{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/does-competitive-play-pay",
  "slug": "does-competitive-play-pay",
  "title": "Played in 91% of Decks, Worth 24 Cents",
  "summary": "We joined eight weeks of tournament deck lists against three weeks of daily prices for 688 cards. Competitive play has a weak positive relationship with a card's cheapest printing (Spearman +0.248) and essentially none with its most expensive one (+0.011). The game decides the floor, barely. The artwork decides everything above it.",
  "section": "Market Structure",
  "published": "2026-09-19",
  "readMinutes": 8,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "+0.248",
      "measures": "rank correlation, play rate vs cheapest print",
      "basis": "688 named cards, weak and positive"
    },
    {
      "value": "+0.011",
      "measures": "rank correlation, play rate vs dearest print",
      "basis": "the expensive printing does not care at all"
    },
    {
      "value": "$0.24",
      "measures": "median cheapest print of a format staple",
      "basis": "cards appearing in more than half of all decks"
    },
    {
      "value": "5,171x",
      "measures": "price range within one card name",
      "basis": "Ultra Ball, 19 cents to $962.76"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Price by tournament share, September 14, 2026",
      "columns": [
        "Appears in",
        "Card names",
        "Median cheapest print",
        "Median dearest print"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Appears in": "More than 50% of decks",
          "Card names": "9",
          "Median cheapest print": "$0.24",
          "Median dearest print": "$55.01"
        },
        {
          "Appears in": "20% to 50% of decks",
          "Card names": "19",
          "Median cheapest print": "$0.20",
          "Median dearest print": "$24.46"
        },
        {
          "Appears in": "5% to 20% of decks",
          "Card names": "81",
          "Median cheapest print": "$0.20",
          "Median dearest print": "$10.51"
        },
        {
          "Appears in": "1% to 5% of decks",
          "Card names": "149",
          "Median cheapest print": "$0.17",
          "Median dearest print": "$7.31"
        },
        {
          "Appears in": "Under 1% of decks",
          "Card names": "430",
          "Median cheapest print": "$0.15",
          "Median dearest print": "$11.42"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Format staples: tournament share against price range",
      "columns": [
        "Card",
        "Share of decks",
        "EN printings",
        "Cheapest",
        "Dearest"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Card": "[Boss's Orders](/card/me02.5-183)",
          "Share of decks": "90.6%",
          "EN printings": "16",
          "Cheapest": "$0.24",
          "Dearest": "[$61.47](/card/swsh2-189)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Night Stretcher](/card/me02.5-196)",
          "Share of decks": "84.6%",
          "EN printings": "4",
          "Cheapest": "$0.24",
          "Dearest": "[$8.95](/card/sv08-251)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Poké Pad](/card/me03-081)",
          "Share of decks": "83.0%",
          "EN printings": "4",
          "Cheapest": "$0.28",
          "Dearest": "[$10.60](/card/me03-113)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Lillie's Determination](/card/me01-119)",
          "Share of decks": "82.2%",
          "EN printings": "4",
          "Cheapest": "$0.34",
          "Dearest": "[$64.85](/card/me01-184)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Ultra Ball](/card/me02.5-213)",
          "Share of decks": "80.5%",
          "EN printings": "21",
          "Cheapest": "$0.19",
          "Dearest": "[$962.76](/card/bw9-122)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Buddy-Buddy Poffin](/card/me02.5-184)",
          "Share of decks": "68.8%",
          "EN printings": "5",
          "Cheapest": "$0.18",
          "Dearest": "[$11.62](/card/sv06-223)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Fezandipiti ex](/card/me02.5-142)",
          "Share of decks": "63.2%",
          "EN printings": "5",
          "Cheapest": "$3.52",
          "Dearest": "[$55.01](/card/me02.5-288)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Special Red Card](/card/me04-082)",
          "Share of decks": "59.1%",
          "EN printings": "2",
          "Cheapest": "$0.18",
          "Dearest": "[$3.16](/card/me04-113)"
        },
        {
          "Card": "[Meowth ex](/card/me03-062)",
          "Share of decks": "51.5%",
          "EN printings": "3",
          "Cheapest": "$2.30",
          "Dearest": "[$119.83](/card/me03-121)"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "title": "Cheapest against dearest printing, same card name",
      "columns": [
        "Card name",
        "EN printings",
        "Cheapest",
        "Dearest",
        "Multiple"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Card name": "[Ultra Ball](/card/me02.5-213)",
          "EN printings": "21",
          "Cheapest": "$0.19",
          "Dearest": "[$962.76](/card/bw9-122)",
          "Multiple": "5,171x"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Rare Candy](/card/swsh10.5-069)",
          "EN printings": "25",
          "Cheapest": "$0.16",
          "Dearest": "[$184.53](/card/bw10-105)",
          "Multiple": "1,136x"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Boss's Orders](/card/me02.5-183)",
          "EN printings": "16",
          "Cheapest": "$0.24",
          "Dearest": "[$61.47](/card/swsh2-189)",
          "Multiple": "255x"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Lillie's Determination](/card/me01-119)",
          "EN printings": "4",
          "Cheapest": "$0.34",
          "Dearest": "[$64.85](/card/me01-184)",
          "Multiple": "190x"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Meowth ex](/card/me03-062)",
          "EN printings": "3",
          "Cheapest": "$2.30",
          "Dearest": "[$119.83](/card/me03-121)",
          "Multiple": "52x"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "Playing the game costs almost nothing",
    "The nine most-played cards in the format, and what they cost",
    "Same card, same rules text, 5,171 times the price",
    "The market's most expensive cards are not legal in anything",
    "Three rules that follow from the join"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Sources: our playability_snapshots table, sourced from Limitless TCG, covering 1,032 distinct card names in the Standard format across 8 snapshot days from July 30 to September 14, 2026; tournament shares in this article are from the September 14 snapshot, which covers 3,292 deck lists across 51 tracked tournaments. Prices are the mean of each printing's daily TCGplayer market value across the 21 days from August 30 to September 19, 2026, from our price_history table. The two tables are joined on card name to English-language printings only. The September 14 snapshot carries 689 distinct names and 688 of them match a priced English printing, so the join loses one name rather than a meaningful share. (The 1,032 figure that appears elsewhere in our data is the union of all eight snapshot days and is not the population used here.) Because the join is by name, every printing of a card inherits that card's tournament share. That is the property this study is testing, and it is deliberately generous to the playability thesis: Standard legality attaches to the printing rather than the name, so a name's dearest printing is frequently an old one that no legal deck can play, which is part of why the correlation against it is zero. Names are matched after stripping a parenthetical qualifier, so the Rebel Clash 'Boss's Orders (Giovanni)' counts as a Boss's Orders printing; an earlier exact-name match dropped seven of the sixteen and put the dearest Boss's Orders at $16.73. Correlations are Spearman rank correlations on the 688 matched names. 'Not Standard legal' means the name did not appear in any tracked Standard deck list on September 14, 2026. Nothing here is financial advice."
  ],
  "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file."
}