How many cards?

The Grand Calculatron

How many Magic cards have been made? Today's question is more difficult than it appears. 

First, let's clarify the intent. Do we mean:

• How many total cards have been made? 
• This would count duplicates (or reprints)- so if a given set had 4 versions of a basic land Forest card, each would count.
• How many unique cards have been made?  
• This would not count reprints, within or across sets.
• How many total cards have been printed?
• A print run- how many copies of cards are produced, packaged, and distributed- for a given set is generally in the millions, as discussed here.

This post will focus on the middle question: how many unique cards have been made.

Now we have to clarify scope. Many types of Magic products have been produced over the years (a good list is here). Do we count:

• Core sets and expansions only?
• Basically, this is any set that would have been legal for use in Standard at any point.
• Compilation sets (like the Masters series)?
• Sets like Modern Masters are generally 100% reprints; since we're concerned with unique cards, we can safely ignore these.
• Preconstructed products?
• Commander decks, duel decks, theme/planeswalker decks, Ravnica guild kits, and other preconstructed decks have been released over the years. Do we count those? Most of those contain reprints of cards that first appeared in core sets and expansions, but not all- there are some cards unique to preconstructed products.
• Funny sets?
• What about silver-bordered cards that came from sets or preconstructed products like Unhinged, Unglued, Unstable, or Unsanctioned?
• Supplemental sets or special releases?
• Do we count unique cards in products like Jumpstart, Conspiracy, Archenemy, Secret Lair Drop series, and product variants like Vanguard or Explorers of Ixalan?
• Do we count digital cards- those that have been released only in digital format (like on Arena)?

Ugh. Where to begin? We'll start broadly and narrow it down. Throughout this post, Scryfall will be our guide. Any commands shown below were typed into the main Scryfall search bar. And all results are accurate only as of this writing- 7 November 2020- as the numbers are always changing.

The first query: how many unique Magic cards have been made? Using Scryfall's syntax, we search as follows, and get the result (presented immediately after and copied from Scryfall's explanation):

• not:reprint  
• 20,962 cards where the cards aren’t reprints

Cool. But this includes funny cards . . . let's drop those:

• not:reprint not:funny  
• 20,485 cards where the cards aren’t reprints and the cards aren’t funny

Now let's remove those digital-only cards:

• not:reprint not:funny not:digital  
• 20,466 cards where the cards aren’t reprints and the cards aren’t funny and the cards aren’t digital prints

Great. Now let's look at how many unique cards have appeared in core sets:

• not:reprint st:core  
• 1,685 cards where the cards aren’t reprints and the card is in a core set

And now expansions:

• not:reprint st:expansion  
• 17,075 cards where the cards aren’t reprints and the card is in an expansion set

All that remains are cards that weren't in core sets or expansions:

• not:reprint -st:core -st:expansion  
• 2,202 cards where the cards aren’t reprints and the card is not in a core set and the card is not in an expansion set

Oops, that includes funny and digital cards. Adjusting:

• not:reprint -st:core -st:expansion not:funny not:digital  
• 1,706 cards where the cards aren’t reprints and the card is not in a core set and the card is not in an expansion set and the cards aren’t funny and the cards aren’t digital prints

Alright, I think that's it for today. So in summary, as of today,

• 20,466 unique Magic cards have been released in core sets, expansions, or other special releases that are not funny and not digital only. The breakdown:
• 1,685 unique Magic cards in core sets
• 17,075 unique Magic cards in expansions
• 1,706 unique Magic cards in special releases
• 477 unique funny Magic cards have been released
• 19 unique digital Magic cards have been released

The numbers are always changing; here's a screenshot on how the numbers have changed over the past few months. Note that the "-is:" or "-st:" syntax is interchangable with "not:" in some cases:

That's a lot of Magic cards. Enjoy!