MTG, The Lord of the Rings, and The One Ring Card

News

By RC Staff

24 June 2023

If you’re out of the loop on MTG, you might not know about what’s going on right now. Wizard of the Coast’s recent Lord of the Rings expansion takes players into the world of Middle Earth. Frodo, Sauron, Elves, The Shire, you get the picture. While rarity in trading card games is nothing new, this time something truly special is afoot. That’s because out of the thousands of packs and millions of cards, there’s just one single card everyone is searching for. The One Ring, the One to rule them all, and the One to blow your life savings looking for.

MTG Lord of the Rings Expansion

So wait, why is Aragorn in Magic: The Gathering? Well, he and the rest of Middle Earth are part of the recent Magic expansion. Tales of Middle Earth released in full on June 23, and includes 462 cards based on Tolkien’s trilogy.

It plays similarly to the Magic: The Gathering trading card game, with a handful of twists and special mechanics to mix things up. Players can be “tempted” by The Ring, and designate one of their cards as a ringbearer to receive benefits, or amass an army of orcs to smash apart their opponent’s deck.

The cards feature a variety of art, some of which has received flak from the most obnoxious and least washed corners of the internet. That’s not something we’re really going to get into. Wizards of the Coast has made it a point that the expansion is based on Tolkien’s writing, not Peter Jackson’s movies. Here’s Elijah Wood to explain:

Part of this focus on the books meant that many of the cards include characters and locations not seen in the films, like Tom Bombadil. Considering WotC had numerous booster packs to sell and collectors to satiate, they could afford to reach fairly deep into the lore.

MTG LotR Serialized The One Ring Card

Of course, one of these cards depicts something very important to both the films and the books. Something small yet powerful, and precious indeed. Yes, The One Ring is a card you can get in Magic: The Gathering, but it gets even better.

While The One Ring can be found and played like any other card in the expansion, there’s a special version of it, floating around out there somewhere. Out of the millions of cards printed for the LotR expansion, there’s just a single serialized The One Ring card. You want to talk about rarity? There are less of these than Willy Wonka’s golden tickets.

Yes, you read that right. This isn’t your average, everyday foil. This isn’t a card you’ll see someone rip on stream. This is something different.

How to find MTG The One Ring Card

The serialized The One Ring card can only be found in Collector’s Booster packs (English versions only). If you didn’t know, Wizards of the Coast abandoned the concept of MSRP back in 2019, and allows its dealers to sell products for whatever price they see fit.

In the case of Collector’s Boosters for MTG: Tales of Middle Earth, those prices are being dictated by demand. You might imagine how that’s going. Retail Booster sets are currently selling for around $500 a pop. That’s $500 for 12 packs, containing 15 cards each. Intrepid resellers are picking these up and shelling the packs out piece by piece, flipping them for $100+ per pack.

If there’s one thing we know about Magic players though, it’s that they like spending money. In fact, they’re positively thrilled to throw paycheck after paycheck to WotC for booster packs. And that’s exactly what’s happening here, as Collector’s Booster packs are absolutely flying off shelves and being ripped into by people eager to pull The One Ring.

The chase makes sense though when you consider just how valuable the serialized The One Ring card could be. The previous record sale for an MTG was over half a million on a Black Lotus card, but The One Ring has already shattered this before even being sold. There’s currently a two million dollar bounty for it from a card shop in Spain (along with dinner and a plane ticket). While most fans who try their luck buying packs will never glimpse the card, there is one who will.

In the words of Boromir, “Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing?” There are a variety of estimates out there for the rarity of the card. Wizards of the Coast has made a helpful graphic to display what The One Ring is and where it can be found, but no numbers to help collectors know their chances.

As you might imagine, The One Ring has been quite beneficial for the game’s sales. Stop by any local game shop or peruse online listings to see just how far the frenzy for this card has gone. Naturally, there’s also a whole slew of people claiming to have found it already, with tons of fake images and clickbait videos.

Of course, that begs the question: just where is The One Ring?

Has The One Ring Card been found?

As far as we can tell, no. Honestly, we’d be surprised if Wizards of the Coast has even bothered to pack it (for legal reasons, we should specify that we’re joking, of course).

But the truth is The One Ring has yet to turn up as of the publication of this article. Collector’s Booster packs are still selling for insane prices, and fans are wearing their fingernails down scrabbling open packs as fast as they can get them. We can only hope that when The One Ring is finally pulled, it doesn’t have the same kind of power that it did in the books. No one needs to go clubbing anyone over the head now, you hear?

Of course, there are more rare cards in the expansion than just The One Ring. There are also special “double rainbow” foil versions of the various Rings of Power. 300 for the Elves, 700 for the Dwarves, and 900 for Men. If you decide to try your hand at ripping Lord of the Rings packs, keep your eyes out for these cards too.

We’ll post an update when The One Ring is eventually found. That should be any day now, considering how many packs have been pulled and the number of people looking for it. While the current highest bidder is offering two million and a dish of paella, there may be more folks coming to market when the actual card turns up. Maybe a Swedish millionaire will end up taking it home in exchange for a Koenigsegg and tin of surströmming.

Make sure you’re subscribed to our newsletter for more updates on all the dumb stuff people are blowing their paychecks on. This isn’t the first we’ve covered Magic either; make sure you check out our article on the MTG 30th Anniversary Box Set and the uproar it caused.