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Looking for the most expensive cards in MTG? Magic: The Gathering has been around for 30 years, and as such, plenty of rare cards are highly sought after by players and collectors alike.
The most powerful cards tend to be the most expensive, especially those on the Reserved List. For the unaware, the Reserved List is a set of cards that will never be reprinted again, meaning their original printings are the only printings that will ever exist.
We’ve also had a look at the most expensive MTG Fallout cards, alongside the most expensive Murders at Karlov Manor cards, none of which touch upon the prices of the Reserved List.
Note: All prices are taken from CardMarket.
13. Candelabra Of Tawnos (€704.42 / $820)
Candelabra Of Tawnos was only ever printed in the Antiquities set and has a deceptively powerful effect. You may think it just trades mana into other colors by tapping lands to untap others. However, when you combine this with lands that create more than one mana, it easily goes infinite with Candelabra in Magic: The Gathering.
For just one mana, you get a powerful enabler for a ton of combos. The card sees niche play in the Vintage format in 12 Post decks which play a ton of lands that create multiple mana from one land.
12. Juzam Djinn (€1,450)
At first glance, it seems that Juzam Djinn is a terrible card. It’s only a 5/5 with no abilities except one that actively hurts you for four mana, and you’d be right! It is an awful card, so why is Juzam Djinn so expensive? The answer is simply nostalgia.
Back in the day, 5/5 for four mana was an amazing stat line. This was especially true when you could cast it quickly with the Moxen and Black Lotus. The card has only been printed in Arabian Nights. It was so popular it was used as an oversized card promo in the 90s.
11. Bazaar Of Baghdad (€1,500)
A land that doesn’t tap for mana may seem odd, but Bazaar Of Baghdad is one of the best lands ever printed (so much so that it had to be banned from Legacy). Despite making you go negative on card advantage since you draw two cards and discard three, this enables a ton of discard-based strategies and cards that want to be in your graveyard.
In decks that use Bazaar Of Baghdad to its fullest potential, it’s not uncommon for it to be one of the few lands in the deck and to aggressively mulligan until you see it in your hand. It’s so good that losing potentially over two cards from your starting hand to open with Bazaar is worth it. The power of this card and its status as a Reserved List card makes Bazaar Of Baghdad so valuable.
10. Mishra’s Workshop (€1,810)
Despite Mishra’s Workshop only being able to create mana for artifact spells, it is one of the best lands in Magic: The Gathering. An untapped land producing just two mana is great, and Misra’s Workshop takes it one step further by giving you three mana to work with. While this is colorless mana, this hardly matters since almost all artifacts are colorless anyways.
In artifact decks, Mishra’s Workshop is the best land you can play, and its power lead to its ban in Legacy. Being able to get so far ahead on your mana, especially when you have more than one copy on the field makes the card phenomenal and why it is so expensive as one of the most expensive cards in the MTG game.
9. Time Vault (€2,600)
Time Vault is one of the best extra turn spells in Magic. You can tap it to take an extra turn, but it doesn’t untap unless you skip your next turn. It also enters the battlefield tapped to make it even slower. However, there are plenty of artifacts that can untap artifacts, making it trivial to take an infinite number of turns.
The other Power Nine card
Time Vault is often called the Power Nine card that never was. Some people consider it to be better than Timetwister and that Time Vault is more deserving of the title. Had the Power Nine been created today, it would likely include Time Vault on the list.
Outside of Alpha, Beta, and Unlimted Editions, there are no other legal printings of the card. It is also banned in every format and restricted in Vintage. Despite all these restrictions on playability, its power alone makes it stand above many other cards.
8. The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale (€2,700)
There has only been one printing of The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale in the Legends set. It’s a legendary land that can’t create mana. But it puts a tax on all creatures where if one mana isn’t paid it has to be sacrificed.
In decks that are abusing low-no mana-producing lands (such as Bazaar Of Baghdad decks), The Tabernacle At Pendrell Vale is the biggest punishment. It also makes your opponents lose out on mana they could be using casting spells. It does this by making them pay to get their creatures to stick to the battlefield.
7. Blue-Coloured Hurricane (€10,000)
Back in 1994, the Revised Edition was released with a ton of production issues such as wrong images on cards and poor printing quality. As a solution, a fixed product now known as Summer Magic was released. However, this too had many problems and the set was recalled and destroyed.
Other Summer Magic problems
Hurricane was not the only card with problems from Summer Magic. Serendib Efreet was printed with the wrong art in the Revised Edition and while Summer Magic fixed this, the artist credit was not changed and was attributed to the wrong person. Plateau also credited the wrong artist, an issue present in Revised Edition. Demonic Tutor was meant to remove all satanic imagery but only some of it was removed while others remained. Green cards were also notably hard to read the text boxes because of the coloration chosen.
The most valuable from this lot of cards is Hurricane. Despite Hurricane being a green card, it was mistakenly printed as if it was a blue card instead. Interestingly, Hurricane in the original Revised set was printed properly with no problems. So it’s unknown why this change happened. It is possible it was mixed up somehow with Serendib Efreet which was a blue card accidentally printed with a green border in Revised Edition that was fixed in Summer Magic.
The card itself isn’t the strongest, simply an X burn spell to players and creatures with flying. Considering only about 40 boxes of Summer Magic survived, it is the rarest printing of an otherwise cheap card. Blue Hurricane is the only green card with this printing issue. This makes it a uniquely rare card that hasn’t been seen since.
6. Ancestral Recall (€11,000)
Alpha had a cycle of cards called boons in every color that would let you do three of something. For blue’s case, this was Ancestral Recall that let you either draw three cards or make your opponent draw three cards.
Ancestral Recall can either be used to draw you a bunch of cards or to infinitely loop and force your opponent to draw their whole deck and lose through deck-out. Both uses of Ancestral Recall were amazing. This led to its banning in every format except Vintage where it was restricted.
5. Time Walk (€13,000)
Taking an extra turn is one of the best effects in all of Magic, and Time Walk is the best way to take extra turns. While a card like Time Vault has a higher ceiling, it needs set-up while Time Walk can be used right away.
Time Walk only costs two mana to play, making it trivial to have enough mana to use it. If you have ways to play cards in the graveyard, you can keep using it to take multiple extra turns. Extra turns as so good because they let you push your advantage further and help you be more efficient with your mana.
4. Timetwister (€18,300)
Timetwister is a simple card, it shuffles all hands and graveyards into the library and has everyone draw a new hand of seven cards. This effect on its own isn’t overly amazing, but when combined with other cards it can leave your opponent with nothing. When paired with a card like Narset, Parter Of Veils or Hullbreacher, it prevents your opponent from drawing the seven while you get full advantage of it.
Timetwister is so good it is banned in Legacy and restricted in Vintage, though is unbanned in Commander. There are many ways to break Timetwister, and that is why it is a part of the Power Nine. It’s also one of the most expensive cards in the MTG.
3. Moxen (€6,700-€22,270)
The Moxen are all artifacts a part of the Power Nine that cost zero mana to cast and can tap for a specific colour of mana. These are all banned in every format and restricted in Vintage, none of them having been printed since Unlimited Edition.
What are the Moxen?
The Moxen comprises of Mox Emerald (green), Mox Jet (black), Mox Pearl (white), Mox Ruby (red), and Mox Sapphire (blue).
The Moxen are great because they are essentially an extra land you can use for free. This advances you on mana early in the game. Even decks that aren’t playing red are playing Mox Ruby, because having extra mana to work with for no cost is just that good and why the Moxen are all among the most expensive cards.
2. Black Lotus (€48,400)
Even if you have never touched a Magic card, odds are you have at least heard of Black Lotus. It is widely considered to be the best Magic card ever printed and the most expensive card in any trading card game. Black Lotus was only ever printed in Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited Editions as is on the Reserved List, so it will never be reprinted.
For no mana, you can cast an artifact that provides you three mana of one color. When combined with other cards, this creates a ton of mana as early as the first turn, allowing for explosive starts. There is pretty much never a time you wouldn’t want to see Black Lotus in a game, as you would never say no to more free mana at the levels that Black Lotus can produce. It’s not surprising that it’s one of the most expensive cards in the MTG.
1. 001/001 The One Ring (€1.83 Million)
When The Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth set was released, so too was The One Ring. While the normal printing is also valuable, there was a special printing that was serialized. Only one exists in the entire world, and it was put into a random Collector’s Booster for the set.
Many opened Collector Boosters in an attempt to open The One Ring, but only one was lucky enough to open it. A man named Brook Trafton opened The One Ring at a game store in Toronto. The card was quickly graded to prove its authenticity and wound up being sold to Post Malone, who himself is a big fan of the game for two million dollars.
The One Ring became the most expensive transaction in Magic: The Gathering history. It comes second to the most expensive non-sports card TCG transaction only behind Illustrator Pikachu purchased by Logan Paul for a bit over five million dollars. The sale of The One Ring ranks as the fifth most expensive trading card transaction of all time.
That concludes our list of the most expensive cards in MTG. There are many reasons why a Magic card might be valuable. In some cases, it’s because of power combined with scarcity. In other cases, it comes to nostalgia. And in one unique case, it happened because only one copy of the card exists.
The Reserved List has a mixture of the most expensive cards in the entire game. Some rather cheap, all depending on how playable they actually are. If you have any of these cards lying around in your collection and you don’t plan to use them, it might be a good idea to head to a marketplace and see if you can sell them! Here’s how to tell the rarity of a card in MTG. And here’s how to build a cube in the card game.
Most expensive cards MTG FAQs
What is the rarest card in MTG?
The One Ring was sold for $2 million, and the variant that sold was a one of one card. Post Malone, a musician, was the person who purchased the card. The card is inspired by The Lord of the Rings (pretty directly) and came from the collaborative Universes Beyond set.
Is the Black Lotus banned?
Yes, in every format except Vintage.
