This was inspired by the market and the rates that people expect for their collections, but I think it's a better discussion to raise/discuss in game talk first exclusively as it relates to internal-game gold values.

So the question is: How much should an average rare/uncommon/common/odd be worth in gold?

I'll present my own calculations and conclusions, which I'm hoping will generate discussion from others.

First, we must determine the value of a pack of cards. This may seem straightforward, you say" but Huger I know it costs 150 gold to buy a pack of cards in the market". Wrong (and this is advice to any newer players) getting cards from Keep Cards and Domain games is much cheaper on average.

Side note: Now this does not mean buying packs directly is not some times a good choice. The downside of KC and Domain is that for the cards to be cheaper for you it requires winning, but overall the packs are cheaper in these other formats.

Ok, now back to the question of how much these packs cost. KC is more straightforward, so let's start there. It costs 2000 gold for all four people to enter, then 760 gold is given back as the payout rewards, meaning 1,240 gold altogether for 12 packs worth of cards, or about 103 gold per pack from KC. "But wait Huger not everyone gets 3 rares, 9 ucs, etc." That's fine, we're calculating average values here so we just need to know how many rares, ucs, etc are given out for that much gold.

Next up are domain packs. This is harder because it depends how many people are in the league and how many packs people buy. Specifically, the more people there are the less payout there is per person since there is an extra 2,000 gold in the payout no matter how many people enter the league. Also, the number of packs people buy as the league progresses will change their average cost. To keep this simple I will just assume people buy all three extra packs for a total of 6 packs AND that there are 16 people in the league since this is how many are in the current one and last one. So this works out to 500+450 gold for each person to enter and buy packs *16 or 15,200 gold altogether. Then the payout is 45 per person (*16) plus 2,000 or 2,720 gold. Finally, the average pack costs 130 gold per pack in domain.

So in conclusion, the cheapest way to get cards is from domain which works out to about 103 gold per pack.

Ok now that we have that worked out time to determine the cost of different rarities of cards. This will probably be a bit more controversial, and debates about it are what I'm looking for.

Assumption 1: Value of a card is equal to the frequency with which it occurs in a pack.

In other words if there are 3 times as many of a card it is worth a third as much.

Assumption 2: Because each player can only make use of three of any particular card the market will become saturated and there will be an additional value to rarer cards.

Now this part is a bit arbitrary (and based a fair amount on values in other TCG), but I think the difference between rarity categories is about 2 times as much in addition to the rarity ratio (this will get clearer soon).

Assumption 3: The total value of cards in a pack is equal to the value of a pack overall.

Obvious, but this is why I calculated pack costs above to show the pack overall is only worth about 103 gold rather than 150.

Ok now for the actual calculations. For those who don't pay much attention there is one rare, 3 uncommons, and 11 commons per pack (also there can be an odd, but it only changes the calculations slightly and is much more confusing so I'll only discuss that if people think it's a big deal). So rares are three times as rare as an uncommon (plus our *2 modifier from assumption 2) so a rare equals 6 uncommons. Next an uncommon is 11/3 or 3.66 times as rare as a common (and again the *2 modifier) so an uncommon equals 7.33 commons. In turn a rare is worth (6*7.33) 44 commons. Using commons as our unit of measure a pack is worth 44 +(3*7.33) +11 = 77 commons or 103 gold.

Working back (and for the part we actually care about) this would suggest values of:
Rare=59 gold
Uncommon=10 gold
Common=1.3 gold

Just to reiterate one point this is saying what I think the value of an average rarity is. Clearly some rares are horrible and only worth a few gold while others sell for over 200. What I would love, but can't seem to figure out a way to do is determine the actual market average prices for each of these rarities. Anyway, can't wait to hear the feedback.

This all makes sense if you do it using the above averages.

HOWEVER -- and this is a very important *however* -- not all rares are created equal.

No one is going to pay 59 gp for Mass Confusion.
No one is going to sell their Claimed with Blood for 59 gp.

The values are not determined by the average cost paid per rare, but by the rarity of that particular card combined with the demand for that card.

Why is Tap the Flux Line so expensive? Because there are so few in circulation and you can't guarantee that you will get it in a pack.

Your math becomes more complicated when you realize that you can buy packs of BL, but not packs of Seed Sets. The odds of getting a Seed Set rare are less than the odds of getting a BL rare because BL rares are guaranteed in a BL pack, but a regular pack can net you either a BL or a Seed Rare.

If you truly believe that rares should be 59 gp, then show me your collection and let me buy all the rares I want from you for 59 gp each. I'll gladly do it.

_________________

Altren wrote:

I agree with Keyser, and that's what I'm planning to implement actually.

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Here's simple check for you: I calculated average last price for all Elemental Rares - result is 104.05 g per rare. Just posting some real value for comparison.
(I was too lazy to calculate it more accurate and do that for other domains )
Calculating that value for all cards will give you pretty accurate market price of Cards by rarity.
Also important thing is that average market price and average value of card is never same.

Your math looks good, but the point is that it is correct only if we have only 1 rare card in whole game, so you always getting it from pack and you don't need any specific one, don't get good rare that doesn't fit your collection and so on.

Another case when your math might be correct is when random generator is always gives you different cards, so you can buy 417 (139*3, 139 is all rares in Seed and Borderlands set) packs and get 3x of every rare card in game, but real result will be much worse.
I made few tests - got next amount of rares from 417 packs:
0x rares: 5%
1x rares: 15%
2x rares: 21%

For 900 packs:
0x rares: 0%
1x rares: 1%
2x rares: 3%