Reference · parallels
The refractor guide.
Chrome sets print the same card a dozen ways, and the colour is the whole difference in price. This is the ladder: what each one looks like in hand, how scarce it usually is, and what it actually fetches — measured against the base card of the same number, which is the only comparison that isolates the parallel from the player.
Plain chrome finish, no colour wash and no serial number on the back.
Tilt it: a rainbow sheen sweeps across the surface. The back usually says “Refractor”. This is the entry rung — everything below it in price is a base card.
Refractor sheen over a visible mosaic/checkerboard pattern in the chrome.
Refractor with a fine vertical prism texture — subtler than X-Fractor.
Deep glassy blue finish; its own product line rather than a colour swap.
Clearly pink wash over the refractor sheen.
Pale blue-green wash. Easy to confuse with Blue — Aqua is lighter and greener.
Green wash, serial-numbered on the back.
Violet wash; often unnumbered despite the colour.
True blue wash, numbered. Deeper and colder than Aqua.
Warm gold wash, numbered /50. The first rung most collectors treat as genuinely scarce.
Gold with a rippling wave pattern through the chrome.
Vivid orange, numbered /25.
Near-black wash with the sheen still visible at an angle. Numbered /10.
Deep red, numbered /5. The last rung before one-of-ones.
Thin aluminium plate, not chrome — the actual press plate. Matte, dented edges, ink-coloured face.
Heavy gold swirl/marble pattern, numbered 1/1. The top of the ladder in almost every Chrome set.
How to read a card you can’t place
- Turn it over and look for a serial number. A number like 12/50 tells you the parallel outright — /50 is Gold, /25 Orange, /10 Black, /5 Red, 1/1 a Superfractor or a plate.
- No number? Tilt it under a light. Rainbow sweep with no colour wash is a plain Refractor. A mosaic under the sheen is an X-Fractor. No sheen at all is base.
- Then match the colour to the ladder above — but check the set’s own page, because print runs move year to year and some sets invent parallels that exist nowhere else.
- Matte and metal, not chrome? That’s a printing plate — a genuine 1/1, but plates trade well below Superfractors despite being equally unique.
Set-specific parallels
The long tail — parallels a single product line invented. Measured the same way.
Multiples are medians of recorded sales against the same card’s base version, across every set we carry with at least 25 comparable pairs · recomputed 2026-08-24. A multiple is what the market has paid, not what any single card is worth — condition, grade and the player decide that. Informational only, never an appraisal.