My question is straight forward: Which booster box whould you recommend me to buy?

I'd like a set with good cards to play and/or with good value but I don't want to spend more than $150 on the box.

I had thoughts on Avacyn Restored, Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, M14 and Theros.

Would you go further and check older sets? Or should I focus on Standard (manly THS-BNG-JOU)?

If you're trying to make your money back, AVR would be the better bet. But if you're looking to actually play the cards beyond your kitchen table, the Theros block stuff would be the right way to go (given that they'll be in standard for the next year and a half).

JOU also has God packs if you're feeling lucky ;)

From Wikipedia

Theros contains 249 cards (20 basic lands, 121 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares)
Born of the Gods / Journey into Nyx contains 165 cards (60 Common, 60 Uncommon, 35 Rare, 10 Mythic)

So your odds of getting a Mythic in a Theros pack are better than in a BNG or JOU pack. Unfortunately that's not all you have to look at. At least 4 mythics in Theros aren't worth the price of the pack they're in. The "concentration" of valuable mythics definitely higher in BNG and JOU. That's only mythics though, there are a lot of value rares in the block.

Going by the tcgplayer prices, the Theros set is worth ~215$ (0.863$/card), BNG is ~141$ (0.855$/card) and JOU is ~162$ (0.9818$/card) so if you do an average of the value of each card you open it seems JOU is the way to go. I kinda wanted to calculate the EV of a booster box for each of the sets but I'm too tired. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow.

Im fairly certain Mythic Chance is fixed. The amount of cards in a set doesnt skew the chance of getting a mythic it skews the way they do the print run.


If you want something with long term Value Avacyn Restored is a nice bet, it also has lots of angels woo. If you want something more playable then Journey is good.

I Personally think M12 is undervalued. If you can get a box of it (Should be about 99 still) Try that. Its got a nice mix of stuff and some nice valuable rare cards.