Let's Talk About Mystery Booster 2

On August 2nd, 2024, Wizards of the Coast debuted Mystery Booster 2 (“MB2”), the sequel to the widely-acclaimed Mystery Booster Cards (“MB”) product from 2019/2020 (release year depending on if you count the Convention or Retail Editions as the first full release). Since that announcement, players rapidly became both excited and disappointed. 

Just like the first Mystery Booster, MB2 looked certain to be an excellent product - valuable reprints, interesting playtest cards, and a wildly fun chaos draft environment. But unlike the first MB, this product was going to be much harder to acquire, only being available at conventions, as a Limited-format experience, and for a limited timeframe on the Secret Lair website as the next installment in the Festival in a Box series.

It’s been over a month since Mystery Booster 2 became public, and the Festival in a Box kit featuring it is finally beginning to ship out. So, as these cards begin to hit the market, what can we reasonably expect?

Sealed Market Volatility

Before we even get into the details as to what’s inside of MB2, we can already be fairly certain that the first months following its arrival are going to be incredibly chaotic from a pricing perspective. Unlike normal set releases, which arrive in stores across the world on the same day, the nature of direct-to-consumer shipping means that MB2 is going to have a staggered release wave. Some people will get their boxes earlier, others much later. So, while the product may have only one print wave, this will only reach the market as available supply in a much more incremental form.

The best comparison for this volatility is the price behavior of just about any other Secret Lair product. Things start off speculative as people eagerly await the arrival of their purchases, and then all manner of volatility sets in during the first days of supply hitting the market. The primary difference between these two products, however, is that MB2 is an incredibly random product - which is part of the allure. Over 1,800 cards are in this set, meaning that it’s conceivable that some singles won’t hit the market in their proper amounts until much later in the shipping cycle. With Secret Lair, the primary contents are fixed, and as such the market has a much better ability to price things ahead of time. Sure, these prices are exaggerated by hype and speculation, but at least people have a reasonable idea as to the cards they’re getting. With MB2, this couldn’t be further from the case.

The Singles Market

As for the contents of MB2, cards can be broken down into three categories: traditional reprints (those which take the form of cards from The List, copies of older printings with a planeswalker symbol tucked in the corner) specialty printings, cards which use any of the numerous premium treatments found in the set (white border, Future Sight frame, etc.), and playtest cards. 

With respect to the first category of cards, traditional reprints, I largely don’t see these as having a substantial impact on the market prices of their original counterparts. When Mystery Booster debuted, the prices for some cards fell heavily, such as Mana Crypt, but this negative pressure was supported by both the wider release of the first MB product, as well as the fact that many of the most-affected cards had very limited supply to begin with. Back in 2019, Mana Crypt was only printed three times before. As such, while other parts of MB2 are going to be very volatile at first, I don’t think there’s significant reason to believe that these traditional reprints are going to share that trend. They’ll weaken the prices of the reprinted cards slightly, but otherwise things will carry on as normal.

Moving next to the premium printings of cards, it’s here that the picture becomes a bit more interesting, especially with foils considered.

MB2 has two primary classes of premium printings: white border and Future Sight. Public sentiment has so far deemed the white border to be less than stellar, not as bad as the Masterpiece Series: Amonkhet Invocations but certainly not universally acclaimed. Still, this is a unique treatment with a limited supply, so there will almost certainly be a price bump for these cards. Future Sight frames, meanwhile, are thus far much more popular, and as such I imagine that these are going to be the cards which carry the singles value of MB2. 

Additionally, less than 5% of Future Sight cards will be in foil – the only foils in the set, except for a special Alchemy slot we’ll get back to later – among which a subset of particularly desirable cards are only found in foil. You won’t see a Command Tower from MB2 in any slot other than the foil Future Sight slot, and this is going to demand a hefty premium. The same can be said of Urza, Lord High Artificer, Dragon's Approach, and many other popular Commander staples. This is the real wildcard for MB2, one which is going to drive the secondary market rampant in the days to come.

Speaking of wild cards, now we come to the gimmick of Mystery Booster 2 – playtest cards. Just like Mystery Booster Convention Edition, each pack of MB2 contains a non-tournament legal playtest card. But given the limited supply of this product, it’s reasonable to assume that these will be a bit more expensive than their MB counterparts. The name of the game for this product as a whole comes down to supply, something so constrained that it’s even buoying the prices of singles players can’t take to tournaments. 

Among the non-legal cards included is a select roster of cards from Alchemy, Magic’s digital-only portfolio, which also appear only in foil. These will be in packs at a rate of less than 1%, making them effectively as rare as serialized cards. 

Wrap Up

Mystery Booster 2 looks primed to be Wizard’s biggest gamble yet - not in terms of whether or not the product will fail (it absolutely won’t), but rather because it has the most randomness seen in any product of recent memory. Foil cards at a rate of 5%, Alchemy cards at 1%, playtest cards, and specialty frames, all locked behind the limited window of Secret Lair. This isn’t just going to be a speculative environment, this is going to be the very definition of volatile. 

Further Reading:

How Has the Print Change for Secret Lair Affected Prices So Far?