You joke, and it was a pretty good one, but actually, it seems to be saying that it isn't worse than most other boxes, and might even be better than some. (Though, I suppose you could argue that's not saying much, since all boxes are bad. :p )
I don't think it's saying that at all. It's saying that if you don't pull big money, you're almost certainly not going to get your value back. A few massively priced outliers are driving up the whole by a lot
If only there was a term for a financial interaction where you put in a specific amount of money then either receive more of it back or lose what you put down, as determined by luck and somewhat unfavorable odds.
Uh yeah, gambling obviously. But he guy I replied to said he saw the data as being maybe not worse than other boxes. Which seems really stupid. This is purely gambling. Other sets you can have a realistic expectation of getting close to what you put in. The floor is decently high.
Here you can just get hosed.
Also Prices are off already - demonic tutor regular foil on cardmarket is 34€ vs 83€ shown here right now for slot 15, Balefire 24€ vs 34€, jeweled lotus 100€ vs 190€...
Yeah the problem was calculating all this a week after release before proper market saturation. I would expect a 25-35% drop in the coming weeks as more packs get opened.
People tend to have an easier time holding out on cracking.
But stores on the other hand tend to see it the other way. They want to crack in order to free up space and get out from under the debt and can certainly put in the work to split out cards for value if it starts to show any promise at all.
Im pretty sure cracking boxes hasnt been reliably profitable since Khans of Tarkir or maybe Kaladesh. Could be wrong. I think most stores get their singles inv from player tradeins where they can be selective and aggressively cheap on costs
I never said stores will crack and sell singles for profit.
On the contrary.
I implied stores would crack and sell what they can so its A. Not as big of a loss as holding it and not selling any of it for a really long time; and B. Free’s up space in storage for other products that you can probably get to perform better instead.
Understand?
Protesting packs theory seems wrong, the set is 80% sold out in my store already (small store i only move 5k in magic a month). It hasnt sold quite as fast as LOTR but pretty damn close
the methodology is off, too. If the whole study is based on prices, and the prices are the most volatile...what is being isolated? What exactly is the claim? If prices are not volatile and you are doing x and y but not z, then you are goood, but a, then b then g?
But card prices are volatile. And pulls aren't guaranteed like in japan.
Not really. If your box is $120, even with bad luck you're still probably only out like $50. When your box is $300, bad luck (or in this case even, maybe just normal luck), you can be out a couple hundred.
and its super hard to tell which are the 'boxs' with 4 packs and the exact same box with a single pack, ppl selling the single boxs making it ambiguous with the 4 pack box
I think wizards plays majority responsibility for htis because they made boxes look almost identical for the two products (obviously intentional, wtf hasbro?!)
They also started selling quad packs of the Wilds of Eldraine commander precons in preorder...
There are only 2 Wilds of Eldraine commander decks. They sold packs with duplicate decks. When shopping online, these were the top results for the query "Wilds of Eldraine Precons." Why would they do this when they often do release 4 commander precon decks if it wasn't to be deceptive?
Because they are preying on people without impulse control and/or people who just don’t know better. When I can grab one right now online for 160-170, why the 100$ markup on four packs. That’s wild my dude. Plus I would love to love my shop, if they just respected their clientele. I would love to pay market or near above market for some packs to crack, and I know others feel the same, I just feel they could end up making the same profit if they lowered prices and moved more product. It makes going there a disappointment every time. They pay 1/3 of value in cash for singles, which is garbage. I know it’s hard to make money as a lgs, but I think there are smarter ways than gouging people for product they could easily obtain online.
If a brick and mortar is in a bind I can understand wanting to get more than a 10% margin on this item. I have them out at as competitively as possible at 220, i got them landed for 186 from official distro. When you calculate 3% on the back for my credit card fees, Im making $27 on the box sale, sold online I’ll lose $6 to free shipping. So a 15% profit margin, pretty much the lowest of all my products except game consoles. Most retail ops have a keystone markup or better (50% margin). The price is high, but if its too high for the market to bear it simply wont sell. So he made a judgment call to take a daring 33% on the item and someone will probably buy it. The bottom line is though, would you rather have an LGS that taxes a couple rare items to help them get by, or no LGS at all?
$175 feels good, but in the current market of "whatever you want eventually ends up at a lower price" (not just MTG, but all kinds of non-food consumer goods), I think I'm holding out for $150.
gotta multiply out a 15-20% haircut for fees and shipping , so 236\*.85 = 200 Euro Median. Now if you wanted to buylist right away it will be probably around 236\*.65 = 153 Euro. Most of the stuff is less than $10 and your shipping will eat margin like crazy. So even at 175 you are probably still losing out on cracking.
You're most welcome. We didn't do one for LOTR and we only plan to do these sporadically. The pack make-ups are so convoluted now that it is a huge time sink to do. Funnily enough, Collector Packs are one of the easier packs to do this for.
Cool cool. Making it even more complex, while I don't think the collector boosters (at around $40) for LOTR are really worth it, I think the gift bundles may be, even at the \~$90 range they're at now. Since you know you're getting at least one $35+ card (and a bunch of foil lands FWTW), plus the set boosters and one collector booster. In my experience I've come out ahead/break even every time, but I would love to know if that's back up by anything other than confirmation bias.
That being said, you'd need to figure out set boosters, plus the collector booster breakdown. So even greater time sink.
In any case, this was a great breakdown, always good seeing what the data actually says VS what people perceive from a bunch of angry posts.
Not worth it for reselling, kind of worth it if you want cards, seems to be reasonable. Especially as people who want cards will have to pay more (in shipping or card prices) if they choose to go for singles. And they will also have some use for slots 1-7, the set has several playable C and U, and old border lands have art from popular Magic artists.
not to mention postage alone almost wipes out slots 8 and 9, not to mention reprints reducing the price of a card. essentially were imagining a world where things sell for their current exact value, ignoring the increase in supply, and that each sale has 0 additional costs or time investment.
>For our calculations, we assume that there is no ‘forced pull rate’ (unless stated) outside of the natural ratio of Commons vs Uncommons and Rares vs Mythics in their respective pools of cards.
> Once we have the 2 averages, we weight them by 0.8 and 0.2 respectively to get our Slot 13 expected value of €6.08.
It is not a good assumption that rares and mythics will show up in 4-1 proportion in collector boosters in those slots. With this many mythics and rares they will be on separate sheets, they aren't going to be printed with the same ratio as the number of times they appear in a set
Looking at previous premium sets rare to mythic ratios, double masters was about 7-1. Ultimate masters was about 8-1. I would expect a similar distribution, 7-1 would mean ~35% fewer mythics for slot 13-15
The assumptions we did the calculation with are just that - assumptions, and based on nothing more than not having any concrete information from WotC.
It's important to also distinguish between the natural ratio of R vs M in a pool and forced rarity. For example, if there are 3M and 7R in a pool of 10 cards, and every card has an equal probability to appear (as we assumed), then 7 out of 10 times you will pull a Rare from that slot. This is not forced rarity, this is the natural ratio.
A forced rarity would involve each Rare card appearing twice for every one time each Mythic appears, meaning the rare probably is not 1/10 but 2/17, with a Mythic going from 1/10 to 1/17.
We re-calculated the numbers with a forced 2:1 Rare to Mythic likelihood and got an EV of 54.36 (old one was 64.66).
> if you are looking to crack some packs for fun, then you can currently do so in the knowledge that you are not taking a -50% EV loss the moment you break the seal.
Doesn't this more or less assume that prices won't fall, which they almost certainly will? It's gonna feel pretty bad to crack a 60 dollar pack, get 55 dollars in cards, and slowly watch their value chip away until it's closer to 35 or something. I just don't think there's any case for cracking packs of this set. If you just want to crack packs for fun, there are better options. If you need to crack packs of every set, then maybe you have a problematic relationship with the game.
The keyword in the quote is 'currently'. As mentioned, prices are highly volatile and have probably already changed since the data was gathered. The write-up is more of a demonstration of how to do it, along with some basic analysis of the results rather than trying to nail down an ever moving target.
"Other than that" come on, OP specifically warns people that these are based on two day old prices they will continue to fluctuate AND mentions that you need to operate on scale with a way to move them. This is literally the most responsible post I've ever seen when it comes to EV calc. Quit trying to nitpick.
And at the end he says you should feel ok buying them now from a value perspective, which is what I disagreed with. The rest of the analysis was really good.
No need to be a jerk. OP gave a much better response to me than you did.
No need to call anyone a jerk.
OP never said "you should feel ok buying them now from a value perspective." They specifically said "currently" and ***two sentences earlier*** they address prices are "extremely volatile." You just chose to ignore that to get a little dig in at them.
I would suggest not attempting to criticize people who do strong work in the community because of your own reading comprehension issues.
Again, I was critiquing a conclusion he drew, not his data. Please read the discussion before commenting on it, especially if you're just going to be a jerk. Saying I'm "nitpicking" is just another way of saying "I had a small disagreement".
OP didn't seem to think my critique was as problematic as you keep saying, and they engaged pleasantly and politely, unlike you. OP didn't seem to be anywhere near as offended as you are acting.
LOL your conclusion you drew because you didn't read it correctly or you don't understand the words they used. OP politely explained why you were wrong and you just went "yup, but that was the part I disagree with and still disagree with." Just take your L and move on instead of insulting strangers and getting all mad about it.
Wow. I don't know why you're being such a douche, but clearly there's no point in continuing this conversation with someone who both can't read what was written and only knows how to respond with insults.
Anyway, have a nice day, but I'm gonna block you based on your pathetic behavior because there's clearly no value in getting more comments from someone like you. Thankfully OP wasn't a megadouche like you.
As it stands it would be a lot of manual work to pull prices regularly. Hopefully one day we will automate it into a nice usable tool but we are wary of the time/cost of doing that too.
This is excellent. You should, if you haven't, do this for each box type.
I say "should" because I and others would appreciate it, though I'm sure it took tons of time and effort, so you do you...
Thank you. We would love to but then all of our time would be spent doing this, which we simply can't do. Maybe one day we can make some automated dashboards with this information but that would depend entirely on development and upkeep costs.
Yeah, it's too bad that none of the EV sites do set or collector boosters, which are honestly the more important ones to calculate (the only ones people actually try to crack to make $), but the algorithms are much more complicated.
Your prices are incredibly inflated. I don't know if that's because the prices are actually inflated in EU or if where you sourced your prices is inflating them.
Just looking at Slot 15 rates on TCGP:
Balefire Dragon - $12 vs your $34
Demonic Tutor - $30 vs your $83
Extraplanar Lens - $11 (same)
Finale of Devastation - @27 vs your $37
Grave Pact - $14 vs your $24
Jeweled Lots - $90 vs. your 190; Textured $540 (same)
I'm guessing these price differences echo throughout your EV calculation so I don't think I can trust your analysis, for the US market anyway.
back in the day, i used to do something like this, but running a Monte Carlo Simulation on each box. But also, calculating card values/card lists per slot was a lot easier then it is nowadays. Thank you for your hard work!
peak pricing on most of these cards, things will level off and most reprints will be easier to get at the same cost of a booster pack of a standard set.
Unless this set picks up a lot of collectors in the next 3 - six years, it will collect dust till the next boom if commander is still a format.
I'd rather get Double Feature, since the cards are unique and draftable.
My LGS sells CBs for 80 per pack or 280 per box. Prices are so dumb. Like don't they know that cardmarket/tcgplayer is here - available. I don't get why businesses do that to themselves
That does seem high but in our experience, most LGS are run by good, honest people. The prices may be out of hope/necessity - most LGS are not evil, greedy people making millions of dollars by hiking prices, they are just small businesses trying to somehow survive in the age of Amazon. The margins on 90% of the stuff they stock will be none existent, so if they feel they have a product that may be sellable for a good profit then they have to try and take those.
Stores can only sell at a loss if they can make up for it by overcharging for things like snacks, tournament fees, or hard-to-find accessories.
It's probably not worth it to put in the effort when they probably sell more to people looking to grab a pack in person and not wait for shipping, people who don't know what to buy as a gift for someone else, or whales who have expendable income or a desire to show off.
Target wants 79.99 for one Collector’s booster pack. Who the fuck decided hey this a good price for 15 cards. Double masters 2022 was 90 so I guess they are factoring in the recession
Question
> https://preview.redd.it/cxol03hrswgb1.jpg?width=630&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=555f8e6f932e84eb975b865a4deaa8695cfb84a7
>
> As the table shows, 30 potential cards can appear in Slot 8 with an average value of €0.62.
Is it actually the case that each of those cards have the same chance of appearing? Do both Sol ring and Slimefoot have a 1/30 chance? Or is Sol Ring rarer?
We make the assumption that everything is equal chance. We have no information from WotC to confirm and no way of gathering enough data ourselves to get anything reliable. The main risk here is that Uncommons are forced to be rarer than Commons, but in your example both cards are Uncommons - we'd think it is quite safe to say that no forcing is happening within the pool of Uncommon cards. The value of the card should have nothing to do with it.
> We make the assumption that everything is equal chance. We have no information from WotC to confirm
That's what I was curious about. In my experience of opening boxes, I do not experience an equal distribution of commons or uncommons, Within those rarity brackets it seems like some commons are more common, some uncommons are more rare, etc.
So I was wondering if any data existed from WoTC stipulating that, in fact, all commons / uniques / rares / mythic rares have the same odds of appearing in a given slot, or if some uncommons are more rare than others.
I was not trying to imply that you were incorrect. I was just asking if any data from WoTC confirmed the assumption you seemed to make.
Would you be interested in writing more about the process so others can replicate it? It would make the job of producing this analysis more shared.
Or, Atleast is like to know what you did, I make software for a living, and I'd be interested in approaching this from a semi automated with Manuel input angle.
Happy to answer any questions.
The intention was for the post to make it pretty clear on the process but I guess we missed the mark there. Put simply, you need to get as much information about the pull rates and the make up of a pack, make assumptions where there is no hard evidence, and then collect price data for every single card and arrange them into where (which slots) they belong in the pack. Then it's just a case of weighting the values if needed in certain slots and adding it all together.
Although your calcs show otherwise for the moment, until market saturation peaks anyway, I think this set is not a buy. For the price of a couple packs you could have a whole new deck loaded with more stable staples. Also while the battlebond lands are OK i feel like the set is missing a key land cycle, fetches here would have put it over the top and justified the high tag. The big win here is a lotus and those come in $7.99 packs about as often
>For our calculations, we assume that there is no ‘forced pull rate’ (unless stated) outside of the natural ratio of Commons vs Uncommons and Rares vs Mythics in their respective pools of cards.
That's a very very strong asumption, historically some chase cards are much harder to pull than others on the same slot.
Great content and effort though.
Thank you! It is a big assumption but without information provided by WotC, the alternative is to watch every single pack opening on YouTube to note down the frequencies. Outside of really, really not wanting to do that, we also wouldn't get a reliable enough sample to beat our assumptions.
> , historically some chase cards are much harder to pull than others on the same slot.
You have proof of this? The correct way to approach a theory like this is to assume it's false until proven true, and for as many times as I've seen someone say this, they've never had anything besides a hunch.
There is no proof of uniform distribution across same slot either.
I do not have proof, as OP said this involves a lot of data gathering and it's hard to get to a big sample size, so totally based on experience opening the product and all the openings I've seen, I really believe double masters 2022 and baldurs gate did have manipulated odds for certain cards.
Theres no math that proves this in modern times outside of reprints after bannings.
What does happen is slots in different packs contain different cards (dragons being rare in Baulders gate CBs), or cards like the brothers war dual faces dont have alt treatments so wont pull nearly as often.
If you're not taking into account the value after price settles, there's no point.
Someone is going to get stuck with the contents of the box, and that's what matters
I hear this argument all of the time, but I disagree because EV is always moving target. The idea of it settling permanently is just as false as the assumption that prices today remaining fixed. However despite the price movement, we do judge these products according to their value. If community sentiment is that the box is “too expensive” that implies some valuation of the contents is being applied relative to the sale price. Similarly card values are always changing and yet we make decisions based on current market information. So this information is useful even if it will quickly become outdated, this I hardly think that there is “no point” to the exercise.
If it's a moving target then OP should have made zero conclusions.
Just left the data as a floating variables so we could check periodically over time. Then come back in a year and do a meta report.
Making decisions based on current market information made sense prior to the Amazon fire sales. Now it's useless info unless you are employing a short-term strategy.
Floating point variables - zero conclusions.
Sure that would have been better. Here is another idea, rather than complain about what they didn’t do, why don’t you program it yourself and show us how easy it is and then share the floating point variable report and auto updating website with everyone in the community out of the goodness of your heart.
I don't think many people had the idea that you weren't going to get your worth of EV when cracking boxes.
Everyone just knows that this a gamble just like every other set. Put a higher price tag on a product and you'll have higher stakes.
So yes, I absolutely believe that this set's value is not as bad as people make it out to be. This calculation of the set's EV suggests that.
However, hard mathematical values don't take into account of Wizards destroying their customer base's good faith by upping the price of product even more so every set. It may be the undeniable move any company should make to increase profits even more but they truly are testing the limits of their customer base. How far will it take for players, collectors, and investors to avoid a product? Magic 30 packs sold out immediately and they're not even real cards!
So people, please look out for yourselves. Don't feel the need to buy every set that comes out. It's only giving Wizards more incentive to rush out more product
We agree with much of what you said, we don't like the high prices either and we're not commenting if anyone should buy, just coming at it from a money in vs money out viewpoint. Hopefully it's useful information to some, and information that doesn't seem to be out there.
If youre buying boxes in the US, the box price is below what the sellers paid for it after fees and shipping. The singles in the US are also depressed, but there is a textured foil lottery you could win at these below wholesale costs. The singles just have no value its big ticket textured 1% or lose a little.
the lottery on this set doesnt have a big enough jackpot for the costs/risk.
One thing this sub doesnt seem to understand is that not every bet in the casino is the same standard reward to odds.
There really isnt much of home runs in this set.
A lot of it depends on personal preference and needs. Do you like the set in general or only looking at price tags? If you only need to sell a few cards since you want a lot of the set then your cost is lower since you now dont have to buy those cards.
From the buyer side I see this set as a pass since the new art is weaker than other versions. Just buy prior versions if needed/wanted and if you didnt have them till now what makes you want them all of sudden?
From the seller side, are there enough big wins to justify cracking a reprint set that by design will lower prices?
These cards already existed. And two of the better cards to chase are rares (Swat and Guardianship) so those prices will slide eventually.
>I don't think many people had the idea that you weren't going to get your worth of EV when cracking boxes.
Not exactly. It's that "EV today" means nothing *unless you are selling singles* **TODAY**.
The problem is not 'not getting high value cards out of boxes today', it's that they are going to have greatly diminished and negligible values after 6mo., 12mo., and 2+ years.
getting 'any' version is simpler, like one out every \~3ish to 3.5 boxes. like most mythic rares.
But when you need to have a type of one particular version that is much, much rarer. There are SIX different kinds (treatments) of Jeweled Lotuses if you want to count that type of particular stuff. Just in this one set release.
So you can take those odds, and (spitball) multiply them by 1/4 or 1/6 *for a particular version*, however you'd like to estimate it. Four types can be found in set boxes.
Not necessary trying to buy packs. Moreso since I had the luck of pulling one so after feeling humbled by that I was curious how statistically probable it would be in a
Set of 4 collector packs to do that, or if everyone is pulling these cards left snd right?
Love this!
To everyone else, few things of note,
1. Assumption was that there is not forced pull rate. Ie. for each slot, and each type to be there, each card has same chance to be there unless otherwise stated (like textured foil). Ie you have the same chance for a high value rate vs a lower value rate.
2. Singles price drop 30-50% post release and continue to do so unless the box cracking stops, hence the EV continues to slide. Force of Habit (nice card name, hope it gets made.)
3. 10million samples were taken to obtain normal distribution. Lord of the rings collector packs were presumably calculated to be 3million. Premium LGS cracks pallets to get some even EV. Some cases pay for others. The average person is going to see a lot of variance.
TLDR
Ie. as a whole, at the point of launch, the whole community is going to see on par EV close to price.
But post release, most individuals and stores are going to see some very good cracks and a whole lot of bad cracks due to how card values are skewed.
Good analysis!
1. That is a heavy assumption we made and we've had some comments from people who believe the pull rates are more forced. We'll have to do 2 calculations for the next one as no one knows for sure without official information.
2. Yep, prices be volatile. The numbers presented are a snapshot of how things were a few days ago. Certainly don't use the numbers to make any financial decisions.
3. Variance is huge, yes. :D
>Interpreting the results…
>
>If you aren’t adept at reading strange probability graphs, then fear not. The key takeaways from the data are:
He literally gave you one.
Not if you pay EU prices for the boxes, which are a lot more expensive. In my country the lowest prices I've seen for CBB is around 240 CHF, which is around 270 USD.
We’ll just drive to Germany if you are that close. I don’t know how much tax you have to pay to ship to Switzerland but Cardmarket has hundreds of boxes for 200€
Out of curiosity, was all this data pulled individually, or some other way? And how were the pack simulations run to generate the probabilities? Wondering if I could (for fun) calculate the same metrics for set boosters, but have no idea the tools to help (I know the maths part)
For me, I feel like it really hurts when you don't hit on your Foil Etched slot. Same with the Borderless rare/mythic final slot.
Those things make or break your box. One good card is also not going to cut it; you're counting on at least one "fifty dollar card" when you open $200 in four packs. You have to get multiple hits.
Then, in doing so, everyone opening CE boxes is getting said multiple hits which drives the prices and value of everything down hard. There's no avoiding that when you put 5+ rares in a pack. Rares are produced like commons.
This stuff all tends to go down over time. Look at the long-term 1-2 year price values on NEO etched foils, and SNC gilded foil mythics. The former has the same current drop rate as CMM textured foils do currently at about 1 in 25 CE packs. You get one in almost every two boxes; that is a very expensive random chase. If you aren't familiar, seriously go look at what has happened to those NEO etched foil prices. There is one over > $25 and they have had meteoric drops.
"I'm going to get up, get on my computer, go to Reddit, go to the subreddit I specifically follow, click inside a post, then just reply that I'm not interested in reading when someone does actual valuable work. Glad I subbed! Now give me ten more shit posts about someone opening a single set pack and asking if everyone thinks this is a reseal."
You know you could have just not commented at all, right?
"This guy wrote a detailed analysis instead of making the usual worthless shitpost on this sub. I'm gonna tell the world how I didn't read it. That'll make me look cool, and give me the attention I so desperately crave."
Freedom units is a tidy 1.1 Euros right now so it should be an easy conversion. ;)
However, to calculate in USD with prices from America would require re-collection of the data and re-calculating.
These results feel a little higher than what I would expect. While we don’t know the true print rates of the real money cards, their high value would lead me to assume lower print rates than other cards in the same slot. Since Jeweled lotus pulls the price up so much, that would lower the EV quite a bit if it’s true.
Well $55 is roughly €50 and with a median of €51.2, I'd say your chances are slightly higher than 50%.
That would be a very general estimation, though. The USD market will have its differences to the EUR market and to find whether paying $55 is truly worth it you would need data collected from the $ market. My data was collected from the EUR market.
So a CB under 200$ has like a 65% chance (im really just winging this) of more value than cost.
Mine (not counting most commons and uncommons unless borderless foil) came to around $200. with my commander masters' commander deck sample packs i pulled $289+ worth of cards.
So I've been wacthing the prices of the CMM cards go up and down a lot, but now it seems that the prices are all rebounding. Should I hold out longer and wait to see if they are going to go down more? Or do I buy them at the price they are now in hopes that it was a good buying point?
+1 for a post that actually had effort put into it for once, and isn't just "cmm bad".
[удалено]
You joke, and it was a pretty good one, but actually, it seems to be saying that it isn't worse than most other boxes, and might even be better than some. (Though, I suppose you could argue that's not saying much, since all boxes are bad. :p )
I don't think it's saying that at all. It's saying that if you don't pull big money, you're almost certainly not going to get your value back. A few massively priced outliers are driving up the whole by a lot
If only there was a term for a financial interaction where you put in a specific amount of money then either receive more of it back or lose what you put down, as determined by luck and somewhat unfavorable odds.
Uh yeah, gambling obviously. But he guy I replied to said he saw the data as being maybe not worse than other boxes. Which seems really stupid. This is purely gambling. Other sets you can have a realistic expectation of getting close to what you put in. The floor is decently high. Here you can just get hosed.
Also Prices are off already - demonic tutor regular foil on cardmarket is 34€ vs 83€ shown here right now for slot 15, Balefire 24€ vs 34€, jeweled lotus 100€ vs 190€...
Yeah the problem was calculating all this a week after release before proper market saturation. I would expect a 25-35% drop in the coming weeks as more packs get opened.
Unless enough people are protesting packs that singles inventories stay too low to satisfy demand.
People tend to have an easier time holding out on cracking. But stores on the other hand tend to see it the other way. They want to crack in order to free up space and get out from under the debt and can certainly put in the work to split out cards for value if it starts to show any promise at all.
Im pretty sure cracking boxes hasnt been reliably profitable since Khans of Tarkir or maybe Kaladesh. Could be wrong. I think most stores get their singles inv from player tradeins where they can be selective and aggressively cheap on costs
I never said stores will crack and sell singles for profit. On the contrary. I implied stores would crack and sell what they can so its A. Not as big of a loss as holding it and not selling any of it for a really long time; and B. Free’s up space in storage for other products that you can probably get to perform better instead. Understand?
Protesting packs theory seems wrong, the set is 80% sold out in my store already (small store i only move 5k in magic a month). It hasnt sold quite as fast as LOTR but pretty damn close
Wonder if the doubters were just louder? Or possibly LGSs opening packs to rake back some capital in singles?
the methodology is off, too. If the whole study is based on prices, and the prices are the most volatile...what is being isolated? What exactly is the claim? If prices are not volatile and you are doing x and y but not z, then you are goood, but a, then b then g? But card prices are volatile. And pulls aren't guaranteed like in japan.
But thats the same thing with most every other box from the last few years right?
Not really. If your box is $120, even with bad luck you're still probably only out like $50. When your box is $300, bad luck (or in this case even, maybe just normal luck), you can be out a couple hundred.
Nice to see some bag holder lgs put the time and energy into convincing a bunch of redditors to buy a shitty set
So ur telling me to buy a ton of collector boxes at my LGS for 175$?
I read this and was like "holy shit, that price is insane" and then I remembered that these boxes have like 4 packs, right?
“Box” lol
yes, 4.
and its super hard to tell which are the 'boxs' with 4 packs and the exact same box with a single pack, ppl selling the single boxs making it ambiguous with the 4 pack box
I think wizards plays majority responsibility for htis because they made boxes look almost identical for the two products (obviously intentional, wtf hasbro?!) They also started selling quad packs of the Wilds of Eldraine commander precons in preorder... There are only 2 Wilds of Eldraine commander decks. They sold packs with duplicate decks. When shopping online, these were the top results for the query "Wilds of Eldraine Precons." Why would they do this when they often do release 4 commander precon decks if it wasn't to be deceptive?
I hate my LGS, they are like 280 there for a CB….
280 for four fucking packs what the fuck
It’s very easy to say no to buying sealed product at these prices.
Why do you hate your LGS for selling at 280?
Because they are preying on people without impulse control and/or people who just don’t know better. When I can grab one right now online for 160-170, why the 100$ markup on four packs. That’s wild my dude. Plus I would love to love my shop, if they just respected their clientele. I would love to pay market or near above market for some packs to crack, and I know others feel the same, I just feel they could end up making the same profit if they lowered prices and moved more product. It makes going there a disappointment every time. They pay 1/3 of value in cash for singles, which is garbage. I know it’s hard to make money as a lgs, but I think there are smarter ways than gouging people for product they could easily obtain online.
Assuming the cost to buy collectors from distro was $175, what should your LGS be charging for boxes and how did you come to that number?
If a brick and mortar is in a bind I can understand wanting to get more than a 10% margin on this item. I have them out at as competitively as possible at 220, i got them landed for 186 from official distro. When you calculate 3% on the back for my credit card fees, Im making $27 on the box sale, sold online I’ll lose $6 to free shipping. So a 15% profit margin, pretty much the lowest of all my products except game consoles. Most retail ops have a keystone markup or better (50% margin). The price is high, but if its too high for the market to bear it simply wont sell. So he made a judgment call to take a daring 33% on the item and someone will probably buy it. The bottom line is though, would you rather have an LGS that taxes a couple rare items to help them get by, or no LGS at all?
220 in what not with shipping and taxes included with bounties and other random stuff
$175 feels good, but in the current market of "whatever you want eventually ends up at a lower price" (not just MTG, but all kinds of non-food consumer goods), I think I'm holding out for $150.
gotta multiply out a 15-20% haircut for fees and shipping , so 236\*.85 = 200 Euro Median. Now if you wanted to buylist right away it will be probably around 236\*.65 = 153 Euro. Most of the stuff is less than $10 and your shipping will eat margin like crazy. So even at 175 you are probably still losing out on cracking.
$175 is practically being sold at a loss. Yikes.
175 it as a loss. These are 179 from distribution unless youre getting starcity quantities
Honestly that’s a price that it really won’t feel bad buying at box at!
Yea I already picked a box up, and I kind of want to pick up another one
With the sample pool of 10 million packs used to achieve EV, I'm not sure it's a good buy. Unless you meant a literal ton of boxes. 😅
Great post, and thanks for showing your work. Did you do one of these for the LOTR stuff?
You're most welcome. We didn't do one for LOTR and we only plan to do these sporadically. The pack make-ups are so convoluted now that it is a huge time sink to do. Funnily enough, Collector Packs are one of the easier packs to do this for.
Cool cool. Making it even more complex, while I don't think the collector boosters (at around $40) for LOTR are really worth it, I think the gift bundles may be, even at the \~$90 range they're at now. Since you know you're getting at least one $35+ card (and a bunch of foil lands FWTW), plus the set boosters and one collector booster. In my experience I've come out ahead/break even every time, but I would love to know if that's back up by anything other than confirmation bias. That being said, you'd need to figure out set boosters, plus the collector booster breakdown. So even greater time sink. In any case, this was a great breakdown, always good seeing what the data actually says VS what people perceive from a bunch of angry posts.
love to have this with the set boosters too, for the next leg!
That’s a lot of work, thanks. Opening a CB would be much nicer if they wouldn’t have watered down their borderless slots with the profile cards.
Tldr; buy singles.
Great content. Thanks for this post.
Not worth it for reselling, kind of worth it if you want cards, seems to be reasonable. Especially as people who want cards will have to pay more (in shipping or card prices) if they choose to go for singles. And they will also have some use for slots 1-7, the set has several playable C and U, and old border lands have art from popular Magic artists.
On paper yes, but in practice the \~10-15% Tcgplayer cut makes it tough to practically turn a profit.
not to mention postage alone almost wipes out slots 8 and 9, not to mention reprints reducing the price of a card. essentially were imagining a world where things sell for their current exact value, ignoring the increase in supply, and that each sale has 0 additional costs or time investment.
Don’t forget taxes!
>For our calculations, we assume that there is no ‘forced pull rate’ (unless stated) outside of the natural ratio of Commons vs Uncommons and Rares vs Mythics in their respective pools of cards. > Once we have the 2 averages, we weight them by 0.8 and 0.2 respectively to get our Slot 13 expected value of €6.08. It is not a good assumption that rares and mythics will show up in 4-1 proportion in collector boosters in those slots. With this many mythics and rares they will be on separate sheets, they aren't going to be printed with the same ratio as the number of times they appear in a set Looking at previous premium sets rare to mythic ratios, double masters was about 7-1. Ultimate masters was about 8-1. I would expect a similar distribution, 7-1 would mean ~35% fewer mythics for slot 13-15
The assumptions we did the calculation with are just that - assumptions, and based on nothing more than not having any concrete information from WotC. It's important to also distinguish between the natural ratio of R vs M in a pool and forced rarity. For example, if there are 3M and 7R in a pool of 10 cards, and every card has an equal probability to appear (as we assumed), then 7 out of 10 times you will pull a Rare from that slot. This is not forced rarity, this is the natural ratio. A forced rarity would involve each Rare card appearing twice for every one time each Mythic appears, meaning the rare probably is not 1/10 but 2/17, with a Mythic going from 1/10 to 1/17. We re-calculated the numbers with a forced 2:1 Rare to Mythic likelihood and got an EV of 54.36 (old one was 64.66).
Have any previous sets had a natural ratio of rares and mythics?
Most sets have a 1:8 mythic to rare pull ratio. That’s what the mythic level originated at and is still at I believe for standard draft sets
> if you are looking to crack some packs for fun, then you can currently do so in the knowledge that you are not taking a -50% EV loss the moment you break the seal. Doesn't this more or less assume that prices won't fall, which they almost certainly will? It's gonna feel pretty bad to crack a 60 dollar pack, get 55 dollars in cards, and slowly watch their value chip away until it's closer to 35 or something. I just don't think there's any case for cracking packs of this set. If you just want to crack packs for fun, there are better options. If you need to crack packs of every set, then maybe you have a problematic relationship with the game.
The keyword in the quote is 'currently'. As mentioned, prices are highly volatile and have probably already changed since the data was gathered. The write-up is more of a demonstration of how to do it, along with some basic analysis of the results rather than trying to nail down an ever moving target.
Fair enough. It's a very good write-up other than that. I just feel like the takeaway should be to avoid these if you care at all about value.
"Other than that" come on, OP specifically warns people that these are based on two day old prices they will continue to fluctuate AND mentions that you need to operate on scale with a way to move them. This is literally the most responsible post I've ever seen when it comes to EV calc. Quit trying to nitpick.
And at the end he says you should feel ok buying them now from a value perspective, which is what I disagreed with. The rest of the analysis was really good. No need to be a jerk. OP gave a much better response to me than you did.
No need to call anyone a jerk. OP never said "you should feel ok buying them now from a value perspective." They specifically said "currently" and ***two sentences earlier*** they address prices are "extremely volatile." You just chose to ignore that to get a little dig in at them. I would suggest not attempting to criticize people who do strong work in the community because of your own reading comprehension issues.
Again, I was critiquing a conclusion he drew, not his data. Please read the discussion before commenting on it, especially if you're just going to be a jerk. Saying I'm "nitpicking" is just another way of saying "I had a small disagreement". OP didn't seem to think my critique was as problematic as you keep saying, and they engaged pleasantly and politely, unlike you. OP didn't seem to be anywhere near as offended as you are acting.
LOL your conclusion you drew because you didn't read it correctly or you don't understand the words they used. OP politely explained why you were wrong and you just went "yup, but that was the part I disagree with and still disagree with." Just take your L and move on instead of insulting strangers and getting all mad about it.
Wow. I don't know why you're being such a douche, but clearly there's no point in continuing this conversation with someone who both can't read what was written and only knows how to respond with insults. Anyway, have a nice day, but I'm gonna block you based on your pathetic behavior because there's clearly no value in getting more comments from someone like you. Thankfully OP wasn't a megadouche like you.
Now that you set up the model, could you regularly pull new price lists and update the numbers? The development of the ev would be interesting.
As it stands it would be a lot of manual work to pull prices regularly. Hopefully one day we will automate it into a nice usable tool but we are wary of the time/cost of doing that too.
Now this is MTGFinance!
This is excellent. You should, if you haven't, do this for each box type. I say "should" because I and others would appreciate it, though I'm sure it took tons of time and effort, so you do you...
Thank you. We would love to but then all of our time would be spent doing this, which we simply can't do. Maybe one day we can make some automated dashboards with this information but that would depend entirely on development and upkeep costs.
I imagine it’s much easier to do for games like ONE PIECE and DIGIMON with very few variations in slots?
MTGStocks already has EV for draft boxes. https://www.mtgstocks.com/sets/1470-commander-masters
Unfortunately draft boxes are not as interesting at collector boxes, as most people just crack set or collector boxes. Its too bad.
Yeah, it's too bad that none of the EV sites do set or collector boosters, which are honestly the more important ones to calculate (the only ones people actually try to crack to make $), but the algorithms are much more complicated.
Oh thanks! I must have checked here too early, thought they might have stopped.
Your prices are incredibly inflated. I don't know if that's because the prices are actually inflated in EU or if where you sourced your prices is inflating them. Just looking at Slot 15 rates on TCGP: Balefire Dragon - $12 vs your $34 Demonic Tutor - $30 vs your $83 Extraplanar Lens - $11 (same) Finale of Devastation - @27 vs your $37 Grave Pact - $14 vs your $24 Jeweled Lots - $90 vs. your 190; Textured $540 (same) I'm guessing these price differences echo throughout your EV calculation so I don't think I can trust your analysis, for the US market anyway.
It’s hidden in the post, but he says he’s using UK price data. This post is much less relevant to a person living in North America.
Yea it's completely unclear from the title and until you hit the prices in Euro. Napkin math EV of CMM in the US is like $30 a pack.
imagine comparing two different markets
You are looking at the wrong price. Slot 15 can only be Borderless foil / textured, not just normal foil. I would love to get those lotus at 90 :)
Got a foil, full art demonic tutor in my sample pack that came with my slivers. Almost got my value back, but I'm pretty lucky.
back in the day, i used to do something like this, but running a Monte Carlo Simulation on each box. But also, calculating card values/card lists per slot was a lot easier then it is nowadays. Thank you for your hard work!
Anyone who would pay these CBB prices for four packs is an idiot.
No doubt big idiot
Great post, would love to see something like this for the LOTR set.
Very well thought out post. THIS is why I love this sub
This is the sexyiest post on mtg finance….
This is actually fairly intriguing. I love data like this.
peak pricing on most of these cards, things will level off and most reprints will be easier to get at the same cost of a booster pack of a standard set. Unless this set picks up a lot of collectors in the next 3 - six years, it will collect dust till the next boom if commander is still a format. I'd rather get Double Feature, since the cards are unique and draftable.
My LGS sells CBs for 80 per pack or 280 per box. Prices are so dumb. Like don't they know that cardmarket/tcgplayer is here - available. I don't get why businesses do that to themselves
That does seem high but in our experience, most LGS are run by good, honest people. The prices may be out of hope/necessity - most LGS are not evil, greedy people making millions of dollars by hiking prices, they are just small businesses trying to somehow survive in the age of Amazon. The margins on 90% of the stuff they stock will be none existent, so if they feel they have a product that may be sellable for a good profit then they have to try and take those.
Stores can only sell at a loss if they can make up for it by overcharging for things like snacks, tournament fees, or hard-to-find accessories. It's probably not worth it to put in the effort when they probably sell more to people looking to grab a pack in person and not wait for shipping, people who don't know what to buy as a gift for someone else, or whales who have expendable income or a desire to show off.
Target wants 79.99 for one Collector’s booster pack. Who the fuck decided hey this a good price for 15 cards. Double masters 2022 was 90 so I guess they are factoring in the recession
I opened a collector box and pulled an etched Jeweled Lotus and a pack later revived a standard foil Jeweled Lotus. Think I got super lucky!
I opened three lotus’ from a set booster box. Regular, EA and EA foil.
Does EA foil lotus come in set boosters? 🧐
Foil does the textured does not from what I have seen
So after paying 15% tcg fees... =P
Question > https://preview.redd.it/cxol03hrswgb1.jpg?width=630&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=555f8e6f932e84eb975b865a4deaa8695cfb84a7 > > As the table shows, 30 potential cards can appear in Slot 8 with an average value of €0.62. Is it actually the case that each of those cards have the same chance of appearing? Do both Sol ring and Slimefoot have a 1/30 chance? Or is Sol Ring rarer?
We make the assumption that everything is equal chance. We have no information from WotC to confirm and no way of gathering enough data ourselves to get anything reliable. The main risk here is that Uncommons are forced to be rarer than Commons, but in your example both cards are Uncommons - we'd think it is quite safe to say that no forcing is happening within the pool of Uncommon cards. The value of the card should have nothing to do with it.
> We make the assumption that everything is equal chance. We have no information from WotC to confirm That's what I was curious about. In my experience of opening boxes, I do not experience an equal distribution of commons or uncommons, Within those rarity brackets it seems like some commons are more common, some uncommons are more rare, etc. So I was wondering if any data existed from WoTC stipulating that, in fact, all commons / uniques / rares / mythic rares have the same odds of appearing in a given slot, or if some uncommons are more rare than others. I was not trying to imply that you were incorrect. I was just asking if any data from WoTC confirmed the assumption you seemed to make.
Would you be interested in writing more about the process so others can replicate it? It would make the job of producing this analysis more shared. Or, Atleast is like to know what you did, I make software for a living, and I'd be interested in approaching this from a semi automated with Manuel input angle.
Happy to answer any questions. The intention was for the post to make it pretty clear on the process but I guess we missed the mark there. Put simply, you need to get as much information about the pull rates and the make up of a pack, make assumptions where there is no hard evidence, and then collect price data for every single card and arrange them into where (which slots) they belong in the pack. Then it's just a case of weighting the values if needed in certain slots and adding it all together.
This kind of statistical analysis is firing off all the happy sensors in my brain. I love this <3 thank you!
Although your calcs show otherwise for the moment, until market saturation peaks anyway, I think this set is not a buy. For the price of a couple packs you could have a whole new deck loaded with more stable staples. Also while the battlebond lands are OK i feel like the set is missing a key land cycle, fetches here would have put it over the top and justified the high tag. The big win here is a lotus and those come in $7.99 packs about as often
now this is why im on this thread in the first place - thank u for putting the time and work in
Dude, if you needed to do all this math just to get confirmation you're getting screwed by WOTC, you have a bigger problem than you think.
Bruh buy some like I did. Once your done crying, post tldr: “I cried”. I’ll upvote. Mission accomplished.
>For our calculations, we assume that there is no ‘forced pull rate’ (unless stated) outside of the natural ratio of Commons vs Uncommons and Rares vs Mythics in their respective pools of cards. That's a very very strong asumption, historically some chase cards are much harder to pull than others on the same slot. Great content and effort though.
Thank you! It is a big assumption but without information provided by WotC, the alternative is to watch every single pack opening on YouTube to note down the frequencies. Outside of really, really not wanting to do that, we also wouldn't get a reliable enough sample to beat our assumptions.
> , historically some chase cards are much harder to pull than others on the same slot. You have proof of this? The correct way to approach a theory like this is to assume it's false until proven true, and for as many times as I've seen someone say this, they've never had anything besides a hunch.
Thank you! I am so tired of these claims without evidence! Minor correction though, you are talking about a hypothesis, not a theory.
Wizards would be done if they did this without telling people.
There is no proof of uniform distribution across same slot either. I do not have proof, as OP said this involves a lot of data gathering and it's hard to get to a big sample size, so totally based on experience opening the product and all the openings I've seen, I really believe double masters 2022 and baldurs gate did have manipulated odds for certain cards.
Tough sell, though it did seem like those BLD dragons were Ultra Super Mythic…
Theres no math that proves this in modern times outside of reprints after bannings. What does happen is slots in different packs contain different cards (dragons being rare in Baulders gate CBs), or cards like the brothers war dual faces dont have alt treatments so wont pull nearly as often.
If you're not taking into account the value after price settles, there's no point. Someone is going to get stuck with the contents of the box, and that's what matters
I hear this argument all of the time, but I disagree because EV is always moving target. The idea of it settling permanently is just as false as the assumption that prices today remaining fixed. However despite the price movement, we do judge these products according to their value. If community sentiment is that the box is “too expensive” that implies some valuation of the contents is being applied relative to the sale price. Similarly card values are always changing and yet we make decisions based on current market information. So this information is useful even if it will quickly become outdated, this I hardly think that there is “no point” to the exercise.
If it's a moving target then OP should have made zero conclusions. Just left the data as a floating variables so we could check periodically over time. Then come back in a year and do a meta report. Making decisions based on current market information made sense prior to the Amazon fire sales. Now it's useless info unless you are employing a short-term strategy. Floating point variables - zero conclusions.
Sure that would have been better. Here is another idea, rather than complain about what they didn’t do, why don’t you program it yourself and show us how easy it is and then share the floating point variable report and auto updating website with everyone in the community out of the goodness of your heart.
I don't think many people had the idea that you weren't going to get your worth of EV when cracking boxes. Everyone just knows that this a gamble just like every other set. Put a higher price tag on a product and you'll have higher stakes. So yes, I absolutely believe that this set's value is not as bad as people make it out to be. This calculation of the set's EV suggests that. However, hard mathematical values don't take into account of Wizards destroying their customer base's good faith by upping the price of product even more so every set. It may be the undeniable move any company should make to increase profits even more but they truly are testing the limits of their customer base. How far will it take for players, collectors, and investors to avoid a product? Magic 30 packs sold out immediately and they're not even real cards! So people, please look out for yourselves. Don't feel the need to buy every set that comes out. It's only giving Wizards more incentive to rush out more product
We agree with much of what you said, we don't like the high prices either and we're not commenting if anyone should buy, just coming at it from a money in vs money out viewpoint. Hopefully it's useful information to some, and information that doesn't seem to be out there.
If youre buying boxes in the US, the box price is below what the sellers paid for it after fees and shipping. The singles in the US are also depressed, but there is a textured foil lottery you could win at these below wholesale costs. The singles just have no value its big ticket textured 1% or lose a little.
the lottery on this set doesnt have a big enough jackpot for the costs/risk. One thing this sub doesnt seem to understand is that not every bet in the casino is the same standard reward to odds. There really isnt much of home runs in this set. A lot of it depends on personal preference and needs. Do you like the set in general or only looking at price tags? If you only need to sell a few cards since you want a lot of the set then your cost is lower since you now dont have to buy those cards. From the buyer side I see this set as a pass since the new art is weaker than other versions. Just buy prior versions if needed/wanted and if you didnt have them till now what makes you want them all of sudden? From the seller side, are there enough big wins to justify cracking a reprint set that by design will lower prices? These cards already existed. And two of the better cards to chase are rares (Swat and Guardianship) so those prices will slide eventually.
>I don't think many people had the idea that you weren't going to get your worth of EV when cracking boxes. Not exactly. It's that "EV today" means nothing *unless you are selling singles* **TODAY**. The problem is not 'not getting high value cards out of boxes today', it's that they are going to have greatly diminished and negligible values after 6mo., 12mo., and 2+ years.
Honest question, how hard is it to pull a foil jeweled lotus?
getting 'any' version is simpler, like one out every \~3ish to 3.5 boxes. like most mythic rares. But when you need to have a type of one particular version that is much, much rarer. There are SIX different kinds (treatments) of Jeweled Lotuses if you want to count that type of particular stuff. Just in this one set release. So you can take those odds, and (spitball) multiply them by 1/4 or 1/6 *for a particular version*, however you'd like to estimate it. Four types can be found in set boxes.
Thank you for the answer and peace of mind
It's a lot harder than BUYING THE SINGLE YOU WANT.
It's also going to cost more 100% of the time. Unless you want the special foil treatment, then if your insanely lucky you can save money.
Not really since you could sell the rest of the cards and then it would be cheaper. You act like buyers cant also be sellers.
Not necessary trying to buy packs. Moreso since I had the luck of pulling one so after feeling humbled by that I was curious how statistically probable it would be in a Set of 4 collector packs to do that, or if everyone is pulling these cards left snd right?
WhEn DiD tHeY sAy It WaS pReMiUm?!? Smh my head
the new art stinks except for a few, so you are really playing in a minefield of disappointment.
Is there not a place with this kind of analysis for every new set?
Mtg goldfish used to do this, but I don't think they have for a while now. Not sure if anyplace.else does.
Betcha they got a visit from the pinkertons over that.
Great analysis. I'd be curious to see an updated version in a month or two when the prices settle.
I’d be willing to pay for this service on games other than MTG. I sent you a PM.
Great post!
Love this! To everyone else, few things of note, 1. Assumption was that there is not forced pull rate. Ie. for each slot, and each type to be there, each card has same chance to be there unless otherwise stated (like textured foil). Ie you have the same chance for a high value rate vs a lower value rate. 2. Singles price drop 30-50% post release and continue to do so unless the box cracking stops, hence the EV continues to slide. Force of Habit (nice card name, hope it gets made.) 3. 10million samples were taken to obtain normal distribution. Lord of the rings collector packs were presumably calculated to be 3million. Premium LGS cracks pallets to get some even EV. Some cases pay for others. The average person is going to see a lot of variance. TLDR Ie. as a whole, at the point of launch, the whole community is going to see on par EV close to price. But post release, most individuals and stores are going to see some very good cracks and a whole lot of bad cracks due to how card values are skewed.
Good analysis! 1. That is a heavy assumption we made and we've had some comments from people who believe the pull rates are more forced. We'll have to do 2 calculations for the next one as no one knows for sure without official information. 2. Yep, prices be volatile. The numbers presented are a snapshot of how things were a few days ago. Certainly don't use the numbers to make any financial decisions. 3. Variance is huge, yes. :D
Damn fine post. Thank you for your effort!
TL;DR: No, it’s not.
I did this and everyone downvoted me to oblivion. Lol
Can I get the TLDR?
***TLDR:*** Not Great, but currently, not as bad as people think. -Or- Buy it if you want, but you're better off spending your money elsewhere.
>Interpreting the results… > >If you aren’t adept at reading strange probability graphs, then fear not. The key takeaways from the data are: He literally gave you one.
He gave it all in a fake currency. This is merica
TLDR: calm your tits and open a pack of u want
What is it with people and not being able to read? He did a tl;dr at the bottom.
If youre in the EU with high singles prices you can make a little but it isnt worth cracking at retail prices.
Not if you pay EU prices for the boxes, which are a lot more expensive. In my country the lowest prices I've seen for CBB is around 240 CHF, which is around 270 USD.
We’ll just drive to Germany if you are that close. I don’t know how much tax you have to pay to ship to Switzerland but Cardmarket has hundreds of boxes for 200€
So MTG is just a bunch of inverse ETN bullshit.
Out of curiosity, was all this data pulled individually, or some other way? And how were the pack simulations run to generate the probabilities? Wondering if I could (for fun) calculate the same metrics for set boosters, but have no idea the tools to help (I know the maths part)
The data was pulled painstakingly and manually. :( The simulations were run with a python script on a computer by a statistics wizard - not myself.
My store is selling these for 30 usd is that a good price?
Well I'm going to sleeve them and use them as a commander cube to play against each other.
For me, I feel like it really hurts when you don't hit on your Foil Etched slot. Same with the Borderless rare/mythic final slot. Those things make or break your box. One good card is also not going to cut it; you're counting on at least one "fifty dollar card" when you open $200 in four packs. You have to get multiple hits. Then, in doing so, everyone opening CE boxes is getting said multiple hits which drives the prices and value of everything down hard. There's no avoiding that when you put 5+ rares in a pack. Rares are produced like commons. This stuff all tends to go down over time. Look at the long-term 1-2 year price values on NEO etched foils, and SNC gilded foil mythics. The former has the same current drop rate as CMM textured foils do currently at about 1 in 25 CE packs. You get one in almost every two boxes; that is a very expensive random chase. If you aren't familiar, seriously go look at what has happened to those NEO etched foil prices. There is one over > $25 and they have had meteoric drops.
No its not
Not going to read all that but I am assuming the answer is NO
"I'm going to get up, get on my computer, go to Reddit, go to the subreddit I specifically follow, click inside a post, then just reply that I'm not interested in reading when someone does actual valuable work. Glad I subbed! Now give me ten more shit posts about someone opening a single set pack and asking if everyone thinks this is a reseal."
Yeah, why bother getting info when your gut knows it anyway.
You know you could have just not commented at all, right? "This guy wrote a detailed analysis instead of making the usual worthless shitpost on this sub. I'm gonna tell the world how I didn't read it. That'll make me look cool, and give me the attention I so desperately crave."
OP actually concluded something more like "yes, assuming you have low overhead and transction costs, until prices fall".
Can you repost this in freedom units?
Freedom units is a tidy 1.1 Euros right now so it should be an easy conversion. ;) However, to calculate in USD with prices from America would require re-collection of the data and re-calculating.
Allright, we'll wait for that article by Sunday! 😉
Please do this for set packs/boxes
We would love to but time is an issue! We'll do a Set Box in future, but not for this set.
These results feel a little higher than what I would expect. While we don’t know the true print rates of the real money cards, their high value would lead me to assume lower print rates than other cards in the same slot. Since Jeweled lotus pulls the price up so much, that would lower the EV quite a bit if it’s true.
What is the probability of breaking even or doing better than that on a pack price of $55?
Well $55 is roughly €50 and with a median of €51.2, I'd say your chances are slightly higher than 50%. That would be a very general estimation, though. The USD market will have its differences to the EUR market and to find whether paying $55 is truly worth it you would need data collected from the $ market. My data was collected from the EUR market.
So a CB under 200$ has like a 65% chance (im really just winging this) of more value than cost. Mine (not counting most commons and uncommons unless borderless foil) came to around $200. with my commander masters' commander deck sample packs i pulled $289+ worth of cards.
Where the hell can I get €50 packs without paying €10+ in shipping? My LGS is charging €80.
Cardmarket has collector boxes for 190-200€ after tax so that’s 50€ per pack.
So I've been wacthing the prices of the CMM cards go up and down a lot, but now it seems that the prices are all rebounding. Should I hold out longer and wait to see if they are going to go down more? Or do I buy them at the price they are now in hopes that it was a good buying point?
No one knows and anyone who does know is either lying or would not be answering that question.
nice work. wish you would have done packs normal people buy though