When asked for the most expensive Magic card ever most folks' thoughts drift to grainy images of a 9.5 graded Alpha Black Lotus encapsulated in a plastic shell and sold for … what was it? More than $150,000? But Sancho stubbornly claims that the most expensive card can be found on Cardmarket for just 50 cents!
Did I ever tell you about the time when someone stole the most expensive Magic card in the world from me? Well, while not quite as dramatic as it sounds, it is a true story, which I will get back to in a little bit. But first, let's make sure that we are all on the same page with regard to what the most expensive card is now and what card it was back at the time of this theft.
The Million Mana Spell
A lot of Magic players won't even be familiar with the most expensive card ever to printed. Perhaps you think it is or something obscure and ultra-rare such as , , or a Wyvern-backed Fallen Empires card. Or could it perhaps be a Summer Magic? Of course, I'm thinking of neither of these.
Not being a fancy Magic financier, but rather a Magic player, I must insist that the most expensive card is . The prices I investigate in this article are all paid in mana rather than euros, dollars, and cents.
How can you even think that Black Lotus is expensive? I mean, it's literally free to cast!
With the one-million-mana, silver-bordered artifact out of the way, let's begin a closer look at some more of the most expensive cards our game has ever seen.
A Playset of Big-Butted Fish
When I began playing, my most expensive card was the found in my first starter deck. But at a mere six mana I knew the Serpent could not be the most expensive card out there, since even the common asked for the same converted mana cost. With a propensity for cracking crappy rares in my Revised booster packs, I soon came across even more expensive cards.
Back then, booster packs were solely something you cracked hoping to hit a jackpot, since Wizards had not yet invented the fig leaf known as Booster Draft with which we crack addicts could cover our vice. The cards I opened were costly both in the sense that my money ended up being spent on pieces that I hardly ever played, and because they often cost ridiculous amounts of mana to cast.
My bad luck soon got me both a and at least a couple of — but at least it was still better than those weird dual lands that seemed to be the most boring rares to open at the time. The aspidochelone somehow caught my fancy, because I kept trying to make it work, and even to this day I own a playset of the big-butted 6/8 dud.
In the days before we discovered that you could actually buy singles, Magic players had to make do with what we opened in boosters or could trade for. Somehow I ended up with a playset of fish
Knocking Over a Lamp
At that time, I still had no idea that there were such things as expansion sets. I didn't know that the War Machine and the Island Fish were reprints from Antiquities and Arabian Nights. Though I did recognize the One Thousand and One Nights origin of the fishy Island and of course. These cards I just had to acquire because, at the cost of respectively eight and ten mana, they could not be anything but bombs, right?
Well, my did succeed in killing a couple s and s. But the most expensive card at the time, , never did anything except leave me with a conversation starter about the time when the most expensive Magic card was stolen from me …
For once my attempt to ramp to the requisite ten mana wasn't cut short by an army of and s. I was set for glory. First off, the artifact would enable me to look deeper into my deck past all the , , and s, hoping to find my lone copy of . Then I'd forever achieve legendary status at the kitchen table by attacking with a 10/10 animated Lamp, the biggest creature imaginable in Magic — not counting temporary effects like , , a pumped-up , or .
This is your brain on Timmy!
If my opponent had shown just a little more patience, the glory of that legendary attack would have been all his, but at least I did not have to face that humiliation. Before I could get to the animating aura, he ruined my plans by casting . I was forever cured from any Timmy tendencies, and my Aladdin's Lamp went into a binder where it still sits today as a permanent reminder that bigger is not better when it comes to casting cost.
Hobbesian Struggle with Draconian Results
Aladdin's Lamp remained the most expensive card until Ice Age, when it was overtaken by the mighty , which, at 11/11, also was the biggest creature in the game then. It usurped this position from The Dark's , which also had been one of the most expensive to cast. Nine mana made Leviathan more expensive than any other cards in this and the previous set. Even the five Elder Dragons from Legends — which gave their name to EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander alias Commander) — each cost a mere eight mana to cast.
Whether facing it from across the table or casting it yourself, Leviathan is likely to make your life nasty, brutish, and short. The priciest card from The Dark outclassed even Nicol Bolas, the nippled nonmammal
The Kraken from Ice Age held its position as the most expensive Magic card from 1995 until the release of the first silver-bordered set, Unglued, in 1998. Here we got , a card so expensive at BBBBBBBBBBBBBBB (fifteen black mana) and so powerful at 99/99 that it took two cards to hold it. Since then only two more expensive cards have been printed: from Planeshift, priced at sixteen generic mana, and the aforementioned from Unhinged, which will probably take you a fifteen-mana from the same set or some combo like plus and to cast.
Sweet Sixteen Forever
Wizards have not printed any black-bordered card surpassing Draco's sixteen mana for nearly two decades, making it the longest standing record of this type in the game's history. Nothing on any plane in the multiverse or indeed from the Blind Eternities separating those planes costs as much to cast. Even fifteen-mana must feel a little cheap here.
Going by combat stats, the biggest, baddest, meanest, scariest creature to be seen so far in a black-border set, the 16/16 , can easily swallow Draco with room to spare for a . Still, that Wurm is almost accessible for those on a strict mana budget, since it doesn't cost more than a measly ten mana.
This red sorcery, originally from Onslaught, might be the real reason why we've stopped at sixteen
I don't know if the R&D department at Wizards just decided that their Draco was to reign supreme at the top of the price pyramid forever, or if it's because there are cases where the casting cost itself becomes weaponized. The mighty Draco probably would not have seen play in many decks, or rather inclusion than play, was it not for how the card works in conjunction with . The existence of that card is the most likely factor why the cost of Draco still remains uncontested.
Another reason not to create a more expensive card could also be that there comes a point where the casting cost is just a number, and it may as well be sixteen as one hundred. Because where but in the lowest of low-powered Commander pods will you ever see anyone fairly casting a card at a two-digit cost? I mean besides Tron …
Going Big on a Small-Mana Budget
Cheaping out and getting Omniscience for three mana with Show and Tell and then casting Emrakul for free? Isn't that the equivalent of shopping around for the best deal on the ultimate status symbol to show off your wealth?
But as we all know, and luckily for those infatuated with the idea of playing with the most expensive Magic cards, there have been ways to get the mana to cast them or get around having to pay the price for almost as long as the game has existed. If you want to play Eldrazi titans without digging for Urza lands and even if you want to deploy a ten-mana to cast Eldrazi titans, Griselbrand, and whatnot for free, no one is going to ramp their way to it, when lets them have the same fun for just three mana. The question remains if you really would like to cast a one-million-mana spell for three mana, which doesn't leave you with the same bragging rights as hardcasting it.
As for the future of spells for big spenders, it is as always hard to make predictions. Whereas power creep is ever present exemplified by ... oh well, any release, the same inflation is not felt on the casting cost of cards. We are now approaching 's twentieth anniversary as the costliest card with no contenders in sight as of yet.
Our current stop on Zendikar only gives us access to at most a single eight-mana spell. Not to mention that will act as a zero-cost land far more often, bringing its average mana intake down to thrift levels, if not into the negative. Even Ikoria, hailed as Lair of Behemoths, disappointed spendthrifts with its sole nine-mana at the very top of the curve.
The curve-topper from Magic's 85th expansion only costs eight mana, en par with Aladdin's Ring, which wasn't even the most expensive card in the game's first expansion
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily Cardmarket.
