Magic: The Gathering
It's from 1993, before you were born.
- Maker
- Wizards of the Coast
- Type
- Trading card game
- Debuted
- 1993
- Note
- Invented the entire collectible-card-game genre
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About
As of 2026, it's 33 years old.
Magic: The Gathering, created by mathematician Richard Garfield and released in 1993, didn't just become a hit — it invented an entire genre. The idea of buying randomized packs of cards to build your own custom deck of spells and creatures was brand new, and it spawned every collectible card game that followed, from Pokémon to Hearthstone.
It became a global phenomenon with a professional tournament circuit, a secondary market where rare cards (the infamous Black Lotus) sell for tens of thousands of dollars, and a famously deep strategic well. It's chess with dragons, an economy, and a 30-year backlog of cards.
Deep, collectible, and genre-defining, Magic: The Gathering is the card game that created the whole concept of collectible card games — and never stopped being the gold standard.
