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Are Collector Boosters A Good Deal?

It’s the Magic Finance controversy of the season: are Collector Boosters worth buying? Chas Andres takes a deep dive into what you can get and makes the calculations so you don’t have to. Plus, This Week’s Trends!

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Love them or hate them, Collector Boosters are one of the most financially important Magic products ever released. WotC has released a lot of premium products over the past couple of years—Mythic Edition, Ultimate Masters, the Masterpiece series—but the Collector Boosters are something entirely new. Unlike Mythic Edition, the Collector Boosters will be readily available at stores near you. Unlike Ultimate Masters, the card pool is limited to the current set. And unlike Masterpieces, you have to pay up for them. Way up, in fact. Right now, a single Collector Booster is selling for $30 here on Star City Games with boxes of twelve sold out at $350.

Whether you plan to buy a booster box of Collector Boosters as soon as Star City Games is restocked or not, you need to pay attention to this product. The mere existence of the Collector Boosters is going to affect the price of the cards that you open in booster packs, and it’s important to know what’s up with all the different new versions of every card in Throne of Eldrane.

Plus, there might be some financially lucrative spec opportunities early on, before everybody figures out the deal with these Collector Boosters.

Remember the Japanese alternate-art planeswalkers from War of the Spark? Pre-ordering the right ones early on could have paid your Magic bill for the entire year. In Magic finance, we have to pay close attention to everything—especially when it is both new and confusing.

That’s why I’m writing about Collector Boosters this week. Stick with me—we’ve got some myths to dispel, some opportunities to find, and a whole lot of data to crunch.

Are Collector Boosters a Limited-Print Product?

Yes—kind of.

WotC appears to have three general modes when it comes to releasing products. All Standard-legal sets, major supplemental sets, Commander sets, etc. are print-to-order for a little under a year. Even though very few War of the Spark packs are still being opened right now, local game shops can still order boxes of that set from their distributor. WotC isn’t even pretending that these are limited edition products, and finding packs from these sets shouldn’t ever be hard.

The second type of product release has truly limited print runs. Sets like Ultimate Masters, the original Modern Masters, Mythic Edition, etc. fall under this umbrella. If you wanted any of these products at MSRP, you either had to place your order right away or get very lucky. Otherwise, you were stuck paying a premium on the secondary market.

The third kind of product release, I’ll call “limited-ish.” These are sets like Eternal Masters and Iconic Masters. Unlike the truly limited sets, it was easy to find these packs at or under MSRP. But unlike the print-to-order sets, these packs could only be ordered from distributors for a couple of months before drying up.

I suspect that the Throne of Eldraine collector boosters will be a limited-ish release. WotC has publicly stated that the Collector Boosters will be a limited print run, but I have a hard time believing that they’re going to be all that difficult to find. We know they’re coming to big box stores, like Target and Walmart. We know they’re going to be in this year’s Holiday Box, which is also sold in big box stores. They’re also going to be in the $450 Throne of Eldrane Deluxe Edition Box Set. None of this screams scarcity to me.

This is important information to know, because the future value of these cards is going to depend a whole heck of a lot on how scarce they are. If WotC under-prints the Collector Boosters relative to demand, the set might end up with several $200+ promos and $30 per booster will seem like a steal. If they over-print them, however, we might be looking at a clearance item by mid-January.

A lot of ink has been spilled on Reddit and Twitter about the financial quality of these boosters, but the honest truth is that nobody can really say whether they’re a good deal or a bad deal until we see how scarce they are. My guess is that they’re not going to be all that scarce, but WotC might deliberately under-print them this time around before slowly opening the floodgates in the future.

Why would they do that? Two reasons. First, if the Collector Boosters end up being a bust, they won’t be stuck with thousands of unsold packs. Second, if the Throne of Eldraine boosters are so rare that they end up being worth, say, $50 each, then far more people will drop $30 on the Theros: Beyond Death Collector Boosters because of FOMO, even if WotC increases the supply.

Because of this, it’s important to keep track of the supply chain logistics for the Collector Boosters over the next month or two. If distributors start limiting or rejecting orders, it’ll be time to stock up on boxes at current retail. If there’s a glut instead, you should consider selling whatever boosters and promos you end up with. As always, I’ll stay on top of the situation and keep you updated.

What Cards Can Come in a Collector Booster?

This seems like it should be a relatively straightforward question to answer, but it’s actually quite complex. I think it’s worth covering in detail right now, since we’re about to see a bunch of different premium variants that we’ve never seen before. We need to know everything we can about them if we’re going to engage with them in any sort of useful manner.

Plus, you want to have a good idea of what you’re getting in your $30 booster pack, right?

Regular Foil Commons and Uncommons

You’ll get up to nine of these in each of your Collector Boosters. Most Collector Boosters will have fewer than nine regular foils because these slots can also be filled with showcase cards (more on those later). Still, more than half of each Collector Booster is going to be made of run-of-the-mill foil commons and uncommons. That’s not very “premium” of you, WotC!

As we learned with the Shards of Alara foil packs, tossing a bunch of extra foil commons and uncommons into the available card supply can tank their price tags pretty hard. Foil multipliers are already lower than they “should be” when you math out the relative scarcity of foils, telling me that the number of people who actually want these cards is pretty low. The best foil commons and uncommons should still have 2-4x multipliers, but the bulk foil commons and uncommons that are usually worth between $0.25 and $2 in a normal set will be worth almost nothing in Throne of Eldraine.

But that doesn’t mean that these slots are a total bust! As of now, the cards that you most want to open are:

The rest of the foil commons and uncommons in the set are all $2 or less right now. A few of them will probably break out over the coming weeks, but these nine slots are still pretty lackluster and are unlikely to provide you with much value.

Regular Foil Mythic Rares and Rares

I’m not going to spend much time on these, because we’ve had foil cards since Urza’s Legacy. It is worth noting that there’s only one slot for regular ol’ foil rares and mythics in each Collector Booster, though, and that slot is shared with the entire pool of foil Extended-Art, Showcase, and Borderless Planeswalker cards. If you open a regular foil or mythic and it isn’t one of the set’s chase cards, you’re probably going to be disappointed.

I also suspect that the existence of the Collector Booster variants will drive down the price of set foils, especially for the less sought-after cards. In the past, the foil multipliers for Standard rares has tended to range from 1.5x to 4x, with the foil multiplier for Standard mythic rares ranging from 1.5x to 6x. Most Standard rares and mythics have a foil modifier in the 2-3x range. With so many more variants to choose from, I wouldn’t be surprised if those numbers come down. I’ll take a look in a couple of months, but I bet the average non-variant foil will be 25%-30% cheaper than it would have been in an earlier set without a Collector Booster.

Showcase Cards (Foil and Non-Foil)

All of the Adventure cards in Throne of Eldrane will have a Showcase printing in both foil and non-foil. Weirdly, you can open non-foil Showcase uncommons, mythics, and rares in both Draft Boosters and Collector Boosters, but non-foil Showcase commons will only be in Collector Boosters. This seems counter-intuitive, but I think it’s to ensure that the Showcase cards will still feel somewhat scarce and cool when you open them in your Collector Booster.

You can receive anywhere between zero and thirteen Showcase cards in your Collector Booster, but most of the pack-openings I’ve seen on video so far have contained roughly three to six Showcase Cards. The nine slots that are dedicated to foil commons and uncommons generally contain a reasonable number of foil Showcase commons and uncommons, which tells me that these cards won’t be all that hard to collect regardless. These foil Showcase commons and uncommons will also appear in Draft Booster packs.

Non-Foil Showcase commons can only appear in one of the three slots in each Collector Booster dedicated to Special-Frame Cards. These slots can also contain borderless planeswalkers, but those are obviously quite a bit rarer. These three slots can also contain non-foil Showcase uncommons and rares, and those can also show up in regular Draft Boosters.

Confused yet? I hope not, because we’ve only covered the commons and uncommons so far. The foil rare or mythic rare slot in each Collector Booster has a shot at having a foil rare or mythic Showcase Card, which can also appear in regular Draft Boosters.

So basically, the only Showcase Cards that can’t show up in a normal pack are the non-foil commons. The rest can show up anywhere. If you’re after rare or mythic rare Showcase cards, you’ve got one shot at a foil in each Collector Booster and three shots at a non-foil.

Let’s go over all the Adventure cards in Throne of Eldrane so we can see which Showcase Cards are likely to hold the most value. The values I’m including below are going to be for both the non-foil and foil Showcase Card variants, with the non-foil price coming first:

Mythic

Brazen Borrower is one of the best cards to open in a Collector Booster. The set foil is currently going for $50, so the foil Showcase variant has a 3x multiplier on that and an 8x modifier overall. Even if Brazen Borrower bombs in Standard, I’d expect Cube and Commander demand to be enough to keep this one quite high.

Realm-Cloaked Giant isn’t an awful pull since it’s a mythic, and you’re never going to feel sad pulling a $10 card from one of your variant frame slots or a $40 card from your foil rare slot, but it’s still not as expensive as you’d hope your mythic rare would be.

Rare

Murderous Rider and Bonecrusher Giant have the look of future Standard staples. They should also see regular play in Cubes, which should keep the Showcase version in reasonably high demand with a solid multiplier. These other three rares have something to prove, though, and currently look to be fairly disappointing pulls.

That said, all of these prices seem cheap to me, especially since there is no real multiplier on the foil variants. They’re all currently sold out on Star City Games, and I would be utterly shocked if they aren’t re-stocked at a higher price tag. If you can still snag a foil Showcase Bonecrusher Giant for $6 when this article goes up, you should absolutely snag a copy.

Uncommon

None of these cards is all that exciting. Hypnotic Sprite might see a little Standard play, but these cards have to prove themselves before I can predict that any of them will stabilize at or over the $5 mark.

Common

There isn’t a single Adventure common with a variant price above $3 right now, foil or not. Merchant of the Vale is clearly the most sought-after so far, with Merfolk Secretkeeper also starting to find an audience.

If these prices don’t quite make sense to you—why is the higher number earlier in most cases?— don’t forget that the non-foil Showcase commons are likely to be significantly more scarce than the foil Showcase commons. It might be a little while before most people realize that, though. If you’re going to buy these, I’d grab non-foils over foils, even if you have to pay a little more. They’re underpriced right now relative to expected scarcity, though they’ll still need to find an audience in order to increase in value.

Overall, the Showcase cards in the Throne of Eldrane Collector Boosters are kind of unexciting. Brazen Borrower and Murderous Rider are solid, but there aren’t many great pulls beyond that. It’s possible that we’re underrating several other cards on this list, but still—this is supposed to be one of the main draws of these booster packs, right? I’m not excited to drop $30 on one of these things yet.

Borderless Planeswalkers (Foil and Non-Foil)

Now we’re talking. If you’re dropping a fat stack of cash on a Collector Booster, you’re probably angling for one of these sweet, sweet borderless planeswalkers.

As we know from Mythic Edition, these ‘walkers tend to be in high demand even if they don’t see a ton of play. Here’s a list of all the current set borderless planeswalkers we’ve had so far, including their price tags. (I’m not going to include any of the older planeswalkers, like Jace, for obvious reasons.)

It’s safe to assume that the Throne of Eldrane borderless planeswalkers will have roughly the same value as they would if they’d been in a Mythic Edition. It’s true that there will be a lot more Collector Boosters than Mythic Editions, but they were guaranteed pulls in Mythic Edition. If you want to get one of these in a Collector Booster, you have to get lucky.

It’s also worth noting that there will be both foil and non-foil variants of the borderless planeswalkers. You can open a non-foil borderless planeswalker in one of the three slots in your Collector Booster dedicated to special-frame cards (these will usually just be Showcase cards), and you can open a foil borderless planeswalker in your one slot dedicated to foil rares and mythic rares.

There are three planeswalkers in Throne of Eldrane, all of which can be borderless. Here they are, complete with price tags for both the foil and non-foil borderless variants:

Obviously, these three foil borderless planeswalkers are going to remain expensive for a long, long time. They’re going to be scarce enough that the folks who want them for Cube and Commander are going to have to pay a premium, and we could be looking at a $300+ card if Oko or The Royal Scions ends up seeing significant Modern or Legacy play.

The non-foil variants are currently selling for about 2.5x retail, and that modifier should remain roughly the same as the prices increase or decrease over the coming weeks. As with the Mythic Edition borderless planeswalkers, all of these cards have a rough $20 floor, but I don’t expect any of these cards to get that low. Oko and The Royal Scions should both see competitive play, while Garruk is a strong casual card.

Extended Art Cards (Foil and Non-Foil)

Yep, we aren’t done with the new Collector Booster variants yet.

All of the rares and mythics in Throne of Eldraine that don’t have another variant frame (so no Adventure cards or planeswalkers) are available in extended art, both foil and non-foil. Even better, every Collector Booster comes with a non-foil Extended Art card—fully guaranteed.

If you want to open a foil Extended Art card, however, it’ll have to come in the Foil Rare or Mythic slot. Since this slot can also have a normal, non-Extended Art foil rare or mythic, these foil Extended Art cards are going to be quite scarce. And unlike the other two frame variants, these cards don’t come in normal Draft Boosters. If you want them, you’ll have to start cracking Collector Boosters. Or, y’know, buy them as singles.

Is it time to examine the current retail price for every single Extended Art card in Throne of Eldraine? You bet it is! Let’s begin:

Mythic Rares

Obviously, opening any of these cards (especially the foil variants) is pretty sweet. So far, the non-foil Extended Art cards are being sold at roughly the same rate as the set foils, with the foil Extended Art variants commanding another 4-5x multiplier on top of that. Let’s see if the same is true for the non-mythic rares:

Rares

Things are a little different down here. Almost all of these cards have a rough 3x modifier between the non-foil and the foil variant, even the most expensive cards like Once Upon a Time and Emry, Lurker of the Loch. This tracks with how Standard foil modifiers are usually calculated, with mythic rares having a slightly higher spread than non-mythic rares.

There’s some opportunity here, though. See, almost every Extended Art card has a price tag that was extrapolated from its base price. For example, Stonecoil Serpent is a $5 card, so the set foil and Extended Art variants are $10 and the foil Extended Art variant is $30. Meanwhile, Irencrag Feat is a $2 card, so the set foil and Extended Art variants are $4 and the foil Extended Art variant is $12. So far, so good, right?

Here’s the thing, though. Stonecoil Serpent might end up as a Standard staple, but it’s not going to do much in Modern, Legacy, or Commander. On the other hand, Irencrag Feat has a much better chance of paying off in some sort of casual or Eternal deck.

Now consider that Standard players rarely like to spend up for foils because they’re changing their decks all the time and generally look for efficiency over aesthetics. Commander and Eternal players are all about aesthetics, though, and the Collector Booster cards that will end up being worth $50+ over the long haul are those that show up the most in non-Standard formats.

This is somewhat reflected in these prices, but not as much as it should be. For example, potential Standard staple Gilded Goose is an $8 card with a $35 Extended Art Foil price tag, while Emry, Lurker of the Loch, a sure-fire future Modern staple, is an $8 card with a $60 Extended Art Foil price tag.

Expect these gulfs to widen over time. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Gilded Goose Extended Art Foil is at or under $20 by the holidays, while Emry could easily be at or over $100. Once we figure out which of these cards are good in Modern, those Collector Booster cards are going to double in price again (at least), while the Standard-only variants will likely see their multipliers significantly reduced.

I’d also take a hard look at the future Commander staples. According to EDHREC, Torbran, Thane of Red Fell is the most popular non-Brawl Commander in the set right now, which means that $20 is likely to seem like an amazing bargain for its coolest foil variant in a month or two. Cards like Faeburrow Elder, Mirrormade, and The Great Henge are likely to hold their value, too.

Foil Tokens

In Throne of Eldrane, we’ve got the following tokens:

  • Bear
  • Boar
  • Dwarf
  • Faerie
  • Food
  • Giant
  • Goat
  • Human
  • Human Cleric
  • Human Rogue
  • Human Warrior
  • Knight
  • Mouse
  • Rat
  • Wolf

I’m not sure that any of these will ever be worth more than a buck or two. The Food tokens will likely hold some value by virtue of their uniqueness combined with their playability in Standard, while the Human, Knight, Rat, and Wolf tokens will almost certainly be sought-after as well. There won’t be as big a market for tokens like the Goat and Mouse, which don’t have a lot of homes.

Regardless, you aren’t really buying the booster for this slot, and you’ll probably end up buylisting these for $0.50 at some point in the future.

The Ancillary Slot

Yes, this is what WotC calls it. In Throne of Eldrane, it’s for the Buy-a-Box card as well as the unique cards from the Planeswalker and Brawl Decks.

Here’s the full card pool for this slot:

As with so many things in Magic Finance these days, this is a pretty high-variance card pool. Best case, you get a rare non-foil variant of the Buy-A-Box promo. Worst case, you get Thornwood Falls. Guess which one I’m going to open in my first Collector Booster?

The good news is that you have about a 40% chance to open a $6 or higher card in this slot. I’ll take that. A lot of these cards are likely to hold their value quite well, too. This is the only way to get non-foil copies of the Brawl commanders, and I expect cards like Knights’ Charge, Steelbane Hydra, Tome of Legends, and especially Arcane Signet to remain very popular in Commander. I’ll be looking into buying some of these cards in a month or two.

So. Are Collector Boosters a Good Deal?

In an answer that’s unlikely to satisfy anyone, I am here to declare that Collector Boosters are better than the haters think, but they still have some major issues.

In essence, nine of the fifteen cards in each Collector Booster are going to end up being close to worthless. That leaves us with the three Special Frame cards, the Extended Art card, the ancillary card, and the rare or mythic with extended art as ways to recoup your value.

The variance within these six slots is enormous. Here’s the best-case Collector Booster:

Total: $355

And here’s the worst-case Collector Booster:

Total: $7.25

Looking at things this way makes it clear just how much we’re relying on that foil rare slot to provide us with value from these booster packs. Most of the expensive foil variants (AKA the cards you really want to open) can only be found in this slot, which can also just have, like, a normal foil rare in it. The non-foil Extended Art slot acts as a nice stabilizing force, but the upside is pretty limited. Meanwhile, the three special frame slots have a whole lot of junk—the common and uncommon Showcase Cards say hi—though they do have a small chance at a $40-$60 planeswalker.

Unsurprisingly, I come out of this article feeling like I don’t really want to pay $30 for one of these booster packs. Of course, I don’t like cracking regular booster packs on a whim, either, so this conclusion should be fairly unsurprising. These packs aren’t really for me, nor are they really for anyone who is super-value-conscious. They’re for folks who have some extra money and want to try and shoot the moon on some fancy foil.

These packs would obviously be more attractive if they had older cards in them—Modern staples, say—but I’m sure WotC is currently hard at work trying to figure out a fun new way to sell those cards to us. For now, they want to see if we’ll pay a premium for fancy versions of Standard-legal cards. The answer to that question, I think, is a very lukewarm “maybe!” I’ve seen a lot of community members speak up about their dislike for this product, not wanting to spend a bunch of money on Standard foils, and I certainly get that. On the other hand, I expect that the coolest Collector Booster variants, like the borderless planeswalkers and foil Extended-Art staples, will maintain their value quite well.

Don’t forget: WotC said in their Project Booster Fun article that they expected these packs to sell between $20-$25. They’re sold out at $30 right now, which tells me that there’s actually a great deal of demand at the moment. People want to get their hands on these pretty new cards, and they want them now. It’s also worth knowing that these foils are absolutely gorgeous up close. Seriously—these are some of the nicest-looking cards that WotC has ever produced, period.

Even still, I’m not going to buy any Collector Boosters at the moment. I’m going to snag a few underpriced Extended Art foils, perhaps an Emry and some Commander staples, and then I’ll see how things develop. If the supply starts to dry up, I’ll buy in a little more. More likely, the Collector Booster pack price will drop down into that $20-$25 window and it’ll get easier to find packs. Wait until then if you can. If there are still packs going around when Throne of Eldrane starts to become old news, you should be able to buy the cool new cards you want at a pretty big discount.

This Week’s Trends

The initial Throne of Eldraine Standard metagame is starting to shape up, and it’s got some pretty sweet decks so far.

First up, we’ve got Rakdos Aggro. This one has quite a few rares and mythic rares, including Rankle, Master of Pranks; Robber of the Rich; Bonecrusher Giant; and Murderous Rider from Throne of Eldrane as well as Gutterbones, Knight of the Ebon Legion, Dreadhorde Butcher, Rotting Regisaur, and Spawn of Mayhem from earlier sets. While most of these cards haven’t spiked yet, Spawn of Mayhem is getting really hard to find for less than $6-$7 right now. Expect all of these cards to continue gaining value for the next week or two unless this deck fizzles out.

Golgari Midrange appears to be back as well. This one includes Throne of Eldrane cards like The Great Henge; Once Upon a Time; Questing Beast; Rankle, Master of Pranks; and Murderous Rider as well as earlier cards like Knight of the Ebon Legion, Growth-Chamber Guardian, Rotting Regisaur, and Spawn of Mayhem yet again.

It says a lot that both of these decks use the same basic suite of black cards: Murderous Rider; Knight of the Ebon Legion; Rotting Regisaur; Rankle, Master of Pranks; and Spawn of Mayhem. It’s clear that these cards are playing well together so far in the new Standard environment. If you’re looking to get a leg up on which Standard cards might be the next tier one multi-deck staples, this is where I’d start.

Last up, we’ve got the most popular nonblack deck of the week: Bant Ramp. This one features new Throne of Eldraine cards like Gilded Goose; Wicked Wolf; Oko, Thief of Crowns; and Once Upon a Time alongside old standbys like Hydroid Krasis; Teferi, Time Raveler; and Nissa, Who Shakes the World. We know that these three cards are among the most powerful in the format, and seeing them pared up with Oko, Thief of Crowns only helps confirm that this new Simic planeswalker is the real deal. I really like this deck moving forward, too.

We’ll cover the new Standard metagame in greater detail next week, when we have a little more data, but let’s move on to Modern for now. The biggest innovation of the week is the rise of Paradoxical Urza, a brand-new fusion of a couple of older archetypes that is having a lot of success right now.

Paradoxical Urza
Piotr Glogowski
2nd Place at Magic Online Premier Event on 09-21-2019
Modern
Magic Arena

Creatures (6)

Planeswalkers (3)

Lands (18)

Spells (33)

Sideboard

Magic Card Back


Everyone wants to play Paradoxical Urza right now, and its staples are all shooting up the charts. Mox Opal, Mox Amber, Urza, Lord High Artificer, Mishra’s Bauble, and Engineered Explosives all saw gains last week that are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. I expect foil copies of Paradoxical Outcome to start increasing in price soon as well.

If you’re looking to get ahead on this archetype, check out [author name="Autumn Burchett"]Autumn Burchett’s[/author] article from last week. They have a couple of really interesting ideas about what’s coming next, including the addition of Emry, Lurker of the Loch. Regardless, this is a Modern archetype that I’ll be keeping a close eye on moving forward. As cards move in and out of the consensus decklist, their prices might see some pretty major rises and falls.