Overzealous mother tries to sell son’s Magic: The Gathering collection worth thousands of pounds for just £7

When I hit my teens, I offloaded my entire binder of Pokémon TCG cards for £20 – a decision that still makes me wince as I recall the many rare and expensive cards my younger self drastically undervalued.

However, that mistake pales in comparison to the very near miss a mother in Japan recently experienced when she decided to clear out her son’s collection of Magic: The Gathering cards.

According to IT Media, the hapless parent was tidying up her son’s room after he had moved out when she spotted a folder of Magic cards, seemingly forgotten and apparently of little worth.

She put up the assortment for auction online as a single listing, simply describing them as ‘various old cards’ and starting bidding at 1,000 yen – or just £7.30.

It didn’t take long for the internet to notice that at least one of the cards among the selection was worth just a tad more than that: the Unlimited Edition Black Lotus, a version of perhaps the most valuable Magic card in existence.

While the white border variant isn’t as rare as the alpha deck edition, which can fetch tens of thousands of pounds when they surface, it’s still worth a fair chunk of change, coming in at a value of around £4,000 alone.

Once the Black Lotus’ presence was made public, bidding for the ‘various old cards’ intensified, quickly rocketing to 601,000 yen – around £4,389. Not bad for a quick clearance of old junk.

Once the mother realised her mistake and had spoken to her son (‘My family is on the brink of collapse,’ she added), she cancelled the auction, apologising for underestimating the value of the cards, and said that her son was coming to collect his cards. Let’s hope he puts them somewhere a little more secure next time.