Market structure from recorded TCGplayer prices, cross-read against 1,651 community decklists. Decklists and prices only, never win rates.
index level
$106936
printings priced
1,393
decks read
1,651
price updates
58
Set power
Epic vs rare market price, by set
Base-numbered cards only (overnumbered secrets excluded). Average is skewed upward by a few chase cards; median is what a typical card is worth. The gap between the two bars is the chase premium.
Epic cards: average vs median
AverageMedian
Rare cards: average vs median
AverageMedian
Rarity
Set
Count
Average
Median
Min
Max
epic
● OGN
42
$10.11
$3.37
$0.59
$65.50
epic
● SFD
38
$5.25
$1.76
$0.31
$33.63
epic
● UNL
36
$5.18
$1.62
$0.34
$27.45
epic
● VEN
27
$2.76
$0.67
$0.24
$40.58
rare
● OGN
84
$1.25
$0.29
$0.12
$19.95
rare
Price curves
The top-50 price curve of each set
Every set's cards sorted by price. A curve that stays high across many ranks means the set's value is spread across a lot of cards rather than concentrated in a few.
The hypothesis, measured
Set universality: do OGN and SFD cards go in every deck?
The market thesis says early-set epics and rares are priced high because they slot into any deck. Read against 1,651 real decklists (runes excluded): OGN+SFD cards appear in 30% of decks on average, UNL+VEN in 16%. The data supports the thesis.
Share of decks running ≥1 card from the set
OGN
30%
SFD
29%
UNL
28%
VEN
3%
Average deck slots from the set
OGN
5.9
SFD
3.3
Bulk & chase
Where each set's value actually lives
Share of printings worth under $1 (the bulk rate), and how much of the set's total market value its top five cards hold.
Bulk rate: printings under $1
OGN
70%
SFD
65%
UNL
64%
VEN
69%
Top-5 cards' share of set value
OGN
58%
SFD
52%
UNL
Treatments
What a treatment is worth
Median price multiplier of each art treatment over its base printing (same card, same set), and the foil premium per set.
Treatment multiplier vs base
alt art
62.1× (24)
showcase
44.8× (12)
Foil premium (median, per set)
OGN
3.1× (165)
SFD
3.2× (123)
UNL
3.0× (124)
VEN
Playability
Staples and the value board
Most-run main-deck cards across the corpus, with the cheapest printing's price. Runes are excluded because every deck runs 12 of them.
Defy
10% $1.87
Discipline
9% $0.87
Stacked Deck
8% $0.45
Star-Crossed
8% $0.22
Hidden Blade
8% $0.86
Punch First
7% $0.23
Sealed
Box price vs the set it contains
Booster box market price against the summed value of one of every card in the set, at normal finish. This is not pull expected value. Riot does not publish collation rates, and most boxes open below their sticker price.
Sealed
What a box actually returns
Sticker EV values every card at market. Net applies TCGplayer's fee schedule per card and treats anything that cannot cover its own fees as bulk. Median is the middle of thousands of simulated boxes — the outcome half of openers do worse than. The three diverge because a handful of chase cards carry most of the average.
Set
Box price
Sticker EV
Net of fees
Median box
Beat the price
OGN
$221
$272
$173
$77
9%
SFD
$183
$169
$101
$41
8%
UNL
$176
$208
$136
$48
17%
VEN
$146
$128
$82
$17
9%
Community-observed pull rates; Riot publishes no collation sheet. The guaranteed foil and the room card are not modelled, so every figure reads low. Selling as one lot beats the per-card fee floor used here.
Audience
Who each set is for
Splitting box value into cards bought to be played (common through epic) and cards bought to be owned (alt art, secrets, signatures). Playable value is the floor almost every box delivers; collectible value is a ceiling most boxes never reach. A set leaning collectible pays rarely and enormously.
OGN$6.56/pack playable · $4.77/pack collectible
58% playable · 42% collectible
SFD$3.31/pack playable · $3.75/pack collectible
47% playable · 53% collectible
UNL$3.34/pack playable · $5.34/pack collectible
38% playable · 62% collectible
VEN$1.78/pack playable · $3.53/pack collectible
33% playable · 67% collectible
Listings
Where the asking price sits against the last sale
TCGplayer's low, mid and high describe what copies are currently listed at, across every condition. Market describes what copies recently sold for. They answer different questions, so they are not blended here. The residue worth knowing is the printings where every listing sits above the last sale — nothing on the shelf there is a bargain today, which is a moment to sell rather than buy.
OGN11 of 3523% priced above their last sale
SFD11 of 3064% priced above their last sale
UNL12 of 2984% priced above their last sale
VEN2 of 2421% priced above their last sale
Bars are scaled ×6 so a few percent stays visible. No printing in any set has sold above every current ask, which is what a market with adequate supply looks like.
Scarcity
The foil ladder inverts, and that is a healthy sign
Every rare and epic is printed in foil, so a foil uncommon is genuinely harder to pull than a foil rare — nominal rarity is not true scarcity. Where the uncommon foil out-prices the rare foil, buyers are paying for the harder pull rather than the printed rarity, which is what an invested playerbase blinging out decks looks like.
Set
common foil
uncommon foil
rare foil
epic foil
Ladder
OGN
$0.27
$0.54
$0.29
$3.37
uncommon > rare
SFD
$0.21
$0.35
$0.23
$1.76
uncommon > rare
UNL
$0.20
$0.28
$0.22
$1.62
uncommon > rare
VEN
$0.23
$0.28
$0.17
$0.67
Pool structure
The shape of the card pool
Energy curve of all units, spells and gear; domain and keyword distribution across identities.
Cards by energy cost
70
711
2142
2423
2134
1595
1056
377
26
Event studies
Rules events × the price series
Every ban and errata with its effective date, and each card's price now against the series open. Before and after windows fill in automatically as new price updates follow these events.
Median latest foil close per rarity, base-numbered printings only. Median rather than average, because one chase foil would otherwise carry a whole rarity.