TOPIC: New to TD, Question about Packs of tokens

Greetings,

Is the ultra rares that you have a chance at getting, on the top of the token packs? I am asking since I am thinking of buying some unopened tokens sets from stores/ebay from previous years. I am concerned that if the UR is on top, the chance of getting one would be 0%.

Also, I see token pulls going for almost the same cost as a new pack of tokens. Why is this? Is the treasure boxes seeded better than token packs?

Thanks for the info,

James Gaugh wrote: Greetings,

Is the ultra rares that you have a chance at getting, on the top of the token packs? I am asking since I am thinking of buying some unopened tokens sets from stores/ebay from previous years. I am concerned that if the UR is on top, the chance of getting one would be 0%.

Also, I see token pulls going for almost the same cost as a new pack of tokens. Why is this? Is the treasure boxes seeded better than token packs?

Thanks for the info,

The top one is always rare. The next two are always uncommon.

There is controversy over whether you can tell if a pack has a UR by inspecting the wrapper somehow, but it's not as easy as looking at the top token.

Treasure pulls can include things you don't ever find in a token pack, including monster bits (trophies) transmutes, relics, and gold bars as large as 25k - but obviously the better the stuff, the fewer of them you'll find. Uncommon might be 30% of the draws, but the 25ks are limited to maybe one or two total, so like 0.001% or something.

If you get a UR in a pack, it will be somewhere in the middle, not on top.

Buying single packs online is a crap shoot. If I opened a large order of 30 packs and there was an UR in the first pack I opened, I could then sell the remainder of packs and be relatively sure there are no more URs. Yeah, there is a tiny chance of a Golden Ticket, but that is minute. The upside to treasure pulls is that there shouldn't be any commons when you pick from the box. If you get one, mention it and ask for another pull.

Hi James,

Welcome to the wonderful world of token addiction buying.

You used to be able to figure out which token packs contain the Ultra-Rare and Golden Ticket tokens, and I've been told that is still the case. So, if you buy unopened packs from any source other than directly from True Dungeon, you are running the risk that they will have a very low chance (maybe zero) of having an Ultra-Rare. Back when I sold unopened packs, there were still ultra-rares mixed in, and perhaps some other sellers do the same, but the safest is to buy them directly from True Dungeon.

And, as a bonus, when you buy from True Dungeon, if you buy a high enough amount of them, you get bonuses. For instance, if you spend $250 on tokens from True Dungeon, you get five bonus token packs (30 total) AND an Ultra-Rare token of your choice from the current or previous year.

Regarding the treasure pulls, this year they were pretty generous, with numerous Ultra-Rares, Relics, and even Legendary tokens mixed in. That is why the Treasure pull coins have been selling for a lot, and it's why tokens that give you bonus treasure pulls (like the Ioun Stone Ultra-Rare this year) are always top sellers.

Thanks!
Mike

If you want to see a partial breakdown of pulls from Gen Con 2016 and GameHole Con 2016 several forumites added their treasue pulls here.


docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mPCHbtCwDUgO7ZpAnwmn8-9mOza8qVO0RH8ABHAM2v8/edit

You can see out of the 5k+ pulls at Gen Con (which is still a pretty small number of the total pulls) a 25k bar was at 0.05% for 2016. Uncommons and Rares both came in at just over 37%. That pulls at TDC 2017 should be about in line for percentages of GC and GHC.


Gen Con 2017 may have a different mix, we rarely know for certain. Hopefully we can get even more people to contribute this year and have even a more accurate view.

balthasar wrote: Buying single packs online is a crap shoot. If I opened a large order of 30 packs and there was an UR in the first pack I opened, I could then sell the remainder of packs and be relatively sure there are no more URs...

Back in the day when MTG foils first came out, IIRC they were advertised as coming one to a box (36 packs.)

So, what to do? I'm convinced some store would buy boxes, open packs from one until they found the foil, repeat with box two, combine the unopened packs into a foil-less box and sell them to people who wondered why they could never seem to crack a foil.

That said, most of the folks I see selling stuff on the forum are honest. Our community is too small to get away with shenanigans for long, even if they wanted to. The newbies probably are, too, but I don't know most of them, because they're new.

If you want a few packs, it's probably safe enough to order from them. But, if you can put together a larger order, do that, because perks.

Brad Mortensen wrote:

balthasar wrote: Buying single packs online is a crap shoot. If I opened a large order of 30 packs and there was an UR in the first pack I opened, I could then sell the remainder of packs and be relatively sure there are no more URs...

Back in the day when MTG foils first came out, IIRC they were advertised as coming one to a box (36 packs.)

So, what to do? I'm convinced some store would buy boxes, open packs from one until they found the foil, repeat with box two, combine the unopened packs into a foil-less box and sell them to people who wondered why they could never seem to crack a foil.

That said, most of the folks I see selling stuff on the forum are honest. Our community is too small to get away with shenanigans for long, even if they wanted to. The newbies probably are, too, but I don't know most of them, because they're new.

If you want a few packs, it's probably safe enough to order from them. But, if you can put together a larger order, do that, because perks.

I've read that the large dealers of Magic Cards are able to open a few booster boxes and document what location each Rare/Mythic Rare is at, apply a formula to that, and then look at just a few of the top packs in a booster box and figure out where all of the chase rares/mythic rares are in the rest of the box, because they are sorted in a standardized way. If you buy one of the opened booster boxes of packs on Ebay, it's very probable that a dealer has already gone through them and pulled the top cards from them, leaving the packs with lesser Rares/Mythic Rares.

Mike there was actually "An App for that" ... seriously you opened the box laid out the packs in a specific order and then opened select packs and took a pic and it uploaded to a DB. After that it could extrapolate the rest of the packs you wanted to keep and the ones to throw away,,...I mean resell to rip people off.


But back to the OP
You've been given all the right information already. Yes your packs may contain no URs. With that in mind determine if its still a good deal to you and proceed.

Something not mentioned is you'll notice a different colored token - 1 per pack, they get called "platinums" or maybe silver backed. Those are never URs. We know the top 3 tokens won't be an UR so if the platinum comes in the bottom 7 you've got 1 less chance that its a pack with an UR in it.

IMO if you want to purchase bulk packs, don't go to ebay, find someone here. They likely did some combined order and got packs as part of their deal and they may be less interested in those packs then you'd imagine.

I guess as a side note - are there even True Dungeon sealed packs for sale on Ebay right now? I did a search and didn't come up with any. Getting sealed packs from previous years could be especially tough. It's probably easier to get sealed ONYX Rare/Uncommon/Common sets than sealed packs from the earlier years.

I wonder how many people collect sealed packs. I have sealed packs from every year but one (starting in 2007, since the wooden tokens weren't in sealed packs). I know one other person that does something similar - does anyone else keep some sealed packs for their collection?

Oh, onyx...

If you're buying sealed packs of onyx (black) tokens, there will be 120, one if each for the year. There is a zero percent chance of a UR in there.

If you buy sealed packs of onyx URs, then every token is a different UR.

But that's probably not what you're talking about.

In reference to the Magic packs discussion: they have allegedly fixed the collation so that you can't predict rarity anymore. That was park of the reason they changed the borders and added the foil 'dot'. Their printers are supposed to be able to read the cards now and assign them more randomly.