An Alpha Black Lotus Auction has seen one of the rarest Magic: The Gathering cards sold for over $160,000 as reported by PWCC Marketplace in a press release. The rarity and legend behind this card seem to have made for a particularly appealing auction—it went for almost double the price of the last Alpha Black Lotus sold through the PWCC Marketplace and handily netted its previous owner a hefty payday.

It is perhaps best to explain why the Alpha Black Lotus Auction netted such a price by going into a bit of history around the card. For those not in the know, the Black Lotus is one of (if not the) most legendary cards in Magic: The Gathering. The Black Lotus is an artifact that can add 3 mana of any color to your mana pool simply by being tapped and sacrificed, putting it into the graveyard where players have sometimes used various methods to resurrect it for more mana.

The ability to add 3 mana of any color to your pool for a casting cost of 0—did I mention that the Black Lotus costs 0 mana to play?—can best be described as "hilariously overpowered". It is for this reason that the card was one of the many that were entirely banned from tournament play, aside from in Vintage where it is one of the restricted cards that even in this format of basically everything goes, you can have only one. As for the "Alpha" bit of the Alpha Black Lotus Auction, this particular card came from the Alpha set of Magic: The Gathering. This was the very first printed set of Magic cards that made up an extremely short print run used to test out the game with some of its earliest players. In total, only 1,100 or so Alpha Black Lotuses are thought to exist.

As a result of its rarity (and the excellent condition of the card), the Alpha Black Lotus Auction hit $166,100 before closing. This is nearly double the previous site record of $87,672, which was just last year - an increase of 88%so. This particular card was appraised at a 9.5 Gem Mint PSA Grade—a card in nearly perfect condition. If you have a couple hundred thousand sitting around, you can take a crack at getting your hands on one in just a couple of weeks when two more of this ultra-rare Magic: The Gathering card for up for sale on PWCC Marketplace. Or you could just buy a truckload of the upcoming Ravnica board game and hand them out to a couple hundred of your closest friends.

What do you think of the Alpha Black Lotus Auction? What would you spend $160,100 on instead of a Magic: The Gathering card? Let us know in the comments below!