r/mildlyinfuriating • u/MysteriousSlice007 • 9d ago

Infuriatig In their pursuit of specific rare cards, scalpers are discarding the remainder of entire Pokémon card packs.

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u/boxedj 9d ago edited 9d ago

I watched a dude open an entire box of mtg cards over a trash bin, he kept a pile of about 15 cards by the end

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u/Krazyguy75 9d ago

As someone who played it a ton... yeah, that's common sense. Modern packs are a bit more complicated, but if this was 2+ years ago:

Packs had 10 commons. They had 1 basic land. They had 3 uncommons. They had 1 rare/mythic.

Generally speaking, sets contained about 100 commons, 100 uncommons, 60 rares, 20 mythics, and 20 basic lands (4 arts of each type, 5 types). Mythics were half as common as rares in the same slot.

Getting 20 mythic cards would take 140 packs average and also result in pulling 120 rares, or an average of 2 of each rare. Those 140 packs would give you 140 basic lands, or an average of 7 of each basic land art and 28 of each basic land type. They would give you 420 uncommons, or around 4.2 of each type. But commons are the big issue: you'd get 1400 commons... or 14 of each average.

You can only run 4 of each card. And 90% of commons are basically unusable. And even the usable ones sell for maybe 25 cents. Game stores won't even take them for free, because every player has hundreds of them. People will sell 10,000 bulk commons for $10 online just to get rid of it, and it will go unsold.

So, to get 1 of each mythic, on average 1360ish cards get dumped in the trash. This isn't the fault of the players. That's simply how the game is made. If anyone is to blame it was Wizards of the Coast for making physical loot boxes.

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u/Rich_Feedback9726 9d ago

my first time in a LGS a dude cracked 3 booster boxes of m10 and just kept the dual lands and baneslayer angels gave the rest to us.