How Sealed Verdict works
This page explains where our numbers come from, what they mean, and what they do not mean.
You can read it from top to bottom, or jump to the part you need. Each heading is a question. The answer is directly underneath it.
What does this site do?
Sealed Verdict looks at sealed Magic: The Gathering products sold in Australia. For each product, it shows you:
- What the cards inside are worth, on average.
- What the cheapest Australian price is right now, and how many shops we checked.
- How that price compares to what the product sells for overseas.
You then decide what to do with that information.
Does this site tell me whether to buy something?
No.
We used to give a "buy" or "don't buy" verdict. We removed it.
We removed it because the right answer depends on things we cannot know about you. Two people can look at the same booster box and both make a sensible choice for different reasons. One wants cards to play with. One wants to open packs because opening packs is fun. One is buying a gift. A price that is too high for one person is fine for another.
So instead of a recommendation, we give you facts and let you make the call.
What are the two price facts?
Fact 1: the cheapest Australian price.
We show the lowest current price we can find, and how many shops we checked to find it. For example: "Cheapest AU listing $248.98 — best of 4 AU retailers."
If we only found one shop, we say so. If we found none, we say that too. We would rather tell you we have no data than guess.
Fact 2: how the price compares to overseas.
We show the Australian price as a multiple of the overseas price. For example, "1.3x US market value" means the Australian price is 30% higher than the same product sells for in the United States.
Can I just buy it from overseas instead?
Almost always, no.
Wizards of the Coast, the company that makes Magic, gives certain shops exclusive rights to sell in certain regions. Because of this, large US sellers do not ship sealed Magic product to Australia. This is not a shipping problem you can work around. It is a contract between the seller and the manufacturer.
This means the overseas price is a measuring stick, not a shopping option. We show it so you can see whether you are paying a normal Australian premium or an unusually large one. We are not suggesting you buy from overseas.
One more thing about that number: it is a straight currency conversion. It does not include shipping, import costs, or GST. So a product showing "1.0x US market value" is not actually the same cost to you as buying it in the US would be. It would be more.
What is "expected value"?
Expected value is the average worth of the cards inside a pack or box.
Here is how we work it out. We take every card that can be pulled from that set. We look up what each card sells for. We work out how likely each card is to appear, based on the published rules for how packs are filled. Then we combine those into an average.
The word "average" is doing a lot of work here. Please read the next section.
Why did my pack not contain the average?
Because almost no pack does.
Imagine a box where 99 packs contain $3 of cards and 1 pack contains $300. The average across those 100 packs is about $6. But if you buy one pack, you will almost certainly get the $3 one.
Expected value works the same way. A small number of very expensive cards pull the average up. Most packs you open will be worth noticeably less than the average. A few will be worth much more.
This means expected value tells you what a large number of packs is worth. It does not predict what your pack is worth. If you are buying one or two packs, treat the number as background information, not a forecast.
What is the difference between the two expected value numbers?
You will see two figures. Here is what each one means.
Theoretical value is what the cards are worth at their listed prices.
Realised value is what you would actually get if you sold them. It is the theoretical value minus 15%.
We subtract 15% because selling cards is not free or instant. You pay fees, you post things, you accept slightly less than the listed price to make a sale, and some cards sit unsold for a long time. The 15% is our estimate of that friction.
We show the realised value as the main number because it is closer to what actually happens.
What does the "hold or open" call mean?
This is the one judgement the site does make. It is about a product you already own, or are deciding what to do with. It has three possible answers.
Open for singles. The cards inside are worth at least 20% more than the sealed product costs. If your goal is to get value out, opening is currently the better path.
Keep sealed. The cards inside are not worth clearly more than the sealed product. There is no strong reason to open it for value.
Sell into strength. Two things are true at once: the Australian price has risen by 10% or more over the last 30 days, and the set is at high risk of being reprinted. Reprints usually push prices down. This is a flag that the current price may not last.
Sometimes we show no call at all. That happens when we do not have enough information — usually no Australian price, or no expected value for that product type. We show nothing rather than guess.
This call is about money only. If you want to open packs because opening packs is enjoyable, that is a completely valid reason and this number has nothing useful to say about it.
Where do the Australian prices come from?
We check five Australian shops automatically, once a day:
- Games Empire
- Ronin Games
- Tabernacle Games
- Gameology
- Millennium Comics
We are not checking every shop in Australia. "Cheapest we found" is not the same as "cheapest that exists." There may be a better price somewhere we do not check.
A price only counts if all of these are true:
- The shop lists it as in stock.
- We know the shipping cost, and we have added it to the price.
- The price is less than 30 days old.
If a price fails any of those checks, we ignore it. If every price for a product fails, we show no Australian price for that product.
We include shipping because a $90 product with $15 postage costs more than a $99 product with $9 postage. Comparing the sticker prices alone would point you at the wrong shop.
What is this site not good at?
We would rather tell you this up front than have you find out later.
Some product types have no expected value yet. Collector Boosters, Set Boosters and Jumpstart Boosters are filled using complicated rules that change from set to set. We have not modelled them yet. For those products you will see "not yet modelled" rather than a number. We would rather show nothing than show a made-up figure. For these products, the only information we have is the price.
Card prices move. We update daily, but a price you see here may have changed at the shop. Always check before buying.
Our shop list is incomplete. See the section above about the five shops.
Expected value ignores what you personally want. A box full of expensive cards for a format you do not play is not valuable to you, whatever the maths says.
We are new. This site has not been running long enough to have a long track record. Judge us on whether the numbers hold up over time, not on our say-so.
Do you count cards that cannot actually be pulled from a pack?
No, and this matters more than it sounds.
Some very expensive cards exist for a set but cannot be found in a normal booster pack. They come from tournament prizes, special promotions, or limited print runs. If you counted those, the expected value would look far higher than anything a real buyer could achieve.
We filter them out before doing the maths. If a card cannot come out of the pack you are buying, it does not count towards that pack's value.
Where do the card prices come from?
Card prices and set information come from Scryfall, a public Magic card database. Overseas sealed prices come from TCGplayer. The exchange rate comes from a public currency service and is updated hourly. Every card we show links back to a public price page, so you can check any number yourself.
What is reprint risk?
Reprint risk is a score from 0 to 100. It estimates how likely it is that the expensive cards in a set will be printed again soon.
This matters because a reprint usually makes a card cheaper. If you are holding a sealed box hoping it gains value, a reprint works against you.
We base the score on four things: what kind of set it is, how long since those cards were last printed, whether people are actively playing with them, and how old the product is.
It is an estimate, not inside knowledge. We do not know what Wizards of the Coast plans to print.
Who is this site for?
It is for people in Australia who buy sealed Magic product and want to know what they are getting before they spend.
That includes players buying a box to draft with, people who enjoy opening packs, collectors, and anyone who has ever stood in a shop wondering whether $250 is a fair price.
A note on speculation. We show what things are worth. That information can be used by someone buying to resell. We are aware of this. We have made specific choices to avoid being a speculation tool: we do not predict future prices, we do not tell you what to buy, we do not flag products as investments, and we do not track scarcity in a way that would help anyone corner supply. What we do is tell an ordinary buyer what is in the box and what it costs. If that seems useful to you, the site is for you.
Who runs this site?
Sealed Verdict is run by Sidebyte Labs, a trading name of Symposia Co Pty Ltd (ABN 19 699 627 702), an Australian company.
We are a small operation, not a large one. We are not owned by a card shop, a distributor, or a marketplace. Nobody pays us to recommend a product, and we do not earn a commission when you buy something.
You should not have to take our word for any of our numbers. Card prices link to a public source. Our method is written on this page in full. If a number looks wrong, check it, and tell us.
How do I tell you something is wrong?
Email hello@sealedverdict.com.au.
We especially want to hear about: a price that is wrong or out of date, a shop we should be checking, a card being counted that cannot really be pulled, and anything on the site you found confusing or hard to read.
You will not be dismissed for asking a basic question. If something here was unclear, that is a problem with our writing, not with you.
Last updated: 2 September 2026