Pennsylvania Vendor Asks $100,000 for Ultra-Rare Card You’ve Never Heard Of

Last updated on March 14, 2025

Nira, Hellkite Duelist | Illustration by Yoichi Ito

If you've ever been to any Grand Prix or MagicCons, then you've likely seen the booth for the Magic retailer Tales of Adventure Comics and Games (TOA). They are based in Pennsylvania and are recognizable by their iconic winged horse. Their owner (Michael Caffrey) just made Magic history by trying to sell an extremely rare card for $100k!

What Card Could Possibly be Worth 100k?

Given that a Black Lotus runs for about $12k+ these days, it's hard to imagine a card that could be worth much more than that, at least one that's not called The One Ring and sitting in Post Malone's home somewhere. The card in question however is even rarer than a Beta Black Lotus; in fact, there are actually only four of them in the world! So what's the card? Drumroll please….

Source

You've likely never heard of Nira, Hellkite Duelist (this writer hadn't!), as it was actually exclusive to a handful of WotC employees in 2016, who worked on the game “Duel Masters,” another Wizards of the Coast property There are only four copies of Nira, Hellkite Duelist in existence, making it obscenely rare! It was part of a trio of “Heroes of the Realm” cards from 2016, the rest of which also have only four copies worldwide. The full 2016 trio can be seen below:

These cards are of course illegal in all formats, as they have a non-standard card back and would be far too rare to allow anywhere.

Will Nira actually sell for $100k?

It's hard to say! Of course, the best of luck to Caffrey and TOA on selling this, as it's certainly possible that some esteemed collector could be in the market for something like this. Some might be curious to know how Caffrey even acquired the card in the first place, as it likely would have had to have been sold to them by one of those WotC employees. Draftsim has reached out for comment from the seller.

Interestingly, the original post on X mentions that there is a small bend on the right side. “100k for a card with cosmetic defects is wild,” comments on user on the post. It sounds like a wild number, but this is also about as collectible as something can get in MTG, so it might not be as outlandish as it seems.

Would These Cards Be Good if They Were Legal?

Dungeon Master | Illustration by Mike Burns

From a Commander perspective, Nira, Hellkite Duelist is an interesting but middling commander. It's a WUBRG dragon with excellent stats, and a powerful comeback ability. However, that ability will be telegraphed to the table constantly, and it doesn't produce any real card advantage otherwise.

As for the two planeswalkers, they aren't especially powerful, and also couldn't be your commander anyways. This means that Nira is by the far the best of the bunch, though don't forget that these are three illegal cards anyways! Still, your playgroup might fancy proxying these and a few other Heroes of the Realm cards (there are some seriously inspired cards in the bunch). Or, drop a cool 100k and get the real thing for yourself.