Magic: The Gathering Cards

Magic: The Gathering cards are produced in much the same way as normal playing cards. Each Magic card has a face which displays the card's name and rules text as well as an illustration appropriate to the card's concept. 9113 unique cards have been produced for the game, many of them with variant editions, artwork, or layouts, and 600–1000 new ones are added each year.

The first Magic cards were printed exclusively in English, but current sets are also printed in Simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. shows those 9 languages as of the summer of 2006. Magic was previously printed in Traditional Chinese (used in  Taiwan) and Korean, but this stopped after  Urza's Saga, when  Simplified Chinese was added, the official language of the  People's Republic of China.

Magic cards are normally divided into three rarities, which can be differentiated by the color of the expansion symbol (in sets released after the Stronghold expansion. For sets released prior to Stronghold, rarities must be checked against any number of databases). These are Common (Black), Uncommon (Silver), and Rare (Gold). Basic lands are their own rarity, and are colored black as commons. Most new cards are purchased in the form of "Booster Packs" or "Tournament Packs". A fifteen-card Booster Pack will typically contain one Rare, three Uncommons, and eleven Commons. A Tournament Pack typically contains three Rares, ten Uncommons, thirty-two Commons, and thirty Basic Lands. This means that three Booster Packs are roughly equivalent to one Tournament Pack.

The vast majority of Magic cards are marketed to the public in the form of sets. The biennially-released Core Set currently consists of three-hundred and eighty-three reprinted cards, with a mixture of old and new artwork. Tenth Edition is the most recent Core Set and was released on Saturday, July 14, 2007. Newly-designed cards are first sold in expansion sets with a "block" consisting of up to three theme-related expansion sets released over a period of a year. The first and largest part of a block is the set released in or around October and typically consists of three-hundred and six cards with eighty-eight Rares, eighty-eight Uncommons, one-hundred and ten Commons and twenty Basic Lands. At subsequent four-month intervals, the second and third expansion sets of the block are issued. These two smaller sets each typically consist of one-hundred and sixty-five cards divided into fifty-five Commons, fifty-five Uncommons, fifty-five Rares, and zero Basic Lands. The number of cards per set and the rarity distribution has varied over time.

In 2003, starting with the Eighth Edition Core Set, the game went through its biggest visual change since its creation—a new card frame layout was developed to allow more rules text and larger art on the cards, while reducing the thick, colored border to a minimum. The new frame design aimed to improve contrast and readability using black type instead of the previous white, a new font, and partitioned areas for the name, card type, and power and toughness.

Secondary market
There is an active secondary market in individual cards among players and game shops. Many physical and online stores sell single cards or "playsets" of four of a card. Common cards rarely sell for more than a few cents and are usually sold in bulk. Uncommon cards and weak rares typically cost under US$1. The most expensive cards in Standard tournament play usually cost approximately US$20-30. On rare occasions if the cards are particularly powerful, some might even sell for US$40-50.



The most expensive card which was in regular print (as opposed to being a promotional or special printing) is Black Lotus, with average prices as of 2007 above US$1,000 and high-quality "graded" copies rising above US$3,000—in 2005, a "Pristine 10 grade" Beckett Grading Services graded Beta Black Lotus was bought by Darren Adams, owner of West Coast Sports Cards & Gaming Distributors in Federal Way, Washington, for a record $20,000. A small number of cards of similar age, rarity, and playability—chiefly among them the other cards in the so-called "Power Nine"—routinely reach high prices as well. In 2003, after the rotation of the Extended tournament format and in combination with the first Type 1 Championships, the prices for such old, tournament-level cards underwent a large, unexpected increase.

As new sets come out, older cards are occasionally reprinted. If a card has high play value, reprinting will often increase the original version's price because of renewed demand among players. However, if the card is primarily attractive to collectors, reprinting will often decrease the original version's value. Wizards of the Coast formulated an official "Reprint Policy" in 1995 in an attempt to guarantee to collectors the value of many old cards. The Policy details certain cards that are unavailable to be printed again.

Wholesale distributors are not allowed to ship product to foreign nationalities. Additionally, several countries still have import restrictions that could be construed to bar the import of Magic: The Gathering or other collectible card games ( Italy, for example, places restrictions on the importation of "playing cards"). Shipping restrictions have been relaxed recently and it is now possible to ship sealed product to Europe.

Non-English cards often have different prices on the secondary market than their English equivalents, depending on the desirability of the language. Certain languages, such as Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian, are less valuable than English cards, while Asian languages, along with Russian and German, are often worth more to the American or English-speaking collector. While this is a highly debated topic and often left to the opinion of the collector, a select number of people are willing to pay extremely high prices for foreign cards.