How many cards (2021)?

The Grand Calculatron

How many Magic cards have been made? I looked at that question and the difficulty it creates in this post last year. Today, I simply update the numbers. This post will focus on how many unique cards have been made.

As with last year, 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- 16 November 2021- 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  
• 22,818 cards where the cards aren’t reprints

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

• not:reprint not:funny  
• 22,341 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  
• 22,292 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  
• 18,395 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  
• 2,738 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  
• 2,212 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,

• 22,292 unique Magic cards have been released in core sets, expansions, or other special releases that are not funny and not digital only [+1826 from last year]. The breakdown:
• 1,685 unique Magic cards in core sets [same as last year]
• 18,395 unique Magic cards in expansions [+1320 from last year]
• 1,706 unique Magic cards in special releases [+506 from last year]

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, and quite a jump from last year.