Without a doubt, the biggest thing making headlines from the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth Magic set is the existence of a two-million dollar trading card. This Willy Wonka-like Golden ticket is so popular that it has entered mainstream media. Massive streamers like xQc joined the hunt for The One Ring, opening up thousands of dollars worth of Collector Boosters with thousands of people watching.
Here’s the thing, though. There is only one copy of the two-million dollar MTG card. You’re quite literally more likely to be struck by lightning than open this card. With that in mind, almost every MTG player hunting for The One Ring is unlikely to open it.
That said, recently, one player was indeed lucky enough to find this card. The hunt for The One Ring is now over.
That doesn’t mean all the value in this set is just in One Ring. I, personally, have the habit of opening one single Collector Booster per set. While this one was quite expensive, I scored a foil One Ring (not the serialized one), an Scene Foil Orcish Bowmasters and a Cavern of Souls! These are all rather expensive cards in their own right, and easily recouped my Collector Booster pack’s cost. That said, there aren’t many packs like this.
Now that these openings have moved mainstream, and The One Ring is no longer available, getting some insight on what other valuable cards can be found in this set could be insightful for anyone viewing box openings. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
The Caveats
We generally start these lists with a few rules. These are put in so we can provide as much value as possible within the framing of the list. For this one, we will be separating the more expensive treatments into sections instead of individual cards. This will allow us to cover a wider range of what the valuable cards are in this product. For individual cards, we will prioritize the versions that you can actually find in Collector Boosters. This means that, while we will list the values of the Foil Box Topper cards found in Box Topper packs, these will be ordered in nonfoil order since those can be found in Collector Booster packs. You’re also supposed to get 3-4 of these per box on average, so they can have a big impact on your value.
Otherwise, as per usual, we will be using TCGplayer’s market prices, and recent sales as of July 3rd, to determine the order of this list. Prices can vary between sites, but this is the one that we choose to use.
#10 Orcish Bowmasters
This being #10 on our list, even with the caveats listed above, is incredibly exciting. This means that there is a good number of valuable cards that can tick up the reward of a strong Collector Booster pack. Whether or not this justifies the $500 asking price of these boxes is another question entirely.
Either way, a lot of players are interested in obtaining copies of Orcish Bowmasters. This card is being heralded as one of the best Commander cards in quite some time, is turning Legacy on its head, and is a very viable card in Modern, as well as Arena’s digital formats.
All of this demand has bumped up the prices of foil Full-Art, or scene, Orcish Bowmasters to somewhere between $35 and $40 on average. Traditional Foil copies of this card are going for anywhere between $35 and $45. Honestly, the price between this and our #9 spot is pretty interchangeable, but the low end of the traditional foil version of the card knocked it down a bit.
#9 Gemstone Caverns
Gemstone Caverns has only becoming a more popular option in Modern as of late. Three mana seems to be the critical mass number thanks to a major uptick in Cascade decks like Living End and Crashing Footfalls. As a result, using Gemstone Caverns to give yourself a mana advantage on the draw is massive.
Gemstone Caverns, according to TCGplayer, is currently going for somewhere between $37 and $45 for its non-foil version. Foil copies of this card are retailing for about $65.
#8 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
A Commander favorite that also sees a ton of Pioneer, and some Modern play, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth gives all lands the ability to tap for black mana. This is good for fixing but is best known for its synergy with Cabal Coffers, which is also available in this set, but is not on this list.
Because it sees rampant play in both Commander and Pioneer, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth tends to go for about $40 in its non-foil version. That said, the card does seem to be steering towards $45.
Notably, there is a relevant price difference between the foil and non-foil and foil iterations of this card, as the foil versions seem to be going for about $50-60 right now. Do note that the foil version listed here is found in Box Topper packs.
#7 The Great Henge
The Great Henge, featuring The Party Tree as a Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth skin, is one of the best Green cards in all of Commander. During its time in Standard, The Great Henge remained a staple for some of its lifetime, at least, after Oko was banned.
This card may seem expensive to cast at first glance, but The Great Henge’s mana cost is reduced by the greatest power value you have on your board. Should you have a 7 power creature, The Great Henge will only cost two green to cast, which is the cheapest it can be without outside assistance.
Should you cast it for this cost, you won’t really be spending any mana, since The Great Henge is a mana rock that taps for two green. It will also buff up any creature that enters the battlefield while its in play, and provides a ludicrous stream of card advantage since creatures entering will also draw you a card.
For all this awesome power, a copy of The Great Henge costs about $50 in its nonfoil version, and approaches $60 in the foil versions you can only open in Box Topper packs.
#6 Cavern of Souls
Cavern of Souls sees play in Commander and Modern primarily, but can also see Legacy play. This is the best typal land a player can ask for. Granting five-colored fixing for one creature type of your choice, anything with that type cast with Cavern of Souls’ mana will also become uncounterable. This allows decks like Amulet Titan in Modern to play through countermagic, which would otherwise invalidate the strategy.
In terms of price, Cavern of Souls goes for around $50 at the low-end of sales, but the card is starting to uptick towards $65 in both versions. This particular card is likely to maintain a lot of its value regardless of the reprint. Cavern of Souls has a ton of printings but, thanks to massive demand for the card, its price has stayed the course.
#5 Ancient Tomb
Ancient Tomb is not a legal land in many formats, but its an absolute pillar to any format it is legal in. These include Legacy, Vintage and Commander.
The ladder format is the biggest reason why Ancient Tomb fetches a heavy price tag. Able to tap for two mana, Ancient Tomb is capable of accelerating your curve an entire turn for the cost of two life per activation. Sure, this adds up, but having 40 life in Commander takes a lot of the sting away. In Legacy, decks need to establish a commanding presence right out of the gate. The mana advantage, more often than not, outweighs the downside, especially when paired with cards like Lotus Petal that can tap for colored mana.
At the time of writing, nonfoil copies of Ancient Tomb found in Collector boxes seem to be selling for between $60-65. Foil ones have a small premium, selling for between $70 and $85.
#4 The One Ring (Unserialized)
Even though players can access one of these cards in each Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth bundle, they are still obscenely expensive. That’s because The One Ring is one of the most powerful cards that have been printed in recent Magic, and its turning Modern upside down.
If you want to play Modern right now, its very difficult to play an optimized list without two or three of these. The One Ring goes in almost every deck and legitimately makes it more powerful. The ability to protect you the turn it comes down combined with its obscene amount of draw makes The One Ring absolutely absurd in constructed play.
For the time-being, players who want to get a nonfoil no whistles copy of The One Ring have to pay $60-70. Foils cost a bit more on average, selling for $85-100. Extended Art One Rings cost about $65-80 apiece. Extended art foil One Rings are obscenely expensive, but actually cannot be found in Collector Booster packs.
The Scene Foil One Ring – the one found in bundles, are the cheapest of all The One Rings right now, selling for about $55. If you can find a bundle for that price, it shouldn’t be too hard selling The One Ring to one of many Modern players looking for them, which would make the rest of the bundle free!
Read More: MTG Lord of the Rings Starter Kit Card Sees 400% Increase!
#3 Surge Foil Box Toppers
These are all put in one category for two reasons: they are exceptionally rare, available in less than 1% of booster packs, and listing them out would take up the entire list, omitting some of the easier, yet valuable, cards you can find in your boxes. This makes these Surge Foil toppers rarer than Shattered Glass foil Transformers cards from The Brothers’ War, and Lost Legends cards from Dominaria United.
There are a lot of different box toppers, which means the range on how valuable these cards are varies heavily. According to TCGplayer market prices, the most valuable of the Surge Foil Box Toppers is the Cavern of Souls, coming in at $400 or more apiece. Gemstone Caverns follows this up. Do note that, because of how rare these cards are, sales do not happen too often. These prices, therefore, can vary on a sale-to-sale basis.
The cheapest Surge Foil Box Topper you can come across is the Mouth of Ronom, which goes for about $55.
#2 Unserialized Sol Rings
The One Ring isn’t the only Ring of Power that you can open in these collector boosters. There are also serialized and unserialized Sol Rings representing the Rings of Power gifted to the Elves, Dwarves and Humans.
Interestingly, these Rings have different rarities. There are only 3000 unserialized Elven Rings in existance. There are 7000 Dwarven ones, and 9000 Human ones. Like some of the other options on this list, the cheapest of these cards are outpriced by others. The Human Sol Rings, for example, fall behind the most expensive Surge Foil Box Topper. According to TCGplayer, Elven Rings are currently selling for somewhere between $6-700, Dwarven Rings sell for about $250, and Human Rings are selling for around $200.
If you’re only after a copy of Commander’s super staple to play it, you can find these for a lot cheaper. Printed in almost every Commander preconstructed deck, Sol Ring is the cheapest powerhouse you can find, retailing for as little as a dollar at its cheapest. That said, for just a dollar and a mana, you get an artifact that basically pushes your mana two turns ahead for the price of one.
#1 Serialized Sol Rings
Like the unserialized Sol Rings, there are three of these you can get. In terms of overall numbers, the Elvish Rings are the rarest, limited at 300. The Dwarven Rings follow at 700, and, finally, there are 900 Serialized Human rings.
Depending on the variant and number, these rings can be worth some serious value. For example, during the prerelease season of this set, the #1 Dwarven Ring was found, and sold for $13,000! This is likely going to be an outlier compared to what the other serialized rings sell for, but having a favorable number, like 1, 420, 666 and the like, will probably fetch a premium.
Like the normal rings, the Elven ones are, by far, the rarest. Additionally, you’ll find these cards in your last common slot, should they show up in your pack, so be sure to check those.
#0 The Serialized One Ring
Pictured above is what the two-million dollar card, more or less, looks like.
Ironically, right before this article was published, The one-of-one serialized Ring was confirmed to have been found, so this isn’t a realistic thing you can open anymore. Regardless, there are still a lot of sweet goodies to find!
Read More: MTG Players Don’t Have High Hopes For Upcoming Reprint Set
