Secondary market

The Alpha version of the Black Lotus is usually considered to be the most valuable non-promotional Magic card ever printed, aside from misprinted cards.

There is an active secondary market in individual Magic: The Gathering cards among players and game shops. Many physical and online stores sell single cards or playsets of four cards.

Prices

Common cards rarely sell for more than a few cents and are usually sold in bulk. Uncommon cards and weak rare cards typically sell from 10¢ up to $1. The more expensive cards in Standard tournament play are typically priced between $1 and $25, although many commonly played cards in the Modern and Legacy formats sell for $50 to $200. Foil versions of rare and mythic rare cards are typically priced at about twice as much as the regular versions. Some of the more sought-after rare and mythic rare cards can have foil versions that cost up to three or four times more than the non-foil versions.

A few of the oldest cards, due to smaller printings and limited distribution, are highly valued and rare. This is partly due to the Reserved List, a list of cards from the sets Alpha to Urza's Destiny (1994–1999) that Wizards of the Coast has promised never to reprint. The most expensive card that was in regular print (as opposed to being a promotional or special printing) is Black Lotus. In 2013, a "Pristine 9.5 grade" Beckett Grading Services graded Alpha Black Lotus was bought by an anonymous buyer, for a record $27,302.

History

The secondary market started with comic book stores and hobby shops displaying and selling cards, with the cards' values determined somewhat arbitrarily by the employees of the store. With the expansion of the internet, prices of cards were determined by the number of tournament deck lists a given card would appear in. If a card were played in a tournament more frequently, the cost of the card would be higher (in addition to the market availability of the card). When eBay, Amazon, and other large online markets started to gain popularity, the Magic secondary market evolved substantially. Buying and selling Magic cards online became a source of income for people.

Scalping

In 2024-2025, the problem of scalping came to the forefront: buying cards in bulk from the official source, and immediately reselling them for a high profit. These practices were partly enabled by Wizards of the Coast.

In January 2024, Wizards switched the sale of Secret Lairs from Print to Demand to a limited-print-run model, where Secret Lair Drops were printed in set numbers before the drop was put up for sale. This method allowed Wizards to ship the drops as soon as buyers made a purchase but at the cost of only having limited stock that could run out before the end of the sale period. Many popular Secret Lairs would be sold out within hours, only to be resold on hawking sites later with a massive price increase. Sometimes, they would even be inaccessible to regular customers.

By the time of of MagicCon Las Vegas 2025 (Final Fantasy) problems around the organization of the festivals also became notable, all related to to scalpers using Black Lotus VIP passes buy up product and to make high profits at the expense of regular convention visitors by abusing event systems and merch limits. It was noted that bribery and policy loopholes were rampant — people walking away with dozens of Collector Boosters while others waited for hours and got nothing, while badge technology and purchase limits existed but weren’t enforced. Con-exclusive merchandise and major events sold out instantly, leaving most attendees out of core experiences.