Written on January 26tj, 2025
Good morning! In this piece we’ll breakdown the number of cards (the count) and the dollar value of cards (the sum) for Innistrad Remastered near mint normal cards and near mint foil cards. I’ve suspected for some time that the amount of bulk determines how successful a trading card set will be, with no way to prove it. I define bulk for the sake of simplicity as any card worth $1 or less. The results surprised me on why demand for Innistrad Remastered is so high. It’s high because certain near mint foil cards have high demand and low supply, contributing to the overall demand for the set.
Why bulk is bad
Small rant: It’s understandable why certain cards are bulk. Set designers want cards that are useful and cheap for everyone to use. The problem with bulk is once demand is satisfied from singles or booster boxes, demand for bulk collapses while supply is steady. When the demand collapses, the price tends towards zero.
Bulk takes effort to organize, sort, recycle and dispose. It takes physical space. Bulk must be separated from other valuable cards. It is moved from seller to seller, country to country, contributing to emissions.
We refuse to sell any card less than 9 cents. When postage is 73 cents and we can reasonably secure and ship 8 cards for 1 oz, selling bulk after fees and postage is a money loser. We have taken time to sort through bulk, anything with market value less than 20 cents, and recycle them wholesale.
Sets with the most bulk are the ones we want to avoid. It is better to buy singles for cards we like that may appreciate or have value after grading. This will lower emissions from transportation and reduce how much bulk we can accumulate and need to dispose. We hope the big producers of cardboard bulk reduce the size of sets and reduce the number of cards that may be valued below $1. Big contributors to bulk in our experience are Disney Lorcana and Pokémon.
INR Near Mint foil summary
As we started this analysis, we focused on cards available from Play booster packs. For Innistrad Remastered (INR designation) we include card numbers 1 to 480. We defined bulk as $1 or less in market value or the low price on tcgplayer. Here is the summary for NM foil cards.
INR Market price for NM foil cards
Bulk card count, $1 or less: 309
Above $1: 189
Bulk card value sum, $1 or less: $112.45
Bulk %: 62.05%
Above $1: $1,107.17
Bulk value %: 9.22%
INR Low price for NM foil cards
Bulk card count, $1 or less: 354
Above $1: 144
Bulk %: 71.08%
Bulk card value sum, $1 or less: $104.47
Above $1: $895.62
Bulk value %: 10.45%
Here’s the Sheets workbook.
Innistrad Remastered Near Mint Foil as of 26.01.25
The initial standard I am adopting is if a set has more than 80% bulk for the card counts on any measure, it is bad set. As we add more sets across a variety of tcg’s we’ll see if 80% holds up. By that measure the foils of Innistrad Remastered do not fall into the bad set category. For cards above $1, there are 144 cards above $1 with an average value of $6.22 each. It is the high value for a number of foils that is driving demand for the set.
INR Near Mint normal summary
INR Market price for NM normal cards
Bulk card count, $1 or less: 402
Above $1: 95
Bulk %: 80.89%
Bulk card value sum, $1 or less: $125.35
Above $1: $514.95
Bulk value %: 19.58%
INR Low price for NM normal cards
Bulk card count, $1 or less: $94.85
Above $1: $469.34
Bulk %: 16.81%
Here’s the Sheets workbook.
Innistrad Remastered Near Mint as of 26.01.25
The normal cards of Innistrad Remastered have a high bulk % above 80% for market and low price. These bulk cards will tend to 0 over the coming months and won’t be worth holding onto. The value is concentrated in the popular normal cards of the set.
We plan to expand this analysis to Foundations, Bloomburrow, Scarlet & Violet sets, and all Disney Lorcana and Star Wars: Unlimited sets.
Last note, we plan to open a Substack account soon to reach a bigger audience! Let us know your thoughts.
Sincerely yours,
smilingdad
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