Buckle up, people, because we’ve got a lot to talk about. Every set, Wizards gives us some information, and from that information, we can calculate very specific ratios and odds for what we can open out of Collector Booster packs.

So let’s get to it, and insert your own ‘find the precious’ joke here.

First of all, the whale in the kiddie pool. The One Ring (001/001) is the first serialized singleton in Magic’s history. There’s a couple other exceedingly rare, or one-of cards, in Magic’s history but those are prizes and giveaways. This time, someone’s going to open it. 

We’re outright told in the Collecting Lord of the Rings article that there’s less than a 0.00003% chance of opening the card. In math terms, that’s less than 0.0000003. If you remember reciprocals, that’s handy here as that decimal is also expressed as 1/3,333,333 and that’s how many packs we’re talking. 

Granted, there’s a ‘less than’ in that sentence, so it could be that there’s 3.5 million Collector Booster packs that are eligible. Or four million. We’re going to use the 3.3 million as a known figure, and know that the odds aren’t going to get better, just potentially worse. Wizards likes to be cagey about its actual sales numbers to the public, but this 3.3 million is a helpful guide for future sets.

So one pack in 3.3 million will have The One Ring. There’s three other serialized cards: Sol Ring with Elven art, Dwarven art, and Human art. Respectively, there’s 300 copies, 700 copies, and 900 copies. We know how many copies there are, and we know there’s at least 3.3 million packs, so we can estimate how many packs it would take to get one of those serialized Sol Rings.

That’s some long odds, but if Sam and Frodo could do it, don’t give up hope! Someone’s going to open these, and claim quite the windfall. 

Let’s talk for a moment about what we can get in terms of special treatments. Last week I wrote about the Box Toppers, and how every box gets a traditional foil. In Collector Boosters, those can show up in nonfoil in one slot, and Surge Foil in the final slot.

There are three special versions of LOTR cards: The Showcase Ring frame, the Borderless Scene cards, and Extended-Art cards. Every card has at least one of those, except for the Sagas, which exist only in regular frame foil and nonfoil. In the last slot in a Collector Booster, you can get any of these cards:

Yes, you’re reading that right. Surge foil Box Toppers are going to be slightly more rare than Human Sol Rings. Given 3.3 million packs, there’s approximately 867 of each Surge Foil Box Topper. 

Of course, these aren’t serialized Surge Foils, and that’ll keep the prices lower. There’s also some less appealing choices in the list, such as a Thorn of Amethyst, that will mess with folks’ perception of what these prices should be. 

Here’s one thing that’s missing from that slot: Foil Extended-Art cards. Wizards hasn’t had a problem shoving all sorts of cards into one slot before, but this time, FEA cards from the main set and the Commander product aren’t going to be in the Collector Boosters. There’s slots for non-foil EA treatments, both main set and the Commander cards, but FEA got left out of these packs. 

Instead, they’ve been added to the Collector Booster Sample Packs, the two-card packs found inside of Commander precons. Here’s what’s officially in those: “a 2-card Collector Booster Sample Pack (contains 1 Traditional Foil or nonfoil special treatment card of rarity Rare or higher and 1 Traditional Foil special treatment Common or Uncommon card).” 

We know from the Collecting article that there are 28 rares and 9 mythics from the main set in the EA treatment. The Sample Packs have everything from the last slot in a CB, minus the Box Toppers and adding in those 13 FEA rares and 5 FEA mythics from the main set. There’s a stack of rares and mythics with no FEA version at all.

With all the options in a Sample Pack, here’s how the data breaks down:

We don’t have the same estimates on how many Commander decks get made as we do for the number of Collector Boosters printed, but it’s still an intimidatingly small ratio to get that FEA mythic. 

With all that said, let’s come up with some relative rarities for individual cards/treatments: 

The biggest takeaway here is that Surge foils are crazy rare, and preorder prices bear this out. We should look for these to sell quickly, or at very high price points. 

Secondarily, we want to keep a close eye on the FEA cards from the main set that are only in the Sample Packs. Especially if there’s no other special version of the card, these foils are going to be opened quite infrequently. Prices might rise fast, and quantities will be low.

I hope all this math helps inform your buying, both of packs and of cards, and as always, if you have data you want to show me, please reach out on Twitter or our 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 co-host 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.

There’s a lot going on in the Lord of the Rings set. In the early previews, we’ve gotten a pretty fantastic build-around Commander, who does something unique in a prevalent tribe and in some new colors:

Éowyn, Shieldmaiden, is not a defensive Commander, despite her name. She wants a legion of Humans coming into play, attacking for a bunch, and drawing you cards. This looks to be a fun build, focusing on a tribe that doesn’t have a strong, thematic, multicolor Commander. There’s a couple members of the Kudro family, and several versions of Sigarda who want you to play Humans, but Éowyn tells you exactly what to do, preferably the turn she comes into play so you can get some bonuses immediately.

This is probably going to cause some spikes going forward, and let’s make a preliminary list and see what we can do right away.

I’m not going to lie: There’s a boatload and a half of choice for a Humans deck. Scryfall says there’s 2,037 humans in these colors, and while I think my choices are defensible, more will pop. That’s just the nature of things. Secondly, with Commander Masters coming, plus Secret Lairs, etc., reprints are going to hit some of these cards. It’s pretty certain that at least one of these will be reprinted soon, actually more than one because my first mention is a confirmed reprint for later this year.

Rick, Steadfast Leader ($50 or so) – I have said on podcasts and articles what a terrible idea it is for new cards to only be available in special forms like this. The Walking Dead Secret Lair was the first example of this, and they’ve gone back to this well, promising to use The List to put more copies out there. It’s been done for Stranger Things, it’s due for Street Fighter and the recent D&D set as well.

Rick will get reprinted in The List for Wilds of Eldraine, along with Negan and the whole crew. Rick is clearly the best of the bunch, giving two good abilities and a huge stat boost for only four mana. Being at $50 right now, this is a card you really want to have in any Human-based deck, and the good news is that The List copies, while only being available in nonfoil, promise to be a lot cheaper.

The originals, only available in foil, have a chance to appreciate from here and I think you can at least be able to move any copies you have from $50 to $75. It moves a couple copies a day, and offers a chance at some profit. At the least, get your personal copy now if you want a shiny version.

Esper Sentinel ($30 for the cheapest version, up to about $46 for the most expensive) – A very strong contender for a reprint in CMM in August, this does everything you want in a Humans deck. It draws you cards when your opponents do things they are guaranteed to do, and also offers you a chance to play a one-drop Human for Éowyn, play her, and profit.

Esper Sentinel has reached mega-staple status on EDHREC, being in 256,000 listed decks, and so the reprint is coming. Until it does, Éowyn is going to be part of why this card keeps rising higher and higher.

Hanweir Garrison ($5-$8) and Hanweir Battlements ($4-$9) – These are two cards that haven’t really had a deck that allows them to sing, but are perfect for Éowyn. We want haste, we want lots and lots of Humans, and everyone loves Melding cards for giant cards. 

The only thing that doesn’t work is that the Garrison’s attack trigger happens a little too late for Éowyn’s trigger, which is at the beginning of combat. Garrison is one of the fastest ways to get to six Humans, though, so when this starts climbing, be ready to cash in.

Grand Abolisher ($27 to $121) – Another card that’s begging for a reprint, the only foils of this from M12 are more than a hundred bucks. As useful Humans go, this one is worth the price of admission.

Having this in play gives you such a feeling of security, that nothing can go wrong. This ought to be in more decks, but it’s so noninteractive that I think Wizards has been hesitant to reprint it. I’m constantly surprised that it’s not played in Modern more. If it dodges a reprint in CMM this summer, we’ll see this grow as folks want the warm safety blanket.

Sakashima of a Thousand Faces ($27-$40), Sakashima the Impostor ($3 to $143) and Sakashima’s Student ($14, no foils) – It’s easy to forget that these aren’t just Clone effects, they are Humans and will work with lots of effects. You might not want them to come in as copies of your Humans, but you might also want them to copy your Commander, which two of them can do. 

Again, I’m expecting at least one of these to catch a reprint in Commander Masters, so speculate carefully, but these cards are also under pressure from clone themes and ninja decks, so this isn’t just a spec based on Éowyn.

Hero of Precinct One (all under $1) – Now let’s get to the cards that synergize best with Éowyn’s text box. In this instance, if you have the Hero, and cast Éowyn, you’ll get the trigger, create a token, and then Éowyn will see that you had a Human come into play and all of her fun happens. If you have even one other Human, you’ll immediately get a card.

This was from Ravnica Allegiance, so there’s no special versions, only regular and foil. This is a pretty cheap card to get a premium treatment now, but we’ll see about the reprints we get going forward. For now, buy a brick now and buylist them out for $2 each.

Outlaws’ Merriment (50¢ to $8) – There have been a lot of ways to potentially use this random effect, especially given the ‘party’ mechanic, but no matter which token you get, it’s good with Éowyn. It’s a damn shame that Assemble the Legion is Soldier tokens, but you get what you get. For the Merriment, I think I’d prefer to be stocked up on the super-cheap copies, though the FEA versions are also at their lowest:

As a mythic from the first FEA set, there aren’t a lot of these on TCG right now and if you’re going to go build Éowyn’s deck, this is an excellent place to start. The low number of copies is appealing on the FEA, but there’s definite brick potential in buying a whole lot under a dollar and buylisting them for double to triple that.

Thraben Doomsayer (25¢ to $3) – Foils at $3 would be the play here, as they are from 2012 and there are relatively few in circulation. Nonfoils were in Commander 2020 decks, and there’s a very large number of those around. Again, this as a play before Éowyn means you get all of Éowyn’s goodness on the turn she comes down, and I hope you’re never in a Fateful Hour situation.

Gallows at Willow Hill (25¢ to 75¢) – Finally, a pet card of mine when I had a Humans token deck a while ago. You will be amazed at the number of times you can activate this card with token makers like Call the Coppercoats, Increasing Devotion, Reverent Hoplite, etc. Reusable ways to destroy creatures is a great way to make up for how undersized your Humans are, and if there’s no good attacks, you can just solve target problem. I don’t think this will bite hard price-wise, but it’s an example of the random Humans and Human accessories we’re about to see spike.

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 co-host 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.

I’ve written before about how my new rule is to wait around six months for a set to be out, in order for supply to hit maximum before I move in on cards. We’ve got some new factors to consider with this policy, but Dominaria United has reached this point, and it’s time for us to dig in and see what’s worth buying for long-term gains.

The big caveat here is the new three-year Standard. I am certain that there will be some form of Standard reprint set, but I’m not sure what form it will take. There’s four major options, based on previous products, or they could get us with something new:

1. Multiverse Legends-style bonus sheet in a regular set
2. Aftermath-style small packs
3. Challenger decks with some number of reprints
4. Secret Lair versions of popular Standard cards

Personally, I think Challenger decks are the most likely, but we’ll see.

Card discussions today are going to focus on the idea that these cards won’t rotate until the Fall set of 2025. They will have a long time to mature, and we’ll just have to see about bans and reprints.

Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (cheapest version is about $65, most expensive $110) – There’s a banned announcement coming on Monday, and frankly, I’m worried Sheoldred will be on that list. If you were paying attention in our ProTrader Discord, James identified this card way early as a grower, and he’s been nothing but right. 

In a world with no bannings, no reprints, this would be crazy expensive in the next 18 months. Unfortunately, I have to imagine one of those things will happen to the card. Wait until the hammer drops, one way or the other, and be prepared to pick up potentially very profitable copies when they bottom out again.

Liliana of the Veil ($16 to $23 for DMU versions) – The main thing holding this card back is the presence of not just the original Innistrad copies, but Modern Masters 2017 and Ultimate Masters as well. 

As we have seen, you can only reprint a card so many times before it doesn’t recover. There is a world in which LotV reasserts her place at the top of Modern and Pioneer, but the relatively low inclusion rate in Commander (15,000 decks on EDHREC) means that when she’s not good in the Eternal formats, her price is going to wither.

With originals at about $30 and a range of copies available between $16 and $25, I just can’t recommend picking this up as a spec…yet. If the DMU copies manage to sink below $10, I’ll think about this again because while I have a hard time seeing the world in which $20 copies become $40, I think it’s very reasonable to have sub-$10 copies climb to $20 or $25 before she’s printed again.

Shivan Devastator ($5 to $25) – I’ve never hidden my love for Dragons, and with The Ur-Dragon returning this summer in Commander Masters, every Dragon is on the radar. This Dragon Hydra is a simple, flexible card that is only in 10,000 decks online, but I suspect that more casual players opened this and popped it into any Red deck they wanted. Of note, I think the Game Day versions, which are full art, foil, and a mostly-not-there frame, are probably where I’d want to be, given that there’s less than 30 vendors with NM copies on TCGplayer and the biggest wall is five copies.

Jodah, the Unifier ($4 to $10) – Jodah is one of the top commanders since being printed, and it’s not hard to see why. Commanders that give value are usually popular, and this one offers a flexible, five color theme of ‘what are the best legends in Magic?’ The commander is usually not the most expensive part of the deck, unless you’re The Ur-Dragon and you haven’t gotten new copies in several years. In this case, though, with the theme being legends and legendary accessories, I’d be a believer in some of these textured foils around $10. Textured foils were slightly harder to pull than Showcase versions, and we always want the fanciest version for our Commander. 

Plaza of Heroes ($7.50 to $11) – Jodah’s favorite land, this price is mostly due to Commander demand, though there is a neat Esper Legends deck running around that makes good use of this card. Note that it’ll cast any legendary spell, a designation that includes Planeswalkers and other legendary fun, including legendary sorceries.

Unsurprisingly, this is the top card from the set in EDHREC, but it’s not that far ahead of #2, Braids, Arisen Nightmare. I really like FEA copies around $11 to start making some serious gains soon. As an added bonus, because it’s so easy to put in just about every Commander deck, when the inevitable reprint comes, this ought to recover fairly quickly.

Timeless Lotus ($17 to $22) – We don’t get mana rocks that tap for the same amount of mana as it took to cast them. Getting more than you paid means a drawback, with the exceptions of Power cards and Sol Ring. Basalt Monolith is the only other artifact that gives as much as it required, and it needs mana to untap. If you haven’t played with Timeless Lotus, you might not be aware of how amazingly efficient it is, but rest assured, this is a good card even without shenanigans involved.  Please be aware that the only thing holding it back in Commander is that this must go into a five-color deck. unlike cards templated in the style of Cascading Cataracts.

Despite its restrictions, copies under $15 are gone, and there’s not much left under $20. Note that this had no fancy version, only foil and nonfoil; we all expected a schematic version in BRO’s subset but it didn’t appear there either. There will be some Secret Lair with a Lotus theme, and I will likely buy a lot of that.

Rivaz of the Claw (a quarter to $1.50) – Dragons on the horizon means that this incredibly powerful mana dork might have a chance to shine. It’s pretty impressive that you can get both two mana and the reanimation going on at the same time, making sure that this is never a dead draw. The EDHREC numbers are terrible, though, and the price is in the gutter, nearly a bulk rare. The play here is to pick up a brick of very cheap copies, and hope to buylist them all at the same time when this spikes to $3 in the midst of Ur-Dragon hype. However, if casual players aren’t using it now, they might not ever. Staying away is probably safest.

Cut Down ($0.50 to $3) – Given that there’s two years and change for this in Standard, I strongly advocate you picking up your playset now for personal use before these hit $1 or $2 per copy. It’s brutally efficient, instant-speed, and even has a sweet promo version to go after.

Leyline Binding ($10 to $17) – Finally, a card that’s helped give Triomes one more reason to shine in Modern and Pioneer. In Modern, a judicious fetchland for the correct Triome, plus the right shockland, means this is one mana starting as early as turn 2. Pioneer isn’t quite as capable or as fast, but even without fetches it’s still a very popular card among Domain or Zoo archetypes. This is rarely played at less than three copies, which also helps the price. This is the most expensive rare from the set, and I think it’ll be at least $15 before Christmas.

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 co-host 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.