A Toronto retail worker found the elusive "One Ring: card from the Magic the Gathering and Lord of the Rings collaboration after only a few weeks of the set being released.

The current offers value the card at between one million USD and two million Euros.

The hunt for the card began when Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns Magic: The Gathering, announced that there would be a single print of the One Ring card. Jeff MacDougall, manager of 401 Games in Vaughn, says that people on the Internet have been live streaming themselves opening packs on the hunt for the limited card for weeks. Each box of 12 booster packs currently cost almost $600.

The Toronto retail worker who pulled the card wishes to remain anonymous and is using a PR company to maintain their anonymity while communicating about the card.

The card owner says that they bought the Lord of the Rings collectors box on a whim. They had one pre-ordered due to arrive at their local game store on June 17 but wanted to get a box a day early. They went to the store and picked up two boxes: the first box had nothing special but six packs deep into the second box they stumbled across Isildur’s bane, the One Ring.

“I was in complete disbelief. My hands were shaking and my heart was racing. I know it was a life-changing moment,” says the card owner in a statement.

Large bounties online were spread before the card was found.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that does not happen to people like me,” the card owner says.

As a Toronto resident who says that they currently live paycheck to paycheck, pulling this card has let them “invest and set-up [their] future.”

The version of the card that has been found is the only one that has been printed. The card compared to the other One Ring cards is written only in the Black Speech, a fictional language in the Lord of the Rings novels, with gold font. The card was officially graded by PSAcard, a company that awards a quality grade to trading cards. The One Ring was given a grade of mint 9 which is one off a perfect score.

Jeff MacDougall, manager of 401 Games in Vaughn, says that this card is different from the other rare cards that have come before it. He says expensive and rare cards are common with Magic the Gathering with cards becoming rare due to time causing exclusivity.

“[Wizards of the Coast] wanted something unique so they only made one copy of the card and randomly inserted it into a pack and threw it out there into the world,” says MacDougall. “Sports cards and a lot of other trading cards have been doing this for quite some time where you have cards numbered one of one…for Magic and card gaming in general this is fairly new. Some other games have kind of dabbled in stuff like this but nothing really like this before.”

Magic the Gathering is a globally popular game that in 2021, made Hasbro, the parent company,  $2.1 billion dollars. MacDougall says that the collaboration has been very successful with sales being high in his store for the packs. He says the hunt for the one ring has had people outside of the community start collecting in the hopes of being the one to find the ring.

The Toronto man intends to keep on working even after selling the card. Unlike the counterpart in the novel, this one ring is set to only help its owner.

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