{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/ninety-percent-of-decks-twenty-six-cents",
  "slug": "ninety-percent-of-decks-twenty-six-cents",
  "title": "Ninety Percent of Decks, Twenty-Six Cents: The Game and the Market Are Different Economies",
  "summary": "Boss's Orders appeared in 2,330 of the 2,586 tournament decklists we sampled on August 31, 2026, and its cheapest printing costs $0.26. Across 655 played card names matched to live prices, the correlation between how heavily a card is played and what its cheapest printing costs is 0.14, and against its priciest printing 0.09. Of the 200 most expensive English printings we track, 20 have a name that appeared in competitive play at all.",
  "section": "Analysis",
  "published": "2026-09-03",
  "readMinutes": 8,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "90.1%",
      "measures": "of decks ran Boss's Orders",
      "basis": "2,330 of 2,586 decklists, August 31, 2026"
    },
    {
      "value": "0.14",
      "measures": "correlation, log meta share vs log cheapest printing",
      "basis": "655 played names with a priced English printing"
    },
    {
      "value": "0.09",
      "measures": "correlation against the priciest printing of the same name",
      "basis": "play does not set the ceiling"
    },
    {
      "value": "20 of 200",
      "measures": "priciest English printings whose name is played at all",
      "basis": "median meta share of those 20: 0.23%"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "One name, two prices",
      "columns": [
        "Card name",
        "Share of decks",
        "Cheapest printing",
        "Priciest printing"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Card name": "[Ultra Ball](/card/me02.5-213)",
          "Share of decks": "79.8%",
          "Cheapest printing": "$0.17 (Ascended Heroes)",
          "Priciest printing": "[$698.84](/card/bw9-122) (Plasma Freeze)"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Rare Candy](/card/swsh10.5-069)",
          "Share of decks": "34.5%",
          "Cheapest printing": "$0.16 (Pokémon GO)",
          "Priciest printing": "[$183.76](/card/bw10-105) (Plasma Blast)"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Shaymin](/card/sv08.5-087)",
          "Share of decks": "37.4%",
          "Cheapest printing": "$0.03 (Prismatic Evolutions)",
          "Priciest printing": "[$91.89](/card/pl1-126) (Platinum)"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Boss's Orders](/card/me01-114)",
          "Share of decks": "90.1%",
          "Cheapest printing": "$0.26 (Mega Evolution)",
          "Priciest printing": "[$17.29](/card/sv02-265) (Paldea Evolved)"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Budew](/card/sv08.5-004)",
          "Share of decks": "34.0%",
          "Cheapest printing": "$0.21 (Prismatic Evolutions)",
          "Priciest printing": "[$9.79](/card/dp7-33) (Stormfront)"
        },
        {
          "Card name": "[Meowth ex](/card/me03-062)",
          "Share of decks": "52.2%",
          "Cheapest printing": "$2.10 (Perfect Order)",
          "Priciest printing": "[$123.69](/card/me03-121) (Perfect Order)"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "The staples cost nothing",
    "The same name, two economies",
    "The one place the game does move prices"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Playability source: the moonstone playability snapshot table, which aggregates public tournament decklists into a per-card-name meta share for the standard format. This study uses a single dated cross-section, the snapshot of August 31, 2026, covering 656 card names, 2,586 decklists and 50 tournaments; five earlier samples, dated July 30, August 3, August 10, August 17 and August 24, 2026, are held but not pooled, because a card that stops being played simply stops appearing and pooling latest-available rows would mix dates. 655 of the 656 names match at least one English printing carrying a market price on September 2, 2026, matched case-insensitively; the earlier case-sensitive match undercounted, which is why the priciest-printings tally reads 20 here and 17 in an earlier draft. Prices are TCGplayer market prices, ask-derived. Meta share attaches to the card NAME rather than the printing, which is a genuine limitation: an expensive alternate art inherits the play rate of its cheap counterpart, and format legality is not stored per printing, so several of the priciest printings named here are not legal in the format their name is played in. The cheapest-versus-priciest design is our answer to that limitation rather than a workaround for it: the cheapest printing is the copy a player actually buys, the priciest is a collectible with the same text. Correlations are Pearson on logs. A floor of 0.0001 is added to meta share before the log, and it should be understood as inert rather than protective: every name in this sample appears in at least one decklist, the smallest observed share is 0.0004, and the floor changes the correlations by 0.001 or less. The real truncation is upstream of it. Names that no deck played are absent from the snapshot entirely, so the regressor is censored from below and the correlations describe the played population, not all cards. The 200 priciest printings are ranked on the same September 2 price snapshot. Not 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."
}