Let’s talk about Masterpiece Economics

Why the ‘added value’ is a double-edged sword

(Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions addressed in Ask Krenko are for entertainment purposes only, and I make no promises that my math is right, though I did clear it with a trained professional.

Strap yourselves in: This is a bit of a read, but I promise it’s important)

For the purposes of this discussion, I want to start with two assumptions, both of which are technically false but useful to us to determine value.

Assumption One) Tokens, Commons and Uncommons are effectively worthless. While this isn’t true, and many uncommons reach a dollar or two, it’s close enough to true for this conversation, and you threw out a pile that you drafted just last week anyway.

Assumption Two) A pack of Magic: the Gathering cards sells for $4. You pay less if you buy in bulk and some places just charge less, but the actual pack value isn’t relevant to this conversation. I just need a baseline to compare things.

So, if we accept that assumption, now we need to explain that a pack of an unlimited set like Battle for Zendikar or Kaladesh can never be worth MORE than $4. The reason for this is that unless something goes seriously sideways like in Worldwake, demand will never be so high as to outstrip supply. As long as Wizards is pumping out a steady stream of these cards at $4 a pack, if expected pack value rises above $4, people will just buy packs instead of singles. Singles will then lower in price, and expected pack value will settle at $4. Expected pack value can, however, drop below $4. This just results in people only purchasing when they can purchase at a discount, and stores putting things on sale.

If tokens, commons and uncommons are worthless and pack value is $4, then we assume the value of a pack is entirely in the rare slot. This means that in a set like Onslaught, with 110 rares, as long as expected value hasn’t dropped below $4 (which is rare and only tends to come from very poor power level), the average rare has to be worth $4. Sure, some will be worth more, and some will be worth less, but on average, $4. If you bought three packs to draft with, you’d expect to get about your money’s worth.

Then Mythic Rares happened, and rares were lowered in number. Shards of Alara, the set that introduced Mythics, had 53 rares and 15 mythic rares. Mythic rares are rarer and more valuable than rares. Because a Mythic is only about 1 in 8 packs, it’s 7 times rarer than a rare. You pull 1 mythic for every 7 rares on average. With fewer mythics, though, this makes any given mythic 7*15/53 times as rare as a rare… or about twice as rare. But while a rare was formerly worth about $4, a mythic has to be worth about twice as much as rare AND the price of a pack can’t exceed $4.

This means our new formula is $4 = (2x [the value of one mythic rare in 8 packs]+7x [7 rares in 8 packs])/8 [packs] where x is the average value of a rare.

If we do the math out, a given rare is now worth about $3.56 while a mythic is worth about $7.12, before adjusting for competence. This may not seems like a large change, but it means now your ability to get good value is based much more heavily on whether or not you open a mythic or not. With mythic rares often being particularly powerful for Standard, this issue is exacerbated, but that’s not math I’m here to discuss. That’s just me hating mythic rares.

With Battle for Zendikar, and now with Kaladesh, we have masterpieces. A Masterpiece appears in 1 out of 144 boosters, though it doesn’t take up the rare slot. Assuming Kaladesh has the same 53:15 ratio as most sets, this means a Masterpiece is worth (144*30/53) or 81.5 rares.

Now, we multiply our earlier formula from 8 packs to 144 packs to get ( 36x [18 mythics] + 126x [126 rares]+81.5x [the lone Masterpiece])/144 = $4. Based on card rarity alone, this brings X, our expected value of a given rare, down to $2.37, which in turn drops the average Mythic Rare’s value to $4.74. This is a major drop. This means if you pull as Masterpiece, you’re set for a while, as their average price lies at $192.90, but that will only happen in 1: 48 drafts, and in the other 47, you can’t expect to get close to your investment.

Our final math shows that any non-Masterpiece card in a set with Masterpieces is worth about 67% of what it would be worth without Masterpieces.



So, who is this good for? Standard players, primarily. The existence of non-standard-legal Masterpieces will drop standard’s price significantly for as long as they’re around. Though the numbers will surely skew based on playability, the base numbers suggest standard decks costing a third less than they used to. It’s also good for anyone who wants to use the Masterpieces, as some of these will be first foil printings, the new art adds options, and it’s plausible that some of the Masterpieces will wind up less expensive than the originals.

Who’s it bad for? Technically, by sheer numbers, nobody. In practice? Anyone who opens any Battle for Zendikar or Kaladesh booster packs and never opens a Masterpiece, including any Standard player who gets packs as a tournament prize. With the odds against you being literally gross, that’s very likely to be you.



Krenko’s final opinion here is… Masterpieces are too rare. I don’t mind the concept, I love the style, but the highest rarity card still needs to be something the average player can expect to see one or two of. Without that, we’re going to have large numbers of players feeling like all their cards are worthless, because they just haven’t been lucky enough to see a Masterpiece.

