"Magic: The Gathering," Manufactured Scarcity, "The Lord of the Rings," and Comics

"Magic: The Gathering," is an immensely popular card game. I have friends who tried to get me to play it but I always would state how I had so many other hobbies that took up my money adding another one just seemed silly. Because, boy, do some cards in, "Magic," take a lot of money! People will buy packs and randomly, "Pull," good cards, but plenty of players and collectors will shell out big bucks for rare and powerful cards. Now, there was a partnership between, "Magic," and the Tolkien estate for a, "Lord of the Rings,"-themed expansion. True to the literature, there was a card for, "The One Ring," and I do mean a single card was produced. News of this extremely limited card resulted in players and stores offering million-dollar or more bounties for whoever pulled the card. It's been announced someone found it.

A person who has wished to remain anonymous pulled the card and get it graded right away with PSA. It scored an impressive 9 out of 10 and this individual now can either take up one of those offers online or I wouldn't be surprised if this goes to auction and pulls in some significant cash. "One Ring to Rule Them All," indeed. Between the kind of sports cards on that Goldin show I watched and these, "Magic," cards clearly this can be a pricey hobby. I can't judge because if I had a ton of money lying around I'd probably buy some fancy comics, but the manufactured scarcity of trading cards is always interesting to witness, a bit like ratio variants of comic books or Bad Idea and their limited comic releases. I prefer being able to buy and read a comic without hoops to jump through and that's one reason my interest in Bad Idea diminished some time ago; it is also why I don't mess with ratio covers much unless I find a cool one for cheap. This is a model that works with trading cards, I suppose, but hopefully not with comics outside of some fancy variant covers and silly companies such as Bad Idea. Time will tell.