Summary
The originalMagic: The Gatheringset, Limited Edition Alpha, is where the wildly successful tabletop game got started. Colloquially known as Alpha, this set has some incredibly powerful cards, combined with the fact that it had a limited printing, and is more than 30 years old, makes just about every card from this set cost a pretty penny.
Since many of Alpha’s most valuable Magic cards are made through private sales with collectors, it can be difficult to gather accurate data on values. We generally use TCGplayer.com as the benchmark for card values, though, for many of these cards, the value can fluctuate wildly with what private sellers list them for. As such, values here might not always be accurate but should give you a good idea as to what the most valuable cards are.
10Birds Of Paradise
Rare - $3,999
Affectionately known as ‘BoP’ by many longtime players, Birds of Paradiseis among the best mana-ramping creatures in Magic, making it a natural collector’s item.
Fun little fact for this card, the artwork for Birds of Paradise was originally supposed to be for a land, but very prominently features a colorful bird, which wasn’t quite what Wizards Of The Coast was looking for. Instead of scrapping the artwork, Richard Garfield, creator of Magic, designed the Birds of Paradise card to work with the art.
9Time Vault
Rare - $4,299
Do you like free turns? Of course you do, it’s so much easier to win games when your opponents can’t go. What about a wildly exploitable artifact that all but guarantees you infinite turns with very little work?
Time Vault is an incredibly cheap two-mana artifact that you’re able to tap to take an extra turn. The card pretends to be balanced by entering the battlefield tapped and doesn’t untap on your untap step, instead, forcing you to skip a turn to untap it. Unfortunately there are dozens of ways to untap artifacts in Magic, making it exceptionally easy to spam out tons of turns.
8Chaos Orb
Rare - $5,995
One of the original Magic myths, Chaos Orb is a delightfully weird little card that is banned in practically every format due to being a dexterity card that requires players to physically flip the card from the height of one foot in the air, destroying all cards it touches when it lands.
Rumor has been circulating around Magic communities for ages about how once a player took one of these cards and ripped it up into a bunch of pieces, and tried to destroy every other card the little pieces touched.
7All Ten Alpha Dual Lands
Rare - $2,700 - $12,700
All of these lands are worth a good amount of money, and it’s pretty clear why. Cards like Underground Sea are nonbasic lands with two basic land types, in this case, being both an Island and a Swamp.
Modern-day iterations of these Dual Lands will have some type of drawback to using them, either by paying life for them to come into play untapped like the Shock lands, or more commonly, not having a basic land type associated with them.
6All Five Mox
Rare - $5,110 - $18,000
Much like the Dual Land collection, the five Mox artifacts all fetch a good amount of money if you’re looking to upgrade your decks.
These zero mana artifacts are functionally lands, coming into play untapped and letting you tap them for their associated color identity. The reason why they’re so valuable though, is because they’re all artifacts, you can play a land and one of these Mox on your first turn, giving you access to at least two mana for free on your first turn.
5Time Walk
Rare - $7,700
Time Walk is one of those Magic cards that just seems too good to be true, which is why Magic doesn’t print cards like that anymore. Forjust two mana you’re able to take an extra turn, which is incredibly good no matter what.
While not repeatable in the same way Time Vault is, Time Walk doesn’t require other cards or hoops to jump through to cast. You can also cast it from your graveyard through any number of other shenanigans to get extra turns.
4Ancestral Recall
Rare - $10,999
One of the best draw spellsyou can play in Magic is Brainstorm, a one-mana instant that has you draw three cards and put two of them back on your deck. It’s heavily played in every format it’s legal in, and helps sculpt your hand however you want.
Ancestral Recall does so much more work than Brainstorm, it’s almost embarrassing. For one mana, also at instant speed, you can have you or anyone else draw three cards. No need to put anything back on top of your deck or worry about paying an exorbitant amount of mana for those cards.
3Shivan Dragon
Rare - $11,999
One of the most iconic cards from across Magic’s history, Shivan Dragon is a powerhouse, though not really one that saw a lot of play. That doesn’t mean that players don’t love collecting this big ol’ Dragon.
An Alpha Shivan Dragon is more of a collector’s piece rather than a rare and powerful card, especially since it’s been reprinted tons of times since its initial release. Dragons are super cool though, and you’re able to’t argue with the rule of cool when it comes to collectors.
2Timetwister
Rare - $16,499
What’s better than drawing three cards for one mana from an Ancestral Recall? How about drawing seven new cards and resetting your graveyard, hand, and library all at the same time?
Timetwister is a rather unique card, where for three mana you can shuffle everything together and start the game over, minus anything that’s in exile or on the battlefield. Sure, it forces your opponents to do the same, potentially refilling their hand with more spells, but also has tons of potential of shuffling away some powerful spell they were holding on to.
1Black Lotus
Rare - $30,000
Surprising no one, the most valuable card from Alpha is the Black Lotus. Similar to the Mox artifacts, Black Lotus costs zero mana, so you can play it on your first turn along side a land, but adds three mana of any one color when you sacrifice it.
Giving you four mana on your first turn catapults you wildly ahead of your opponents and lets you do practically anything you want on your first turn. Of course, the Black Lotus has reached the millions in value in private sales, but those are also typically graded copies that have been well preserved for years.
