Spending excessive amounts of money looking for ultra- and secret-rare foil cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! booster packs only to come back empty-handed can be discouraging. Finding extremely rare foil cards in booster packs is entirely up to chance. Or is it?
Scaling is a technique used by Yu-Gi-Oh! players to improve their chances of choosing booster packs with foil cards. To scale packs, weigh a couple of the same booster packs with an accurate scale. Foil cards are slightly heavier than regular cards, so heavier packs are more likely to have them.
Trading card game players have long since found ways of improving their chances of pulling rare cards from booster packs. If you’ve ever wished you could do the same or are wondering how you can do it, we’ve got you covered. Scaling is a technique that almost guarantees you will get a foil card from a booster pack. So get your game on and read our guide to find out how.
How To Scale Yu-Gi-Oh! Booster Packs
Trading card game players often use scaling to find out which booster packs have rare cards. While it may seem silly to weigh cards that are light as a feather, certain cards have different weights. These weights can give you an idea of whether rare cards are inside a booster pack.
Scaling works on the principle that holographic or foil cards weigh more than regular cards. For example, a pack containing only standard cards would be slightly lighter than a pack with a rare holographic card inside. Many use this technique to their advantage for various reasons, such as making a profit by selling the cards they find or collecting rare cards.
Card shops are a perfect example of where scaling is used to maximize profit. As you may have seen at your local card shop, plenty of rare holographic or foil cards are on display. Some of these were sold by players, while most were from booster packs. But the shop can only open a little of its own stock looking for rare cards, so it’s fair to assume that the booster packs have been scaled.
Instructions
To scale booster packs, you’ll need to gather a few of the same booster packs for comparison. This is because there is no standard weight for all booster and blister packs. Instead, weigh all the packs individually to see which ones are heavier. While regular Yu-Gi-Oh! cards have a standard weight of around 1.65 grams each, their packaging’s weight may differ.
Heavier packs are more likely to contain rare holographic or shiny cards because of the added weight of the foil. While this technique does not guarantee finding rare cards, it raises the odds significantly compared to choosing packs at random.
Tips And Tricks For Scaling Yu-Gi-Oh! Packs
Scaling is a very niche technique typically used only by those serious about making a profit by selling foil cards or those unwilling to spend their money on packs to come up empty-handed. For this reason, not many TCG players do it, so the technique isn’t too widely known. We’ve listed a few tips and tricks that should give you the best success rate when looking for holographic or foil cards.
Use An Accurate Scale
This doesn’t mean making sure your scale is correct. Instead, it means using a scale with more decimal points for a more accurate measurement. A scale that only reads .0g won’t be of much help. What you need is a scale with .00g readings.
When scaling booster packs, it’s important to remember that the weight difference between foil cards and regular cards is minuscule. Because there is such a slight difference, a standard scale won’t pick it up. The weight of cards can differ by only a hundredth of a gram, depending on whether it’s a foil card or a regular card.
This means you’ll have to go out and buy a new scale that will measure such small weights. These scales are relatively inexpensive, and you can find them in many stores.
Avoid Packs With Security Tabs
In general department stores like Walmart and Target, most products have security tags, anti-theft devices, and barcodes. This also applies to Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. This significantly affects the packs’ weight when you’re scaling cards to find those elusive foils.
Luckily, not all blister and booster packs have these tags and barcodes. Avoid packs with these tags when you’re scaling to find foil cards. Otherwise, your measurements will be completely off. It’s difficult to know how much the tags weigh, and there may be different tags on some products and in other stores. So there isn’t a standard calculation you can do to account for them.
Blister packs and booster packs are essentially the same things. The only difference is that blister packs are booster packs with packing around them. The packaging weight is the same across the board, so if you can find some without security tags, you can just as easily scale blister packs as you can booster packs.
Some blister packs have barcodes on the inside of the packaging, making it difficult to tell whether it’s there. You are welcome to try scaling blister packs, but the option with the highest rate of success is booster packs without the extra packing.
Scale Older Packs
In September 2015, Konami announced that from 2016, they would be changing the format of their booster packs to include at least one foil card in each pack. This made the need for scaling boost packs almost redundant as the weight of the packs had changed due to the guaranteed foil card.
For this reason, scaling packs manufactured before 2016 gives you a much higher chance of finding a rare foil card. On the other hand, along with the change, ultra-rare and secret-rare foils became almost twice as common.
Conclusion
Scaling Yu-Gi-Oh! cards isn’t an exact science, so it’s not always guaranteed that you’ll find ultra- and secret-rare cards. However, scaling booster packs raises your chances by a significant amount. Foil cards are slightly heavier than standard cards, and scaling works by weighing identical packs and choosing the heavier ones. You’re almost guaranteed to pull foil cards with this technique.