Showcase and borderless cards feel like they belong to their own rarity tier, given how much attention and secondary market value they command, but they are technically something different: a frame treatment layered on top of a card's existing rarity, not a rarity of its own.
Both treatments grew out of Project Booster Fun, a design initiative Wizards introduced in 2019 specifically to give Collector Boosters more variety and visual appeal beyond the standard black-bordered frame that most Magic cards use.
This guide covers what showcase and borderless frames actually are, how they differ from each other, how they relate to a card's underlying rarity, and where collectors are most likely to find them in modern booster products.
Understanding the distinction matters because the same card can exist in a standard frame, a borderless frame, and a showcase frame simultaneously, all at the same underlying rarity.
Borderless cards remove the standard black frame entirely and extend the artwork all the way to the card's outer edges, giving the art far more visual real estate than a normally framed card allows. They are most commonly found in Collector Boosters.
A closely related treatment, extended art, keeps the standard frame but stretches the same artwork left and right beyond its normal boundaries. Extended-art cards are also typically exclusive to Collector Boosters rather than standard packs.
Showcase frames are stylized alternate borders, often built around a theme unique to that specific set, layered over the card's normal frame elements. Every set that uses showcase treatments designs its own version to embody that release's particular aesthetic.
Unlike borderless and extended-art cards, most showcase treatments can be opened in any booster type for that set, not just Collector Boosters, though some showcase variants are still exclusive to premium products depending on the release.
Wizards introduced Project Booster Fun in a July 2019 design article, framing it as a deliberate effort to make Collector Boosters more exciting by giving collectors more frame variety to chase beyond a simple foil-versus-non-foil distinction.
The initiative debuted across several 2019 and 2020 sets and has since become a near-permanent fixture of modern set design, expanding well beyond its original scope into dozens of distinct showcase styles across different releases.
Showcase and borderless frames are applied to cards that already carry a rarity, most commonly rares and mythic rares, but the frame treatment itself is not a separate rarity tier with its own symbol or classification. The underlying card's rarity stays exactly what it was.
In Collector Boosters specifically, two slots are typically guaranteed to contain a non-foil borderless or extended-art rare or mythic rare, showing how tightly these treatments are woven into a product's guaranteed contents even though they remain distinct from rarity itself.
Despite not being a formal rarity tier, showcase and borderless versions of popular cards routinely sell for significantly more than the same card's standard frame printing, since collectors treat visual scarcity as its own form of demand independent of print rarity.
This is a useful reminder that secondary market value tracks total scarcity across every axis, print rarity, foil status, and frame treatment combined, not any single factor in isolation.
A quick way to tell these treatments apart: borderless cards have no visible black frame at all, extended-art cards keep the frame but stretch the art past its normal width, and showcase cards keep a frame but restyle it entirely around a set-specific theme.
Checking a card's product listing or a reliable pricing database is the safest way to confirm exactly which treatment you are looking at before buying, since photos alone can sometimes make borderless and showcase versions look similar at a glance.
Some collectors specifically chase a full run of a single set's showcase theme, since each set's showcase style is typically unique and non-repeating across releases. A complete themed showcase run has become its own collecting subgoal separate from completing a set's full checklist.
This niche has grown as showcase styles have become more elaborate and varied, with some treatments, like retro frames or anime-inspired styles, developing dedicated followings well beyond the specific set they originally appeared in.
No, showcase is a frame treatment applied to a card's existing rarity, not a separate rarity tier.
Wizards introduced Project Booster Fun in a July 2019 design article.
Most borderless and extended-art cards are exclusive to Collector Boosters, though showcase treatments vary by set.
Borderless cards remove the frame entirely, while extended-art cards keep the frame but stretch the artwork past its normal width.
Whichever alternate frame you end up chasing, keep the whole run organized in an EVORETRO Magnetic Deck Box.
!
