's Pokémon version certainly sold: In 2017, a holographic, shadowless first edition Charizard sold on eBay for $55,000. The card had a perfect 10 from Beckett Grading Services, a company that maintains the strictest criteria in the business, and it took that Pristine grade all the way to the bank. The sidewalk kids of the '90s may now be getting their first big payday when it comes to trading cards. Ash: Charizard, you saved our lives! Sam: And for those of us deeply involved in the world of Magic: the Gathering, we have: Open booster packs: HOLY BOOSH! HOLY... OH MY GOD...

HOLY SHIT! That shouldn't happen! Titus Chalk: You're really going back to the early '90s and a slightly different gaming landscape than today, of course... There's a card, which is perhaps the most legendary in the game, called 'The Black Lotus'. Sam: In 1993, when Magic first hit West Coast gaming shelves, breaking new ground in design and revolutionizing the market in the process, I still couldn't read. 20 years later and just before graduating from college, I found the game that had since become a global phenomenon. Not long after learning the rules and playing a few games, I asked the question that perhaps everyone asks at some point near the beginning: What is the most powerful card in the game?

Good. Is this. The Black Lotus. In a world of hungry hydras, cunning wizards, menacing dragons, and mind control, you mean to tell me that a flower in a field is the centerpiece? The short answer is yes, absolutely, and the reasons why are at the center of this study. First, I'd like to contextualize this card for those who don't know it. Black Lotus is the centerpiece of a collection of cards dubbed The Power Nine, all of which are banned or restricted in all but one playable format, and all of which come from the game's debut set, when the designers were still learning how to balance every little move. . part.

The other eight members of this group are, if you'll pardon me... Ancestral Recall, a blue spell that grants huge card advantage at a very low cost. Time Walk, another blue card that allows players to take extra turns and advance their resources while their opponent twirls their thumbs, Timetwister, a third blue card and the weakest of the nine, which resets resources and exploits other draw effects. cards. Then, the five moxen: Pearl, Sapphire, Jet, Ruby and Emerald. Black Lotus does what these five do, but better. Better. In a turn-based game driven purely by cost and effect, these artifacts give players an added advantage with virtually no downside.

And since, unlike their blue affiliates, they could be included in any deck, anyone who chose not to did so brought pieces to a game of chess. After its monumental debut in 1993, the game's creator, Dr. Richard Garfield, and its designers faced two unforeseen problems for Magic. The first, and most urgent: they didn't expect Power Nine to appear in large numbers in individual decks. “When they sat down to test the game, Richard Garfield and his friends from the mathematics department at the University of Pennsylvania...tried to simulate what it would be like for people to play this game in real life.

So they printed in a very rudimentary way... they made several copies of the cards and mixed them all up in a big garbage bag and handed them out to the testers. And they were thinking, "Well, once this game comes out, maybe people will buy a deck of cards and maybe some extra cards and that's what they'll play with." So they underestimated the power of many of these cards in the game, including this legendary Power Nine, which is worth a lot of money today.” The second problem was a direct result of the first: players wanted power, but were faced with a very short supply.

Both Alpha and Beta, Magic's first two core sets, sold out almost immediately after printing. So, in response to immense demand, Wizards made a third printing of the same Beta cards and called the expansion Unlimited. To keep collectors happy, Unlimited had cards with white borders (as opposed to the

black

borders of Alpha and Beta) and sought to saturate the market to give players a better chance of finding cards like The Black Lotus. But in March 1994, just four months after its release, Unlimited also went out of stock. To put this into perspective, here are the numbers. The Alpha run produced 2.6 million cards.

Beta printed 7.3 million. Unlimited, despite its name, tripled the number of the first two games combined and printed over 35 million cards. The 45 million cards were sold out five months before Magic's first anniversary. And only in these three sets were the only physical copies of the Power Nine. In other words, every tournament-legal Black Lotus in existence was printed in 1993 and never again. Writer Chas Andrés broke down these numbers further in his 2012 "All About Alpha" article to better identify the total number of first edition Lotuses we have. He writes: "Alpha contained 295 cards...the print run of each rare in Alpha was only 1,100, all the Alpha Black Lotuses that ever existed could fit inside a single long box." Opened Packs: Here comes the first rare Alpha... at 8 minutes!

Could it be the

lotus

? Sam: Now you might be wondering: Why not print more Lotus? Of the 79 expansions, 18 core sets, and myriad add-on products over the game's 25-year lifespan, why has Power Nine only appeared in three sets? Well, this is the part of the story that gets very, very complicated. Let's rewind the clocks to 1995. Magic is doing extremely well, and part of the reason for its success is because powerful cards like Black Lotus gain monetary and nostalgic value on the secondary market. Not only was the game engaging enough to keep players highly interested, but the ability to collect began to take shape in the community as it had with baseball cards and the like.

Announcer: And now we see a tropical island. And now we see Justin unfolding his 8 cards, playing a Sulfurous Spring. And a... Oh my God! It looks like a

black

lotus

! Sam: In July 1995, Wizards released Chronicles, which was an extension of the 4th Edition core set and didn't introduce any new cards to the game. Its function was purely to satisfy the crisis of high demand and low supply that had been plaguing Magic since its inception. It attempted to get booster packs into the hands of players who couldn't buy cards at sold-out game stores. But unlike Unlimited, it was printed into the ground, adding 180 million cards to the market and causing many of the game's most prized possessions to lose almost all their value overnight.

The collectors submitted a rebuttal and argued for a better reprint policy in the future. Then, in May of the following year, first published in issue 10 of Duelist magazine, Wizards of the Coast responded to the resistance with the delivery of the Reserved List. "We have decided to expand on our previous policies by creating a new category of cards, called 'The Reserved List,' which will never again be printed with a white or black border in a form functionally identical to the game." On this list was The Black Lotus In its inception, The Reserved List was well received and celebrated by players.

The cards in the list were safe from reprints, which meant they naturally had the potential to appreciate in value as the game grew in popularity. , supplemental sets didn't exist yet, so strong cards like The Power Nine had virtually no chance of being reprinted in tournament-legal expansions. The Reserved List, at the beginning,It acted as the perfect middle ground between providing for gamers and appeasing collectors. Since then, it has become the central target of all the disdain from critics of the inflated prices of old-school Magic cards, and like many people, if given the choice, Mark Rosewater would never have implemented the List in the first place. place. exists, and has for the most part remained untouched since May 1996.

A couple of revisions have been made, resulting in the removal of a handful of classic cards like Demonic Tutor and Clone from the list in 2002. In 2010, Wizards experimented with reprinting some Reserved List cards in foil, playing with a loophole that claimed the original decree never prohibited the publication of premium versions. Players reacted, claiming this violated the spirit of the list, resulting in Wizards extending a promise to include foil versions of these cards in their no-reprint policy. Sam: "If you could introduce yourself and explain what you do in the Magic community, we'll take it from there." DJ: My name is Douglas Johnson, but everyone calls me DJ.

I buy and sell Magic cards for a living." Sam: For this video, I wanted to talk to Douglas Johnson for several reasons, the first to get his opinion on the DJ Reserved List: “Mark Rosewater, to all the designers and to all the people employees at Wizards would probably love the Reserved. List to go away, but it's really hard to make that argument to a Hasbro Lawyer... I don't think the Reserved List can go away... I think it's too late to try to mess with the Jenga blocks” Sam: Since reprinting Black Lotus is out of the question, given its place on the Reserved List, why not abandon the policy altogether?

If Magic's lead designer and leading R&D figure wants it gone, what's to stop it? for the company to do another review like they have done in the past and just remove all the cards from the list? Again, this part is very complicated and, as DJ said, it is a matter of law. Luckily, we have brilliant people who. plays Magic and can theorize about the ramifications of abolishing the Reserved List. Scott Peitzer, an attorney interested in contract law, is one such figure. In June 2018 he published the first installment of a series of articles called Contract From Below on MTG Goldfish in which he details the principle of promissory estoppel and how it applies to this situation.

First, Peitzer outlines the anatomy of a contract, stating that the Wizards article in Duelist magazine never had "consideration," one of the three core elements of a contract. As such, even though the Reserved List is a promise to players, it is not legally a contract and therefore not enforceable by law. The caveat, of course, is promissory estoppel, which essentially gives the judge discretion to enforce the promise as if it were a contract. In theory, a player could sue Wizards for promissory estoppel if it reprinted Black Lotus, but they would have to prove that the case had all the elements necessary for promissory estoppel, and they would also potentially only receive the difference between the price paid and the fair price. . market value after reprints.

For example, if I bought Black Lotus for $3,000 and the price dropped to $1,000 due to a reprint, I could only sue for $2,000, not the value I expected from the investment. And once again, reimbursement of such damages is ultimately at the judge's discretion. And there are a lot more details that Scott will go into. Now, I'm not a lawyer, so I have nothing more to say regarding the court. I'll leave that for future Peitzer articles. Bottom line: Of the nine most powerful cards in the game, Black Lotus is the centerpiece. Additionally, it was only printed in three games in 1993, and may never be printed again due to an old promise that the game's creators have since regretted.

As a result of these three elements, Black Lotus has gone from being just another cut of card to becoming the most desirable item in Magic history. Zakeel Gordon: “My name is Zakeel Gordon. “I am a product data professional and a collectibles entrepreneur.” Sam: As he went down the rabbit hole into the world of collectibles, he wanted to know who was buying and selling Black Lotuses. So I called my good friend Zakeel to talk. Zakeel: “flashback to my local game store, I remember walking in and they gave you the 30 card sample decks and at the same time you can look in the display case and see all the cards… I remember specifically seeing Black Lotus, Mox Jet, even dual lands, and I realize, like a holy cow, that this game is everything all these other secondary markets are, but more.” Sam: I also wanted a salesperson's perspective.

Enter Douglas Johnson again. DJ: "I guess the background to this whole story is that a close friend of mine stumbled upon a collection that was basically the Holy Grail. It was the collection that everyone dreams about, or that friends lie to their friends about. about finding it at a garage sale or whatever... the kind of collection where someone uses a volcanic island as a bookmark for Eragon That kind of thing Sam: When kids used Magic cards to save their pages in novels. fantasy, Lotus cost less than a hundred dollars. In 2002, according to Scrye magazine, an Alpha Lotus was around $500. 11 years later, in 2013, the auction of the same card obtained a starting price of $27,000.

DJs weren't dealing with the near-perfect first edition Alphas. But the cost of Beta and Unlimited copies was still in the thousands at the time of their purchases and has only increased since then. Zakeel's first Lotus was one of the latter. . Zakeel: “I knew someone was selling one for $1,700 and I made them an offer and said, you know, if I'm going to do this, it's not just going to be for my cube and my collection, but for this. It's going to be my dedication to the best game ever made... so I bought that for my cube, and suddenly I became the guy..." DJ: "I drove to meet him at his house, I brought a magnifying glass, I brought a friend who could also help me verify the authenticity of the card... it was an Unlimited Lotus in very good condition that I bought last year for a little over $3,000.” Sam: For trading cards of this value, authenticity and quality are key.

Counterfeits have always threatened the former, so buyers and sellers need to know how to verify that these cards come from printers from 1993 and nowhere else. To do this, there are some methods to confirm that the card is not fake. The first one is a little difficult to see. Known as “The Bend Test,” this technique tests the integrity of the interior materials. Fakes will wrinkle in the fold, but authentic cards, like Zakeel's first Lotus here, won't show any of that. “...Tops. It bends, but there are no wrinkles, which is the important thing we are looking for.” Sam: Second, as DJ said, a jeweler's loupe can detect inconsistent ink patterns on fake cards.

This video from Kingslayer Games shows us the rosettes that a real card should have and then how they appear on fake Unlimited pieces. "The set symbols, and then also the text on the cards, will be a second layer of ink on top of the other ink... so there will be rosettes underneath and black ink on top." Real. "You've got nice rosettes on the blue part of the card... and the ink pattern is recognizable on other authentic cards on the rest..." Sam: ...and fake. "If it were authentic, it would just be black printed right at the top of the card, which it clearly is not." Sam: An actual text box on an unlimited Lightning Bolt. "And the same thing.

Awesome. So we have the Rosette patterns that make a lot of sense for how these cards are printed and then the black ink for the text on the card as well printed as you can see, it's like it floats on top of the other layer from ink." Sam: And the text box of a fake Unlimited Black Lotus. "So, yes, that black ink should be right on top of the other ink and it clearly isn't." Sam: The light test is another barrier to overcome. Here's a video of Christoper Lam showing a signed fake Lotus through the light of his cell phone.

Unlike a real Magic card, the counterfeit one has inconsistent and blotchy ink patterns throughout the core of the card. Christopher: "...and you can see it's just uneven. Totally wrong. And that explains why the card didn't look real to me." Sam: The final way to verify authenticity is to send the card to a grading service. For now, the two leading names in the business are Professional Sports Authenticator, PSA for short, and BGS, better known as Beckett. After purchasing a Black Lotus, DJ sent his to the latter who, as I said before, holds him up to higher standards.

DJ: “As someone who had never dealt with a $1000 card before, I messaged a couple of friends of mine who deal with that card regularly… I sent them very high quality scans of the card… a of those people said: 'Hey. , I think this is a card in good enough condition... I think the risk is good enough to grade it and send it in for grading. If it goes back to 8.5, you're looking at an additional $500 to $1000. If it comes out as a 9, you're looking at an extra $2,000 to $3,000, this could be really good for you.'" Sam: Little did DJ know, the card was in near perfect condition.

DJ: "I have a First I sent an email that said what the rating was and I thought it was wrong and I thought it must have been wrong and then I got it back in the mail and it was a 9.5, and that was definitely the best case scenario because it added several thousand dollars; “That single half decimal adds a significant amount of value.” Sam: A 9.5 is a blessing for sellers and collectors. But Zakeel wasn't looking to encase his Lotus in a slab of plastic and lock it in a safe. He wanted to use his for his bucket.

Zakeel: “After playing for a while, I made a firm commitment: I want to make a cube, because I know that, in terms of my career progression, I'm not going to have as much time as I would like later, and my cube is essentially what I I call it the Magic museum, so it has Black Lotus, it has test printings, it has Alpha and Beta cards, it has new cards, and it really sums up what the game is in its core function and the cube. It’s really a testament to that as a format.” Sam: However, the piece had much more value than simply its place in the cube.

Zakeel: “Is there some form of validation as a Magic player to climb Everest to get to the top and have this card in your hand... I remember buying it and looking at it in my car for half an hour thinking like 'holy cow...' I can't believe I have a Black Lotus... um... if you watch the video, you can see me walking in the garage and saying, "Oh my God!" *laughs* I can't stop. smiling..." Sam: In October 2017, YouTuber Openboosters took a 1993 Beta pack and found the same card that Zakeel bought at Grand Prix Seattle. However, the most significant difference between the two cards was what DJ alluded regarding Zakeel's Lotus, considered Lightly Played, was purchased in 2018 for $6,000.

This…. Open Boosters: Wa-chee! “Woahhhhhhhhhh” This is a BGS 9.5 Beta Black Lotus. Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Sam: And this one? Open Boosters: Here comes the first rare Alpha. Will it be the Lotus? Sam: From the video he made. national headlines, breaking into gaming circles and drawing the attention of all sorts of people who simply didn't understand the gravity of the event... Open envelopes: 'HOLY BOOSH!' Sam: Or maybe they just decided to lean into their prejudices and discard them. This is a 9.5 Alpha Black Lotus. One of only 1,100 ever made in the world.

Sam: Now I guess we could give the critics the benefit of the doubt. I suppose we could choose to be cynical and laugh at the gloves, their reaction, and the idea of ​​collectibles as a whole. After all, it's just another piece of cardboard. These are just shoes, and... "These three are the three best home runs in Major League history right here." "'66. '70. '73." Sam: Those are just baseballs, and... "We're here this afternoon to dedicate a new version of the most famous stamp in American history. Sam: Hell, these are all just decorated pieces of paper. At the end of the day, they are nothing more than the value we have agreed to give them.

Unlike food, water and a home, they are completely unnecessary in economics, they would call the Black Lotus a Veblen good: but for me, I see a common thread in all of these. hobbies and interests revealed by the very human tendency to collect things. Long before the Internet, long before photography, travelers searched for and collected trinkets, paintings, and even animal skeletons for display. They were known as cabinets of curiosities, and their. Their function (aside from simply signaling social status) was to instill wonder in the minds of those who passed through the room. More than a museum, cabinets of curiosities were mechanisms for turning seemingly mundane objects into repositories of intrigue.

They were places for the imagination. And notIt mattered a lot if the truth was distorted in the process. What she was telling was the story that an object could provide. “But that's the great thing about these collections of curiosities, right? Every object has to have a story! And... I don't know if we sometimes wonder or does it even matter if it's true or not? I don't think so, right? It is what has been invested in the object. This is what he has been accused of. “It’s a kind of narrative.” Zakeel: “Sneakers, Magic cards, even to a lesser extent, paintings, comics, art, high-end luxury clothing – they all have the same core values.

They're all luxury items with perceived value that are worth a lot to some and a lot less to others... We're in Magic and obviously Black Lotus is this transcendent piece that represents so much to us, but at the end of the day. It's still a piece of cardboard." DJ: "Black Lotus is the crown jewel of magic. And because of that, there will always be people willing to spend money on Black Lotus no matter what the new price is and how fast it goes up." Zakeel: "But what remains constant in these collectible markets is... Is the item desirable?

And on top of that, does it transcend what it was originally supposed to do?" In July 2018, The Black Lotus was in the news again. One of the 1,100 copies of Alpha, rated 9.5 by BGS, was sold at auction for $87,000. A curiosity indeed. Thank you very much to Titus Chalk for allowing me to use the sound clips of the interview below. very deep. And obviously my two guests for this episode, Zakeel Gordon and DJ: Douglas Johnson. Douglas Johnson is a podcaster and host of The Brainstorm Brewery podcast. One of my absolute favorites of all time. Brainstorm Brewery fan out there.

Zakeel Gordon is a long time friend, just through YouTube I went to Seattle and met him in person and he took me out for pizza and beer and we had good conversations AND he was very willing to help me. with the Lotus video, so contact those people. Tell them thank you and that you appreciate their contributions. They are great people. Also, this episode is dedicated to all my sponsors. Every sponsor I have will be listed in the credits for this episode just because it was a monster to make. It's the longest I've ever spent on any video and people...

You know, people when they promise you a certain amount of money, they want to see you produce content... and I've basically been letting them out to dry throughout the entire thing. the summer while doing a couple of smaller projects, but this one took me about three months. Thank you so much for being patient with me and believing in the work and the process, so this is for you. Last but not least, of course, I have a partnership with Cardkingdom.com. So if you want to buy singles and get them super fast for your Commander decks or whatever, visit "Cardkingdom.com/Studies".

If you also want to join the Patreon page, that would be great. If you liked the video and want to see more. Well, thank you very much to everyone who has helped with this project. I felt very, very good doing the proper service and had plenty of time over the summer to do it. So greetings everyone. Shout out to Black Lotus. Shout out to good coffee. Black coffee. Very good, thanks for watching.