Foundations prerelease is this weekend, and in case you’re forgetting, this is the set that will be legal in Standard until early 2030. The cards you open will be useful for just over four years, and most interestingly, we’re getting Collector Booster and Play Boosters for this set. We’ve never gotten reprints of Collector Boosters, and so today, I want to dive into some specifics about this set, the cards in it, and what the different distribution methods mean for the cards themselves.

Last week, I went over the math of the set, and some of that will get repeated here. It’s necessary to know what the drop rates for the different frames are, but today we’re focusing on the things that repeat in the two different boosters. The supply range for those is quite different, and if we get a glut early, followed by a very tiny trickle of supply, that’s a formula for big potential growth. 

One thing I want to mention about the set: There are five reprint cards that have a Borderless, but no EA. With these as reprints, they are unlikely to be huge movers, but be aware. Giada, Font of Hope, Phyrexian Arena, Etali, Primal Storm, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, Genesis Wave, and Lathril, Blade of the Elves.

Now, this table has the odds for what’s in a Play Booster. There is space for a rare/mythic, and then a wildcard which could be foil. Additionally, I’ve calculated the cost to buy the packs needed for a copy, averaging at $4 each. If you can get them cheaper, great, but $4 is a good average.

Those Play Booster odds hurt the eye to see. To put in context, needing to open 5600 Play Boosters is worse odds to get a specific Borderless Foil Mythic Rare than you had opening Lord of the Rings Collector Boosters to get a xxx/700 Dwarven Sol Ring, which took an estimated 4762 packs to open.

Let’s do the same table for Collector Boosters, using only the Borderless Foils and the regular frame foils. 

Traditional Foil (unless noted otherwise)	# of cards in that group	Percent chance for any card of that category	Percent chance for a specific card of that category	# of packs to open one specific card from that category	Times $24/pack to get cost/copy
Borderless Rare	43	34.50%	0.80%	124.64	$2,991.30
Borderless Mythic Rare	17	6.80%	0.40%	250.00	$6,000.00
Regular Frame Foil Rare	60	85.70%	1.43%	70.01	$1,680.28
Regular Frame Foil Mythic Rare	20	14.30%	0.72%	139.86	$3,356.64

Much more tolerable drop rates, and you’ll notice how much cheaper it is to open these cards in a Collector Booster than it is for a Play Booster. In fact, let’s compare those directly, for foils and nonfoils. 

Card/Frame/Treatment	Cost in Play Boosters	Cost in Collector Boosters	Difference in price	Efficiency
Borderless Rare	$1,849.46	$1,116.88	$732.58	39.61%
Borderless Mythic Rare	$3,777.78	$2,217.39	$1,560.39	41.30%
Foil Rare	$1,472.39	$840.14	$632.25	42.94%
Foil Mythic Rare	$3,076.92	$1,678.32	$1,398.60	45.45%
Borderless Foil Rare	$10,750.00	$2,991.30	$7,758.70	72.17%
Borderless Foil Mythic Rare	$22,666.67	$6,000.00	$16,666.67	73.53%

So here we are. Efficiency is 1 minus the ratio, as a way of comparing the difference in prices without having to measure the absolute sizes of the differences. The higher the percentage, the bigger the difference in price and therefore how much easier it is to get those cards from the Collector Boosters instead of the Play Boosters. 

Extended Art cards aren’t in the Play Boosters at all, so there’s a strong chance if the Borderless versions get cleaned out for a card, the EA versions will follow suit. Additionally, the EA versions won’t ever be replenished via Play Boosters, whereas we’ll be opening a few extras of Borderless here and there. Not often, mind you, but if Foundations is a good draft experience AND the cards are decently priced AND they are useful for Standard, we’ll see the Play Booster boxes get opened for a while. Wizards will print move of these as needed, which is a good plan for cards that have a four-year lifespan in Standard. 

We also need to be mindful of the timeframe. Foundations is going to lose attention to Innistrad Remastered, which is scheduled to be released January 24. Given that there’s several major holidays between now and then, the amount of packs opened should be impacted. I think that some of the more popular cards won’t be able to get very low before they begin to grow in price, and specifically, the Fracture Foils ought to really take off early.

It’s roughly 1,500 packs to open a Fracture Foil in Foundations, and it was only about 900 packs to get a Confetti foil in Wilds of Eldraine. These are mega-rare, and have the anime appeal to go with the sweet foiling. As an example, you could get a Confetti Foil Rhystic Study early on for $250 or so, and now they are three times that. I don’t think all the Fracture Foils have that growth potential, but Doubling Season gets my vote for having the cute anime kittens on it, and I’ve learned not to bet against cute on shiny Magic cards. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.