Hey folks,
So I believe this was more before my time ,started with BFZ, but I'm wondering when it was that box-mapping became pretty much impossible, such that from X set onward, buying single boosters tends to be safe enough?
I mean I've had a couple of old boosters purely for fun from sets I'm pretty sure were mapped, suppose cards not much then could have spiked too, you never know.
But I think from researching it, it seems to be around Theros, is the whole Theros block "safe", or is it Khans onward?
(I think there are rumours about more recent sets potentially mapped though it seems more vague)
Box-mapping, when did it "end"?
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Single boosters are always a dicey proposition. While box mapping may be a thing of the past, if I start to open packs of BFZ until I get an Expo, I'm going to chuck the rest of the packs in a corner because the odds of getting a second masterpiece in the box are just ludicrously bad. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now I have a lot of BFZ packs that are unsearched, but are pretty much guaranteed to not have a masterpiece. I'll turn around and sell them. They're still legit, and I have no idea what's in them - but I'm pretty sure that it's not a masterpiece, and for a lot of the price of a booster, having the possibility of a good card is baked in. If I know that the pack of BFZ that I'm buying has no Expo, I'm not going to pay more than $1 for that pack, because now instead of hoping for a $300 blue fetch expo, I'm hoping for a $30 Ulamog. Most of the set is worthless crap. Now instead of Expos in BFZ, substitute foil planeswalkers in JP WAR, or foil Gods in Theros, or ... whatever.
It's more than that--When you're cracking a few cases, like 15-20, but not hundreds of cases, you care a bit more about your "box hits" and "case hits". Typically, there's one foil mythic per case (six boxes) and one foil rare per box (box hit). You also have typically 3-4 mythics.
If I'm cracking a case, I've already found the "case hit", and I find a third mythic in a box, what incentive do I have to crack the rest of the box? Dump those packs, sell them in 3's as draft sets to other players/casual playgroups.
If I'm cracking a case, I've already found the "case hit", and I find a third mythic in a box, what incentive do I have to crack the rest of the box? Dump those packs, sell them in 3's as draft sets to other players/casual playgroups.
I can tell you box mapping was especially easy in Return to Ravnica block. There was a series of iOS apps that did it for you (one app per set). It seemed like Wizards was aware how bad it was because the print runs became much harder to predict in the very next block (Theros).