Mystery Cards
How Mystery Cards work
A verified store seals real cards from its stock into a drop. Every sealed card looks the same and costs the same, and the full list of cards, with their values, is public before the first sale. Here's everything that happens, and why what's inside can't change after sealing.
What a drop is
The store picks cards from its stock and seals them into a drop. Each one becomes a sealed card: the same cover art, the same price, and a number from 1 up.
The real cards aren't hidden, only which number they're behind. Every drop page lists the whole pool, with each card's market value.
Buying
Press Buy and we'll assign you a sealed card, or choose the ones you want from the list. You pay from your wallet like any Venda purchase, and they appear in My Mystery Cards right away.
Until you open it, a sealed card is yours to keep or resell, still sealed, to another collector.
The timeline
1 · On sale
Until every card sells or the end date arrives. Unsold cards go back to the store, still sealed. That doesn't change yours: what's in each sealed card was fixed at sealing.
2 · Waiting
A wait the store sets before opening starts. It can be zero.
3 · Opening
Open your card whenever you like. At the auto-open time the store set, anything still sealed opens for its owner. If none was set, that happens after one year.
4 · Closed
Once every card is open, the drop closes and its proof is published.
Every drop shows its own dates before you buy, under “Before you buy”.
The odds
Each sealed card is equally likely to be any card in the pool. In a drop of 10, each card has a 1 in 10 probability of being yours.
To make that easier to read, cards are grouped into tiers by how their value compares to the price you pay:
| Tier | Card value | At a $10.00 drop |
|---|---|---|
| Base | Less than the priceunder $10.00 | under $10.00 |
| Rare | 1× to 2× the price$10.00 to $20.00 | $10.00 to $20.00 |
| Elite | 2× to 5× the price$20.00 to $50.00 | $20.00 to $50.00 |
| Chase | 5× to 10× the price$50.00 to $100.00 | $50.00 to $100.00 |
| Grail | 10× the price or more$100.00 or more | $100.00 or more |
The odds are fixed when the drop is sealed and never change. Once cards start opening, the drop page also shows the odds now, worked out on the cards still sealed, next to the odds at sealing.
Why it can't be changed
When a drop is sealed, Venda locks which real card is behind each number and publishes a fingerprint of that lineup. The fingerprint is a hash: it gives nothing away, but it only matches that exact lineup.
At sealing
The lineup is locked
Which real card is behind each number was decided when the drop was sealed. This fingerprint captures that lineup, and it’s public from the start.
While it runs
It gives nothing away
Nobody can work out the lineup from the fingerprint, so it’s safe to show everyone before a single card sells.
When it closes
Anyone can check
We publish the lineup and its secret key. Put them through the same formula and you get this exact fingerprint. If even one card had been swapped, it wouldn’t match.
To be clear about what this proves: the fingerprint doesn't hide the lineup from Venda, since we hold the database. What it guarantees is that nobody, including us and the store, can swap a card after sealing without the fingerprint giving it away.
Public from the start
- Every card in the pool, with its value
- The odds and the tiers
- How many cards have sold
- The fingerprint
Secret
- Which number holds which card, until the drop closes
- Who got which card, never shown
See what's on sale
See the drops