The Magic Librarities

So I'm trying to figure out how many of each Arabian Night rare (ie. U2) was printed, and I'm getting confused, so I was hoping some could look at my logic and tell me if it seems, well, logical.

Print run ~5 million cards printed in 11x11 sheets of 121 cards. Each uncommon sheet had 33 U2, 17 U3, and 1 U4 (Oasis). 2*33 + 3*17 + 4*1 = 121, so at least something works out.

5,000,000 / 121 = 41,322.314... <-- not an even number, so it must not be 5 million cards on the dot. Let's assume 41,322 sheets printed. This means there was 4,999,962 cards printed.

Each booster pack had 2 Uncommons and 6 Commons. Therefore 25% of the total cards were uncommons, or 10,330.5 uncommon sheets (still not a round number, this is getting annoying).

#U2 = 2 (cards per sheet) * 10,330 (uncommon sheets) / 33 (different U2's)
#U2 = 626.06
#U3 = 1822.94 (using similar logic as above)

What this is telling me is, that an Arabian Nights Ebony Horse is almost twice as rare as an Alpha rare (known to be ~1100 of each). I just can't believe that this is so, which is why I seek your help.

Also, there has to be a way to do the math such that I only get whole numbers, but I can't figure this out.

Thoughts?

4999720 / 121 = 41320
41320 / 4 = 10330 (25%)

That's 10330 uncommon sheets.
Each sheet contains 66 U2's, 51 U3's and 4 U4's

10330 * 66 = 681780 U2's total
681780 / 33 = 20660 of each U2

10330 * 51 = 526830 U3's total
526830 / 17 = 30990 of each U3

10330 * 4 = 41320 Oasis

These are nice round numbers and are the largest ones under 5m that work

l0qii wrote:20660 of each U2

This makes far more sense. Thank you for correcting my math before I decided to hoard what I thought were 626 AN Island of Wak-Wak's!

berkumps wrote:

l0qii wrote:20660 of each U2

This makes far more sense. Thank you for correcting my math before I decided to hoard what I thought were 626 AN Island of Wak-Wak's!

It is comforting to see that someone else is number challenged too. Peter tried to tell me how to calculate how many Alpha rares there were and remembered the math about 5 min.

Where can we see print run by edition ?

Thanks.

Here is a summary from older sets:
http://www.crystalkeep.com/magic/misc/rarity-info.php

But nobody knows exactly the print runs, especially from all newer sets :-/

koubiak wrote:Where can we see print run by edition ?

Thanks.

WotC did publish the print run numbers up through Fallen Empires or there abouts. I saw it in a hard copy some years ago but have no recolection of where.

Gary

In the official encyclopedia numbers were published

pp wrote:In the official encyclopedia numbers were published

I'll bet that is where I saw them. I haven't looked at those books in years--used to use them all the time until the Gatherer came out.

Gary

I have volumes 1-3 and 5. wouldn't mind being able to pick up volume 4, but not really looking for it right now.

pp wrote:Here is a summary from older sets:
http://www.crystalkeep.com/magic/misc/rarity-info.php

But nobody knows exactly the print runs, especially from all newer sets :-/

Thanks for link !