How a 'Magic: The Gathering' player from Toronto sold an ultra-rare card to Post Malone

Before finding an ultra-rare trading card and selling it to superstar Post Malone for over two million dollars, Brook Trafton was working a retail job in Toronto.

He told CTV News Toronto Thursday his hobbies were “pretty nerdy,” like collecting cards for the tabletop game Magic: The Gathering (MTG), watching movies, and playing video games. 

But one fateful day this past June, Trafton’s life changed when he dropped by Face to Face Games on a whim to pick up collector’s boxes of the newly-released MTG collaboration with the “Lord of The Rings” series.

“I just decided, ‘Hey, I’m just gonna go and see if they’re open and if they had extra boxes,” Trafton said. “I went there before they opened. I was the first one in line, I was the first one inside the store, I was the first one to the counter.”

When Trafton got home and opened up his two collector’s boxes, there was the card glistening in the sixth pack he opened.

Trafton said he instantly knew of The One Ring’s significance – after all, it is the only Magic card in existence to be printed in Black Speech of Sauron using Tengwar letterforms, which is one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional languages in the hit series.

Brook Trafton with The One Ring card. (Courtesy of Carli Posner/Notable Group)

“I knew about the bounties out there and it was a very valuable card,” he said. “As soon as I opened it up, I was shaking.”

News of The One Ring’s discovery spread like wildfire. But while everyone knew about the card, nobody really knew about the card bearer himself.

“That was more for, pretty much just my safety,” Trafton explained. “It was out of my hands before I came out with it, and that was the hardest thing to do because I was so excited. I wanted to tell everybody, I didn’t even tell my dad.”

Several companies worldwide publicly placed bounties to get their hands on The One Ring, with one Spanish-based game store offering two million euros (about C$2.9 million).

“To put it in perspective, like just the first offer? That would have been me working for at least 15 years,” Trafton said.

“As much as I would love to keep this thing – it’s absolutely gorgeous – I couldn’t say no to selling it. That amount of money would change my life.”

Trafton secured a lawyer and a PR firm to start weighing out his options of what he could do next, and determine what his dream sale would be.

“The first thing I told them, I said, ‘Listen, I am not even worried about the money at this point. I really want to send it to Post Malone, to meet him – even if we just meet him that’d be perfect,’” he said.

Hip-hop superstar Post Malone is “big” in the Magic community, Trafton explained. After all, he bought Magic’s Black Lotus card for US$800,000.

“I know that he has a love for the game, so I know that not only is it something that he would appreciate, I think that it would be a good fit,” Trafton said.

‘IT WASN’T EVEN SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN’

Trafton said his team reached out to Post’s team to offer The One Ring card.

“It wasn’t even supposed to happen,” Trafton said, adding there were several different offers on the table and they were working to finalize one of them.

But 10 minutes after he punched into work that day, Trafton said he got a call.

“They said, ‘Hey, come get the card, come meet me in Toronto, like downtown by the Budweiser Stage, we’re gonna go meet Post Malone,’” he said. 

"I was head over heels ... I said (to Carli Posner, CEO of PR firm Notable Group) confirm this, call me back, and I will find a way to leave."

The musician had a concert on July 20 in the city, and when Trafton arrived to meet him, they talked all about Magic: The Gathering.

“We pulled the card out, and we’re showing him, he starts talking to us and he’s like, ‘What’s your price?’” Trafton recounted, adding he directed Malone to Posner who was facilitating the sale.

An up close shot of The One Ring Magic: The Gathering card. (Courtesy of Carli Posner/Notable Group)

“Then he says to me, ‘What’s your favourite commander?’ Commander’s like a format of the game where you make a deck and you have one card that’s like the theme of your deck. I look at Carli, I look at Post Malone, and I’m like ‘I actually brought it with me.’”

After looking through Trafton’s Magic collection, Trafton said the musician said: “I’ll take it.”

“I’m like, ‘Pardon, like what do you mean?’ And he’s like, ‘I’ll take it,’” Trafton said. “The rest is history.”

Trafton confirmed he sold the card for just over US$2,000,000 to Post Malone, which would come to around C$2.67 million. 

Now that Post Malone is keeping the The One Ring safe from the fiery underbelly of Mount Doom, Trafton said he is still going to keep working, using the money he earned from the sale towards investments.

“I’m 37, I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck most of my life. I understand how to make life with little, so this is more than average. I want to make sure that I’m secure for life,” he said.