What's in a Commander Legends Collector Booster?

 Back in March, I started a post about what's in a Collector Booster, with a few Throne of Eldraine and Theros: Beyond Death boosters I opened, but it looks like I never published it.  Well, let's start fresh with the current hot set, Commander Legends (CMR).  CMR was designed to be a draftable Commander set, unlike the usual preconstructed Commander decks that are released each year.  I've played a few drafts on Magic Online, and I really like the set, although the games tend to be very long on MTGO.

Collector Boosters have been around for a few sets now, so they've changed a little, but they're still mostly the same thing: lots of foil cards, more rares than a normal booster, and a few fancy cards with extended art and other treatments.  This time, instead of showcase cards (with unique art and frames), they have brought us something called foil etched cards.  It's hard to tell what that really means without having ever seen the cards in person.

So this shiny, iridescent pack of 15 cards cost about $25 at my LGS.  (Aside: I'm trying to shop at the LGS a bit more than normal to support them, because they haven't been able to run any events since everything closed in March for the pandemic.)

As usual, the pack has some details in tiny print about what kinds of cards may appear.  WotC also published an article that goes into more detail.  The long story short is that most of these cards will be foil, at least 2 will have extended art, and 3 will be foil etched legendary creatures or borderless planeswalkers.  One of those will be a foil etched reprint of a popular legendary creature not appearing in CMR draft boosters.

So lets lay them all out in order:

Top row is the normal foil commons.  Nothing too exciting here -- most of these are cards that support the draft environment, and don't actually get played in Commander/EDH constructed decks.  In this slot I would have hoped to see something like Command Tower, Commander's Sphere, or some of the new cards with the cascade or encore abilities.

Second row is the normal foil uncommons and rares.  The two uncommons have a chance to be upgraded to extended art foil common/uncommons, but we didn't get any.  Burnished Hart is commonly played in EDH, but it already has other foil printings, so this one isn't valuable (50 cents).

The two normal foil legendary creatures can be any uncommon, rare, or mythic legendaries from the set.  We got two uncommons here.  Halana was very strong in CMR draft games, and I can imagine she will see some play in constructed EDH.  Alharu is basically designed for the draft environment and I don't think will show up much in constructed decks.  As an interesting aside, they do represent some of the identity diversity WotC has been trying to promote.  Halana ("Hal") and her hunting and life partner Alena have appeared in Innistrad block story for about 10 years, and CMR is the first time they have appeared on cards, fittingly in a set where they can be partnered together.  Alharu has not appeared in Magic previously, as far as I can see, but the article introducing the characters of CMR uses they/them pronouns, making Alharu the only non-binary character in the set.

And, to finish the second row, our normal foil rare is Magus of the Order, a creature to call back the classic sorcery Natural Order.  This slot can sometimes be extended art.  Foil rares can be valuable, but this one is only about 75 cents.

The last row is where things get interesting.  We are guaranteed one non-foil common/uncommon extended art card (out of 33 that were specially picked for this treatment -- don't worry, you won't get a Skyraker Giant here).  Our common is Fleshbag Marauder, a card I'll actually slot into one of my decks.  I'm not a fan of the gross art, but it does look impressive extended to full card width.

The second non-foil extended art card is the best card in our pack, a $30 Hullbreacher.  It's a straight up nasty card that I don't really want to play in friendly EDH, but it's very popular and the 5th most valuable card we could have gotten in this slot.  I think the art with the merfolk stealing gold from the ship is pretty cool, except it's a little too dark to actually see it well.

Then we get to the foil etched cards - an uncommon, a reprint, and a rare or mythic.  Captain Vargus Wrath is another "bulk uncommon" legend, fine in draft but most likely just a filler card in EDH pirate decks.  Foil etched Vargus is about $1.  Akiri is one of the original two-color partner commanders, which make up the majority of the reprints in the second foil etched slot.  She has never been very high in popularity, but this printing is currently about $3.25.  In general, cards in this slot are all worth a few dollars minimum.  The last slot is Amareth, a good-ish rare legend that gains a few points for being a dragon.  Current price about $2.25.

We also got a double-sided foil token of a 2/2 firebreathing dragon (from Dragon Egg) and a */* horror artifact creature (from Profane Transfusion), worth about 50 cents.

So our total value in this pack is somewhere in the $35 - $40 range, with almost all of it coming from the Hullbreacher.

Now let's look at the foil etched treatment.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  I had seen pictures of these cards online, but I expected that "etched" meant some kind of physical textural element on the face of the card, like some of the fancy chase baseball cards of the mid 1990s.  But these are entirely smooth.  I took a few shots from different angles and lighting to try to show the effect.  They look like they have sort of a sparkly metallic flecked surface.  It looks a little like they're made of metal that has been etched with acid, so maybe that's what the designers were going for.  I am neutral about whether they look better or worse than normal foils, but they're certainly different.  I do like the watermark on the text box.  Normal foils have some parts of the art that aren't treated, but these foil etched cards appear to have the treatment over the entire art.

Anyway, let's wrap this up.

I think we got a little lucky with Hullbreacher.  As far as I can tell, the extended art rare slot and the normal foil rare slot are the best slots for randomly getting an expensive card (in this case a Jeweled Lotus worth about $100 normal extended art and $400 foil extended art).  And I think the foil etched reprint slot is the slot most consistently giving you a card worth a few dollars and playable in an EDH deck.  The common and uncommon slots are mostly just for fun/pretty cards.

CMR Collector Booster is a good product for you if:

• You like the thrill of opening pretty cards with a chance at some valuable ones.
• You don't mind spending more money on fewer cards.

CMR Collector Booster is not a good product for you if:

• You want a specific card for your deck.
• You want to get your money's worth on a consistent basis.
• You don't want to spend a lot of money on Magic.

This is clearly an ultra-premium product intended for people who don't mind spending a lot of money for a fun experience.  Like all sealed randomized products, you are unlikely to make your money back, and the more you open, the closer you will get to the roughly break-even point (just as you will have more consistent results playing a slot machine 10,000 times than 10 times).

This is the first time in 4 Collector Boosters that I have opened more value than the price of the pack.  It's possible that this set will be better on average than the Standard sets (like Eldraine and Theros) because it has a higher ratio of cards people will want over the long term.

Thanks for reading!  Let me know what you think, or your own experiences with Collector Boosters.