When it comes right down to it, Magic is a game-there is value in having fun, and EV calculation can't account for this non-monetary value.
All of these (and I'm sure there are many more) are fine reasons to purchase a booster box, even a low-EV booster box. For some people, buying a box is a tradition, or they enjoy the lottery aspect of the potential to open a foil full-art Engineered Explosives.
Others buy boxes to play Limited with their friends. Some people buy boxes because cracking packs is fun. One more thing before we get to the numbers: it's important to remember that there are many reasons why people buy a box. As a result, don't expect these numbers to be good a month from now because they will be wrong, and likely very wrong. Even if the expected value is positive on release day, it won't be in a few weeks because the supply of the cards from the set will increase, driving down prices.
As a result, like we did last time, we'll have two expected values for Aether Revolt: one pretending that Masterpieces series cards (in this case, Kaladesh Inventions) don't exist and another including the Masterpieces.Īll in all, the question we are looking to answer is: Is it worth it to crack a box based purely on the numbers? Basically, if I pay $100 for a box of Aether Revolt, should I expect to get my money back, lose money, or come out a little bit ahead? Here, it's important to note that, over the long haul, it's never, ever worth it to crack a box. While it's theoretically possible to construct a "winning" box that doesn't contain a Masterpiece, it isn't all that likely. As such, "winning" when you open a box of Aether Revolt will most likely involve opening a Masterpiece.
This means that, getting back to the Masterpiece series cards, if the Masterpieces are eating up $20 of the $70, the rares, mythics, and uncommons (as a whole) will have $20 less EV space to work with. As a result (outside of release periods, when supply is limited), in-print sets have a hard cap on their EV at somewhere around $70 (the EV can be lower, but it can't be higher, at least for an extended period of time). The foundation of expected value (EV) analysis is that, while a set is in print, the value of the cards in a box has to be equal to or less than the cost of the box itself-if there a period when cracking open boxes is actually a way to make money, then people will start doing it, driving up the supply of cards and lowering prices. Of course, we still have the problem of Masterpiece series cards, which add a ton of variance to box opening, because this cycle of super-rare cards eats up a comparatively large chunk of the set's value.
In the past, it went up the weekend when the full set was spoiled, but by moving it to the weekend of the prerelease, we get a better view of the set's value, since card prices have a bit of time to stabilize after the hype of spoiler week. Aether Revolt officially releases on Friday, which means it's time to take a look at just how much value you can expect to open if you decide to crack a box! You've probably noticed that I've moved the article back a week for the last couple of sets.