Faker's Galio is a Black Label: Beckett 10 Pristine, Riftbound's first Pop 1

by Riccardo Emanuele Eustor·Riftbound Zone

A copy of Faker's Galio, Indefatigable, the serialized gold-signature card from the T1 2025 Worlds Champion Signature Edition, has come back from Beckett with the highest grade there is: 10 Pristine, with a 10 in all four subgrades. It is number 0603 of 2025 in English, and according to the population report it is the only one in the world at that grade: a Pop 1. The image above is the poster Hobby Beast, who handled the submission, used to announce the result. It is the first time a Riftbound card has reached this level, and it is worth understanding what that actually means.

The cardOne of 2,025, with Faker's signature stamped in gold

The Signature Edition is the $360 box Riot distributed in August by drawing, with 10,125 copies per language in English, Chinese and Korean. Inside are the five cards chosen by the T1 players (Ambessa for Doran, Galio for Faker, Miss Fortune for Gumayusi, Seraphine for Keria and Xin Zhao for Oner), and only one of the five is serialized 1 to 2025 and carries the player's gold-stamped signature. Which one you get is random, a one-in-five chance per player: so there are 2,025 signed, numbered Galios in English, and 6,075 across the three languages. We covered the product in our piece on the Worlds Champion Collection and the mess of the drawing and the bots.

The card itself is a three-cost Champion Unit that deals no combat damage, with Deflect and Tank: a wall, like the Galio of League of Legends. The flavour text, readable under the signature on the graded copy, says it all: "I have watched the rise and fall of many teams. The player who stood at the end was always me." Faker picked it himself, and nobody needs to explain why.

The gradeWhat 10 Pristine means, and what Pop 1 means

Beckett does not give a single grade: it gives four subgrades, for centering, corners, edges and surface, and the final grade sums them up. A 10 Pristine with all four subgrades at 10 is the absolute top of the scale, what collectors call a Black Label after the colour of the label, and Beckett awards it to a tiny fraction of the cards it receives. The label on this copy reads it all in one line: "2026 Riftbound Promos, #003 Galio - Indefatigable, Gold Signature", centering 10, corners 10, edges 10, surface 10.

Pop 1 is a population report figure: the public register in which each grader counts how many copies of each card it has graded, grade by grade. Pop 1 means that, in that register, there is only one Faker Galio at 10 Pristine. It is true today, but by nature provisional: there are 2,025 signed copies in English alone, the product only reached homes on 2 September, and many owners have yet to decide whether to send theirs in. With cards printed this well, more 10 Pristines will come. The value of this copy lies in being the first, and in the serial number it carries.

The marketWhat something nobody has sold yet is worth

There is no sale price for this copy, and it is not for sale. What we do know is the context: serialized Faker Galios, ungraded, sit on eBay with very high asking prices, such as the €9,000 asked at the end of August for number 248; on the very day the confirmation emails went out, an English box still to be shipped was resold for $8,000, twenty-two times retail. Those are asks, not completed sales, and should be read as such. A Black Label slab with Faker's signature and a Pop 1 is, for now, an object with no comparables: whoever holds it has a showpiece, not a price.

Two things matter more than the grade over time. The first is the serial number: collectors pay more for low numbers, for 2025, for 0001 and for "meaningful" numbers. 0603 is none of those, and its whole case rests on the grade. The second is the registry: the community projects tracking the serialized cards, such as the SunEater Games tracker and the T1 Serial Registry, let you know where copies ended up and with what history. For a one-of-a-kind card, the history is half the value.

In practiceWhat to do if you have one at home

If you were drawn and have opened the box, there is one rule: do not touch it. The Signature Edition foil marks with nothing, and a 10 surface is lost with a single fingerprint. Sleeve and toploader straight away, out of the light. Whether to grade it depends on what you want to do with it: if you plan to sell, a Beckett or PSA grade makes it readable for a buyer on the other side of the world; if you plan to keep it, the slab is mostly protection. The card's prices, with eBay sales of graded copies as they come in, are on the price page of the serialized Galio.

Source: poster released by Hobby Beast, who handled the submission, showing the copy's Beckett label. Product mechanics from the Riot Games Store. Logged copies and eBay asks from the SunEater Games tracker and the T1 Serial Registry. Images: Hobby Beast (poster), CardTrader (card).