RUMOR CONFIRMED: The Hobbit Collector Boosters to Have Chance for 001/001 Martin Freeman
MATAMATA, New Zealand — While Wizards of the Coast continues to ramp up the hype train for Secrets of Strixhaven, a curious rumor has begun floating around about another upcoming set. During a tour of the Hobbiton set used in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies, a bewildered Reddit user captured video of a visibly disheveled Andy Serkis emerging from a hobbit hole. He then proceeded to look directly into their camera and declared “they’re putting Martin Freeman into one of them Magic card game Collector Boosters! You’d better find him before I do,” before scampering into some nearby bushes in a manner evocative of beloved LotR antagonist/freak Gollum. The Reddit user’s post on r/magicTCG, titled “The fuck???,” has garnered over 5000 upvotes at time of publication.
Commander’s Herald reached out to a contact at Wizards of the Coast for comment on Serkis’ statement, which led us to a surprising conference call via Zoom. “I asked ChatGPT, it said this is legal,” stated Hasbro CEO/perennial lawsuit defendant Chris Cocks in response to our inquiry. “Hey Chris, uh, maybe let me handle this one,” said Blake Rasmussen, Senior Communications Manager for Magic at WotC. “So, normally we don’t comment on rumors, but I asked Chris about doing so this one time, and he… gave his blessing for us to do so.” “I did this,” Cocks then said, as he proceeded to cup his hand and move it up and down rapidly, causing Rasmussen to shake his head. “… ANYWAY, yes, I can confirm that we will be serializing Martin Freeman at 001/001 and placing him in a single The Hobbit Collector Booster, akin to what we did with the serialized 001/001 The One Ring card in Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth. We’re very excited that he approached us with this idea for such a one-of-a-kind promotion, and look forward to someone finding him in their Collector Booster, hopefully sooner than later.” Rasmussen then thanked us for the conversation and ended the call, as Cocks made fart noises with his mouth and armpit.
We then began to seek out Martin Freeman himself for comment. After both a tense email exchange and a shirtless Waffle House parking lot brawl with his agent, we agreed to meet with Freeman at the facility printing 2026’s third-most anticipated Universes Beyond release to paper. Freeman greeted us in a green morph suit. “I imagine that I’ll be spending quite a bit of time living in this booster pack, so I wanted to ensure that I’d be doing so in something comfortable. I realized that would be the case at the last minute, though, so I settled for this,” gesturing to his disconcertingly tight choice of clothing. When asked why he approached Wizards of the Coast with this bewildering idea for a promotion, Freeman said, “I was kind of bored and looking for a challenge to take on arbitrarily. When I learned from my children that Magic was going to do a Hobbit set during an outing to the dump, I said out loud, ‘That’s literally me, I’m literally Bilbo fuckin’ Baggins IRL!’ I wanted to get involved, and when I later learned about that whole One Ring thing, the inspiration to do this struck me like Viggo Mortensen striking that helmet with his foot. My agent tried to shirtlessly fight me at Waffle House about it, but I eventually won him over, and here we are.”
As we spoke with Freeman, a visibly disheveled employee of the printing facility emerged from a nearby service tunnel to slap a large 001/001 serialization label onto Freeman’s chest, causing him to wince. Shortly thereafter, Gavin Verhey, Senior Game and Product Designer for Magic, arrived to oversee Freeman’s insertion into the booster pack and ensure his proper collation. “This is a big day for Magic. I’m so excited for someone to open that Collector Booster and ponder why there’s an adult man in there,” he commented. When asked if he had any final statements he wanted to share before his entombing, Freeman said, “Yeah, we’re about to do some dumb shit that’s never been attempted before. It’ll be great. Buy Magic’s The Hobbit and justify this, please.”
The medium we paid to ask J.R.R. Tolkien’s ghost for comment did not respond in time for publication.
