Yearly Winners 2020: Top Winners and Losers
I kind of assume there are not a lot of people who are sad that 2020 is finally over, and while we cannot and should not assume 2021 will be any better, it should not be that hard for 2021 to beat this past year. When the COVID-19 pandemic really started to flare up we have seen multiple people saying this will be the end of Magic and people predicting the second-hand market to collapse. Neither of those has happened, and we see no reason why 2021 will be any different when it comes to that. Magic seems more popular than ever, and everyone knows that at some point we will be able to physically sling cardboard against each other again in the (hopefully near) future.
As is our yearly tradition, we will show you the winners and losers of 2020 in several categories:
- Winners/Losers overall 2020
- Winners/Losers of the reserved list
- Winners/Losers based on dollar value rather than percentage
Usually people don't scroll all the way to the bottom of tables and articles this long, so I'm going to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you one heck of a 2021! We hope you keep slinging those spells with as much vivre as you always have and hope you'll be able to get those cards you've always wanted to play with for a price as low as possible!
Product Releases
In 2020 we have seen the following products being released:
Core sets
Core 2021 (July 3rd)
Expansion sets
Theros: Beyond Death (January 24th)Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths (April 24th)Zendikar Rising (September 25th)
Commander
Commander 2020 (May 15th)Commander Legends (November 20th)Commander Collection: Green (December 4th)
Un-sets
Unsanctioned (February 29th)
Other product
Mystery Booster Cards (March 13th)Signature Spellbook: Chandra (June 26th)Jumpstart (July 17th)Double Masters (August 7th)
Secret Lairs
- Year of the Rat (January 27th)
- Theros Stargazing, Volume I (February 14th)
- Theros Stargazing, Volume II (February 14th)
- Theros Stargazing, Volume III (February 14th)
- Theros Stargazing, Volume IV (February 14th)
- Theros Stargazing, Volume V (February 14th)
- International Women's Day (March 8th)
- Thalia - Beyond the Helvault (March 12th)
- April Fools (April 1st)
- The Godzilla Lands (May 7th)
- Full Sleeves: The Tattoo Pack (June 1st)
- Can You Feel with a Heart of Steel? (June 2nd)
- The Path Not Traveled (June 3rd)
- Mountain, Go (June 4th)
- Ornithological Studies (June 5th)
- Prime Slime (August 19th)
- Every Dog Has Its Day (August 26th)
- Happy Yargle Day! (September 3rd)
- Showcase: Zendikar Revisited (September 25th)
- The Walking Dead (October 4th)
- Extra Life ( November 6th)
- Artist Series: Seb McKinnon (November 30th)
- Happy Little Gathering (November 30th)
- Hope You Like Squirrels (November 30th)
- A Box of Rocks (November 30th)
- Party Hard, Shred Harder (November 30th)
Top 100 Interests
Calculation method
The most important task in calculating these kinds of lists is the method you use to select, filter, include and exclude cards. Maybe you are missing some cards, or maybe you're surprised about the results. To avoid any confusion I will explain how we have calculated this list. We did it the same as last week, but to recap we will go over this again.
First of all, we excluded all the oldest sets with big prices and little trade. Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, the Dark were excluded from our list. The second important thing to note is that if a card was printed in 2020, we will use the prices of the day of the release of the set. Prerelease prices are known to be inaccurate and some were even listed as $99.99 (or some other ridiculous) price at first. When we take the actual release date prices tend to be more accurate but still a tad high most of the time.
Logically, please note that our 'jan 1st' column is either the price of the card on January 1st, or the price of the card on the day of the release of the set, if that was a date after January 1st.
Winners
Losers
Reserved List
In this list, everything is considered from the Reserved List.
Winners
Losers
Absolute dollar value
For this list, we took all the prices for all cards that we would normally also include in our default interests. This means that sets like Alpha, Beta, Revised and several promos have been excluded.
