While cleaning out her son’s room, a mum in Japan apparently came across some old cards. Her son had moved away, and she thought she was getting rid of clutter. She put the cards up for auction online, seeming to have no idea what they were worth.
[Images: Yahoo Auctions Japan]
On Yahoo Auctions Japan, the mother listed them as “Various Old Cards”, stating that since they were old, some had scratches, folds or were even stinky.
Mmmmmmm. Old card smell.
“But, objectively, I think they are beautiful,” she stated, adding that she didn’t know much about them so couldn’t really answer any detailed questions.
“No claim, no return,” she wrote, seeming to want to offload the old cards with bidding starting only at ¥1000 ($12).
As IT Media points out, people on Twitter noticed something about this particular auction.
サラッとすごい出品を見てしまった https://t.co/VfBeu0XSuw
— めのー(瑪瑙連翹) (@OnyxGoldenbells) April 10, 2017
The batch included one of Magic the Gathering‘s rarest cards, the Black Lotus, leaving some to wonder if the son had give his OK or if this was all some kind of prank.
[Image: Yahoo Auctions Japan | Arrow: Kotaku]
In the auction site listing, you can see a the white border Black Lotus, meaning it’s from the Unlimited Edition. It isn’t the insanely priced alpha deck version, which can be worth up to $US30,000 ($40,131). The Unlimited one, however, is no slouch and commands around $US5000 ($6670).
With five days still left to go, the auction had reached ¥601,000 ($7327) on April 11 when the mum posted an update. “I apologise to those who placed bids,” she wrote on the auction page, “but I put these up without knowing they had this much value.”
The mum added that her son had called and yelled at her. “With my family on the brink of collapse, I’m calling off this auction.” She continued that she felt terrible for letting everyone down and causing trouble.
“Today,” she added, “my son said he’s coming to pick up his cards.” That might be for the best.
Comments
17 responses to “Mum Apologises For Trying To Sell Son’s Rare Magic Card ”
With cards being worth this much, how hard are they to counterfeit?
Counterfeit Magic cards are a real thing and there are quite a lot of fakes floating around for the older cards. As far as I’m aware, you don’t see many counterfeits of the super-high value cards because they attract too much attention. There are still plenty of cards worth in the hundreds that would have more fakes floating around than people care to admit.
There is crackeddotcom article about this. Worth a read
“With my family on the brink of collapse, I’m calling off this auction.”
Aw this article just got a bit sad all of a sudden.
You try selling my $5000 card for $20 and see how long your family stays together
yeah but the auction had already surpassed that mark. might as well have sold it 😉
If it was that important to you, you should have taken it with you when you moved out. Just sayin’.
Depends on his situation. For example, I’m at uni and there’s nobody in this town that plays mtg commander. Haven’t met anyone at uni that does and the gaming shop only ever seems to have modern and standard events.
Because of this, I left all my cards at home this year (brought them here last year). My room is fairly small and a big container of cards I won’t use it just unnecessary clutter.
I don’t quite have a Black Lotus but I do have some fairly expensive decks and as expensive as they are I don’t have anywhere to put them here.
I have disowned family members for less.
Awh man, this was sad from the start. Poor old Mum was just trying to do something productive… I’m willing to bet she never intended to hurt or financially disadvantage her son. Good parents always want the best for their kids. Not that all parents are good, but I hope her son is grateful and just panicked rather than actually holding a grudge and making her feel bad. I can imagine my Mum doing exactly the same thing.
…This is also a good reminder that I should call my Mum more.
Son should not of left his crap at her house, she should of sold them.
“Of” is not used as an abbreviation of “have”, learn to use apostrophes.
Grammar aside, that was a silly statement – as if parents normally don’t have some of their kids’ old stuff lying around after they move out.
Black Lotus is one of the “Power Nine”. Nine iconic cards from the early days of Magic that were obscenely powerful and carry additional prestige beyond their in game use because of the label.
Time Walk, Ancestral Recall and Timetwister are also part of the Power Nine. They’re the three blue cards in the bottom of the picture.
They’re all Unlimited versions so not quite as impressive as the black-border Alphas but that’s still a fuckload of dollar value sitting in that one photo. The three blues are about $1200 each in what appears to be excellent/near-mint condition (hard to be sure in that photo).
Where would you even go to verify if a card was legit? Father in law gifted us his old collection, including a black lotus, to sell.
You can use the tests here. Some games shops will be happy to check for you but it’s usually some variation of those tests.
Oh, and it should be obvious but never do a test or allow a test to be done that would damage the card. No bends, tears, water, permanent marks. If the card is genuine, any of those bogus tests will have ruined its value.
Get a good jewellers loupe, you can easily differentiate real cards from fakes by the ink pattern on the card. Coupled with a light test, nobody, unless they’re messing with you, can deny those tests. As far as I’m aware no fakes have replicated the ink pattern of authentic cards.
I just called my Mum asking if she still had my card collection from the 90’s which I also left behind…….she gave them away :\
I just felt like my heart broke, and those weren’t even my cards.