Fifty dollars is the number most people arrive with. Spent one way it does not finish paying for a single card. Spent another it buys 1144 cards. Which of those you walk away with is the whole question, and it is answerable with arithmetic rather than opinion.
- $50 is 83% of one of every card in the newest set. All 204 cards at their cheapest printing come to $59.99.
- Or it is 1% of a single card. The most expensive Core-legal printing is Mickey Mouse - Brave Little Prince at $3,803.12.
- Or it is playsets of 286 different cards at the cheap end of the format.
- The median Core card costs $0.10. The format is much cheaper than its reputation.
The same $50, four ways
- 83%of a full newest set
- 286playsets at the cheap end
- 1%of one chase card
These are not four strategies. They are four facts about the same money, and putting them next to each other is the most useful thing anyone can tell a new player.
One of every card in the newest set
Attack of the Vine is a 204-card set. Bought at the cheapest printing of each, one copy of all of them comes to $59.99. The Enchanted and Epic treatments numbered past the set proper are a collecting project, not part of this count.
Fifty dollars is 83% of the way to owning the entire newest set, once. Not playsets, and not the premium treatments, but every distinct card in it.
That is the number that surprises people. The full breakdown, including why the same set costs thousands if you want every printing, is in our set cost article.
Or a fraction of one card
The Iconic printing of Mickey Mouse - Brave Little Prince is the most expensive Core-legal printing in the game at $3,803.12. Your fifty dollars is 1% of one copy of it.
Both of those sentences are true at the same time, which is the part worth sitting with before spending anything.
What the cheap end actually looks like
There are 927 Core-legal cards priced under a dollar, and the median card in the whole legal pool is $0.10. Fifty dollars buys playsets of 286 of them.
| Card | Rarity | Each | Playset |
|---|---|---|---|
| Higgins - Undercover Officer | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Detective's Badge | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Amos Slade - Tenacious Tracker | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Lyle Tiberius Rourke - Looking for His Moment | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Young Macintosh - Proud Son | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Tyler Nguyen-Baker - 4*Town Fan | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Fflewddur Fflam - Luckless Bard | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Mata - Meat Hut Waitress | Common | $0.02 | $0.08 |
| Sergeant Tibbs - Courageous Cat | Common | $0.03 | $0.12 |
| Virana - Fang Chief | Common | $0.03 | $0.12 |
A cheap card is usually a card printed at common rarity in a set people opened a lot of. That is a fact about supply, not about the card.
Why the format is cheaper than its reputation
Group every card by the rarity of its cheapest printing and the shape is obvious. The premium treatments carry almost all of the money, and there are very few of them.
| Cheapest printing is | Cards | Median | Dearest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 354 | $0.05 | $0.22 |
| Uncommon | 276 | $0.08 | $3.44 |
| Rare | 241 | $0.18 | $4.73 |
| Super Rare | 94 | $0.38 | $10.74 |
| Legendary | 59 | $2.51 | $50.47 |
| Special | 2 | $2.47 | $2.47 |
871 of the 1026 legal cards are cheapest as a Common, Uncommon or Rare. That is the format most games are actually played with.
The last 1 rows are the exception that proves it. Those 2 cards have no ordinary printing to fall back on, so the cheapest way to own one is still a premium treatment. That is why they sit so far above everything else, and why they distort every "what does Lorcana cost" answer that quotes an average.
A real package, for scale
The Amber and Steel Lilo and Stitch package is 9 cards. Playsets of all of them come to $18.40, so fifty dollars covers it 2.7 times over.
What that package does, and why its engine is two cards costing eight and twelve cents, is written up separately.
The one thing this article will not tell you
Which cards to buy. That depends on what you want to play, and the people qualified to answer it are the players and creators publishing real lists, not a price feed.
What a price feed can tell you is the shape of the format, and the shape is this: a very deep cheap pool, a thin expensive shelf, and a median card that costs $0.10.
Prices here update daily. The deck builder reads the same feed and prices any list as you build it, so you can test what you are considering against your fifty dollars before you spend it.
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