Sets, products and parallels

Modern products are built as hierarchies. A base set, inserts sitting alongside it, parallels of both in a ladder of scarcity, and a small number of cards that are individually numbered. Understanding that structure is what lets you look at an unfamiliar card and work out roughly where it sits before you look up a single price.

These posts describe the structures rather than the current catalogue. Which company holds which licence changes, and a page that lists this year’s line-up as fact is wrong within a season, so the manufacturers are the right source for what is being printed now.

No pillar guide yet. The same reasoning as selling: the pillar comes after the cluster, not before it.