€140 paid, 30 packs opened, every card logged: what was really inside the Magic box “The Hobbit”, why I still buy Play Boosters and what I would do differently today.
I have been collecting Magic since around 1995, as a collector, not a player. I don't care about decks, I care about full binder pages. So for The Hobbit I did what many collectors do when a new set comes out: I bought a German Play Booster box, opened all 30 packs on camera and logged every card in TCG-Completist right away. Here is the honest result.
I paid €140. That is a fairly good price for a fresh box: once a set gets scarce, the same boxes quickly climb to €170, €180 or even €200. The Collector Booster box of the same set was well above €300 at the time, and that is where the fun stops for me. I won't spend €300 hoping that one specific card is inside. I'd rather take the Play Booster box and buy the missing cards as singles later.
Why a German box? I prefer collecting in German. German cards often sell for a bit less than English ones, but I don't mind. A collection is a matter of taste, and I want my binders in German.
According to the manufacturer, every Play Booster contains:
On top of that, every box comes with a box topper: a single foil card that does not come from the packs.
The result was mixed, to put it mildly. The 30 packs contained only three mythic rares: Thorin Oakenshield, Gollum, Riddle Master and, right at the end, Beorn the Fierce. At the halfway point I had exactly one. There were some nice rare foils and several borderless cards, though, and the artwork of this set is excellent on almost every card.
The box topper saved the box: Galadriel's Dismissal in foil. Only later did I look closely at the line “M0016 HOC DE” on the card: M means mythic, HOC means the side set “The Hobbit Eternal”. So it was four mythics after all, and the best card of the whole box did not come from a pack at all.
In numbers: after opening, the portal showed about €75 in trend prices for all cards together, almost half of that from the box topper alone at a little over €35. Against €140 that is a clear loss, and trend prices are not buy prices. If you want to sell, you will get less.
A box is not an investment. It is the cheapest way to get the foundation of a set. A Play Booster box gives you most of the commons and uncommons, often 80 to 85% of what can appear in Play Boosters at all. Buying exactly those cards as singles would be tedious: many orders and lots of shipping for cards worth a few cents. The gaps that remain are manageable and can be closed one by one.
How expensive closing those gaps really gets for The Hobbit is worked out in a separate article: What does a complete Magic set really cost?
Play Booster wrappers are tough. After a few packs I had the trick: squeeze the pack gently at the top seal and move it back and forth until a small gap opens. From there the pack pulls open cleanly without tearing at the cards. Back in the day I opened boxes wearing gloves so no card would get a fingerprint. I'm not that strict anymore, but every card still goes into a sleeve and a binder after logging.
With over 400 cards per box, logging is the real work. I read part of the cards in with the TCG-Completist card scanner: hold the card in front of your phone or webcam, the portal recognizes name, set and number, one click and it is in your collection. The set grid then shows which numbers are still missing, and duplicates can go straight into the trade board.
The full opening of all 30 packs with a running price total is in the video below.
