Hey all,

Just a quick question. I'm in the midst of doing a pretty sizable trade, but the other trader is saying that the value for some cards should be considered roughly double their TGC average because they're foil. Personally, I'm not worried about foil cards, if you have them, cool, if not, so what? But does this sound reasonable for the value on them?

Double? no. Yes the value is a little higher, but not even close to double.

That's what I was thinking... I'm willing to give the guy a bit more, maybe even up to 1.5x as he's done a significant amount of legwork tracking down the cards I'm looking for (he REALLY wants the FOWs I'm trading), but I'm glad to see that I'm not off kilter by saying double is far too much.

Double isn't incorrect in some cases. you can use ebay or starcitygames as a guide.

Some foils are worth at least double if not more like Delver of Secrets but that is clearly the exception. For junk cards, not much of a premium.

Thanks for the link Tawnos... I found the ones I'm looking for. The only one that the foil-ness really adds much to the value is a Grave Titan.

You can't do a hard and fast rule for this. Think of it this way. A non-foil Divination costs, what? A penny? In this case, a foil seems to raise its price up to a quarter or so -- twenty five times its non-foil cost. By comparison, something like Jace the Mindsculptor only increases by a factor of 4 -- but that factor of four can be a difference of almost 200 dollars. Other cards... Let's say Azusa, Lost but Seeking, for example. Here, the increase is 8 fold -- from 5 dollars, to about 40 dollars. It's all over the place depending on the card. It really is a case by case basis.

But for the majority of cards, I'd have to assume that this is somewhat overpriced.

a wee bit dated, but thanks for the input anyway...

I always look up the card on http://store.tcgplayer.com and http://findmagiccards.com and guesstimate the average foil price from the listings of the various stores.

I think everything depend on the rarity and the availability of the card. Foil cards are a lot harder to find (except deck main cards and promo cards), so the value is higher. There is not a lot of Foil collector but I'm sure they can put a very good price on rarer foils.

mtgfanatic.com posts foil pricing for most every card foil-available. The harder the foil is to find, the higher it will be compared to its non-foil counterpart. Shards block (all-foil boosters) and anything reprinted as foil in any Duel Decks or newer Promos (such as Elspeth, Knight Errant or Gravecrawler) are going to be fairly close to their non-foil counterparts. Azami, Lady of Scrolls on the other hand is around 10x the regular print cost in foil because that block did not sell as well, has had no reprints as of yet, and is highly sought-after by the EDH community.

As far as foils go, there is no steadfast rule as to how to gauge their value in relation to a non-foil version. For some cards it adds a minimal amount of additional value, where others, Daze for example, increases the cost nearly 25-fold.