Cruelclaw's Heist | Bloomburrow | Art by Brian Valeza
31, Jul, 24

Bloomburrow Play Boosters Have A Major Value Problem

If you took part in a Bloomburrow Prerelease event last weekend, you may have noticed something a little different about your packs this time around. Less interesting card treatments, perhaps, or less valuable cards in general. You may have chalked this up to pure bad luck, but it’s actually nothing of the sort. Bloomburrow Play Boosters are notably worse value-wise than those of the past few sets. Unsurprisingly, the community has quickly taken notice.

The Value Of Bloomburrow Play Boosters

Bloomburrow Play Boosters Box

A player by the name of Nothing371 pointed out this disparity in a post on the r/mtgfinance subreddit. They pointed to a range of factors behind the drop in overall value, including the recent removal of The List. We’ll get more into that later but suffice it to say that a lack of special treatments hurts the value of Bloomburrow Play Boosters significantly.

For example, Raised Foil Anime cards are the most valuable cards in Bloomburrow by a significant margin. The most expensive of these goes for over $200, making it a huge hit in a pack. Unfortunately, they can only be found in Collector Boosters. Collector-exclusive styles are nothing new, of course, but Bloomburrow marks a uniquely wide divide between these products.

The biggest issue here is the lack of value to be found in Bloomburrow itself. With the exception of Three Tree City, which currently sits at around $20-30 depending on the version, there aren’t many juicy pulls. A few of the mythics and special Field Note variants go for around $10-15 for now, but the vast majority of the set is under $5. Even with the potential for multiple rares per pack, it’s tough to make up the $145 you’ll be paying for one of these Play Booster boxes.

What We Lost Along The Way

In previous sets, there were multiple ways you could break through this value barrier and make a profit when opening a box. The Lost Caverns of Ixalan had the Jurassic Park cards. Outlaws of Thunder Junction had The Big Score. On top of this, the vast majority of sets, until now, had The List, which could make a huge difference.

The List was a great source of extra value for packs. Cards from it appeared roughly 25% of the time, and many had serious value, like Ancient Tomb or Mana Crypt. As of Bloomburrow, however, The List has been replaced entirely by Special Guests. These are borderless reprints of classic cards, with new plane-appropriate art.

In theory, this change is actually fine. The exclusive art ensures that most Special Guests have a value of around $5, with many going for much more. Bloomburrow has a very tasty Special Guest Sylvan Tutor at just under $40, for example. The problem lies in the execution. Special Guest cards are much, much rarer than List cards, only appearing 1.5% of the time in packs. This means you’ll only get one Special Guest every three boxes, as opposed to one List card every four packs.

Throw in the ever-low chances of pulling a Field Notes card, and the impossibility of opening a Raised Foil Anime card or a Courageous Critter, and Play Boosters start looking like a much worse deal than Collector Boosters. This is almost certainly intentional, but it’s not a great thing to see, especially for Magic’s primarily casual audience.

A Bleak Future?

Looking at the structure of Bloomburrow Play Boosters compared to that of past sets, it feels very much like a bait and switch has taken place. We were introduced to Play Boosters as more expensive Draft Boosters that offered much higher value potential. We were given a few sets where this was the case. Now, with Draft Boosters completely phased out and no real alternatives present, we’re seeing the promised quality decline, but the higher price remain.

HeyApples put it succinctly in the Reddit thread: “It’s basically shrinkflation of the product at this point.” Looking at Bloomburrow, it’s hard to argue with this. That being said, however, it’s equally hard to say players didn’t ask for this. There have long been complaints about unique variants appearing in Draftable packs and the headaches they cause. Now that they’re gone, however, it’s clear they’re sorely missed.

Will this trend carry on into the future? That remains to be seen. Duskmourn doesn’t look like it’ll feature more special card variants than Bloomburrow. Judging by Wizards’ statement, The List won’t be coming back either. Without these extra angles, the value of a Play Booster box comes down entirely to the price of the rares within. If Duskmourn is a powerful set, then boxes will be worth picking up. If not, then it won’t.

This sounds obvious, but the beauty of past Play Booster products was that they could be valuable purchases even if the set itself was underpowered. Now, that’s far from the case. WotC may have played a blinder for the shareholders here, but it’s bad news for the players who actually want to buy and open booster packs.

Read More: MTG Bloomburrow Draw Engine is Deceptively Powerful

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