Should I Really “jUsT bUy SiNgLeS?”
If you’ve spent *any* amount of time around trading card games, you’ve probably seen, heard, or been part of an interaction where one person (maybe it’s you) is sad they opened some number of packs or boxes and the response from whomever they’re talking to is, “Well, that’s why you should only buy singles.”
It’s a rallying cry of the Magic the Gathering community in particular, and as many of those community members start participating in newer games, I’m seeing it more and more in some of those communities, as well. If you’re new to TCGs you may be taking it at face value as true, or you may be wondering.. how true is this sentiment?
The answer (if you’ve read ANY of my other articles you’re probably going to see this response coming) is that it’s a bit complicated.
For some games, or some sets within those games, I would never, ever, ever tell you that you’re going to buy a booster box at MSRP and make your money back. For those same games, it’s unlikely I’d tell you that it’s impossible you don’t make a massive return on that same box.
The thing that makes this really complicated is that the prices of singles, the rarest and most powerful ones, are determined by HOW MANY BOXES ARE OPENED across an entire playerbase.
First, a definition:
“Smaller Games” - n. games that have healthy player bases, fire off decent sized nationals events, but that don’t have very many stores investing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year into them, such as UVS, Digimon, Dragon Ball Super Masters; they have lots of listings on TCGPlayer, but they’re not on the landing page and aren’t available on TCGDirect.
In Smaller Games™ the supreme chase cards tend to be opened at much, much, much lower rates. Taking the example of UVS, many of their sets now have what they call “chrome rares.” A chrome rare is approximately 1 per 1-2 cases. If you play any modern TCG, you should be familiar with this pull rate. Almost every game has an equivalent - enchanteds, alt art leaders, expeditions, mangas, secret alternate arts, etc. In many arguments about whether to open a box or not, people are treating this ultra rare chase cards as insurance against low estimated values, and are counting on “hitting” to flip them for money and essentially get all the other cards in the box for free. The logic is there, but it’s flawed, and that’s a totally different discussion for a different time.
In a game like Pokémon where more boxes than you can possibly picture are opened of every single set, the secret alternate arts usually get up to a maximum of $400-500 during the ultimate peak of the hype, and that’s only in rare cases. As time passes and the population of that same card at NM or graded 10 decreases, on a long enough timeline and assuming Pokemon continues to be popular with people of all ages, that number will climb.
With a Smaller Game™, several of the assumptions we make with a Pokemon chase card are no longer true. We cannot assume, for instance, that the game will remain popular enough that it will still be printed in 10-20 years, and games that are no longer in print have much, much shallower interest bases. We also cannot assume that the population of opened copies of the rarest of the cards from that set are at their peak. Both of those assumptions affect the valuation of long-term investment. With Pokemon, it’s an easy assumption that the market demand for anything that has spiked to a high value is DEEP, meaning there’s lots of people willing to pay that amount of money for that card. All of these factors mean that when we’re talking about a game like Pokemon, it’s fairly easy to look at all of the cards which could potentially be in a booster box and calculate whether that box will be worth more opened or sealed. With Smaller Games™ there simply isn’t enough data.
All of that said, here’s what you should ask yourself when you’re trying to figure out whether you want to buy boxes/packs or singles:
1. Can I afford to buy a booster box today?
2. Does opening a booster box bring me joy?
3. Do I need a significant number of cards from this box or am I chasing a single card?
4. Am I opening cards as a hobby or am I trying to turn a profit?
The simple fact of the matter is that if you’re not a business, and you’re not interacting with trading cards because you want to make money off of them, you shouldn’t be bothering to listen to any of the finance arguments. Enjoy your hobby how you want to enjoy it and ride off into the sunset with your fingers in the air.
People who knit or scrapbook or bake as a hobby are NOT doing this math, so why are you?
If you’re on a budget and want the most bang for your buck, question number 3 is the most important. I’m going to assume that if you’re broke and you want to be able to build a current deck full of cards from the newest set, you’re not really going to care whether the versions you have are the coolest. In this scenario (brand new set, you’re trying to build a deck that has multiple copies of things from the new set), you should ABSOLUTELY be buying a box or two.
Buckle up - this is where we get into some nitty gritty maths.
Let’s say you want 4 copies each of every playable common/uncommon and most of the rares (if you’re playing a game that does not call the cards that, substitute in whatever the lowest three rarities are). In most cases, you can expect a playset of commons out of a single box, and a playset of uncommons out of 2-4 boxes depending which game you play.
The average game has booster boxes priced between $110-150, and most of them have 24 packs in them now, although some have 36. For this hypothetical, I’m going to assume you’re able to find a box for $120, it has 24 packs, and each pack has 12 cards in it. $120 is on the high side for a lot of current games, and 12 cards is fewer than many packs have in them, so this math is probably being generous unless you’re playing something like Lorcana, which MSRPs at $145 and has 24 12-card packs.
Here’s some really basic math to illustrate the point I’m about to make:
$120/24 = $5/pack
$5/12 = $.41/card
If you’re buying singles out of the case at a store, they’re usually refusing to price any of those cards at lower than a certain threshold, so they’re not losing money the moment a staff member touches it. This is typically $.50 or $.75 depending on the store, so compared with walking into the store and asking to buy those bulk cards individually, you’re probably saving money overall.
But remember, there’s a breaking point. If you want enough playables in your collection that you can build almost any deck in the current format, you just need a playset or two of the majority of the cards before it stops being a game of “every card I open is maybe worth keeping” to “I only want 1-3 cards from this whole box.”
Here’s that same math, if we’re assuming you are opening a box because you want 3 super particular cards:
24*12 = 288 cards in the box ($.41 each)
24*1.5= 36 the number of rares or better you can expect with the way most games are currently seeded
3*(1/36) -= 8.3% (and this is being really generous with the probabilities by assuming there’s only 36 different cards that can be in those slots, among other things) you hit 1 of the cards you need from that box in each of the 36 rare+ slots
$120/3 = $40 per card cost assuming you hit all three cards you’re looking for
This is all very rough, but it’s in the ballpark (or at least next to the ballpark) for most sets of most modern TCGs in the United States. If you’re able to sell all the cards you don’t want or need to someone else at more than $.41 each, then opening that box is maybe still worth the time and effort, but if you have the infrastructure to instantly flip 98.9% of the cards you’re opening, you probably have better math than this to work with and don’t need my advice.
The main takeaway here is that if you’re buying a box for only a handful of cards, you are, in spirit, gambling and should probably just trade some of your extra duplicates for the cards you’re still missing unless what you enjoy about TCGs is that it feels like gambling. If you want 80-90% of the cards you could potentially open from a box, you should definitely buy a box, and everything in between is based on what you, an adult with money in your pocket, want to do.