Magic: The Gathering · m21 · 2020-07-03
Core Set 2021 — Booster Box (36 packs)
Where the value comes from
| Tier | Odds / pack | Avg card value | EV / pack | Priced | P(≥1) / product |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rare | 86.5% | $1.40 | $1.21 | 100.0% | |
| Mythic Rare | 13.5% | $9.33 | $1.26 | 99.5% |
Expected hits per product: 36.00 (counting every tier the pull-rate table enumerates).
What are the odds you profit?
EV is the average; this is the distribution. 20,000 simulated openings of this exact product, using the same sources, odds and prices as everything above.
Same assumptions as the EV: odds are uniform within each tier (real sets short-print their biggest chases, so true odds are usually a touch worse than this), cards sell at today's market price, and selling costs nothing. Read it as a ceiling, not a promise.
Chase cards
13 priced · biggest hits first
$36.58
$29.99
$25.71
$16.16
$14.23
$13.76
$11.93
$11.56
$8.04
$7.98
$7.91
$7.83
$5.26Each tile: card value (top-right), then the odds of pulling that exact cardfrom a single pack — shown as “1 in N packs” and as a percentage (the same number, two ways). Per-card odds assume every card in a tier is equally likely — no public data quantifies short prints. See methodology.
Special-treatment cards
27 shown · not counted in EV
$51.35
$41.57
$32.94
$25.97
$25.08
$16.72
$16.68
$15.40
$14.92
$12.87
$12.46
$11.32
$9.94
$9.34
$9.16
$8.94
$8.52
$8.07
$8.01
$7.37
$7.20
$7.13
$6.01
$5.87
$5.69
$5.66
$5.42Premium special-art printings — showcase/borderless prints, ultra-secret SARs and the like. They’re the set’s headline chases but pulled far below any rate public data quantifies, so they’re shown here for reference and deliberately excluded from the EV above.
Is it worth grading?
PSA US fees, approx · Jul 2026What a PSA 10 sells for vs the raw price plus PSA's fee — the upside if the card grades a 10. The odds of actually getting a 10 are a separate column, still pending.
| Card | Raw | PSA fee | PSA 10 value | Net if 10 | Chance of 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chromatic Orrery #228 | $36.58 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Terror of the Peaks #164 | $29.99 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Grim Tutor #103 | $25.71 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Heroic Intervention #188 | $16.16 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Ugin, the Spirit Dragon #1 | $14.23 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Fiery Emancipation #143 | $13.76 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose #127 | $11.93 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
| Azusa, Lost but Seeking #173 | $11.56 | $79.99 (Regular) | — | — | — |
Net if 10= PSA 10 value − raw − fee, the gain assuming a perfect grade (an upper bound — most cards won't 10). Chance of 10is this card's own PSA population — of every copy graded, the share that came back a 10 — and it drives the graded EV toggle instead of one flat assumption. Read it as a ceiling, not a coin flip: it counts cards people CHOSE to submit, which skews toward good copies, and a card pulled from a pack today may fare worse. A “—” means too few graded copies to quote. PSA 10 prices come from Scrydex and PokemonPriceTracker. Fees exclude shipping and use the cheapest PSA tier for each card's declared (graded) value. PSA paused its cheaper Value tiers in June 2026 under a grading backlog, so Regular ($79.99) is the current floor — grading a card much under ~$100 rarely makes sense.
How many packs for…
No number of packs guarantees it — that is what a -44.8% market ROI pays for.
Magic booster EV, modeled on the ~1 rare-or-mythic-per-pack structure common to Draft, Set and Play Boosters: rare 0.865 / mythic 0.135 (mythic ~1 in 7-8), plus ~7 commons + ~3 uncommons per pack. WotC discloses booster collation, so this beats a pure community estimate, but it is still MODELLED and capped LOW: (1) special treatments (showcase/borderless/extended, and pre-2024 alt-frames) are folded into the flat common/uncommon/rare/mythic tiers with a uniform-within-tier assumption, which OVERSTATES the odds of the specific expensive alt-treatment prints; (2) prices are the NON-FOIL TCGplayer market price (via Scryfall) — a pack's guaranteed slots are all non-foil; the single foil slot's extra value is not added to EV (conservative); (3) for Play Boosters the wildcard + foil slots add ~0.2 more rares/mythics per pack that are NOT modelled (conservative); (4) older sets used Draft Boosters (more commons, foil ~1 in 3-4 packs) - the rare/mythic value driver is the same but the rest is approximate. Only cards Scryfall marks booster:true are counted (no promos/box-toppers/Commander cards). Net: a rough, indicative pack EV, not a precise one.
Market price history
No history yet. The chart fills in as the daily price job accumulates snapshots.