The RealReal Inc, the members-only consignment marketplace for luxury goods, has just landed a rare haul: the six-card collection of Magic: The Gathering cards from the original Power 9 set. The collection, which was produced in 1993 in limited quantities and includes the hotly sought Beta Black Lotus card artist-proofed by Christopher Rush, one of the game’s original designers, is priced at $845,000. Wizards of the Coast launched the trading card game in 1993, and it was acquired by Hasbro Inc. in 1999. The Magic: The Gathering franchise continues to be one of the company’s most profitable, reports Bloomberg. The game was played competitively and was estimated to have about 40 million players worldwide.“This is the RealReal’s most expensive consigned item in its history,” Matthew Rogers, lead valuation manager of comics, trading cards, and collectables at The RealReal Inc, told Bloomberg, adding that only a handful of these cards are known to exist.
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A century of Surrealism
A new exhibition, Objects of Desire: Surrealism and Design 1924 - Today, exploring the complex evolution of the art movement will open at London’s Design Museum today. Surrealism, which was born in literature before spreading to visual art, declined as an artistic movement in the early 1950s, but has survived in design, reports AFP. In fact, some of its creations “seem to have really found their moment in this century”, curator Kathryn Johnson told AFP. Some of the key highlights of this exhibition include the Metamorphosis of Narcissus, painted by Dali in 1937; a huge lamp on a plastic horse by Swedish studio Front (2006); an armchair made of Disney stuffed animals created by Brazilians Fernando and Humberto Campana (2007); two lamps made of horsehair by British artist Jonathan Trayte (2022) and music videos of songs by Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjork.
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A new range of NBA merchandise
The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Reliance Retail Ltd announced on Wednesday that they were collaborating to launch an extensive range of NBA merchandise in India. NBA team and league-branded products, including adult and youth apparel, accessories, back-to-school supplies, toys and collectables, are now available for fans in India. The merchandise is on sale in Reliance Retail stores across the country and on its e-commerce platforms. NBA’s senior vice president of international licensing and business development Rob Millman told ANI that he hoped that the collaboration would help strengthen their retail presence in India. “As the NBA’s popularity in India continues to grow, making products more broadly available reflects our commitment to providing fans in India with a more wide-ranging NBA experience,” Millman said. At the ongoing Lakme x FDCI Fashion Week, too, some fashion designers have created and showcased exclusive NBA capsule collections.
Millennials and Gen Z fuel a boom in the second-hand watch market
An industry report released by consulting firm Deloitte stated that the pre-owned luxury watch segment will surge by 75% by the end of this decade, stated Bloomberg. According to this report, the annual sales of second-hand watches will jump to 35 billion Swiss francs ($35 billion) by 2030 from 20 billion francs now. “The growth potential for the pre-owned market is enormous,” said Karine Szegedi, the head of consumer, fashion and luxury at Deloitte Switzerland. According to Bloomberg, the growth is largely driven by younger consumers; millennials and Gen Z are more likely to purchase pre-owned items and look for better prices. The report also stated that almost half of the millennials said they would likely buy a second-hand watch in the next year, compared to just 12% of baby boomers.“Our audience is so different than who you assume a traditional watch buyer to be,” Ben Clymer, the founder of online watch news and retail website Hodinkee, said in the report. “They’re much younger, they’re buying and selling watches much more often, and they care about pre-owned.”
