Sealed product & breaks
Set Completion Calculator
Tell it how big the set is and how much of it you already have, and this returns what the rest costs as singles, how many packs it would take to finish by opening, and why those two numbers are so far apart. The last 10% of a set routinely costs more than the first 70%.
Why the last cards cost the most
Completing a set by opening packs is the coupon-collector problem, and it has an
unpleasant closed form. Collecting all n distinct cards takes on average
n × H(n) draws, where H(n) is the harmonic number — about
n × (ln n + 0.577). For a 198-card set that is roughly 1,150 cards
pulled to see all 198, or about 115 packs at ten countable cards a pack.
The final card is the killer: on average it takes n more draws on its own, which for a 198-card set means about 20 more packs chasing one common you have somehow never seen. This is why set builders buy singles and why every serious collector eventually stops opening.
The crossover point
Opening is competitive only at the start, when almost every card is new to you. By the time a set is 70% complete, each pack yields perhaps two or three cards you need, and the effective price per needed card has passed what the singles market charges for commons several times over. The table above shows exactly where your set crosses that line.
Costs the arithmetic hides
- Postage per order. Twenty missing cards from twelve different sellers is twelve lots of postage, which frequently exceeds the cards themselves. Buying a completed-minus-chase lot from one seller is usually cheaper than assembling it.
- Duplicates. Opening for a set generates hundreds of doubles with a resale value close to zero once you account for the effort of selling them.
- Condition drift. A set assembled from twenty sellers arrives in twenty conditions. If you care about consistency, you will replace cards, and each replacement is a second purchase.
- Master set traps. Reverse holos, parallels and promos can double or triple the card count over the base set, and their singles prices are not the base-set prices.
Questions people ask about this
How many packs does it take to complete a set?
For a 198-card set with ten countable cards per pack, about 115 packs on average — roughly 1,150 individual cards pulled to see all 198 distinct ones. That is the coupon-collector result, and it assumes even distribution; real collation and rarity tiers make it worse, because rares appear at a fraction of the rate of commons.
Is it cheaper to buy singles or open packs to complete a set?
Singles, in almost every case, and by a wide margin past about 50% completion. Opening delivers its value early, when most cards are new to you; as the set fills, the number of useful cards per pack collapses while the pack price stays flat. The exception is at the very start of a set with an expensive chase card, where a box carries a real chance of pulling it.
Why is the last card of a set so hard to get?
Because the odds of any single pack containing it never improve, and it is the only card left that helps. On average the final card takes as many draws as the whole set has cards — about 198 more cards pulled for a 198-card set. It feels like bad luck and is in fact the expected outcome.
What is a master set?
Every printed variant of every card in a set: base cards, reverse holos, parallels, and often promos and secret rares. It typically runs two to three times the base-set card count, and the extra cards are the scarce ones — which is why a master set can cost ten times what the base set does.
Where these numbers come from
Rates on this page were last checked against the published price lists on . Grading companies change fees and pause tiers without notice — confirm the total on the submission form before you pay.