{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/what-56000-cards-say-about-set-design",
  "slug": "what-56000-cards-say-about-set-design",
  "title": "What 56,000 Cards Say About How Sets Hold Value",
  "summary": "Across 212 sets with full price coverage, the top five cards hold 56% of a set's entire market value on average. Some sets are lottery tickets where five cards are 90% of the pie. Others spread value across the whole checklist. Which kind you buy changes everything.",
  "section": "Investment research",
  "published": "2026-08-26",
  "readMinutes": 7,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Top-5 concentration: share of set value held by five cards",
      "columns": [
        "Set",
        "Top-5 share",
        "What it means for a buyer"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Set": "[Champion's Path](/set/champion's%20path)",
          "Top-5 share": "90.3%",
          "What it means for a buyer": "two Charizards, [the V](/card/swsh3.5-79) and [the VMAX](/card/swsh3.5-74), are most of the set; everything else is packaging"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Phantom Forces](/set/phantom%20forces)",
          "Top-5 share": "89.9%",
          "What it means for a buyer": "same lottery shape, 2014 edition"
        },
        {
          "Set": "Average across 212 sets",
          "Top-5 share": "55.6%",
          "What it means for a buyer": "half the value in five cards is normal"
        },
        {
          "Set": "World Championship Decks",
          "Top-5 share": "10.8%",
          "What it means for a buyer": "value spread across the whole print, no chase"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "Lottery sets vs ledger sets"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Concentration computed from our set value histories: top five card share of summed card market values per set, 212 sets with a stored value history, August 2026. Catalog: 56,426 tracked cards. Note two things about the average. The population is every set that carries a history, with no floor on how many of its cards are priced, so a handful of tiny promo rows with three priced cards sit in it at a trivial 100%; and the average is unweighted across sets, so a 1,900-card set counts once and a 20-card set counts once. RECHECKED 2026-09-22: neither the catalog nor the value store carries history, so August cannot be replayed. Rebuilding today over the 200 sets that now hold a value history returns an average top-five share of 55.9% against the 55.6% printed here, 53.2% if the population is cut to the 172 sets with at least twenty priced cards. Champion's Path reads 90.3% and Phantom Forces 90.0%. World Championship Decks has moved to 12.2%. The hero figure has been corrected: 89.9% is the share held by the five dearest Phantom Forces cards together, and M Gengar EX is the third of those five, worth 19.1% of the set on its own behind Dialga EX at 35.8% and Gengar EX at 26.7%. The catalog now holds 63,600 rows; 1,212 TCGplayer product ids are claimed by two of those rows each, so any count of rows runs about 2% above a count of distinct products."
  ],
  "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."
}