Welcome back to a new set, and a new group of calculations. Aetherdrift has a new type of booster for us to unpack, a single serialized card, and another batch of sweet, sweet, Fracture Foils. 

Let’s get into what you can open and what you might get when you crack one of these packs. 

Box Toppers are back! These are two-card packs, found in Play Booster boxes, Collector Booster boxes, and the Finish Line bundles. You’re going to get one of ten different lands (75% driver’s perspective, 25% full-art panorama, and one of 84 different rares or 43 mythics, a total of 127 options.

It’s possible that the panorama foils might become expensive down the line, but I’ve found that basics are no longer worth it, generally speaking. There’s just too many sweet options, and each new awesome one makes the others harder to go up in price. We get occasional exceptions, but even things like the Oil-Slick lands have taken forever to go up a buck or two. Just better to put your money someplace else.

The First-Place Foils have the distinction of looking like terrible Pokemon cards, thanks to the yellow outline on the posted photos, but the videos Wizards posted look pretty cool, so I’ll forgive them. The second slot of a Box Topper pack has a lot of options, which calls for a table: 

Right away, I want you to see that 7 of 10 packs have a regular rare card. We’re already off to a killer start with that, but the rates go up from there. The First-Place Foil version of the Special Guests is a mega-rare pull, being at 714 of these packs to get a single copy. You get ONE Box Topper pack per box (Play, Collector, or Finish Line) so please, if you open something good make sure you get a good price.

I’ll be curious to see if folks realize what difficult pulls these particular foils are, there may well be some underpricing going on early.

Let’s get to the nonfoils, of which there are two slots, so we have an extra column for the doubling up. 

Note: Wizards doesn’t want to just say how many of each treatment there are in an easy way, spreading out the information over the whole page, and if I find new ones revealed on Jan. 31 or later, I’ll update these numbers. 

The nonfoil special versions are about right, providing some solid numbers for those who don’t like the shiny, warping cards. Especially with two slots, there will be plenty of these to go around. 

Now, for the foil slot at the end of the pack.

Yup, you’re reading that right. Fracture Foils at 1500/3000 packs is in line with the last two sets. They’ve clearly got a ratio they like, and going by the prices of most Fracture Foils, the players agree. 

Please remember that you’re 1/1000 to get any Fracture Foil, but because two-thirds of those are English-language and one-third is Japanese-language, that’s where the 1500 and 3000 come from. 

What jumps out at me from these tables is the Special Guests. That’s been a rare enough thing in the Collector Boosters, but considering that it takes 714 Box Topper packs to get a particular First-Place SPG, but only 238 Collector Boosters, I’ll be keeping an eye on the relative prices of those cards. If those are close to the same price, it would be a data point about how many boxes (and Finish Line boxes) are sold compared to how many Collector Booster packs are opened. It’s a little scary that 238 x 3 is exactly 714, and that made me go back and check my assorted math. 

The rest of it is in line with previous sets, so any big spikes or dips will be due to demand, not a change in collation. Please notice that the Mana Foil is no longer there, which was a good midway between the Borderless art and the Japan Showcases.

Now, to talk about the serialized Aetherspark. Wizards is probably aware that they made a mistake when they gave us precise odds for serialized cards, as in Lord of the Rings, because that let us know what the total number in circulation was, a data point that they haven’t really replicated.

Here’s a table for your odds, varying the number of packs printed:

The $120 is an estimate of what the distributors pay for the average Collector Booster box, and that’s the sales that Wizards cares about. Again, these are estimates, and if I get better data I can give a more precise number, but we think that you’ve got to open something like 6,000 packs to get a serialized Aetherspark. 

Remember, statistics are an overall view. There will undoubtedly be people who open two serialized Aethersparks within 500 boosters, and others who open 10,000 Collector Boosters and get none. 

I hope this math is helpful for you, and helps in your buying and opening decisions. If you want to talk about my methods or errors, please reach out to me on Twitter, Bluesky, or in the ProTrader Discord.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

Innistrad Remastered has been fully revealed, and the set is a combination of amazing frames, needed reprints, and underwhelming choices. We’ve been semi-promised no Masters/Remastered sets after this for a while, but nothing is locked in. Wizards is free to do what they want, even if there was no particular demand for most of these cards, they really wanted to do the Dominaria, the Ravnica, and now the Innistrad Remastered.

Wizards made some choices here, and while I would have made different ones, I’m not in charge. So let’s review what is going on, and we can make some choices about this set, as well as some plans. 

Let’s start with my favorite thing about this set: The Borderless Movie Poster Frames.

These are gorgeous and then some, and while some of these treatments have languished after Secret Lair printings, the layout and design here is top-notch. These range from popular Commander cards (Cathars’ Crusade at 128k decks on EDHREC) to Modern archetypes (Through the Breach) and even Griselbrand, who gets reanimated now and then. 

What I don’t like here is how often some of these have gotten reprints. Avacyn has a borderless foil from Double Masters. Gitrog has a Judge Foil and a Secret Lair version. Griselbrand has had a couple of special printings despite being banned early on in his Commander career. It’s one thing to cash in on reprint equity, but they are hitting these cards hard. 

Also, as a personal note, I tend to concede when the Crusade comes down. I anticipate death comes soon after, but it’s the ten minutes of adding counters I can’t stand. Play it on Arena or MTGO sure, but if it’s not automatic, I no longer care. 

There are other Borderless cards in the set, but I feel it’s important to go over the math on those and the Movie Posters too.

Nonfoil cards: 

Foil cards:

Like I said, compared to other recent sets, INR has relatively easy pulls. You need to open ten times the packs needed to get a Fracture Foil compared to a Movie Poster!

The only things harder to pull than a Movie card are the six mythics: Borderless Temporal Mastery, Borderless Cultivator Colossus, Borderless Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, (who is banned in Pioneer), Equinox Arlinn Kord, and Fang frames for Edgar Markov and Bloodline Keeper. 

It’s also worth mentioning that one of the most popular casual cards in the set is Infernal Grasp, and we can bring up that math too: 2.5% to get a foil borderless, 5% to get a nonfoil. That’s 1/40 and 1/20 chances at the Infernal Grasp, which is in 185k Commander decks online.

The Retro Frame cards in this set are neat, but that treatment is a bit underwhelming. If the card is already popular, that’s good, but I have a hard time seeing most of the INR cards holding a price. For comparison, in Ravnica Remastered, the only retro frame nonfoils with a price above $10 are the ten shocklands, Cyclonic Rift, and Bruvac the Grandiloquent. I do not have high hopes for INR’s retro foils.

Underwhelming is really the keyword for a lot of this set. For instance, the slowlands from MID and VOW are mega-popular in Commander, but those got no special treatment at all. Just regular and foil, not even a retro frame. Sure, they already had sweet versions in the original set and in Double Feature, but if you’re a reprint set…use your reprints!

These packs are going to be tremendously swingy, as several people on the ProTrader Discord have pointed out. Movie Poster Emrakul in foil will be an impressively expensive card, but that same slot might get you a showcase Arilinn Kord for $5. I always advocate against buying single packs and opening them, even with the dopamine high that you get. This set is going to be one of the strongest examples of the phenomenon, given that the packs are more expensive than usual.

It’s well known that Ravnica Remastered did not sell up to its expectations. Innistrad Remastered has pretty low expectations, and seems to be selling decently. We’ll see what these prices do, but around the beginning of summer, I’ll be on the lookout for a few specific cards:

Foil Borderless Rooftop Storm: As a Zombie enthusiast, this enchantment is one of the best things you can be doing. I want a big stack of these for when Zombies have their time in the sun again.

The Slowlands: These were expensive during their heyday in Standard, and the premium versions still are. I’d be looking to get a few of each when the regular nonfoil is at its lowest price, just for the Commander appeal.

Movie Poster Hermit Druid: The combos are many, and they are deadly. This will get impressively cheap in the regular frame, but considering the combo players, I’ll want a few of these in reserve. 

Foil Borderless Conjurer’s Closet: Commander players love a good flicker, putting this in 100k decks. This is clearly the best version, and should get impressively cheap.

Finally, I want to go over a few Vampire specs that have potential right now. We saw Dragon cards spike somewhat when The Ur-Dragon was made cheap, and we’re about to see that with Edgar Markov, one of the top ten all-time Commanders. 

Edgar, Charmed Groom – I especially like the Dracula version here, because he’s a lord, he makes tokens, and he’s tough to kill. Should be one of the first Vampires to pop off as people get their hands on a cheap copy of Edgar Markov and get to building.

Malakir Bloodwitch – I own a few foils from before VOW was printed, and I bought in at much too high a price. I’ve played enough Vampire decks to know how good this effect is, and if you can copy it, even better. What should Gray Merchant have all the fun?

Vampire Nocturnus – A big throwback, this card is unfairly fun even if it’s only active something like 40% of the time. 

Elenda, the Dusk Rose – There’s more than one special version to choose from, but you’d have to have an odd build of a deck to leave her out. Grab what’s cheap while it’s cheap.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

It’s the New Year, and it’s time to look at what I actually bought into during the calendar year. Some of these are specs, some of these are related to picks I’ve made, and plenty are Secret Lairs. I want to be as transparent as possible, and if you want to see all that I’ve done, this is your time. 

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Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

You might be thinking something like ‘We don’t even know all the cards in this set yet, and this guy is calculating odds and how many there are and what to target already?’

And the answer, clearly, is yes. 

Given what we know, we can make more than a few suppositions, and estimate where would be a good place to make some plans. 

So last week, I laid out that my estimate for the print run is 1.25 million packs.

With some more research, and conversation, and distributors, I’m revising that to double the print run, at 2.5 million Collector Booster packs. The numbers after this paragraph have been edited to reflect that new estimate.

With that number, we can say how many of a certain card *should* be out there. This presumes that every pack finds it hands into customers’ hands, which is not a given. 

What we can glean, though, is going to do a lot for our expectations. Let’s look again at the categories of cards in the last three slots. First, the two nonfoil slots: 

Nonfoil Category	# of packs to open one specific card from that category	Final odds (divided by two, because there’s two slots!)	Times $30/pack to get cost/copy
Movie Poster Rare or Mythic Rare (10)	114.94	57.47	$1,724.14
Retro Frame (24)	57.55	28.78	$863.31
Retro Frame Mythic Rare (12)	81.08	40.54	$1,216.22
Other Booster Fun Rare (17)	57.43	28.72	$861.49
Other Booster Fun Mythic Rare (6)	115.38	57.69	$1,730.77

And as a reminder, the foil slot: 

Traditional Foil (unless noted otherwise)	# of packs to open one specific card from that category	Times $30/pack to get cost/copy
Movie Poster (10)	100.00	$3,000.00
Retro Frame Rare (24)	58.39	$1,751.82
Retro Frame Mythic Rare (12)	82.19	$2,465.75
Borderless, Showcase Equinox, or Showcase Fang Rare (17)	58.22	$1,746.58
Borderless, Showcase Equinox, or Showcase Fang Mythic Rare (6)	117.65	$3,529.41

Now, that data is useful, as these cards aren’t tough to pull. We know that already. But when you add in the 2.5 million as the number of packs, then we get the approximate number of copies out there…and that’s illuminating indeed. Data is useful, as these cards aren’t tough to pull. We know that already. But when you add in the 2.5 million as the number of packs, then we get the approximate number of copies out there…and that’s illuminating indeed. 

	# of packs to get a copy (approx.)	# of copies out there (approx.)
Nonfoil Category
Movie Poster Rare or Mythic Rare (10)	57.47	43500.96
Retro Frame (24)	28.78	86865.88
Retro Frame Mythic Rare (12)	40.54	61667.49
Other Booster Fun Rare (17)	28.72	87047.35
Other Booster Fun Mythic Rare (6)	57.69	43335.07
Traditional Foil (unless noted otherwise)
Movie Poster (10)	100	25000.00
Retro Frame Rare (24)	58.39	42815.55
Retro Frame Mythic Rare (12)	82.19	30417.33
Borderless, Showcase Equinox, or Showcase Fang Rare (17)	58.22	42940.57
Borderless, Showcase Equinox, or Showcase Fang Mythic Rare (6)	117.65	21249.47

So let’s start with the movie posters, as we know two of them already: Emrakul, the Promised End and The Meathook Massacre. 

Both of these are already expensive cards in their own right, and therefore start out as quite pricey cards, especially in foil. However, given the quantity out there, I think there will be a downward trend for these over time. Let’s do a comparison for the nonfoils.

Card	# of copies	EDHREC usage	Price
Hellkite Tyrant (Retro Frame Serialized)	500	90,000 decks	$185 (started at $260)
Emrakul, the Promised End	~43,500	44,000 decks	$50/$100 (projected)
The Meathook Massacre	~43,500	125,000 decks	$75/$130 (projected)

Emrakul is currently at $45 and will drop some in price for the regular frame, but the movie poster version should end up at $60 or so, with the foil being at or near $100. I think Meathook’s popularity will bode well over time, but the initial price is just too wild. It’s $90+ and should slowly decline in price. I’ll need a couple for my decks, but these cards will come down as time passes.

If we knew the other movie poster cards we could make estimations of those prices as well, but for now, we’re just speculating. 

The movie posters are slightly more common than the alternate frame mythics, but I have little faith in non-serialized Edgar Markov’s price long-term. Everyone who wants a Vampire deck will be able to get one, and while he’s a fantastic Commander with a broken ability (Eminence is pretty damn overpowered) he’s going to have trouble keeping regular nonfoils over $30. We’re getting Showcase, Retro, and Regular frames, plus the serialized version, which will attract the big spenders.

We do know some of the retro frame cards, like Snapcaster, Liliana of the Veil, or Meathook, and sadly, I don’t think that these are going to be particularly chase versions. Retro frame was a really cool thing when it first happened but compared to the borderless versions we get, these are just not as desired unless they are super-rare or serialized. The prices bear this out, as evidenced by super-staples like Cyclonic Rift or Rhystic Study. 

As more cards get previewed from this set, we’ll get better information, but for right now, this is what we’ve got and this will help us manage the new-set-frenzy that might come up.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.