Porg Depot has been tracking prices for almost a year now.  We get asked or have seen a number of questions that come up from time to time are:

What do the trends in the card prices mean?
Are they good or bad for the players?
Stores?
FFG?
The game as a whole?

Low prices feel like a win at first glance. People can build more decks, chase more card variants, and maybe even afford a showcase leader without selling a kidney.

However there is a darker side to all those low prices. Cheap boxes mean pressure on stores, fading hype, and legendaries that don’t feel very legendary. It seems to be the great Star Wars Unlimited card price paradox.

General Trends

Things mostly go downwards with SWU items on the secondary market.  We can see this trend in showcases, legendary cards, rares and even sealed products.

Not everything universally follows the trends of course.  There absolutely are cards that have held their value.  There are others that have steadily increased or spiked from time to time due to usage in a hot new deck and the changing meta.

Generally speaking though, things have been going in a down direction for both single cards and sealed products.

Good Thing

Low prices are good for at least one aspect of the game, getting new players.

“For many players, SWU is their first competitive card game or TCG in general.” -Anonymous Store, PA

Having cheaper, less expensive cards and sealed products makes it much easier for new players to get into the game.  When you can start playing the game with a reasonably meta competitive deck for under $100, it’s a pretty low bar for entry as far as a TCG’s go.

“Lower prices make the game much more accessible, which is great for building up a player base.” -Benn Roe, Redcap’s Corner, Philadelphia, PA 

Existing players also don’t get tied into a specific leader or strategy.  Getting the needed cards for a specific deck is not terribly difficult for the exact same reason.

“If more people can afford the cards that they want to be able to play the game with and to build the decks that they want to build, that to me feels like a rock-solid win for the wider SWU community” -Mark, @UnlimitedPowerTCG on YouTube

Why Down Happens

Supply and Demand

A massive reason that prices just head downwards is simple economics.

The initial print run of Spark of Rebellion was ultimately much smaller than what FFG expected to be needed.  Only a few weeks after release it was nearly impossible to find sealed packs.

“Everyone was so hyped during set 1 cause even though there was supply issues demand was sky high.” -wa2t0rtle, SWU-AUS

When the supply of sealed product was gone and the only available cards were on the secondary market, the prices went spiking into cloud territory.  Darth Vader – Commanding the First Legion was topping $100 for the standard variant.  Showcases like Boba Fett – Collecting the Bounty were going for over $1000.

After the initial success of Spark of Rebellion, the print runs for Shadows of the Galaxy and Twilight of the Republic were quickly enlarged.  The larger runs made it much easier to get cards, packs and boxes which drove prices to be lower.  Adding in that the cards from sets two and three were generally considered to be a lower power level from Spark of Rebellion for competitive play kept prices for those sets low.

There was also a second run of Spark of Rebellion.  While this made it much easier to acquire the sought after cards from that first set, the increased supply also massively adjusted single card prices as more and more of them flooded the market.

Weak Chase Cards

Many (some would argue most) sets after Spark of Rebellion lack compelling chase cards at high rarities beyond only a very few per set. The legendary slot often includes cards that see little or no competitive play.   At the same time, new leaders have not been able to break through those of the first few sets causing those showcases to not maintain the value of the more competitive leaders.  

While this keeps the game accessible, it drains excitement from pack openings.  Sealed product loses its appeal when there is nothing to chase in opening packs.  This drives the cost of sealed packs and boxes down.  

“No point in buying product to ‘chase’ when it has no value. Shame.” -Reddit Person

Even sets that have been considered successful because of their impact on the meta, have struggled to hold value on sealed products.  Spark of Rebellion has historically done better than the others, which leads back to the point that better playable legendary and rare cards will contribute to maintaining demand for a product.  

We can take a look at some box values thanks to the Porg Depot EV Calculator and TCGPlayer captured on 10/23.  The below chart shows the expected value that could be found in a sealed box at the median 50th percentile value mark and also at the 75th percentile.  On a bell curve these would be the approximate middle ground opened value and also at the top quarter of boxes opened.

	Median Box Value	75th Percentile Value	TCGPlayer Low Price
Spark of Rebellion	$69.55	$139.80	$97.87
Shadows of the Galaxy	$36.74	$90.92	$63.99
Twilight of the Republic	$22.56	$57.45	$49.00
Jump to Lightspeed	$25.41	$64.65	$62.45
Legends of the Force	$33.47	$76.83	$64.99

Even the newer sets Jump to Lightspeed and Legends of the Force which will not rotate in early 2026 have a median value significantly below the cost of a box.  Both of these sets were successful as far as the competitive and casual scene, however, arguably most of their power is at uncommon rarity.  

Nobody is saying that a box has to be profitable, but people do need to feel like they are getting good value for their money.  TCGs aren’t like standard board games that you just buy and play.  When someone buys a box, 90% of what they buy are cards that will never be used.  When those other 10% that might get used have little to no value there is virtually no incentive for that player to go back to their LGS and buy more products.

Variants & Foils

Variants are perhaps a great way to drive demand and promote people purchasing booster boxes.  In general, people love pulling a showcase.  It’s exciting, especially if it’s not in the Finn Zone.  

However, there are things about the variants that FFG is printing that are simply not resonating with players.  Hence the secondary market is weak.

“We are seeing…little to no difference in price between hyperspace, foil, and standard printings of the cards.” -Anonymous Store, PA

The first issue is foils.  People have been asked to replace foil cards in their decks during deck checks at events.  It is important to note that those cards could have been considered marked. Foils that are sleeved when pulled and kept at the appropriate humidity level should not warp, and would not be considered marked.  Regardless, it sure seems like a big problem to manufacture cards that people can’t play with for fear of having issues at an event, and inserting these cards as a “premium” variant in booster boxes.  

Even before Carbonite boxes were available, foils held less value than their respective standard variants because of this. After Carbonite boxes were released, the market was flooded with unplayable foil cards.  The market responded by crashing for those variants.

The Hyperspace variants look great, are much harder to pull than their standard variant yet we see instances where the hard to get variant gets valued less that the standard printing.  If your supposed “hits” in a booster box are worth no more, or often less, than a standard version then clearly the demand for these variants doesn’t exist.  

The excitement of opening a Hyperspace Anakin, which is clearly the best card in the Legends of the Force set and should be about 1 in 40 boxes, is short-lived when you go online only to see that it’s worth roughly the same as the standard one you should pull in ~4-5 boxes on average.

There is a disconnect somewhere with the variants FFG is providing and the variants the players seem to want.

“Showcases no longer carry the special feeling when opened unless it is a chase or fan favorite. The serialized card market also feels oversaturated due to the sheer number of cards receiving the treatment.” -Anonymous Store, PA

“My biggest problem with SWU top end is it doesn’t really feel like there are chases in the same way that other games have.” –@UnlimitedLimitedSWU on YouTube

LGS Strain

This current trend puts a large strain on local game stores.

Box prices collapsing within weeks of release has become a pattern. Products that launch near $100 tend to plummet quickly.  This can leave early buyers feeling burned. It could also discourage preorders.  This may already be turning into a massive problem for Star Wars Unlimited at the local store level.

“Boosters are all but unsellable after prerelease weekend, which forces stores to rely on preorders… Stores that carry singles, or have been able to cultivate good draft scenes, are in a better position, because they can do something with those boosters, but–otherwise–they’re dead stock.” – Benn Roe, Redcap’s Corner

We start to get a downward spiral.  

1. Low single card prices at high rarities leads to low sealed product demand.
2. Low demand for sealed packs and boxes leads to a lowering of the price for which an LGS can sell those packs.
3. Lower pack prices will lead to an LGS either stuck with a significant amount of product which they have a hard time moving or lowering to a point where they are taking a loss on the product.
4. Low demand and hard to move product from prior sets might lead to lower pre-orders of future sets and lower revenue for the LGS on the game in general.
5. Lower revenue for an LGS would likely force a store to shift to other products that help them turn a profit and stay in business.
6. Turning to other products means less or no support for SWU.
7. No support for a game at the local level would likely lead to local communities for that game dying out as the players shift focus to something else.

“If boosters aren’t selling, eventually stores will stop carrying them.” -Benn Roe, Redcap’s Corner

“The declining prices on the singles and sealed product have absolutely affected the amount of product ordered. Our store has cases of TWI and JTL that we are unable to sell, and as a result we’ve ordered a significantly smaller amount of product for Legends of the Force” -Anonymous Store, PA

Potential Solutions

We of course are not just going to complain and yell into the void.  Let’s talk about some potential solutions.

Better Cards

Make better legendaries!!!  (*Ok fine, yeah, this is a little bit of yelling.)

Ensuring that at least some legendaries have staying power in gameplay keeps singles desirable and boxes more valuable.  FFG does a good job of designing cards and an often poor job at setting the rarities.  Just flipping some of the better uncommons into legendary slots might go a long way to maintaining the chase and getting people to want to open more packs and boxes.  This isn’t to say that all good cards need to be legendary, but it would help if some of them were.

“The absolute biggest thing that could happen would be to fill the legendary card slots with some of the best cards in each set… or in other words, make the legendaries be better.” -Anonymous Content Creator

Unifying the Product Line

A widely supported idea is to fold Carbonite content back into the regular boosters. Integrating prestige and serialized cards into standard packs might bring back the excitement of chasing big hits.

“FFG jumped into the collector pack market way too early in the game’s life cycle.  Just because other games have them does not mean SWU must do the same things so soon.” -Anonymous Content Creator 

Pack contents in general could be updated in ways that would help retain value at least at the sealed product level.  Some brainstormed suggestions:

• Remove foils, especially of base cards.  Hyperfoils maybe, but they need to fix curling.
• Make hyperspace the base variant with 1 per pack.
• Make hyperspace foil leaders and common bases at 2-3 per box.
• Make alternate art leaders & bases as a 1 per box variant.
• Move prestige cards to regular boosters and make them very rare.
• If serialized cards remain, make them alternate art.  Only having a different treatment isn’t enough.
• Box toppers might be a great way to encourage full box sales.  They need to be interesting though.  Maybe the alt art bases/leaders could be in here.  Maybe acrylic leaders or bases with alt arts or serialized versions as extra hard to get.

Rewarding Preorders and LGS Support

Small, targeted incentives could reignite preorder enthusiasm. Exclusive promos, in-store bonuses, or early access sealed events could make preordering feel like a community investment rather than a financial risk. Supporting local stores should feel rewarding, not obligatory.

Print Runs

“One possible solution would be for FFG to reduce their initial print-runs a little, but have smaller second and third waves in the pipeline ahead of time to smooth things out. You don’t want One Piece or Pokémon levels of scarcity, but they’re definitely over-printing at the moment.” -Benn Roe, Redcap’s Corner

As a possible extension of staggering out initial print runs, what if initial print runs were very small and had some distinction with an icon to denote a first printing wave?  People could be more apt to pre-order initial wave boxes to make sure that they got their hands on the extremely limited first runs.

Subsequent print waves would be notable in having the print run icon be different or even removed entirely.  Magic had success with this in the past for a long time by having black bordered initial printings and then an ever updating base set with white borders.  

Off the Wall Idea: No or Limited Previews

An issue we all experienced with Secrets of Power is that the preview schedule really stifled excitement for the set.  There are decent cards in the set, and even some powerful ones, but those weren’t previewed until towards the end of preview season.  By that point people had already decided not to pre-order boxes and judgments on the set were already made.  A first impression is hard to overcome, especially if it’s a bad one.

The obvious and easiest fix here is for FFG to not backload the preview season with what they think are the best cards.  It’s possible they did this and just have bad judgement, but they clearly held two big named leaders as the final two in Cassian and Jabba.  Cassian especially is exciting and different, so why wait until the end?  Drum up some excitement earlier on.

A bonkers idea would be to not have previews, or at least significantly reduce the number that are shared ahead of time.  Making the release events the first time many of the cards could possibly be seen might drive up pre-orders of a set.

The downside here is that while it could help with LGS pre-sales volume, if the cards at high rarities are mediocre relative to commons and uncommons the post-release value would still drop.  This would likely lead players that ordered ahead of time going blindly into a new set feeling quite burned as a result.  That’d be a massive backfire.

Wrap Up

Keeping things reasonable for new players to get into a game is a noble idea.  Having some options in a meta that could be viable while retaining an inexpensive cost to entry is a good thing.

However, there needs to be some inherent value in the cards.  Do they need to be at the moonshot investment level?  No, of course not.  Go buy some SWUcoin or PorgCoin in that case, cross your fingers and hope for the best. They should however give a better feel when opening a pack or else we are playing an LCG dressed up like a TCG.  

Believing that there is value in the pack…
…will drive the excitement at the player level,
…which would drive sealed product purchases, 
…which would grow profits for an LGS,
…which could lead to better local communities with more events and better prizes,
…which helps make SWU as successful a game as possible.

The tricky part is the how.

• Create better legendaries and chase cards.
• Incentivise pre-orders and full box purchases.
• Perhaps most importantly, the secondary card markets should not be ignored as they could help foretell the game’s health and viability.

This isn’t all meant to discourage people from buying boxes or singles.  We at Porg Depot love this game more than any in our 30+ years of playing TCGs.  Ripping open packs is crazy fun.

In order for SWU to have a long and healthy lifespan, some things need to be said and potentially changes may need to be made.  We hope FFG is paying attention to what some in the community are saying.  Hopefully they are open to making some changes for the betterment of the game as they attempt to balance out this very tricky pricing paradox.