While Fallout previews are going on in full force, I can’t help but be underwhelmed by the choice to make the bobbleheads the serialized cards for this set. We’ve got a wide range of legends to choose from in here, and I think this was a miss.

I got to thinking about what the prices on the serialized bobbleheads will get to, and then I realized that we need to examine the history of these cards and see where prices might go. There’s SO MANY factors at play when it comes to these cards, so let’s open up the vault and take a look.

The first serialized cards were the Retro Frame artifacts in The Brothers’ War, a subset abbreviated BRR. There were 500 of each of these, and the playability for these cards resulted in a very wide range of prices, a theme which we’ll see more of. The serialized cards had the same art as the Retro Schematic frame, just with a new foiling method called the Double Rainbow. None of the cards were completely unplayable, but there’s a heck of a gulf between the decks that will run a Bone Saw vs. how many run a Chromatic Lantern.

As a result, the early prices were absolutely wild. Collectors (and these are definitely collector items, not player pieces) were caught up in a frenzy, with several going for more than a thousand dollars. Weirdly, even though they were all equally rare, the ones marked as mythic tended to be sold for more money than the ones marked as rare. That trend has flattened out, thankfully.

The next set of serialized cards came from March of the Machine, where we are given the five flip Praetors, also in a set of 500, but most importantly, the serialized cards have new, original, exclusive art. These five cards are still quite expensive, and it’s not due to playability. It would appear that the combination of iconic characters, flipping into powerful Sagas, and one-of-a-kind art has allowed these prices to stay in the four figures.

This is notable, because as we’re going to see, comparatively speaking, the Praetors should be cheaper than they are. 

March of the Machine also gave us the Multiverse Legends sheet, which contained xxx/500 versions of assorted legendary creatures in a frame that reflected their home plane. One of the quirks of printing and packaging meant that it was possible to open a Collector Booster that had a serialized Praetor and also had a serialized MUL card. Infinitesimal odds, but still possible.

The MUL cards have a wide range of prices, but consistently lower than the Praetors from the same set. 

Ragavan is the most highly-played creature from the set in both Commander and Constructed, and those serialized cards are available for around half the price of Jin-Gitaxias. Ragavan is in four times as many Commander decks as Jin-Gitaxias is, they are even in the same Collector Boosters, and have the same number of serialized versions.

I have to think it’s the art, the feeling that those 500 copies of Jin-Gitaxias are truly unique, whereas there are thousands of copies of Ragavan out there that look the same as a serialized version only without the xxx/500 printed on there. If you’ve got other interpretations, please, let me know in the comments or in Discord.

The other legends from this subset also have a wide range of prices. Many of these have come down to under $200, though relatively few are close to the $100 price. The best predictor is EDH use, especially since these are all legendary and likely to be Commanders for decks. Why not splurge on a serialized for the lead singer of your deck?

After this, though, came the greatest triumph: Universes Beyond: Lord of the Rings and the four different serialized cards. Wizards pulled this off perfectly, giving us 900, 700, and 300 serialized versions of the same card (again with different art, and with the non-serialized, nonfoils still a difficult pull) they gave us the first 1 of 1 card in Magic’s history, opened by a player in Canada and famously sold to Post Malone for $2 million.

Sol Ring has more premium treatments than any other card, has been reprinted more than any non-basic land, and has three accessible serialized versions. If you’re willing to shell out more for a Sol Ring than for a Mox, the Elf ring is for you. This entire endeavor was well-planned and carried out well, resulting in LTR being one of the best-selling sets in Magic’s history.

They weren’t done, either: they told us that reprints were coming in a Holiday edition and those reprints included serialized psychedelic poster versions of cards and serialized versions of the Realms and Relics. These, however, were limited to just 100 of each, and that combined with the power of these cards has made them pricey indeed.

I like what they tried in the WHO expansion from Universes Beyond, where The First Doctor is xxx/501 and The Thirteenth Doctor is xxx/513, but the demand for those cards as Commanders hasn’t materialized. I thought there might have been enough whales/collectors who wanted a complete set, but the pricing doesn’t back that up.

The next entry in the Serialized saga is from Ravnica Remastered, where all 64 serialized cards are reprints, in the retro frame, with known art. In other words, the most basic version possible. As a 25-year-veteran of Magic, I like the retro frame, but I want something special and unique! Unsurprisingly, the shocklands are near the top of this list, with none being under $100 and very few being over $300. That price range, dependent on the number of decks demanding the card, seems to be the default setting for serialized cards that share art/frame with another card in the set. 

Most recently, we got xxx/250 for seven guild leaders in MKM, but none of their prices are outstanding. All the cards are solid, playable, potentially cornerstones but even a lowered rarity wasn’t enough to keep the price high.

Fallout went for serialized Bobbleheads, and there won’t need to be a lot of collectors who need the entire SPECIAL set of seven for these prices to be higher than expected. The cards themselves are underwhelming for what they are and what they represent, so I’m expecting them to average nearly $200 apiece as well.

Today we were told of the Assassin’s Creed set, which will feature serialized versions of historical figures. Most importantly, these cards will have new art, a borderless frame, and be printed in a non-English language.

I don’t have details for this yet but I expect these to command hefty premiums. This one, with a half-done Mona Lisa especially but the AC series takes us to a lot of figures and a lot of landmarks/historical artifacts. We’re going to see some awesome choices and these serialized cards will be notably more expensive. I’m hoping the preorders are lower priced for these cards but since most big vendors won’t do a preorder, I might have to settle for jumping on the first couple of listed copies.

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.

Murders at Karlov Manor is out, and that means we’re seeing all kinds of things go down in price, and surprisingly, we’ve got some cards heading upwards. We often see one or two cards go up, but there’s multiple factors at play here that lead to the spikes involved.

Those spikes will be addressed today, along with what you should do. Additionally, we need to start planning for rotation, which will happen in about eight months. It’s been a while since rotation happened, and we skipped a whole rotation cycle last year, so there’s some things that we need to take care of before prices start to dwindle downwards.

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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.

The set is finally legal for singles sales, after being revealed seemingly five weeks ago.

There’s been a whole lot of pre-ordering going on, which is something not every TCG vendor can do or wants to do. The majority of sales on there are due to individuals, not big cracking operations. So this weekend, we’re going to see a whole lot of prices moving fast. Mostly downward, but I think there’s a few exceptions here.

I’ll be leaning heavily on my article from last week about the Mana Math of Karlov Manor, so go back and take a look at that one if you haven’t done so yet.

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

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.

New set, same issues. They give us percentages and counts and then it’s up to us to figure things out for what exactly that means. Luckily, I’ve got years of practice in doing exactly that.

We’ve got a new type of booster to talk about, we’ve got The List, Special Guests, and more serialized cards! So many sweet things to talk about and hopefully make some great decisions that pay off nicely.

Play Boosters are here!

Reminder about The List and Special Guest: “Special Guests and The List cards can appear in non-foil in Play Boosters, while only Special Guests can appear in traditional foil in Collector Boosters.”

Here’s how the odds work: First, only 1 in 8 Play Boosters has any of these cards, and even if you get a booster with one of these, you don’t have equal chances at each. We are given the percentages, and the number of options, and then it’s just division (odds/# of cards) and then take the reciprocal for the number of packs required to open a specific card.

Special Guests(10) 1.56% of boosters (approx 1 in 641)	The List Commons/Uncommons (30) 9.38% of boosters (approx 1 in 32)	The List Rares/Mythic Rares (10) 1.56% of boosters (approx 1 in 641)
Crashing Footfalls Drown in the Loch Fabricate Field of the Dead Gamble Ghostly Prison Show and Tell Tireless Tracker Tragic Slip Victimize	Bishop of the Bloodstained Burden of Guilt Cavalier of Thorns Combine Chrysalis Consign // Oblivion Duskmantle, House of Shadow Enlisted Wurm Ghost Quarter Gnaw to the Bone Goblin Warchief Hard Evidence High Alert Krosan Tusker Kuldotha Rebirth Laid to Rest Leonin Relic-Warder Magmaw Maverick Thopterist Mentor of the Meek Metalspinner’s Puzzleknot Millstone Mistveil Plains Mystery Key Nyx Weaver Putrid Warrior Quintorius, Field Historian Shard of Broken Glass Spell Snare Stromkirk Captain Syr Konrad, the Grim Treacherous Terrain	Death Cloud Jace, Wielder of Mysteries Baleful Mastery Ixidor, Reality Sculptor Molten Psyche Mass Hysteria Monologue Tax Ranger-Captain of Eos Worldspine Wurm Cavalier of Thorns

Price analysis: Holy hell, it’s going to take roughly 17.8 boxes to nab one copy of a Special Guest or a rare/mythic The List card. You will open one common/uncommon The List card every box (very likely, anyway) and even have a shot at two of them in your 36 packs, but goodness, the rares are rare indeed. 

For those who are worried about Special Guests being in large quantities, put those fears to bed. A playset of the new Crashing Footfalls (nonfoil) will require approximately 71 boxes of Play Boosters. (Want foils? I’ll explain the math in a moment, but it’ll be roughly 111 Collector Booster boxes!)

Sometimes the Collector Boosters have lots of things in lots of different slots, but this time, almost everything we care about is focused in the final slot of the pack:

Of note: the third from last slot, the one with all the Commander cards in Extended Art, will be almost completely nonfoil. Some sets, we get foil EA versions, but not this one. The only foils to be found in that slot will be Foil EA treatment versions of the eight mythics that are the commanders for the decks, and each one of those eight has a 1.06% chance to show up in foil. You have the same odds for nonfoil too.

So let’s have a table with the options for the last slot, of which there are many. The math plays out the same way: The percent chance of a card from a category, divided by the number of options, gives you the odds for a certain card. Then take the reciprocal to get the number of packs required to hit that specific card.

Type/Rarity (# of options)	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
Traditional Foil Showcase Dossier Invisible Ink Mythic Rares (14)	8.4%	0.6%	166.67
Traditional Foil Showcase Magnified Frame Rare (8)	9.5%	1.19%	84.2
Traditional Foil Showcase Magnified Frame Mythic Rare (1)	0.6%	0.6%	166.67
Traditional Foil Guild Leader Ravnica City Mythic Rare (3)	0.9%	0.3%	333.33
Traditional Foil Guild Leader Ravnica City Rare (4)	2.4%	0.8%	125
Traditional Foil Guild Leader in Showcase Dossier Mythic Rare (3)	0.9%	0.3%	333.33
Traditional Foil Guild Leader in Showcase Dossier Rare (4)	2.4%	0.8%	125
Traditional Foil Showcase Dossier Mythic Rares (13)	15.4%	1.19%	84.4
Traditional Foil Showcase Dossier Rares (11)	6.5%	0.59%	169.2
Traditional Foil Borderless Mythic Rare (1)	0.6%	0.6%	166.67
Traditional Foil Borderless Rare (11)	13.1%	1.19%	84
Traditional Foil Special Guest (10)	3%	0.3%	333.33
Traditional Foil Extended Art Mythic Rare (4)	3%	0.75%	133.33
Traditional Foil Extended Art Rare (29)	33.3%	1.15%	87.08
Serialized Double Rainbow Foil Retro Frame (7)	<1%	See Below	See Below

The City Frame and Dossier versions of the Guild Leaders add up to make them as common as any other mythic or rare. This is commonly done when there’s extra versions of a card that might cause a problem, because there would be that many more copies of that card out there.

From this list, we can see that the foil Special Guests are a difficult pull indeed. You’ll have the same tough odds for the Guild Leaders in mythic rare, either version. (Remember, together they add up to other mythics!) This tells me to keep an eye on these cards, but preordering them looks like more than I’d want to cough up. If the preorder is too high, then even with these odds, I’d need crazy growth to resell profitably.  The only one close to that is Ghostly Prison, whose preorder price is about the same as the Secret Lair version, making the margins too thin for my taste.

However, it’s worth noting that the foils and the nonfoils might be close in price. It takes 641 Play Boosters to snag a nonfoil Special Guest. The foils require 333 Collector Boosters. We aren’t given precise counts on either type of booster, but we should keep those relative counts in mind as the set goes on and the prices move. 

There are only 1,750 serialized cards out there from this set, 250 each of three mythic rares and four rares. All of them are guild leaders in the City frame: 

Mythics: Rakdos, Patron of Chaos Trostani, Three Whispers Vannifar, Evolved Enigma

Rares:  Aurelia, the Law Above Lazav, Wearer of Faces Niv-Mizzet, Guildpact Teysa, Opulent Oligarch

We’re told it’s less than 1% to pull any serialized card, so let’s have a table for what the options are.

Our estimate is that there’s between 2 million and 3.5 million Collector Boosters made for a set like this, based on figures for annual revenue and other such sets. So instead of saying ‘Less than 1%’ we’re estimating it to between 0.09% and 0.05%. This means you’re going to hit any serialized card every 1,150 packs to 2,000 packs, or if you prefer boxes, roughly every 96 to 167 boxes. If you want the odds for hitting a specific serialized card, you’re talking 8,000-14,000 packs to get that card, or 667-1167 boxes. 

Given those odds, I wouldn’t be shocked if the prices for these cards started out sky-high. There’s less of these than there were for the Elven Sol Ring, but the play pattern/collectibility for the cards couldn’t be more different. These are clearly meant for folks who want the serialized cards as the Commanders for their decks, and I suspect the first couple of these will sell for very high prices, but it should trickle down to something more reasonable over time. 

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.