The variant premium report
What a signature, alt art or overnumbered printing actually costs over the base card, measured across every card that has one.
The same card, the same text, the same stats. Ten, thirty, sometimes a hundred times the price. What you pay for is the printing. This is what each kind of printing costs over the plain version, measured across every card in the catalog that has both.
The premiums, in one table
For every card that exists in more than one printing, we divide each fancier printing by the cheapest version of that same card carrying a real price. The median is the number to trust. Means get dragged around by a handful of extreme cases. A printing measured across fewer than five cards is left out rather than given a median it cannot support.
| Printing | Cards measured | Median premium | Mean | Highest seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Signature | 35 | 12.0× | 2396.5× | 83333.3× |
| Alt art | 50 | 3.0× | 4.4× | 23.2× |
Reading the ladder
The order is what you would expect, and the gaps are bigger than most people assume. A signature printing sits at the top and typically costs somewhere between ten and twenty times the ordinary version, occasionally far more. Alt art sits well below it, and has the widest spread of any printing, because it covers everything from a lightly reprinted common to a genuine chase card.
The one that goes the other way
Metal printings are the exception: their median premium is below 1×, meaning they typically sell for less than the ordinary card. If you assumed every special treatment carries a premium, that is the counterexample. Scarcity and desirability are not the same thing, and a printing only commands a premium if collectors actually chase it.
