CGC Trading Cards Grades Rare MTG Phoenix Heart Card

Posted on 10/14/2022

Phoenix Heart was created to commemorate MTG creator Richard Garfield's second marriage.

CGC Trading Cards® has graded an ultra-rare Magic: The Gathering card from the Richard Garfield Event set. The Phoenix Heart, Magic: The Gathering (2014) Richard Garfield Event Special Promo has been graded CGC 9, the highest graded example in the CGC Trading Cards Population Report. It has sub-grades of 9 for Centering, 9 for Surface, 8.5 for Corners and 9 for Edges.


Click images to enlarge.

Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, is a mathematician, inventor and game designer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As the creator of the influential card game, he has conceived and published several cards with each commemorating an event in his life. Some of these include cards such as Erhnam Djinn – Arabian Nights for his brother-in-law and Phelddagrif – Alliances, an anagram of his name and Ph.D.

In 2015, Garfield proposed to and married his second wife, Koni Kim. To celebrate the occasion, MTG artist Drew Tucker created original artwork featuring both Garfield and Kim as warriors with a brightly colored phoenix in the background. This art was used to create a special Magic card that was inserted into Garfield and Kim’s wedding invitations. The card also featured a poem from the Persian poet Rumi and instructions saying, “Koni and Richard continue the game and play all games as partners forever.”

Because this promotional card was only privately released, it is unknown how many copies exist. Their rarity and value to collectors cannot be overstated. CGC Trading Cards is proud to have certified one of these valuable relics.


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