MTG Card Rarities Explained: Common, Uncommon, Rare & Mythic

Every Magic card prints its rarity into the set symbol's colour. Knowing the wheel helps you read a card at a glance — but rarity is only loosely correlated with price.

The rarity wheel

• Common (black symbol) — the bulk of a set. Most are bulk-priced, but staple commons (think Lightning Bolt, Counterspell) can outvalue rares.
• Uncommon (silver) — better effects, still opened often. Format-defining uncommons spike hard.
• Rare (gold) — one or two per pack. Most chase cards live here.
• Mythic Rare (orange-red) — the rarest slot in a modern pack, roughly 1 in 8 packs.
• Special / Bonus sheet — Mystical Archive, The List, Special Guests and serialised cards sit outside the normal wheel.

Why rarity ≠ value

A card's price is set by demand vs. supply, not its symbol. A heavily-played Modern or Commander staple printed at uncommon can cost more than a mythic nobody plays. Reserved-List rares from the 1990s trade for hundreds because they can never be reprinted.

How to use this when buying

Use rarity to understand how hard a card is to open — then ignore it and let the live price tell you what it's worth. On any card page here, compare every store's price for the exact printing you want before you buy: the cheapest copy is often at a store you'd never think to check.