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The Secret Speculation Formula
This is my most closely guarded secret. A formula which helps predict set prices and
individual prices. It allows me to know what booster boxes/cases and what singles to buy.
The formula is easy to understand. It told me Zendikar Booster Packs/Boxes/Cases were
a great long term value. It also helps you speculate on singles. Alumni include Jace
the Mind Sculptor, Karn Liberated, and Voice of Resurgence.
Now the boring math stuff.... Open Excel. Gracias.
One Pack typically consist of
1 Rare (mythic) 3 Uncommons
9 Commons 1 Common or Foil
1 Basic Land
We need to get the value of each card in the set. We can do this by using tcgplayer lows.
We add together the value of every mythic card in the set, and divide by the number
of mythics to find the value of the average value which I will label MAverage.
We do the above for the rare cards as well. Let's label this RAverage.
To get the entire set's value (important in understanding whether to buy a box/case not
as important for speculating on individual cards) we do this for uncommons and commons.
I will ignore foils for now (there is a more advance formula that calculates their value).
There are four categories: MAverage, RAverage, UAverage, and CAverage.
Following the above structure we get a formula like so:
Pack Value = 9*CAverage + 3*UAverage + (7/8)*RAverage + (1/8)*MAverage
The result gives you the average price per pack.
Multiple by 36 you get the average price per box.
Multiple by 216 you get the price per case.
Let's go over two examples:
Zendikar
Zendikar was not a typical box since it has another variable. This additional variable
was the full art land. The excel spreadsheet for Zendikar was insane since every pack had
a full art land and a few packs would have FOIL full art lands. Plus the fetchlands and
FOIL fetchlands.
Here's some interesting stats.
1 in 4 packs will have a foil.
1in 15 foils will be a foil rare.
1 in 60 packs contains a foil rare.
1in 15 foils will be a foil land.
1 in 60 packs will have a foil land.
.....yawn
Remember the formula above... now it gets complicated. The formula uses averages of
M, R, U, and C and calculates current set values. To speculate we have to use expected
value or EV. Who determines EV? You do. The total EV of Zendikar is extremely high, just
below 200 dollars.
But why are boxes 300 dollars? The extra 100 dollar is the premium a person pays to open
the box. A box unopened is worth more than a box opened (if this was not true then arbitrage
would occur and players would just open ALL the boxes).
Voice of resurgence
I picked Voice of Resurgence when he was 12.50 on ebay (on SCG which I screen o matic he
was 19.99). The feedback on my video was largely "Dies to pillar of flames." In general people
thought the card would do poorly.
The values of mythics were exceedingly unbalanced for a third smaller set. And most of the pre-order
prices were completely insane: Ral Izzet at 40 is unbelievable. The only comparison I
had was Worldwake. None of the rares broke an EV of 5 dollars (which especially terrible
given the size of the set).
After plotting the EV mythic and rare prices I determined some card should spike hard.
How I determined it was Voice I'll leave for another video.
If you guys enjoyed this please like, comment, and share. Next up in the weekly series Make
Money Get Money: What does Voice, Archangel of Thrune, and Elspeth Sun's Champion have
in common?