It turns out that the Alpha version of Black Lotus, the rarest and most expensive Magic: The Gathering card ever printed, is 10% rarer than initially thought.
On his Facebook page, Peter D. Adkison, the founder and first CEO of Wizards of the Coast, has recently shared definitive print run information about the Alpha and Beta MTG sets.
According to Adkison, the Alpha print run for MTG was 26,000 60-card Starter Decks and 70,000 15-card booster packs, for a total of 2.61 million cards
The Beta print run was 78,000 60-card Starter Decks and 210,000 15-card booster packs, for a total of 7.83 million cards.
The combined total for Alpha and Beta is 10.44 million MTG cards, which Adkison claims matches close to his memory.
Peter D. Adkison reveals print run info for Alpha and Beta cards.
This means that there were about 1,008 Alpha Black Lotus cards ever printed in the history of Magic, which is 10% less than the initial print run estimate of 1,100.
This new estimate could potentially drive the price value of Black Lotus and other Alpha and Beta cards. Last January, a single copy of Alpha Black Lotus with a case signed by the artist Christopher Rush smashed records when it was sold in an eBay auction for $511,100 USD.
