In one of the more depressing Magic: The Gathering stories in recent times, it appears as though people have jumped on the Star Trek Collector Booster boxes following the death of Patrick Stewart, in hopes of turning a profit due to the highly limited and valuable signed Jean-Luc Picard cards that can be found in packs.
While it's hard to confirm this as the specific reason for the spike, nothing else of note happened yesterday that would trigger an almost $100 spike in market value and a 796% uplift in sales. These signed MTG cards may be among the last signed memorabilia Patrick Stewart agreed to, so their value will only increase over time.
On TCGPlayer, the price of Star Trek Collector Boosters was $495.34 on October 28; the next day, after news of Patrick Stewart's passing, it spiked to $576.02. This isn't the only major swing that occurred, though, because on October 28, only 63 boxes were sold according to TCGPlayer's figures, but on October 29, this figure rose to 565, a 796% increase in sales.
News of Stewart's passing hit Star Trek fans hard, and it's hard to imagine that their first thought was to go and buy Magic Collector Booster boxes, so this definitely seems like a concerted effort from those who are going to hold onto this product in hopes that the price spike sticks, and they can sell for a profit.
We don't doubt that some of these purchases are from genuinely interested players, given that sales have been pretty steady over the past few weeks, but we can't ignore the elephant in the room.
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