Rare card considered too powerful for some tournaments
Press Release – DALLAS, Texas (July 23, 2018) – A storm of competitive bidding drove the final price for original art and a copy of Kaja Foglio’s Magic: The Gathering: Arabian Nights “Shahrazad” Card (Wizards of the West Coast, 1993) to $72,000 in Heritage Auctions’ July 22 Sunday Internet Comics, Animation & Art Auction.
The result for this original art, which measure 7 by 5-1/2 inches and comes from the Ethan Roberts Estate Collection, broke the previous record for the most paid for any lot in Heritage Auctions Sunday Internet auction.
“Any original art from Magic: The Gathering is highly sought by fans,” Heritage Auctions comics cataloger Weldon Adams said. “Art by a favorite artist such as Kaja Foglio is even more desirable and collectors drove the bidding sky-high on this item.”
The “Shahrazad” card is among the rarest cards from Series A or Series B. It is from Arabian Nights, the very first Magic expansion pack released in 1993. The card is perhaps the most quirky and fascinating card ever created for the role-playing game because of its ability to turn a session entirely on its head.
The “Shahrazad” card instructs players to quit their current game and start a separate game with the remaining cards. Once that game is finished, players may return to the original game but the loser of the subgame loses half of his or her life. In 2007, it was added to a list of banned and restricted cards for tournament play because it was deemed a pure time-wasting device.
Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game created by Richard Garfield. Cards are sold in packs, much like those containing sports trading cards. The most coveted cards are those that are more rare than others, and those which carry specific powers or abilities that affect gameplay.
Foglio is a Seattle-based artist, writer and publisher, who is perhaps known best for the Girl Genius series that she writes with her husband, Phil Foglio. The Foglios and colorist Cheyenne Wright won a Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story for Girl Genius in 2009.
Heritage Auctions’ Sunday Internet Comics Auction, closing July 29 on HA.com, features another piece of original art from Magic: The Gathering: Artist Phil Foglio’s 1994 Original Painting for “Conch Horn,” from Magic: The Gathering: Fallen Empires.
Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States, and the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer. Heritage maintains offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam and Hong Kong.
The Internet’s most popular auction-house website, HA.com, has over one million registered bidder-members and searchable free archives of four million past auction records with prices realized, descriptions and enlargeable photos. Reproduction rights routinely granted to media for photo credit.
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