You bought a sealed case of your favorite TCG with three friends. Now you have hundreds of cards on the table, four wallets waiting, and one big question: who owes what? Splitting a case by card count is easy, but it isn't fair — one person walks away with the alt-art secret rare while another gets a stack of commons. This guide walks through the fair way to do it: weighted splits by rarity, with worked examples and the exact steps to do it in Case Split.
Step 1: Agree on the ground rules before you open
The single biggest source of drama in a group case break is disagreement after the case is open. Before anyone cracks a booster, get everyone to agree in writing on how the split will work. The Terms & Conditions field in every Case Split case exists exactly for this — you can preset the language when you create the case and share it via a link so nobody says they didn't know the rules.
- Who is an admin (can edit the case, add cards, adjust weights)?
- What happens with cards nobody wants — split proportionally, sold, donated?
- How is payment settled — Venmo, Zelle, cash, store credit?
- What's the deadline for claiming cards before unclaimed picks go up for grabs?
Step 2: Set the case cost
Punch in what you actually paid for the case, including shipping and tax. Case Split uses this number as the pool to be divided. If you're paying for something extra outside the case cost (booster box protectors, playmat, whatever), leave it out — those should be handled separately.
Step 3: Set up rarities and weights
This is where fairness lives. Each rarity in the case gets a numeric weight. Higher weight = larger share of the cost. A useful starting point:
- Common: 0.3
- Uncommon: 0.5
- Rare / baseline: 1.0
- Mythic / Ultra: 1.5
- Secret / Alt Art / Chase: 1.7 – 2.5
- Bulk you'd throw away: 0.0
These numbers are relative — only ratios matter. If your group thinks the chase card is worth exactly twice a mythic, use 2.0 for the chase and 1.0 for the mythic. Case Split lets you rename rarities per game (Mythic Rare for Magic, Secret Rare for Yu-Gi-Oh!) and add or delete rows as needed.
Step 4: Add participants
Add everyone splitting the case, including anyone who isn't in the room. If a friend doesn't have an account yet, add them as a guest — you can bind an invite link to that guest later so their picks carry over when they sign up.
Step 5: Log each card and claim it
As you open packs, add every card with a non-zero weight and assign it to whoever's keeping it. For cards that already have a well-known secondary-market price everyone agrees on (a $50 chase alt), skip the weight and put the value in the fixed cost field. Case Split subtracts fixed costs from the case cost first, then splits the remainder by weight — so the chase-card owner pays exactly $50 for that card, plus their weighted share of what's left.
Fixed cost is your escape valve for anything with a real market price. Everything else stays a weighted split.
Step 6: Review the split and pay out
The Split panel updates live as you assign cards. Each person sees their card count, total weight, percent of the pool, and dollar amount. When everyone's happy, share the total with the group and settle up. That's it.
Common gotchas
- Forgetting the case cost includes tax and shipping.
- Setting rarity weights without discussing them (someone always disagrees after the fact).
- Using weights for cards with obvious market prices — use fixed cost instead.
- Leaving cards unassigned at settlement time — those are unallocated cost.