Riftbound's T1 Set Release Has Not Gone Well

Since February, Riot has been selling their new Riftbound releases exclusively through a lottery system. In theory, this system is meant to cut down on scalping and botting. In practice, it just spreads the disappointment around.

So when the company revealed the upcoming T1 2025 World Champions sets, it was no surprise to see these would exclusively be sold via a lottery. 10,125 sets were produced for three languages as a celebration of T1, last year’s League of Legends World Championship winners.

Each set contained five cards honoring each player on the team, and one in each set was stamped with a player’s signature and serialized between 1 and 2,025.

Riot wanted $360 for these five cards. Across three languages for a total of 30,375 sets, the company stood to rake in over $10 million for a single release.

And they had no problem getting it. Unofficial reports indicate over 1 million people entered the English language drawing, with Riot’s own team members indicating it was the “largest drawing Riftbound has ever held by a large margin.”

We knew these cards would resell. Collectors knew these cards would resell. Riot knew these cards would resell. There are probably uncontacted tribes that knew these cards would resell. So, what happened?

Lottery winners began receiving their emails yesterday morning with a checkout link. They’d have 24 hours to complete their purchase, and more than a few of them were quick to immediately list their cards on eBay.

Within 24 hours of the drawing’s close, we recorded over 150 eBay sales for Riftbound T1 trading card sets. The majority of these were in the $4,000 to $6,000 range, but some sellers were able to push their sets for up to $10,000. This is one of the most profitable single-day flips we’ve covered in years.

And despite the writing being on the wall from the start, there were quite a few Riftbound collectors surprised and outraged that resellers had somehow managed to acquire T1 sets, and demanded that Riot take action against them.

Riot stated that they were reviewing a number of “suspicious” accounts, and would be canceling orders that didn’t pass the sniff test. Within hours, a wave of cancel emails rippled through the community.

The only problem is that these cancels weren’t going to evil, nasty scalpers. Instead, many “legitimate” Riftbound players and collectors reported that their orders were being canned. Frustrated would-be buyers took to Reddit and Xitter to beg Riot for mercy and insisted they followed the rules and didn’t know why they were being punished.

This situation is still unfolding. Riot stated that additional emails were being sent out yesterday morning, but then backpedaled because of the reports of false positives. Make sure you check your email for a new purchase link if you haven’t already.

Now that we’re all on the same page, it’s time to talk about the realities of reselling (or scalping, if that’s your preferred term).

Riftbound fans are not happy. They do not like seeing a product like this reselling for thousands of dollars when Riot sold it for $360. They do not like seeing resellers entering a lottery to buy these cards with the express purpose of flipping them for a profit. And they don’t like missing out on the chance to buy these cards at retail prices.

We can sympathize. In fact, because we’re so nice, we’re going to share a few hard truths with you that will hopefully make this drop and future limited edition releases easier to swallow.