Alpha

Alpha is the first printing of Magic: The Gathering, released on August 5, 1993. This archive lists all 295 cards of the set with their exact production figures, reconstructed from the Carta Mundi factory records and the 11×11 print sheet layout.

295 unique cards: 116 Rare, 95 Uncommon, 74 Common and 10 Basic Lands (2 art variants per land type).

Production Data & Sheet Logistics

The factory printed exactly 1,008 Rare sheets, 4,530 Uncommon sheets and 16,030 Common sheets, each holding 121 cards in an 11×11 layout. Total print run: 2,610,000 cards (2,609,728 from whole sheets).

These sheets were cut and collated into 69,768 booster packs (often rounded to 70,000 in historical sources) and 26,100 starter decks. Boosters shipped in 🔒 booster boxes of 36, packed into 🔒 master cases of 6 boxes; starter decks shipped in displays of 10 (🔒 displays). Overall, 🔒 of all Alpha cards reached players through starter decks and 🔒 through boosters.

Product Composition

Basic Land Odds per Slot

Basic lands occupied fixed slots on the same print sheets as spells: every rarity slot in a booster pack could therefore yield a basic land instead of a spell of that rarity. Values already published by external sources remain free; derived figures follow the edition policy.

🔒 Premium land-distribution analysis.

Basic Land Art Variants

Basic lands in Alpha exist in two distinct art variants per land type. The total copies per land type are confirmed by the sheet layout; the split between art variants follows an equal-slot allocation on the print sheets, declared as a derived hypothesis. Each basic land page shows copies, pull odds and artwork for every single variant.

All figures follow the industrial framework described in our print run methodology.

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