Predicting MtG sealed packs

[chemgear]

This might be very old news but I know some people here play Magic the Gathering. I thought this was neat - especially if you are into making money trading cards and such. Kinda breaks the "fun" of opening packs though:

[Mazrim]

I had no idea you could predict what was in the box. I haven't played since high school but that is pretty neat. I spent too much money on booster boxes, really!

I guess the lesson learned is not to buy booster packs from opened sets since they've probably been pillaged of their best cards.

[HELPNEEDED]

Shirt magic meet up?

[SebC]

If this thing actually works, it's a major fail for Wizards. Aren't the packs supposed to be random?

[FanIn80]

Damn, if only more jocks knew how to write code. Would love to have one of these apps for hockey cards.

[Top Shelf]

That is pretty sweet, i bet its always been like that over the years. A guy could make some good money doing that.

[jtfrogger]

Yes, cards have been like that forever. I've never taken advantage of it, but I had opened up so many hockey card packs in the late 80s & early 90s I started to see the pattern. I generally opened up packs to make sets to sell. What sucked for me is when the packs were somewhat mixed up and I ended up with unbalanced boxes. I heard about people searching boxes for special cards, but I don't think it was too common.

That is actually a pretty slick app. It goes to show why you should only buy from reputable sellers.

[dsavillian]

Originally Posted by SebC

If this thing actually works, it's a major fail for Wizards. Aren't the packs supposed to be random?

They likely print in set (but very large) sequences that are pre-randomized. I'm sure there are limitations on doing true randomization in the mass printing world... one of which would be keeping the distribution of the "rare" cards to a set rate per pack/box.

What they should be doing is randomizing the packs that go into boxes. Keep the average number of "really rare" cards (they call them Mythic rare) the same per box, just shuffle where they are in the box.


I don't buy single packs myself, except when playing at an event that doesn't have an entrance fee (to support the store I'm playing at). I'll stick to boxes or individual cards for my collection purposes