Ladder Glossary
The vocabulary used on product pages and in the Ladder Room, defined once. Every term here is linkable, so any card that uses one can point straight at it.
Reading a ladder
- Design
- A distinct card, identified by its release, card number, and title. One design is printed in many versions; the design is what they all have in common.
- Printing
- One specific version of a design: either the base card or one named parallel of it. A printing is the thing you actually own.
- Parallel
- A visual or material variation of a design, usually named for its finish or colour. Some parallels are serial numbered and some are not.
- Ladder
- Every catalogued printing of one design, ordered scarcest first. Collectors usually call the full set a rainbow; a ladder is that rainbow put in order so the steps between printings are visible.
- Rung
- One printing's position on its ladder. “Rung 4 of 12” means eleven other printings of that design are catalogued and this one is the fourth scarcest.
Scarcity and print runs
- Print run
- How many copies of a printing were made, shown as /25 or /499. A dash means the printing carries no serial number, which is not the same as being common.
- 1/1
- A printing with exactly one copy produced. It sits at the top of every ladder it appears on.
- SP / SSP
- Short print and super short print: printings made in smaller quantities than the rest of a set. Scarcity may be described this way without a serial number to confirm it, so we do not place an SP or SSP on a ladder rung unless the print run is documented.
- FOTL
- First Off the Line, a pre-order product configuration that carries parallels sold no other way. FOTL printings are part of the design's ladder.
What our labels mean
- Complete
- We have enumerated the full ladder for that design from the release checklist. The rung count is the real count, not a count of what we happen to have listed.
- Catalogued · more may exist
- We have documented these printings but have not confirmed the ladder is exhaustive. The count is a floor. We would rather show you a known floor than assert a total we cannot support.
- Limit not verified
- The printing is serial numbered, but we have not confirmed the stated limit against a source we trust. The rung is shown with the qualifier rather than dropped or quietly rounded.
- Ladder Curve
- Completed Meltonia sales of printings on one ladder, ordered scarcest first. It shows how price tracked scarcity in sales we actually made. It is not a market price and it never includes an active ask.