Magic: Exact Rarities

[normalbrains]

ive visited this forum in the past and read that there were approximately 1,100  of each Alpha rare ever produced. Beta rares each number 3,300 produced. Can anybody confirm these numbers? How are they known?

Also, I read that Arabian Nights is had the smallest production run of any set (compared to Alpha and Beta or was it even smaller than those?).

Does anybody know how many of each Arabian Nights uncommon (there were no rares) were produced in total?

Any info, insight, or comments on rarities of the older sets up to Legends is greatly appreciated.

[Erl00]

Crystalkeep keeps record of the print run of early sets.
http://www.crystalkeep.com/magic/

5 millions cards for Arabian Night. Booster packs contain 2 uncos and 6 commons, i.e. 25% of AN cards are Unco, i.e. ~1.25 million Arabian Nights Uncommons.

Now, AN contains Uncommon2 and Uncommon3. U2 appear twice per sheet and U3 appear thrice per sheet.

There are 121 slots per sheet.

Sooooo .... 1.25 million divided by 121 = ~10,300 uncommon sheet

Each U2 should therefore exist at ~20,600 copies and each U3 at ~30,900 copies.

Please note that, cccording to WotC, there are 17 U3 in the set and 33 U2.
17 x 3 + 33 x 2 = 51 + 66 = 117, which is an unusual number because a print sheet should have 121 slots.

I therefore suspects that there are indeed 21 U3 and 29 U2.


Hope this helps.
:)
Eric.

[dragsamou]

ive visited this forum in the past and read that there were approximately 1,100  of each Alpha rare ever produced. Beta rares each number 3,300 produced. Can anybody confirm these numbers? How are they known?

Also, I read that Arabian Nights is had the smallest
production run of any set (compared to Alpha and Beta or was it even smaller than those?).

Does anybody know how many of each Arabian Nights uncommon (there were no rares) were produced in total?

Any info, insight, or comments on rarities of the older sets up to Legends is greatly appreciated.

NEWS.
everything new about Magic except standard Magic cards
:)

[Archivist]

This thread is only one day old?!?! Are we being too agressive with the clean-ups?

[rg]

This thread is only one day old?!?! Are we being too agressive with the clean-ups?

I would move it to off-topic and keep it for some time. :-/

[Muldoon]

This thread is only one day old?!?! Are we being too agressive with the clean-ups?

Yeah, I think this was trashed quite a bit too fast. I think it should be in the off-topic section, I dont know about you guys but I find exact print runs very interesting facts :)

[Ralph Herold]

I have restored the thread. I do not know who killed it, but I think it contains valuable data.

[mintcollector]

Since this question has been asked a few times before, and possibly this thread may be destined for archiving, I though it prudent to expand on Crystal Keep's facts.  Crystal Keep states that Alpha had a 2.6million print card run, which is verified by WOTC:
http://www.wizards.com/magic/advanced/1 ... BUnlim.asp
We know there are 116 rares in Alpha, all rated R1, which means that this card appeared one time on a rare print sheet.  what Crystal Keep means by there may be a chance that land may been in a rare, uncommon, or common slot is that each print sheet is 11x11, or 121 cards.  Do the math.  121 slots on a print sheet leaves 5 rares slot opened that were filled with land.  95 uncommons left 26 lands in uncommon slots on the print sheet.  74 commons left 47 lands in commons slots on the print sheet.  This means that any given Alpha booster pack, had a 5/121 (4.13%) chance of having a land in the rare slot, a 26/121 (21.49%) chance of having land in any uncommon slot, and 47/121 (38.84%) chance of having land in a common slot.  Now before you ask why my numbers differ from Crystal Keep's, they are tracking Alpha and Beta as Limited and therefore most of their numbers cover both expansions together.  

I will need to find it, but I do have an article in a magazine somewhere that does have a WOTC official quoted saying that there are 1100 R1's in Alpha and 3300 R1's in Beta.  Let's assume that was true for a minute.  We know that an R1 appeared one time on a rare print sheet.  This implies 1100 R1's=1100 rare print sheets, or 133,100 "rares" (121 cards on each sheet x 1100).  The reason why rares was quoted, is recall that there are 5 lands on each rare print sheet.  Irrelevant, but I wanted to restate that fact.  Assuming 1 rare per pack of 15 cards, implied at least 1,996,500 cards printed if you looked at boosters alone.  Well obviously starters exist and since there are 2 rares in an Alpha starter (see http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mr62 for Mark Rosewater's quote on this .... left of the Scragnoth art).  the rest of the starter had more uncommons and commons in them, or the rare to uncommons and commons ratio was higher than 1:15.  I cannot recall what starter composition used to be prior to tournament starters, but I know it was less than 60, but more than likely above 30, which would be the 2 rare to 30 ratio.   One can also assume that land was present in an Alpha starter purposely in land slots.  Land coupled with the additonal commons and uncommons would account for the missing cards for starter makeup.  If someone could share the exact makeup of an Alpha starter, then we could get a pretty good idea of how many boosters there were compared to starters, as there are about 603,500 cards unaccounted for based on the 1100 R1 numbers.

Beta had an extra 5 cards in it compared to Alpha, but the print run is about tripled (7.8 million), which jives with the 3300 Beta R1's.

[Muldoon]

I saw a figure of 3600 printed of each alpha uncommon, I think it was in the old book "Targen's Tome", can someone verify this? I think it sounds quite right, but cant tell for sure. I'll try to do some math, I'll edit post when/if I figure something out :)

[fvzappa]

Enough guessing- if this link doesn't answer your questions, nothing else will...

http://www.crystalkeep.com/magic/misc/f ... rarity.txt

[Muldoon]

Wow! I had never seen that file at crystalkeep, and I have been there probably a hundred times. Thanks alot fvzappa, it seems very accurate to me :)
Some "bad" news though, now there are 900 more alpha dragon whelps to find than I thought  ::)

[inca911]

Note:
There are only 4 "Rare Islands" on the Beta and UL rare sheets and 5 "Rare Islands" on the Alpha sheet (due to the absence of Volcanic Island in the set).  So adjust your calculations accordingly.

[Archivist]

Note:
There are only 4 "Rare Islands" on the Beta and UL rare sheets and 5 "Rare Islands" on the Alpha sheet (due to the absence of Volcanic Island in the set).  So adjust your calculations accordingly.

Also, there are 46 lands on the common sheet in Beta, and 47 on the Alpha common sheet (due to missing COP: Black).

You may also find this document helpful:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=da ... netcom.com

[hammr7]

Just to clarify the two comments above.  The different number of common land "fillers" on the rare sheets for Alpha and Beta don't make much difference in any of the calculations, since basic lands are always in such excess.

However, the number of actual "rares" on those sheets does make a big difference.  The referenced Crystal Keep calculation sheet does a good job of describing the possible numbers of Alpha and Beta sets.  It concludeds that there are a possible 1,100 Alpa sets and 3,200 Beta sets possible.  (Note that some might argue that there are actually about 3,300 Beta sets)

The Crystal Keep document then adds the two and states that a maximum of 4,300  "Limited" sets total are possible.  This may not be exactly true, depending upon your definition of "Limited".  The problem is the one rare that was added to Beta, Volcanic Island.    

If you say that Limited defines "pure" sets of Alpha and "pure" sets of Beta only, then the addition is correct.  But if you consider Limited to mean composite sets all possible cards consisting of mixtures of Alpha and Beta cards, then the maximum is 3,200 (or 3,300, depending upon which Beta number you believe).  The set total will be restricted by the number of Beta Volcanic Islands available.

The other additions to the Beta set don't have the same impact, since they are in excess.  There are more than enough COP: Blacks, and alternate art for each basic land to fill each Beta set and have one available for each Alpha set.

[mintcollector]

Enough guessing- if this link doesn't answer your questions, nothing else will...

http://www.crystalkeep.com/magic/misc/f ... rarity.txt

I agree with muldoon...wow...never seen this page before.  I went ahead and worked up the numbers for the Alpha print run:

116 R1's x 1100 = 127600 R1's in total
95 U1's x 4500 = 427500 U1's in total
74 C1's x 16000 = 1184000 C1's in total
2 land artworks for 5 land types x 85500 = 855000
Tallying that up: 2594100, whic coincides with the 2.6 million.  Stephen D'Angelo does state that the numbers are rounded to the nearest 500, but this obviously does not apply to the Alpha R1 count(1100), so there maybe some margin of error.

Here are the numbers for Beta:
117 R1's x 3200 = 374400 R1's in total
95 U1's x 13500 =  1282500 U1's in total
75 C1's x 48000 = 3600000 C1's in total
3 land artworks for 5 land types x 171500 = 2572500 total Beta land
Total Beta: 7829400, which jives with the 7.8 mil reporting.  Once again, expect a margin of error.

It is interesting to note that both the uncommon and common Beta print runs triple that of Alpha, but the R1's only go from 1100 to 3200.  I thought this to be a typo at first, but this value is throughout the page.  It could still be a typo if this page is a generated report and the 3200 comes from a variable, but 3200 is presented there.

Stephen did point out that his estimations of starters and boosters are purely subjecture.  I am still curious if anyone knows the composition on an Alpha Starter and to refute if an Alpha booster pack did not contain 1 rare, 3 uncommons, and 11 commons.  Beta numbers would also be nice.  ;D

Once the numbers are determined, a pretty accurate booster and starter count can be constructed for both Alpha and Beta.  Since the oldest pack I have ever personally opened has been Legends (and only 1 of those), a little help is needed here.