Research
How prices move
Two years of daily, card-by-card prices, read for the regularities that repeat. Three hold across every game we cover. Each figure measures what has already happened, with its window attached; none of it is a forecast.
A new set's cards ease to about two-thirds of their release-week price, then settle.
~35% below release, most of it inside 13 weeks
A few cards carry a set. The single most valuable one holds 8% to 20% of its set's summed card prices.
top card's share of its set, by game
Almost every card barely moves in a given week. The rare exception is large, and rises outnumber falls.
the largest weekly moves, of 71,940 measured · ignoring direction, the top 10% starts at 73%
See which cards broke away lately
Each card writes its own story
Read the three together and a card's move is almost all its own. Across every game, about 97% of the variation in a card's daily price belongs to the card itself, not the market moving together (from 92% to 99% by game).
So the market average says little about any one card. We read each card against its own history and name the break-away: the move a card's own past does not account for.