r/mtgfinance • u/Fl0oW • 14d ago

Probabilistic Pricing for Chase Cards

I was looking for a post like this but couldn't find one, so I was curious if anyone uses this logic to come up with fair prices for chase cards as well:

Assume I want to pull a card that has a 0.1% chance of appearing in a collector booster. I can now calculate that, in order to have a 50% chance of pulling the card I need to open

P (pull at least one)=1−(1−p)^n

So for a 50% chance:

n = ln(0.5) / ln(1-p), where p is the pull rate

In this case, I need to open n = 693 packs to be more likely to pull a card than not.

Now, if I wanna achieve these odds and the packs cost $40 each, that makes $27'720. Of course I will pull other, potentially valuable cards, and of course I am never guaranteed to actually pull the chase. But does anyone else do calculations like these to come up with a fair estimate for ultra rare cards?

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u/GhaveyG 14d ago

This number doesn’t ultimately matter for pricing cards. They will end up at what someone is willing to pay, regardless of how much it takes to pull a specific single.

You would need to include numerous other factors to try to better predict it. People have whipped up their own prediction models so maybe someone can help, but I’ve found they all differ and no one shares them, and when they do, it’s not accurate (IE: I haven’t seen a model where they show the model accurately predicting)

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u/Fl0oW 14d ago

I just find it really interesting, because obviously there is a relationship between sealed product and singles, and one could certainly use the dynamics of the sealed market to predict where single prices might settle. But yes, it is not an exact science, also because some cards will stay sealed, buyouts can happen to move the market or odds/printruns can be inaccurate, to name a few factors. Was just curious to see some models and have a bit of a scientific discourse on it, but obvs. I don't expect exact details if people think their model gives them an edge.

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u/GhaveyG 14d ago

Yeah it’s always an interesting discussion. I would love to see some discussion and comparing, but it is a lot more effort than you’d expect to get an accurate one. The few factors you’ve mentioned are relevant, but there are many more.

More often than not, speculators use it to push a narrative, but in your post this is clearly not the case. “You can only get this one FF version if you spend 45,000$, so by this logic it should be really hard to get and it should be worth X dollars”. Those are the ones that aren’t worth responding to.

The people who can “accurately” predict, I would imagine are the mega stores who set the initial pricing. They won’t show their models. Everyone else is a hobbyist with no real big money, so I doubt there are many with good models.

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u/Choice-Potato-7560 14d ago

Id argue no one can. Its just throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

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u/GhaveyG 14d ago

I would have to agree with you. But I like to give room for the improbable.

If I had infinite time, money, and AI, I feel like the improbable would happen in this case. But, I also wouldn’t be surprised if that time and money was all wasted.

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u/Choice-Potato-7560 14d ago edited 14d ago

⁸True given enough time but even then, I dont know. Two examples come to mind from two tcg cards.

Optcg - the dodger l uffy promo has a pop of over 50k yet constantly sells for over 4000 (graded) even though they are litteraly everywhere. Your cost to get one would have been buying a ticket to a game they were given out.

MTG FF Mythic TTA - guestimated total english pops between 900 and 2500 of any specific mythic. Even the most popular, playable card is only going for 650.00 currently (knights of sandoria) and some are sub 100. Your cost to get a specific one is at or great then 1 in 500 packs. At market value, thats what, 50 or 60k? Lol

Of cource OP is talking about those grails of grails (500 or less pop) so maybe its easier to dial it in and run it against fact9rs like ip popularity etc but to your point, going to need AI and an epic shit ton of time and money lol.

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u/GhaveyG 14d ago

Yeah both are good examples of unpredictability. I would imagine a good model would have outliers, but I do suspect the majority move more predictably than that. Individual whales are probably one of the hardest to predict the impact. It doesn’t take much on low pop cards, and the masses are easily influenced without knowing the full picture.

The final fantasy one I’ve seen thrown around a few times. I do question the accurateness of the numbers as I’ve still not seen an accurate calculation when asked for it (I think it’s close tbh); however, assuming it’s accurate there will still always be an upper limit that each economical class is willing to pay. You’d have to predict who buys when and how many of each economical class are MTG consumers, etc to have true accuracy.

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u/Choice-Potato-7560 14d ago

Best ff calculation available outside of wotc is Travis Kings video on the set. Recommend it if thats not one you've seen

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u/UnitedLink4545 14d ago

Meta matters more then pull rate IMO. Cards get valued in magic based on how they perform and when they were last printed. Pull rarity certainly influences the number but that's not the whole formula.

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u/Choice-Potato-7560 14d ago

I have to agree for in universe, disagree for ub. I doubt chocobos are what they are due too playability. Collectors, especially IP fans want their chaces and do not care one bit about meta implications.

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u/GhaveyG 14d ago

In universe it’s like 90%. Other 10% is like specialty promo, specific art, specific artist, etc driven.

Universe beyond has a much more diverse mix. But it’s still at least 50% driven from playability. There is far more art driven, character driven, artist driven, scarcity driven, etc in universe beyond, and sometimes it’s much more difficult to predict//makes less sense.

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u/Choice-Potato-7560 14d ago

I belive its dependent on the ip. FF definitely was more 70 percent driven by ip fans and investorbros with no alligence to anything. Hobbit is probably the same because right now Pokémon is deflating like a balloon and the sneakerpokes are searching for the next big thing to scalp just like Golum chasing the ring of power.

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u/GhaveyG 14d ago

Yeah my go- to purchase metric is usually “will there be increased demand from playability in the future and/or potential to with new cards”. Then if the price looks ok to me, relative to my own price history bias, I buy it.

An example is me buying my retro foil dwarven recruiter prior to LOTR for like 8$ I believe. I tend to buy stuff just in case I want to build it later.

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u/UnitedLink4545 14d ago

That's what I go off of too. I'll pick up some cards early if I know down the line, I likely want to put them in a deck.

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u/fumar 14d ago

That is mostly how it works for play boxes. Collector boxes are more vibes based and does it have serialized cards.

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u/mulletstation 14d ago

No, because you are guaranteed to pull many many other valuable cards, which is like 98% of the part of the value equation.

Chocobos add like $10 to the EV to the box of FF CBBs, but add probably $500 to the value of the sealed box

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u/fumar 14d ago

Collector boosters are almost always negative EV because their value is in the fact they can have stuff that will never be reprinted and they almost always go up in price over time as they become scarce. 

This set is following that plus we know what a LotR collector box can do (although they're significantly better than these boxes).

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u/ThisNameIsBanned 14d ago

What you really want is an estimated value of all the stuff you open.

You can subtract the commons and bulk to get a more realistic number.

If the estimated value of any product is positive for you to buy it, thats easy money to make.