This is the true story of the greatest “always check your bulk” tale in the history of Magic. Let’s go!
(Hey, while I’ve got your attention, check out our Labor Day sale going on this week with 10% off everything in our store, and free shipping on orders of $50 or more in the US. Apply code “LaborDay2025” at checkout, or shop directly with this link.)
After retiring early from Wizards of the Coast to pursue a F.I.R.E. lifestyle I started selling off some of my Magic collection from my time there. The product program for employees at Wizards was pretty cool: you get points each month to spend at the employee store, plus regular product drops to celebrate new releases. After some success selling portions of my collection, other former colleagues reached out to ask if I could help them with theirs, and ultimately that led to the launch of the very website you’re on now.
Several weeks ago a friend and WotC alum reached out with a typical request: “Bill, I’m cleaning my storage space out for a move, can you take my stuff for me?” I was happy to do so, but this particular alum wasn’t a huge gamer. Sometimes when that happens you wind up with a collection in rough shape. Fortunately, they’d had the foresight to store everything in waterproof tubs. Unfortunately some of those tubs had random loose cards, likely grabbed from the free table or the occasional Prerelease deck. Here’s the stack:
Free-floating cards banging around a box of booster boxes and Magic Online redemption sets is not a recipe for mint condition materials. Some of the cards got pretty banged up:
I took a glance at the stack to see if there was anything worthwhile and found a few rares:
There was also a Commander card I hadn’t seen before, which makes sense. As a former professional player, my bread and butter are the formats of my youth: whatever is available for cutthroat tournament play. While I respect the Commander format, if we’re being honest, I’d prefer straightening bent nails to playing a game of it. So it’s no surprise I don’t recognize Magic cards that got their start with Commander products, and I set the Commander card aside with the rares on my desk with the thought I’d “get to them” when I had time.
A few weeks went by before I settled in to clean up my desk, and the stack of cards from my friend’s collection. It was when I flipped them over to place in a storage case that my heart skipped a beat. This was the card back on the “Commander” card I had seen:
If you’re not in the know, for a few years Wizards of the Coast offered an exclusive rewards program for its employees to mark the highest performers in the company. The rewards were awarded at the annual all-hands, and were very prestigious. They were called “The Hero of the Realm” awards and came with a neat benefit: getting to make your own custom Magic card with exclusive real copies of the cards handed out to the employees who won them. These are the rarest Magic collectibles on earth, with some of the cards having as few as 1 copy in existence, and with the program ended no more are being made meaning the ones that exist are the only ones that will ever exist. What I had thought was a Commander card, banging around with a bunch of bent draft chaff and a few bulk rares, was actually one of the rarest cards in the game’s history. This is the card I had mistaken for a run-of-the-mill multiplayer card:
As you can imagine, I sent off a moderately-chiding-in-nature text to my friend who had no idea their prize from working at Wizards was so highly sought after. Working with them, we’re now offering the card for sale on our auction site on eBay. You can find the listing here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/397012344480
And that’s my tale, of how bouncing around in a Costco black-and-gold tub filled with booster boxes was one of the rarest cards in Magic’s history, and why you should always, always, check your bulk. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some 5-rows to sort through…
(And if you’ve read this far, don’t forget about that Labor Day sale. 10% off everything, and you can shop directly using this link or apply code “LaborDay2025” at checkout.)