Every figure below is computed from our own dataset of 78,748 Magic: The Gathering cards across 325 sets, not scraped from another price guide. Free to cite with a link.
The mean price of a Magic: The Gathering card in our dataset is $41.98. The median is $0.68, about 62x lower. Both numbers are correct, and only one of them describes the card you just pulled.
That gap is the whole shape of the hobby. Reserved List staples and a handful of serialised chase cards carry enough value to lift the average by orders of magnitude, while the bulk of every print run trades for cents.Any headline claiming the “average” card is worth $41.98 is quoting the mean of a distribution that has no meaningful middle.
| Raw price | Cards | Share |
|---|---|---|
| $100 or more | 1,268 | 1.7% |
| $1,000 or more | 171 | 0.22% |
| Priced cards in the dataset | 76,824 | 100% |
Across the 2,390 cards where we hold both a raw price and a PSA 10 price, the median PSA 10 sells for 5.4x the ungraded card, at a median of $103.05.
The multiple is the number worth internalising, because grading costs are flat while the premium is proportional. A 5.4x multiple on a $0.68 card is still under a dollar of upside. The premium only pays on cards that already carry value, which is the opposite of how most submission decisions get made.
PSA has graded 27,001 Magic: The Gathering cards to a 10 across the 1,277 cards in our set with population data, and we hold real graded sales history for 8,826 cards.
| Card | Raw price |
|---|---|
| The One Ring /1 | $2,000,000 |
| Black Lotus | $49,565 |
| Smaug the Magnificent [Borderless Foil] #249 | $24,000 |
| Smaug the Magnificent [Borderless] #249 | $22,000 |
| Black Lotus | $18,020 |
| Gandalf The White [Serialized] #732 | $12,400 |
| The Soul Stone #242 | $11,000 |
| Black Lotus | $10,500 |
| Timetwister | $8,805 |
| Mox Sapphire | $8,263 |
Journalists and creators are welcome to use any statistic on this page with attribution and a link to banktcg.com/magic-card-statistics. If you need a figure we haven't published, whether a specific set, era or grade, get in touch and we'll run it.