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 — and 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 as both a base printing and something fancier, we divide the fancy price by the base price. The median is the number to trust — means get dragged around by a handful of extreme cases.
| Printing | Cards measured | Median premium | Mean | Highest seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Signature | 28 | 3100.0× | 3813.1× | 20000.0× |
| Overnumbered | 49 | 2950.0× | 3577.7× | 20000.0× |
| Alt art | 98 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 1.0× |
| Metal | 16 | 1.0× | 1.0× | 1.0× |
Reading the ladder
The order is what you would expect, and the gaps are bigger than most people assume. A signature printing is the top of the ladder and typically costs tens of times the base card. Overnumbered sits below it, and alt art below that — though alt art has the widest spread of the three, 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.
