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I wonder how many Magic: The Gathering cards have been printed I in total (including all languages, all editions).

And I don't mean unique different cards, but really actual printed cards.

It must be billions, but exactly how many?

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  • gazillions. But I'm pretty sure you won't be able to find this information anywhere. There are a few locations that print those cards and every minute there are hundreds(or thousands) cards printed worldwide, so any answer would never be up-to-date. Also, I doubt anyone has actually kept track of this
    – Novarg
    Dec 26, 2014 at 11:15
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    Just an idea, but if anyone's looking for a technique to estimate this, one might research at the German tank problem; I don't have any empty booster wrappers around to check whether there may be plain serial numbers anywhere on the packaging, though.
    – Kite
    Dec 26, 2014 at 16:13

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Duelist Magazine released the size of the print runs for Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, and Fallen Empires. Between those five sets, there were approximately 429 million individual cards printed. (Those may just be the numbers for English cards, though, I'm not certain.) The print run sizes for those sets increased dramatically going forward from Arabian Nights at 5M to Fallen Empires at 312M.

To my knowledge, no other Magic set has had the print run size explicitly revealed.

Edit – Some searching around has revealed some estimates at the print run sizes for other sets:

  • Alpha: 2.6M
  • Beta: 7.3M
  • Unlimited: 35M
  • Revised: 500M
  • 4th: 500M
  • Ice Age: 500M
  • Chronicles: 180M
  • Mirage: 400M

(I'm also going to speculate that Renaissance had approximately the the same numbers as Chronicles, since Renaissance was essentially the German/French/Italian version of the English/Japanese Chronicles.)

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  • From this information and using some speculation, do you think you can estimate the total number?
    – Jan Rüegg
    Dec 27, 2014 at 12:13
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    @JanRüegg This is not the place for speculation. I'd prefer the answer stick to what is known. On that note, the answer mentions articles but doesn't cite a single one. The answer should really mention the articles it stole from.
    – Rainbolt
    Dec 27, 2014 at 18:16
  • @Rainbolt Why not? If there is not other way, a Fermi estimation is better than nothing, don't you agree?
    – Jan Rüegg
    Dec 28, 2014 at 11:15
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    @JanRüegg This problem isn't like the crap you read about on the Internet. Magic has surged in popularity in recent years. Will Fermi account for that?
    – Rainbolt
    Dec 30, 2014 at 5:46
  • Renaissance in Italian was profundly different from Chronicles, so they can't be compared in the slightest.
    – o0'.
    Feb 23, 2015 at 16:21

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