Every so often, we need to look back at previous sets. Specs are not what they used to be, and I’m only interested in things with a high degree of usage, preferably in Commander, and that have been out for a few months.
So today, we’re going to take a look at a few cards from Wilds of Eldraine, and see what’s at the intersection of ‘used often’ and ‘maximum supply’ which is the most likely path to future profit.
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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.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction is here, and while I paid attention to Ghired two weeks ago, I want to look at the most popular commander from the set so far: Gonti, Canny Acquisitor!
Original Gonti is a great time, allowing you the fun of stealing cards from someone else’s deck. The new version adds two colors, lets you cast things for cheaper, and can trigger more than once per turn! This is tricky to do via webcam, but it’s so much fun in person to have those face down cards, those awesome spells that you’re stealing from others’ decks.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
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.
The set prereleases this weekend, and officially goes up for sale next Friday, the 19th.
This weekend, I want to think about what is super rare, based on my calculations from last week, and decide if the preorder prices are within a range I’m comfortable with. I almost never preorder cards, but if the math says one thing and the prices say something else, it’s time to make some moves.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
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.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction is here, and good golly, this is complicated as hell.
It’s well-known by now that one special set of 30 cards was supposed to be an Aftermath-style set, but instead, they mashed that set into OTJ itself and now we have THIRTEEN special styles all present in one set of Collector Boosters.
It’s a lot to keep track of, and luckily for you, I’ve learned some tricks for keeping up with this sort of foolishness. Come on in, and let’s talk about both types of boosters, but especially the amazing things you can pull from a Collector Booster.
One thing to establish early: For all that there’s a million styles and subsets, there’s no serialized cards in these boosters. Not only does that limit the ‘chase’ feeling of the set, it also prevents me from making an estimation for how many Collector Boosters are printed. That’s a handy piece of information to have, but we’re without it this time around.
For OTJ, there are some important changes to Play Boosters:
You have a 20% chance to hit a List card this set, but for this set, The List is the Special Guests and the Big Score subset. For this slot in a Play Booster, it’s nonfoil only, and regular frame for BIG only, no vault frames. The List is ten Special Guests with snazzy hats, and 30 cards from The Big Score, so you’re 20% to hit any card from those forty. A specific card from this group of 40 will take you 200 Play Boosters to open, all nonfoil.
We also have a slot for a foil Booster Fun (which covers everything that isn’t regular frame, so no SPG) in Play Boosters this set, though at an extremely low rate. They don’t give us odds for this, but it covers every rarity. Commons and uncommons made up 11 out of 12 pulls for the Wildcard slot earlier in the Play Booster, and I’d expect similar numbers here. We just don’t have enough information to do more than guess here, and my guess is that foil rares/mythics make up most of that leftover 8.25 percent.
The big appeal here is Collector Boosters, and we’re given some exact number for each slot in one of those. From there, we can figure out the percentages to hit any card and the number of packs needed to open a specific card.
Working our way down from the top of this image, we get pretty straightforward until we hit the 13th slot, the traditional foil or nonfoil rare or mythic rare. We’re outright told that the only foils here are the extended-art ‘face’ commanders from the OTC set, so everything else will be non-shiny. In total, there’s 44 cards here and all have an equal chance of showing up. Sometimes we can get foil versions, but this time none of them seem to be in foil.
The 14th slot is dedicated to Breaking News, and while there are different listed rarities, we have 30 rares and 15 mythics. Traditionally, there’s two rares for every mythic, so the breakdown looks like this:
Set/Rarity
# of potential cards
Percent chance for any card of that category
Percent chance for a specific card of that category
# of CBs to open one specific card from that category
OTP Nonfoil Rare
30
80%
2.667%
37.5
OTP Nonfoil Mythic Rare
15
20%
1.33%
75
For those of you craving a Mana Drain, you’ll hit one every 75 packs. Note that this slot is the newspaper version only, and not the Borderless version.
The last slot in the pack (the foil token doesn’t really count) is a doozy, with twelve different frames/treatments as options. We’re going to need another table:
Set/Finish/Rarity
# of potential cards
Percent chance for any card of that category
Percent chance for a specific card of that category
# of CBs to open one specific card from that category (rounded)
OTJ EA Foil Rare
50
37.83%
0.75%
132
OTJ EA Foil Mythic
11
4.2%
0.38%
264
OTP Foil Rare
30
23.2%
0.77%
129
OTP Foil Mythic
15
5.8%
0.39%
259
Wanted Poster Foil Rare
5
3.33%
0.67%
150
Wanted Poster Foil Mythic
8
2.67%
0.33%
300
BIG EA Foil Mythic Rare
24
5%
0.21%
480
BIG Foil Vault Frame Mythic Rare
30
5%
0.16%
600
OTJ Borderless Foil Rare
5
3.3%
0.67%
150
OTJ Borderless Foil Mythic
2
0.67%
0.33%
300
OTJ Special Guest Foil Mythic
10
3%
0.3%
333
OTP Textured Foil Mythic Rare
15
1%
0.067%
1500
BIG Raised Foil Mythic Rare
5
0.9% or less
0.18% or less
555+
Note: We aren’t expressly told the raised foil drop rate, just that it’s less than 1%. I’m working off of a 0.9% chance for any Raised Foil, but I can’t promise specific numbers here the way I can in other slots. I can say with confidence it’s at least 555 packs, and could easily be much rarer. For instance, if it’s 0.3% instead, that puts it in the 1 in 1500 range, which is more likely.
Next week, I’ll be looking at the drop rates compared to the prices, looking for signs that the market isn’t moving fast enough. As always, if you have information or experiences that would help me make this more accurate, please reach out in the comments, on Twitter, or on the ProTrader Discord!
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.
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