Figure skater Amber Glenn made headlines during the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Part of the reason is that she won a gold medal and that she’s made it known that she’s a big fan of Hasbro’s popular tabletop card game Magic: The Gathering.
Team USA members were seen opening packs of Magic cards multiple times during television coverage of games, and spoke about their passion for the hobby during interviews.
“To be honest, it wasn’t even a promotion,” Glenn told Variety. “I was like, this is what I’m doing for fun and I’m going to be a nerd on international television.”
After the Olympics, Glenn’s agent contacted Magic: The Gathering developer Wizards of the Coast. “And it’s been great ever since,” Glenn said in an interview after attending a Wizards event in Seattle announcing a new card collection in support of the Global Fund for Women.
“Magic has a third space, because to me it’s like a home and a rink,” Glenn says. “I have friends at the rink, and it’s not like a normal job, but it’s work. So going to the local game store where people are just having fun and socializing and enjoying this hobby, whether it’s Magic or board games or D&D or whatever, I finally had a third space. Something other than my daily workouts, that was very refreshing for me.”
Glenn, who has been a player since 2022, says he has amassed a sizeable card collection in just a few years.
“It was a slippery slope. I got really into it,” Glenn says. “This is embarrassing. I probably have well over 100,000 cards. Now some of them are worth less than a penny. There’s nothing crazy about them. But I’m very interested in it.”
Glenn isn’t the first star to go public with his love for Magic: The Gathering, with the most famous example being Post Malone, who bought the one-of-a-kind “One Ring” card from Magic’s The Lord of the Rings in 2023 for $2 million. He is also working directly with Wizards on the Post Malone-inspired “Secret Hideout” drop, a limited release collection of a small number of themed cards.
If Glenn were to go down the same path with her partnership with Wizards, what would she want to include in her “secret lair”?
“Oh my god, that’s a great question,” Glenn says. “The memo literally says, ‘Come up with something,’ because there are so many directions you can go, you can go this way, you can go this way, you can go this way. I have a dog named Ukima. But I love playing Yoshimaru. Her name comes from Ukima the Creeping Shadow, but I think of her more as a shadow-like being. But that would be really cool. ”
“Of course, there are some people who want to play Jeskai (a set consisting only of red, white, and blue mana cards). They’re like, ‘Red, white, blue! America! America!'” I’m like, “Okay, sure,” but usually I don’t play Jeskai, I play each of them. Or do you have something like gold tokens? Hahaha, do you understand? I love a good treasure token. Is it something like an Ancient Copper Dragon? Is it an exaggeration to call it a reprint? When it comes to logistics, we have to think a lot about what we can and cannot do. ”
She also considers Ice Dancer (a “human athlete” creature type), an unofficial joke-style card introduced during the MagicCon event.
“After Magic-Con, someone showed up late to one of the shows. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it because I was doing a Stars on Ice show, otherwise I would have gotten there right away,” Glenn says. “Two days later, someone probably went to our show directly from the concert and showed up with one of these and some collector packs for me. They were very kind, very nice. Of course, I signed the stuff and returned it. And it was really cool to see it.”
Glenn said that one of her first decks was centered around Yorn, God of Winter, and that the “Snow Synergy” element could fit well into her themed deck. “But I don’t want it to be too skate-based because I want to include strong queer women as well.”
In that regard, Glenn is taking inspiration from the “Secret Lair” drop “They Magic Is Limitless” that he had in store for his celebration with the Wizards last week. Created primarily as a tribute to women in the magic community, 50% of the product price of this set will be donated to the World Fund for Women.
“Sol Ring is obviously beautiful, but you can’t top it,” says Glenn, citing the collection’s unique artistic interpretations of classic cards. “They paid homage to the original Sol Ring by putting it on fire, but instead they turned it into something this beautiful. They wanted it to have a feminine delicacy, but also a power. It’s really amazing. I definitely give full credit to the art director here.”
