Celebrating 30 years of Magic: The Gathering’s history, Wizards of the Coast released an incredibly exclusive collection featuring most of the cards from the Limited Edition Beta set originally released in 1993. This extremely limited collector set is called the 30th Anniversary Edition and only comes in packages that include 15 cards, 13 featuring Beta cards with a modern frame, a basic retro frame land, and an extra retro frame card.

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The cards released in the 30th Anniversary Edition are not tournament legal, sporting a unique card back featuring the legendary Black Lotus. There are 594 cards in this collector set, an equal number of modern and retro frame cards, with some cards removed for various reasons. With so many unique reproductions of exceptionally rare cards, many of the 30th Anniversary Edition cards are worth a lot to players and collectors alike. With prices sourced from TCGplayer.com, let’s look at the most valuable cards from the 30th Anniversary Editon as of December 8, 2022.

10 Lifelace (Retro Frame) - $120

 Lifelace

This weird card is a bit of an oddball, but it once played a fairly important role in Magic. Lifelace permanently turns a spell or permanent green.

In a time when Circle of Protection enchantments were rampant and several cards cared about the color of cards, changing the color of a spell in response was a legitimate strategy.

9 Lord Of Atlantis - $120

Lord of Atlantis

The original Merfolk lord creature, Lord of Atlantis is a key component for Merfolk-themed decks. Pumping your Merfolk creatures a bit and granting them a very powerful form of evasion with islandwalk means you are free to keep attacking so long as your opponent controls an island.

Since its printing, many other lords have been introduced to Magic that do similar things, but there’s no denying the power of the original.

8 Stasis - $150

 Stasis

The original tax card in Magic, Stasis has all players skip their untap step until it leaves play. It has a built-in recurring cost to help your opponents eventually get around it, but there are plenty of ways to work around it with a little setup.

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A fun little fact about Stasis: the artwork was actually done by artist Fay Jones, who is MTG creator Richard Garfield’s aunt. Her dreamlike surrealism about what appears to be a Pierrot-like morose clown balanced against a blindfolded Anubis figure is provocative and iconic in Magic.

7 Illusionary Mask - $250

Illusionary Mask

If you’re looking to confuse your opponent, Illusionary Mask is the way to go. You can pay X mana to place a creature from your hand facedown on the battlefield as a 2/2 creature, similar to how the morph mechanic works.

Keep in mind, though, that whatever you pay for X has to include the original conditions of that creature’s mana value. That creature remains facedown until it would receive damage, deal damage, or becomes tapped for any reason. Illusionary Mask used to be a rules nightmare because of the way it functioned before an errata to its ability.

6 Badlands - $280

Badlands

Everyone needs lands to play Magic, and the original Dual lands are the cream of the crop. Acting as both a Mountain and a Swamp, Badlands is an essential land for Legacy and Vintage decks.

Even Commander players want these dual lands to help push their decks to even higher power levels. Because of their versatility, these lands continue to climb in price across the board.

5 Lich - $300

Lich

This weird card puts you in a bit of a predicament when it comes to your life total. But so long as you don’t lose Lich, you’ll be in good shape. When Lich comes into play, you lose life equal to the amount of life you currently have, more than likely putting yourself to an even zero unless you have something else stopping it. Thankfully, Lich prevents you from losing the game and having zero or less life, instead replacing life gain and loss with card draws and card sacrifices.

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There are some tricky ways to use this to your advantage. Using cards to exchange life totals like Axis of Mortality or Repay in Kind can instantly knock your opponents out of the game.

4 Tundra (Retro Frame) - $324

Tundra

Lands are a vital part of Magic. If you own the right lands, you can put yourself at a ridiculous advantage over your opponents. The original dual lands from the Beta set are nonbasic lands that are considered basic lands. Tundra, for example, is both an Island and a Plains, so you can use any number of fetch lands to search your library for it and put it into play.

Many other cards have been printed since that are similar, but oftentimes they include some sort of drawback, like costing life to untapped. Tundra, on the other hand, enters untapped and doesn’t require any additional costs to be paid.

3 Time Vault (Retro Frame) - $400

Time Vault

There are plenty of ways to take extra turns in Magic, but no single card does it quite as well as Time Vault. Just tapping Time Vault grants you an extra turn. Sure, it enters the battlefield tapped and forces you to skip a turn to untap it. But with so many ways to untap artifacts in Magic, this isn’t an issue.

With some minor setup, you guarantee yourself infinite turns to do whatever shenanigans you want with all your turns.

2 Chaos Orb (Retro Frame) - $499

Chaos Orb

This weird card has been a source of inspiration for all sorts of goofy cards Magic has released since. To use Chaos Orb, you have to physically hold it one foot above the table and drop it in such a way that it turns over at least one time before landing back on the battlefield.

Once it settles, you destroy all nontoken permanents it touches. Such a weird card makes it unique in Magic and helps push its price even higher.

1 Black Lotus (Retro Frame) - $5,000

Black Lotus

Surprising no one, the legendary Black Lotus is the most expensive card to come out of the 30th Anniversary Edition collector set. Collectors seek out this card to say they own a piece of Magic’s history. Vintage players desire it to fuel their incredibly powerful decks.

This collector edition is a far cry from the original, which can fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars on secondary markets, but it’s still a great collector card to own.

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