Between the pre-release, a fat pack and a box I ended up buying and opening 50 boosters of Scars Of Mirrodin. For no other reason other than I’m the sort of person who does such things, I kept track of the cards I pulled from these boosters. Here’s the tally:
Commons
– 493 in total (obviously I miscounted somewhere…)
– an average of about 4.9 of each common in the set
– The most of any common was 10 (Scoria Elemental), the least 1 (Blade-Tribe Berserkers)
Uncommons
– 153 in total (50 x 3 + 3 bonus foils)
– an average of about 2.5 of each uncommon in the set
– I did get every uncommon card
– 3 of each of Myr Galvanizer and Palladium Myr!
– only one Memnite 🙁
Rares
– 47 in total
– an average of about 0.90 of each rare in the set
– Of the 53 different rares, I got 38 of them
– I got 3 of one rare: Shape Anew
– One pack contained two (one foil) rares
Mythic Rares
– These were the ones I got: Koth Of The Hammer (x2), Geth, Lord Of The Vault, Elspeth Tirel, Mox Opal
Conclusion: collation in a box of MTG boosters is surprisingly good. I received a far greater variety of rare cards than one would expect were the packs truly randomly distributed. So in short, if you are interested in obtaining a large variety of different cards then a box seems to be the way to go.
(Addendum: after opening all my packs and failing to pull a Mindslaver I caved and purchased one online for a mere $2.99!)
(Addendum 2: Every card in this post found its way into one of my decks. Yes, even the ‘bad’ ones like Tower Of Calamities and Golden Urn. C-c-c-c-combo!)