There have been two Magic cards even whose characters are real people affiliated with Wizards of the Coast. This is one of them.
Previously, Magic Untapped has told you about the rare celebration planeswalker card Deb Thomas, celebrating the retirement of the CFO of Hasbro. That was in 2022. And while it was the first planeswalker of a real person, it wasn't the first card based on a real person.
That honor goes to Luc Mertens.
But lets backtrack.
For years, the sole maker of Magic: The Gathering cards was the Belgian company Carta Mundi. While today there are many printers worldwide of cards, Carta Mundi is still the main one.
For a long time, the main liaison between the two companies was one Luc Mertens. He was the guy who essentially saw to it that cards were going to be printed.
So, in 2013, he announced that he was going to retire. As Magic at this point had a history of giving out special cards for events, they thought that giving him a special one would help cap off his career as a thanks. In total, he was given 15-20 copies of a special card that, well, was himself:
Like Deb Thomas, it was filled with in-jokes. However, unlike Deb Thomas, a real photo of him was used, making it one of the few Magic cards out there to be completely official artwork. Even Deb Thomas got that honor.
As for playability, not only the card is rare with the very few copies being out there, but it's also not an actual card for use. In short, it's not legal in any format whatsoever.
Still, there have only been a handful of celebration cards ever made, with even fewer still of real people. And that makes it one of the few cards probably best being saved away then played freely. Luc has gone through enough already.
