The team here at Mythic Markets has been spending a lot of time looking over fantasy art sales lately, for obvious reasons. While 2020 has already been shaping up as a strong year for the genre, this week gave us one auction in particular which we think all our investors need to see for themselves.

The Heritage Auctions “November 2020 Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction”, which opened yesterday, is actually headlined by a raft of original Magic: The Gathering paintings -- several of which broke the $100,000 mark!

Those of you who are Magic: The Gathering fans might recognize one of the auction’s marquee artists: Douglas Shuler. Doug was a part of the hallowed class of 25 artists who were commissioned to illustrate cards for Limited Edition Alpha -- the very first set of Magic to be sold back in 1993. Art like Shuler’s has lived in the hearts and minds of 30-some-million fans for three decades now, and it and other works of that vintage are bearing serious fruit.

Josh Krause, who operates one of the oldest community markets for Magic artwork, estimates that the price of an original card illustration has tripled every three years since the early 2000s. And Shuler and his Alpha contemporaries are the vanguard dragging that average up, with “Demonic Tutor” setting the watermark for this week’s auction at a whopping $168,000!

Even the more humble pieces from this new auction saw plenty of interest. Shuler’s art for “Contract From Below” -- among the first cards ever banned for its use of the “ante” mechanic -- topped out at $78,000. The same bid won “Mana Flare”, a piece by Magic’s most beloved artist, the late Christopher Rush.

Rush, who painted the iconic card art for “Black Lotus” as well as designing the mana symbols and other important visual components for the game, was widely mourned by the community upon his sudden passing in 2016. Demand for his original paintings skyrocketed, as well as for his Magic sketches and signed artist proofs. Four years on, the buzz has not cooled down so much as spread to other art seen as essential to the game’s history - which of course includes nearly everything from the Alpha set.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about that Black Lotus art? You can pick it up yourself, if you’ve got some change lying around. The owner was quoted last January as saying he’d be happy to part with the most important painting in Magic for a cool $6.5 million. This would make it the most valuable piece of fantasy art in the world - beating out Frank Frazetta’s 1969 work “Egyptian Queen”, which sold for $5.4 million in May 2019. But when you think about the worldwide recognition of Black Lotus, and how it stands as a symbol of wealth, power and beauty to tens of millions, that doesn’t seem too unreasonable.

While the Black Lotus will always be in a class of its own among Magic collectibles, pieces like “Demonic Tutor” which sold this week show that the rest of the Alpha art gallery is also starting to command an impressive price. The reserve for the art was set at around $100K, which shows how much confidence can be had in the art of someone like Douglas Shuler. In the end the Tutor easily broke that mark.

Even Mark Tedin’s “Jayemdae Tome” exceeded that mark at $114,000. The Tome was never as powerful or memorable a card as Tutor or Lotus, but Tedin’s beautifully textured painting and the weight of Alpha’s history brought the auction’s 22 bidders in regardless.

It raises tantalizing questions about what price we could see if a collector loosened their grip on a painting from the famed “Power 9” collection; or the Alpha art for “Lightning Bolt”, which won a gigantic poll to find the most popular card in Magic and is also a treasured Christopher Rush original.

But Alpha paintings are a finite resource (some 300 originals were commissioned in ‘93) and all those mentioned above are stowed away in private collections. This reflects a general state of demand for Magic art outstripping supply even for more modern pieces. The price of sketches, color studies and artist proofs is also rising as eager collectors are forced out of the race for full paintings.

Any time an original does become available, especially something with the weight of this week’s Alpha auction, it gives the broader public a glimpse of how heated that race has become. Following the predictions of someone like Josh Krause, it looks like it will only get harder for someone dreaming of hanging their own favorite Alpha piece on the wall at home.

And that’s a big reason behind our move into fantasy art -- starting with several Alpha originals long absent from the public eye. Images like Doug Shuler’s “Benalish Hero” or Sandra Everingham’s “Giant Growth” are foundation stones for a 30-year cultural and artistic tradition, burned into the mind’s eye of millions around the world.

That’s the sort of holy grail collectibles Mythic Markets is set up to offer investors, and with our ability to offer individual shares at the price of a Magic starter deck, we can make sure that any fan or new investor will actually have the chance to own a part of them.

We’re starting this collection with “Benalish Hero”, a striking and memorable creature from Alpha which helped to define the aesthetics of white Magic just as Shuler’s other piece, “Demonic Tutor”, did for black cards. Shares are available for $35.

If you want to know more about the history of this card and Doug Shuler’s other famous creation, “Serra Angel”, you can read our interview with the artist! And keep these fantasy art trends in mind over the next few months -- because there may be more exciting chances to buy into Limited Edition Alpha artwork in 2021!

Original Magic: The Gathering paintings break $100,000 mark at auction

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Alpha Artists Interviewed: Douglas Shuler