Chocolate Frog Limited Editions

This Month's Edition

Each calendar month has an edition of three cards: two open cards, which anyone can find while the month runs, and one numbered card, which has more personality and much less company. While an edition is live, every card drawn in any pack has a 4.0% chance to be one of the edition's cards instead of whatever the rarity ladder was about to hand you. The chance is printed in the shop, next to all the other chances, because the frog publishes its odds the way other institutions publish their grievances.

The shop names the current edition, shows its three cards with owned and not-yet marks, and states the exact moment the edition leaves the packs, in your own time zone. A card you are missing is always shown; the album does not believe in secret shelves.

When the month ends, the three cards leave every pool at once. They stay in your album as locked entries marked "Retired, ", which is the frog's filing system for gone. A retired edition has never come back and the frog has given its word, in writing, somewhere.

The Numbered Card

Each edition's third card is a print run of 100. A numbered card announces itself: "No. 37 of 100". Find number 37 and you hold number 37 permanently; nobody else holds it, nobody else can, and the ledger keeps the receipt.

• The odds: while numbers remain, 20% of Limited Edition hits are the numbered card. Per card drawn that is 0.8% in an ordinary pack and 5.0% in an Edition Pack.
• One per student: you can hold at most one number of a given card, ever. A second lucky roll is quietly redirected to one of the open cards. The frog calls this sportsmanship; the database calls it a unique key.
• Found out: when all 100 numbers have owners, the card reads "All 100 found" and stops dropping, even mid-month. The run is then closed for good. There are no reprints, no second chances, and no vault copies held back for the faculty.
• The count is honest: numbers are issued only from purchases, in the order they are won, and the count can only go up. A rolled-back purchase returns its number to the run, so there are no gaps and no ghosts.

The Edition Pack

The Edition Pack is 150 Donator Points for 3 cards, and each of the three rolls the edition chance at 25% instead of 4.0% (5.0% for the numbered card, while numbers remain and you hold none). It sits in the shop under the ordinary packs, and it counts against the same daily card cap as everything else, because the cap does not play favorites.

The purchase is confirmed by name: the confirm step names the month it showed you, and the buy re-checks the calendar before charging. If the month turned over between your confirm and your click, the pack refuses, nothing is charged, and the shop tells you which edition is live now. The Registrar is very proud of this one.

The Monthly Guarantee

The 25th pack you open in a row without a single Limited Edition card is guaranteed to hold an open edition card. The count is yours, it runs per calendar month, it resets the moment any edition card turns up, and it counts every kind of pack. The guarantee never hands out the numbered card; a promise this size stays open-ended on purpose.

One caveat, printed here so nobody writes in: a pack made entirely of Epic and Legendary cards waits. The guarantee replaces a low-rarity card, and when there is no low-rarity card to replace, it keeps your slot in the count and tries again on the next pack. Legendary pity, the 30-pack kind, is unaffected and still runs across everything.

The Early Look

In the last 72 hours of each month, packs opened by VIP members can start finding the next month's two open cards, a few days before everyone else. The numbered card is excluded from the Early Look entirely, so a print run always begins fair: nobody opens number 1 before the month starts, including the people with the good seats.

Non-members see the next edition in the album during those 72 hours as a locked "Coming " entry. Locked, never hidden. The album has strong opinions about hidden.

Foils

Any card drawn, from any pack or featured pull, has a 5.0% chance to arrive as a foil: the same card with a light-catching sheen over the art. For VIP members the chance is 7.5%. A foil is a finish, not a promotion; it changes nothing about power, rarity, or the duel mat, and the word "Foil" is written on the reveal in plain text so nobody has to identify a shimmer under fluorescent lighting.

A duplicate foil pays three times the usual dust for its rarity. Spare dust can also turn an owned Common, Uncommon, or Rare into a foil: 100, 200, or 400 dust from the card's sheet in the binder. Epic, Legendary, Limited Edition, and earned cards are not upgradable; their foils, when they come, come from the packs, which the frog considers the correct amount of difficult.

Honors: The Cards You Cannot Buy

Seven cards never appear in any pack, any featured pool, or any shop shelf, at any price. They are earned, which the frog considers the correct amount of difficult:

• House Cup: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or Slytherin. Every playing member of the House that wins the House Cup holds the card. Sleep through the term and the cup happens without you, in cards as in everything else.
• Dueling Club Night Champion. Finish first on a night when the mats are open to the whole school. One card, one night, no replays.
• Tale of the Month. Write the story the library's readers rate highest.
• Champion of the Quarter. Be standing first on a Champions board when a quarter closes. Once per quarter per student, whichever board names you first; the Registrar ran the numbers on dynasties and closed that door politely.

Earned cards land in your binder on your next new day, or the next time you open it. They carry their own badges, they count toward the Honors Earned board in the Hall of Fame, and a repeat winner keeps the copies: two quarters, two cards, one very tidy shelf.

The Patron Foil

Once per calendar month, an active VIP member can claim a free foil copy of the month's first open Limited Edition card, from the button in the binder's Limited section. The claim is membership, not a purchase: no Donator Points move, and the daily card cap is not touched. Claimed cards stay yours even if the membership later lapses, which the frog considers the correct way to remember a friend. The counter resets with the month, so a member who claims October can claim November, and so on for as long as the membership runs.

Showing Off

Your profile's Chocolate Frog section now leads with your picks: up to three cards of your choosing (five for VIP members), pinned from the detail sheet of any card you own in the binder. A card wears everything it has earned on the way in: its foil finish, its number ("No. 37 of 100"), its month if it is a Limited Edition, and its honor if it is one. Visitors see what you pinned; a slot you stop qualifying for simply stops showing, and keeps your card in it for the day you qualify again.

In the binder, the month's three edition cards sit in their own section under the main album, with a strip above the whole grid naming the edition, its leave time, and how many of the numbered card are still out there. Retired months stay listed below it, locked and labelled. The Honors section sits under that, all seven cards visible from day one with the exact way to earn each one, because a locked door with no handle is just a wall.

Where It Lives

The edition block sits in the Card Shop under the ordinary packs, on the same tabbed page as the binder and the dueling mat. The published odds above the products are the same numbers the engine rolls, read from the same settings, so the shop cannot drift from the dice. The monthly edition's cards live in your binder's album like any other card once owned, and as locked entries with their states (live, coming, retired, found out) until then.

Cards cannot be traded, sold, or given away. The frog has considered it, and the bursar has considered the frog considering it, and that was the end of the committee.