You can bet your bottom dollar that someone somewhere out there is wanting more Magic cards. In fact it's pretty much guaranteed considering the enduring popularity of the game and the number of would-be collectors. So it is immensely sad when cards end up in landfill. This is the case of recent sets that are worth a pretty penny and one MTG fan was able to track down exactly where the cards ended up. This is a story of a modern treasure hunt.
On the pics subreddit, someone posted a picture of boxes of MTG cards in a landfill in the United States. It is six pallets of cards. Doing the math: six layers per pallet, 12 cardboard boxes per layer, four display boxes per cardboard box, and so it's around 1729 display boxes in the six pallets. At $150 per box, for a conservative estimate, then this is close to $260,000 worth of product (thanks u/Mirrormn). It's an astonishingly valuable find just sitting there in the landfill. Magic fans were on the case.
After the photo of the pallets was shared, within hours the precise location of the landfill was determined, and it was discovered that it was Modern Horizons 2 booster packs, which is one of the most valuable sets of late. That over $250,000 worth of cards are just sat there unopened and unused flabbergasted many on the forum.
Someone threw away 6 pallets of Magic TG cards at my local city landfill
But why would such valuable cards, and so many, end up on landfill I hear you ask? While we won't know the exact answer, there is good speculation. It is possible that someone (a collector and/or seller) ordered this big haul but the delivery company could've required the buyer to shell out for a forklift in order to deliver the load as a final step. Perhaps the customer then refused the order, and the delivery company offloads the claim to the shipper and disposes of them.
But it could also be that there was some defect with the cards. Perhaps a box was bent or missed some items, and the customer is unhappy and demands a refund or replacement. Then the unwanted boxes just get dumped. People who've worked for big stores on the thread confirmed that something like this could happen.
But since the boxes are unopened, we have no way of knowing if the boxes contain gold or if it is in fact just trash. If only someone could go to said landfill and take a look. Well someone did. It is not clear just how the individual was able to track down the exact landfill, and the speed with which they did so, but the OP got there to take the photo of the boxes and discover what is inside. It seems that they have found treasure. Sharing a photo of what was inside the boxes, u/LATINO showed that it was indeed booster packs of the Modern Horizons 2 sets.
This is straight up a find for the ages, and many Magic fans were positively drooling over the discovery, but what about the legality of taking stuff from a landfill? This is where things get a bit tricky. Basically, it comes down to who owns the dump. If the landfill is privately owned, then technically everything within comes under the ownership of the landowner. But if the dump is city owned (or publicly owned) then it is probably fair game. Of course there might be more specific local laws regarding all this, so you'd do well to do research before going landfill hunting just to be on the safe side.
But for LATINO on Reddit, they have stumbled on a massive haul of Magic cards that is worth a fortune, and a story that'll keep them in drink for many years to come. "Now let me tell you about the time I found hundreds of thousands worth of cards just sitting in a dump, ready for the taking..."