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Magic The Gathering Rarity Chart
Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game made by Wizards of the Coast and originally created by Richard Garfield. One of the first things to learn about the game is how card rarity works. Rarity refers to the distribution of cards in Magic boosters.
There are four main rarities: common (C), uncommon (U), rare (R) and mythic rare (M or MR) Basic lands have their own rarity (L), although you often mark them as common.
How Magic Card Rarity Works
So how do you tell what rarity a card is? Each Magic card has a symbol below and to the right of the picture, called the expansion symbol. It shows which set the card belongs to, and its color tells the rarity.
Black means common. Silver means uncommon. Gold means rare.
Orange or bronze mean mythic rare, the most rare. Also, in the bottom left corner is a letter code: C, U, R or M. That is usefull when the color of the symbol is hard to read.
With older cards from sets like Unlimited to Alpha, it is harder to tell rarity just by looking at the card.
Currently in Magic card codes there are seven options for the rarity field. They are T for token, S for special, L for basic land and the usual C, U, R and M. Some sets include punch-out cards with symbol X.
In most sets a standard Draft Booster holds one basic land, a token, 10 commons, 3 uncommons and 1 rare, with a chance of 1 in 8 for a mythic rare instead of the rare. A foil card of any rarity can replace a common. Foils show up in about 1 in 4 packs, and the probability to get a foil mythic in one pack is almost 1 in 480.
Rarity determines the lack of cards in boosters and shows complexity, but not always the quality, although rare cards are often stronger. A common card from the start of the 2000s can be more scarce than rare cards from last releases. Some people open many mythics per box, others none.
No card or rarity is garantied.
The size of sets varies a lot. For instance, Modern Masters has 229 cards: 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares and 15 mythic rares. Some cards change rarity between sets.
Mind Stone and Soul Warden jumped from common to uncommon in Tenth Edition, while Act of Treason fell from uncommon to common.
During most of the history of Magic the Black Lotus from the original Alpha set of 1993 was the rarest and mostvaluable card.
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