If you’ve been keeping up with our MTG finance reports, you may have noticed a common trend. Special variants of Lord of the Rings cards are climbing in price. Whether it’s a Borderless Poster card or a Showcase Scroll card, all of the rarer variants spiking in price from Lord of the Rings all come from the Special Edition Collector Boosters.
Lauded as a sort of second release for Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, these were released in early November, months after the set’s initial June release date. Complete with a different set of serialized cards and some unique treatments, the Special Edition Collector Boosters are indeed a unique experience.
The demand for Special Edition Collector Boosters seems to have risen to absurd heights. In addition to there being fewer Collector Boosters than players expected, the increase in the price of various cards from the box has caused them to skyrocket to ridiculous levels. $850 may seem like a ridiculous price for Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Collector Booster Boxes, but as of three days ago according to TCGplayer, it’s become an established price.
Special Edition Collector Booster Boxes
The Lord of the Rings: Special Edition Collector Booster Boxes was something that the MTG community hadn’t really seen before. Multi-release sets are unusual for Magic, especially with so much overlap. In recent years, the only other strong example of this is the Innistrad: Double Feature set, which flopped spectacularly. Yet, like this set, the special variants available from that set are surprisingly expensive.
While these sets may fail to sell well in the early days, causing a short printing, it appears that they appreciate in value later. Demand for the scarce card variants causes prices to skyrocket, which in turn causes demand for boxes to increase too. While this pattern is predictable, the recent increase we’ve seen is a little bit ridiculous.
These boxes have actually been increasing steadily since the middle of July. Back then, they were worth about $450 each. A huge jump to $600 occurred at the end of July, and by the time the end of August came, boxes were $700. The jump to $850 has occurred since the beginning of September.
In terms of individual packs, one Special Edition Lord of the Rings Collector Booster Pack will run you about $80, or a little under that. Considering there are 12 Collector Boosters in a box, you are still somehow getting a slight deal buying the box over individual packs. Whether or not you should partake in that deal is another question.
Read More: MTG Lord of the Rings Showcase Scroll Card Hits $220
Most Expensive Cards
$850 for a recently released MTG box is certainly an outlier. Outside of serialized cards, some of which won’t even recur the value of the box, it may be interesting to explore what some of the best hits from the Lord of the Rings Special Edition Collector Booster Boxes actually are. There are some serious hits you can find within your box, but just hitting one thing won’t be enough to recur your value most of the time.
To no one’s surprise, The One Ring is the most expensive card you can open. The Borderless Poster variant pictured above is the single most expensive non-serialized (and serialized) card you can find in your special edition Collector Booster packs. A non-foil Ring in this treatment costs about $300, while foils can cost north of $600.
Showcase Scroll One Rings are also pretty pricy. These will run you about $220 in nonfoil, while foils float around the $300 mark.
While any variant of The One Ring is a definite win, there is one other Borderless Poster card worth more than the cheaper versions of The One Ring. Sauron, the Dark Lord is also a fantastic hit, selling for $150 at the lower end of sales for its Borderless Poster variant. Foils seem to go for anywhere between $200 and $250. Notably, this card appears to be experiencing another spike currently.
There are many other valuable cards in the Lord of the Rings: Special Edition Collector Booster packs, but these cards are quite a bit of an outlier from the rest. Multiple other $40-60 cards await you, with a majority of those being Borderless Poster cards.
So, there are a lot of valuable things you can find in these booster packs. Whether or not you’ll make your money back on this purchase, however, is rather questionable. It’s tough to know if all the recent price spikes will stick, if this is just the result of a sudden increase in demand, or if it indicates something more permanent. In the case that this is a sudden fad, these boxes are probably overpriced. That said, should the supply of these Special Edition Collector Booster Boxes indeed be dwindling, you could be surprised to find out that $850 is a deal compared to a few years from now. It isn’t easy to know.
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