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Insider: An In-Depth Look at All the New “Rarities”

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Since Throne of Eldraine, Wizards of the Coast has added a lot of new card variants. We currently have:

  • Regular
  • Foil
  • Showcase
  • Extended Art
  • Borderless
  • Showcase Foil
  • Borderless Foil
  • Extended Art Foil

The biggest challenge currently is that we no longer know exactly how rare any of those given things are. A lot of these new variants were tied in with the new Collector Boosters. Now thanks to WotC, we know what to generally expect from these boosters.

Collector Boosters

So if we look at just the Collector Booster Box with 12 packs per box, it means that each box will provide;

  • 48 foil commons/lands
  • 24 foil uncommons
  • 12 Extended Art Rares/Mythics
  • 24 Foil Extended Art or Regular Foil/Mythics (unfortunately, we currently don't know the exact ratio)
  • 24 showcase commons or uncommons
  • 12 showcase or borderless rares or mythics (again don't know the ratio)
  • 12 foil showcase commons or uncommons or borderless uncommons
  • 12 foil showcase or borderless of any rarity.

For clarity, cards that are labeled as "borderless" have different art on them, whereas, "extended art" cards have the same art as the regular, but with no border. Here is a breakdown of each rarity in each set of these special variants.

It is also important to note that the Collector Booster makeup has changed.

Throne of Eldraine (no pre-made graphic):

Number of Cards: 15 cards and 1 foil token card
Number of Versions: 1
Contents:

  • 1 rare/mythic rare with extended art
  • 1 foil rare/mythic rare
  • 9 foil commons/uncommons
  • 3 special-frame cards (showcase or borderless planeswalkers)
  • 1 ancillary card
  • 1 foil token

I got the following data from Mr. Thomas Vanek regarding some of his stores Collector Booster Breakdowns:

**Unfortunately, I only found data for the Extended Art cards for Ikoria, so please keep in mind the sample size is limited to one set.

Draft Boosters

Thankfully QS has a lot of store owners as members and some were able to give me some great information regarding breakdowns, so a special thank you to Swaga and Mr. Thomas Vanek for the data below:

*Extended Art cards are NOT available in standard draft boosters.

Variant Options

Lastly, it's important that we know how many of any potential option there are from each set to determine just how rare (or not rare) a given version of these new variants might actually be.

Set Breakdowns

Now it gets a bit more complicated because the Collector Boosters makeup changed; we need to look at the data per set, instead of as a whole. I have provided a ton of information in the charts above and because we don't know print run sizes between Collector Boosters boxes and Draft Booster boxes, I think it would be unwise to dig too deep regarding specifics. However, I think it's fair to look for some generalizations between the sets and these new variant rarities.

Throne of Eldraine

  • Foil Mythic Showcases are likely rarer than Foil Mythic Borderless.
  • Mythic Showcases are likely rarer than Mythic Borderless
  • Showcase rares are likely a lot more common from Draft Booster Boxes than Showcase Mythics, and the fact that there are only 5 showcase rares to choose from implies that any given one may be more common than you might think.

Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths

  • In our data set between 32,544 Draft Booster packs and 600 Collector Booster packs there were only 100 foil mythic borderless and showcase cards. You would need to open about 10 Draft Booster Boxes to get 1 of the 8 potential options. Looking at prices between the two we see a relatively small multiplier between the foil and non foil Market prices.

    • The average multiplier is only a little over 4x as much, despite the fact that these are extremely rare.
    • It is important to note that the Apex cycle had alternate Godzilla card options also available and that those options are likely eating into the demand for the Showcase foils.
      • There is some additional data on the google sheet that shows that the foil Godzilla variants for these mythics was only between 1-2x rarer than the regular Godzilla variant.
    • While there are additional options for the Apex cycle the relatively low multiplier between the foil and non-foil borderless planeswalkers is a bit baffling which averages 3.49x, granted none of these planeswalkers has shown up in any eternal formats, but there are plenty of people who just collect planeswalkers and want each version.
  • While I wish I had a lot more data regarding the extended art variants, the fact that they are only available in Collector Booster packs and while guaranteed 1 nonfoil mythic or rare extended art the fact that there are between 50 and 60 different cards per set that could be pulled in that slot makes me think that any particular one is likely a lot rarer than one would think.

*It's important to note that cards with an * next to them have Godzilla alternate cards and thus are likely considered less of a premium as an extended art card.

  • If we just focus on the Mythic Extended Art vs Regular Art versions we see a multiplier of a little under 2, however, I think it's fair to argue that since the Extended Art variants are only available from Collector Booster packs and Collector Booster packs are a limited print run we will likely see this multiplier climb as the initial first wave of cards from the Collector Boosters dries up. If you were going to speculate on any I would focus on ones that do not have a Godzilla alternate and are desirable by Commander players.

Continued next week...

One thought on “Insider: An In-Depth Look at All the New “Rarities”

  1. Hello Mr. David, I couldn’t help but notice you stated that Extended Art and Foil Extended Art are NOT available in regular boosters? That’s not a true statement.. I recently pulled a Extended Art Foil Nethroi out of a normal IKO booster. More recently, my FIRST pack I opened of Core 2021 contained an Extended Art Grim Tutor. I was under the impression that you could pull anything from a regular booster? Has anyone else pulled anything like I have? Thanks for your service! You guys are great!

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