Arena Current Value Change Log

This page will be a running log of changes to the Arena Current Values when the occur.
Calculations can be found on my shared Google Sheet: Arena Calculated Values

8/31/20

This update is long overdue, but not much has changed since May.

The July 16, 2020 update brought the borderless planeswalker bundles, and with it a another price point to add to the card style pricing. Prices actually dropped from $2.19/avg to $2.14/avg overall, with these particular bundles being priced at $1.87 / 320gems and $1.60 / 1600gold.

The average price of avatars came down slightly, though that price decrease was for only one avatar, Basri Ket. While his gem price of 500 remained the same across the board, they lowered the gold price from 3000 down to 2500 for just this one avatar.

Not much else has changed. Gold/Gem/Dollar values are still the same.

5/17/20
Not much has changed. It appears that WotC is dialing in what people are willing to pay, as well as their conversion rates. Rates have been kept the same for many months now.

As far as changes go, the only change in the past month was for sleeves. There was a daily deal on country flag sleeves for 1,500 gold / 300 gems. This brought the average value of sleeves down from $5.63 to $4.30.

There are no other changes to report. I have not messed with the individual card values pricing at all, I may pick back up on that project later.

4/2/20
I did not have a March update, since it was so close to the Feb update, and nothing had really changed.

I have a new calculation that I added in. Individual card values.

WotC is selling individual cards via Historic Anthologies I and II. With this, I was able to calculate the cards values. Since there is no actual value on each rarity or card itself, we can only go by a bulk purchase price at this time.

There are 80 cards in Historic Anthologies I and 100 cards in Historic Anthologies II. There are also the special art lands they are now selling, the Unsanctioned full art lands, and Unsanctioned Hidden Squirrel lands. Unlike the Theros Nyx Lands, these particular lands are not being sold as "cosmetic".

Based on this, and the fact that you can use basic lands infinity times, I am going to go out on a limb her and say each land bundle has 20 of each land to help calculate an actual real world price for them.

I figure that most decks have 24 lands, most people use special castle lands or dual lands for most mono or duel colored decks, and then 20 regular basic lands would be the minimum you would need to fill out your deck for a cohesive look.

Based on this, I figure that each land is really 20 lands each, and therefore 100 total lands for the purchase price of each of the two land bundles.

Calculating out each gold and gem value of each bundle, the values come out to 4 different dollar amounts, bringing the average to $.17 per card.

I don't know if I will keep this value or not, as it seems a stretch to add in the lands this way, but it's the only logical way that I see since nobody just purchases 1 single land, and gets to use it 20 times in each deck in a real paper deck, meanwhile the other bundles you actually need and get 4 individual copies of each unique card.

Gold dropped a little. Card styles had even more wacky pricing in the "daily deals" area of the store, making their values drop slightly. Uncommon wild cards went up slightly in value, as did the Gold per Gem exchange rate.

2/29/20

With the release of Historic Anthologies II, the exchange rate will be changing once again.
They have priced this at 4000 Gems or 25,000 Gold. This adds one more different rate of 6.2500, bringing the total number of different rates to 5.

We now have: 

• 5.0000 Gold per Gem
• 5.2632  Gold per Gem
• 6.0000  Gold per Gem
• 6/2500 Gold per Gem
• 6.6667  Gold per Gem

This moves the rate from 5.7325 to 5.8359, and thus lowering the $USD value in the game economy. 

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2/29/2020 Rate Calculation Adjustment!

Going into March, we see more sales happening in the Daily Deals section of the store. I decided to not count these as part of the exchange rate simply because they are sales. But of note, it seems they are keeping the values in the Daily Deals to a 5 Gold per Gem rate, regardless of the wildly changing random prices they are putting on things.

After looking over all the various rates, I decided to change how the Exchange Rate is calculated. Instead of counting every different item I see in the entierty of Arena, and averaging them together, I am only going to average together the different exchange rates found.

For this we have 4 different rates showing:

• 5.0000 Gold per Gem
• 5.2632  Gold per Gem
• 6.0000  Gold per Gem
• 6.6667  Gold per Gem

This averages out to 5.7325 Gold per Gem. This of course will change the values of everything, but I believe this is a much better way to calculate this value going forward.
​

2/11/2020

Today marks the February Update and with that comes new things in the store.

We have the introduction of the "Daily Deals" which I believe is going to wreak havoc on the values of everything with their "sales". Some have new rates we can use for conversions too, which helps, but doesn't help.

I added in the Brawlers Guildhall cost into the conversion rate as well since it seems to be sticking around. I decided that even if it changes the pricing, I will start to include any and all items or events into the conversion rate if they have both a gold and a gem cost listed.

We also have the coveted Theros Beyond Death Full Art Lands, each color bundled with a Nyx basic land. These are being sold for 3000 gold, so basically 2 card styles for that price, which actually lowered the value of card styles this week from  $2.26 down to $2.21.

The Secret Lair first bundle of 7 sleeves is also now available. These are selling for 600 gems or 4000 gold each, giving us another data point to use for conversion rates.

The changes are shown below

• Gem = $.0058
  
• Gold = $.00103 --> .00104

Wild Card Values

• Common = $3.29 --> $3.32
  
• Uncommon = $2.99 --> $3.02
• Rare = $5.49 --> $5.53
• Mythic = $16.46 --> $16.60

Items

• Booster Pack = $1.10 --> $1.11
  
• Card Styles = $2.26 --> $2.23
  
• Sleeves = $6.44 --> $5.76
  
• Avatar = $3.00 --> $3.02
• Pet = $19.02 --> $19.21
• Ranked Draft = $4.76 --> $4.80
• Traditional Draft = $8.76

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2/9/2020

Today we have a new event that has appeared: Standard Treasure.

The Gem to Gold rates are different for both costs, so we now have yet another item to use for our Gold to Gem conversion rates.

Standard Treasure costs either 500 Gems or 2500 Gold, which is equivalent to $2.90 and
$2.50 respectively (as per previous rates). This averages out to 5 gold per Gem, which is currently the same rate of a Booster Pack.

This changes the Gold per Gem rate from 6.0833 to 5.8667.

I also added a few more data points that I had not previously looked at that will change the average values of everything as well. I included both the Standard and Historic Events (95 Gems or 500 Gold) and Traditional Standard (190 Gems, 1000 Gold). These both come out to the same rate of 5.26 Gold per Gems.  Since the Standard and Historic events are the same rate, I only included a data point for a single one.

This changes the Gold per Gem rate from 5.8667 to 5.6942.

I am also starting to track the Traditional Draft costs, as this is one of the few items you can directly purchase via Gems.

The full updated list is as follows:

• Gem = $.0058 --> $.0058
  
• Gold = $.00096 --> $.00103

Wild Card Values

• Common = $3.19 --> $3.29
• Uncommon = $2.90 --> $2.99
• Rare = $5.32 --> $5.49
• Mythic = $15.97 --> $16.46

Items

• Booster Pack Cost $1.06 --> $1.10
  
• Card Style Average Cost/Value $2.23 --> $2.26
• Sleeves = $6.18 --> $6.44
• Avatar = $2.90 --> $3.00
• Pet = $18.37 --> $19.02
• Ranked Draft = $4.59 --> $4.76
• Traditional Draft = $8.76
  

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2/4/2020

Previously we had Sleeves at 1200 Gems, with the one lone Gold obtainable sleeve, Liliana Yoshitaka Amano, at 4,000 Gold. This stayed this way for a long time, leading me to believe that that would be the standard Gold price for a sleeve.

As of the previous update, WotC has bucked the trend of sleeve pricing, and we now have new Exquisite sleeves (Cryptic Command and Lightning Bolt) at 8,000 Gold. I feel that this no longer represents a representation of Gems vs Gold because of the direction they are going with premium products, so I removed Sleeves from the conversion chart.

Because of this removal as a data point for Gems vs Gold conversions, this lowered the amount of items available with direct Gem and Gold costs, and thus has changed the values.

This changes the Gold per Gem rate from 5.533 to 6.083.

We also have a Standard Event that costs either

What this has done is lower the values, and thus the cost, of each item in the game across the board.

The full updated list is as follows:

• Gem = $.0058 --> $.0058
  
• Gold = $.00106 --> $.00096
  

Wild Card Values

• Common = $3.34 --> $3.19
• Uncommon = $3.03 --> $2.90
• Rare = $5.56 --> $5.32
• Mythic = $16.68 --> $15.97

Items

• Booster Pack Cost $1.11 --> $1.06
• Card Style Average Cost/Value $2.27 --> $2.23
  
• Sleeves = $6.56 --> $6.18
• Avatar = $3.04 --> $2.90
• Pet = $19.32 --> $18.37
• Ranked Draft = $4.83 --> $4.59
• Traditional Draft = $8.76 --> $8.76