What the card actually is
Vendetta's main set runs 1 to 166. Anything printed above 166 is Overnumbered, the premium showcase band that sits above Epic and below the signed Signature Legends. Akali's is numbered 189/166. The number being larger than the set it belongs to is the whole tell.
The same Legend exists in three treatments, and collectors confuse them constantly because two of them share a number:
| Printing | Number | Lowest ask | Market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Signature | 189*/166 | $5,000.00 | $2,627.33 |
| Overnumbered | 189/166 | $549.99 | $404.49 |
| Base | Main set | $0.01 | $0.11 |
Daily TCGplayer snapshot, August 11, 2026. Lowest ask is the cheapest active listing, not a sold price. The Signature has 5 snapshots in our history and a lowest ask nearly double its market — treat that figure as an estimate, not a going rate.
The asterisk is the whole difference in the collector number. All three are legal in the same decks, do the same thing, and cost the same to play.
The price, and the gap that has been closing
We began recording daily snapshots for this card on July 29, 2026, which gives us 14 days of history. That is thin. It is enough to see a direction and not enough to call a level, so read the shape rather than any single number.
| Date (2026) | Lowest ask | Market | Ask over market |
|---|---|---|---|
| July 29 | $399.99 | $175.00 | +129% |
| August 1 | $349.95 | $249.47 | +40% |
| August 5 | $368.98 | $351.43 | +5% |
| August 8 | $399.98 | $370.04 | +8% |
| August 11 | $549.99 | $404.49 | +36% |
InkSight daily TCGplayer snapshots. Market price is TCGplayer's calculated figure; lowest ask is the cheapest listing on the day.
Market price rose 131% across those 14 days. The more useful line is the last column. On July 29 sellers were asking 129% over market, anchoring far above anything the card had actually traded at. By August 5 the gap had collapsed to 5%, and it collapsed the expensive way: buyers paid up toward the asks instead of sellers cutting toward the market.
Then the asks jumped again: $399.98 on August 8, $499.00 on August 9, $549.99 on August 11. The gap reopened to 36%. Sellers are once more pricing ahead of confirmed sales, and whether the market follows a second time is the open question on this card. We do not know that it will, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing.
What to take from that: the $549.99 you see on a listing page is what one seller wants. The $404.49 is closer to what the card has been moving for. Buying at ask means paying the top of a spread that has already reopened once.
It is the only card in its tier going up
Overnumbered Legends as a group have been deflating since late July. That is ordinary behaviour for a freshly released set: boxes get opened, supply arrives, launch-week prices give way. Akali went the other direction.
| Overnumbered Legend | July 30 | August 11 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Akali — Rogue Assassin | $220.00 | $404.49 | +84% |
| Mel — Soul's Reflection | $243.00 | $205.36 | −15% |
| Kennen — Heart of the Tempest | $402.58 | $221.62 | −45% |
| Zed — Master of Shadows | $374.97 | $189.95 | −49% |
| Jayce — Defender of Tomorrow | $400.00 | $185.07 | −54% |
| Nasus — Curator of the Sands | $299.99 | $115.81 | −61% |
Market price on both dates, InkSight daily snapshots. The July 30 figures come from the first days of our Vendetta coverage and rest on very few observations each — early post-release prices are volatile and these should be read as rough starting points, not settled values. Six of the nine Overnumbered Legends had recorded market prices on both dates; the other three had not yet appeared in our history.
On July 30 Akali was fourth in her own tier. Twelve days later she is first by a margin of 82% over the next card. All five of the other Overnumbered Legends we have paired data for lost value over exactly the same window, under exactly the same supply conditions.
Supply pressure alone does not explain that. Something specific to Akali does.
Who Akali is, and why that shows up in the price
In Riot's lore, Akali was raised inside the Kinkou Order, Ionia's self-appointed keepers of balance, as the daughter of the Fist of Shadow and a student of Great Master Kusho. She left. She argued with Shen over the Order's insistence on restraint while Ionia suffered, walked out with her weapons, and now works alone as the Rogue Assassin (Riot's Universe entry).
She has been in League since 2010, picked up a second audience through Arcane, and fronts K/DA, Riot's virtual pop group, which reached people who never installed the game. RiftCompare's Vendetta chase-card guide names her in its demand section: "Jinx, Vi and Akali have the broadest collector bases from League and Arcane." The same guide calls her the face of the set, featured across much of its promotional material.
A buyer who has never sleeved a Riftbound deck still knows who is on this card. That is a larger pool of potential buyers than Nasus or Jayce can draw on, and it is the one input Akali has that the rest of her tier does not.
What she does on the table — and why that is not the reason
Her Legend ability, as revealed during Vendetta previews:
[Empower] 3 energy + 1 Calm Rune: [Action][>] Exhaust: If it's your turn, move a friendly unit in a showdown to base and if I'm [Empowered], ready it.
She is the first Riftbound Legend to pair Fury with Calm. The pattern is attack-and-retreat: take a battlefield with a unit, pull it back to base before the opponent can punish the overextension, and, if she is Empowered, ready it so it can act again. Riftbound Report described her on reveal as built to "slide and dash her way around the battlefields while pinging units with damage."
Competitively she has been solid rather than dominant. Riftbound.gg's Vendetta meta coverage ranks her fifth among Legends and notes she has yet to win a tournament or string together top cuts; given time to set up she competes with Kennen, Nasus and Mel, but she struggles against decks that race her on points, and she still "lives in Irelia's shadow" in top-8 counts. Riftbound's meta is young and rules and tier lists are still moving; treat any current placement as a snapshot.
Fifth-ranked Legend, most expensive card in her tier. The playability is real and it is not what you are paying for.
The eleven-cent version
If you want to play Akali, the base printing was $0.11 market / $0.01 lowest ask on our August 11, 2026 snapshot. It has the ability quoted above, verbatim. It is tournament legal everywhere the Overnumbered is.
The two alternate arts sit in between and give you distinct artwork for roughly the price of a booster pack: Akali — Silent at $18.94 market, Akali — Deadly Weapon at $15.78, both on the same snapshot.
Akali — Rogue Assassin$0.11 Market · Aug 11, 2026
Akali — Deadly Weapon$15.78 Market · Aug 11, 2026
Akali — Silent$18.94 Market · Aug 11, 2026
Akali — Rogue Assassin$404.49 Market · Aug 11, 2026
Vendetta singles, boosters and boxes are all on TCGplayer, and InkSight earns a small commission on purchases made through that link at no extra cost to you.
How hard is it to pull?
Riot publishes Vendetta's pack structure but not its per-rarity odds. Our Vendetta pull rates guide puts the Showcase band, which includes Overnumbered cards, at roughly 1 in 10 packs, and Signature Legends at roughly 1 in 719. Both are community-calibrated estimates rather than official figures.
That band covers 68 Showcase cards. Hitting the specific one with Akali on it is a much longer shot than the band rate suggests, and community box-opening data collected for that guide found roughly 60–65% of packs contain no Epic, alternate art or Overnumbered card at all. If you want this card, buying the single is the cheaper route in expectation. That is true of nearly every named chase card, and it is true here.
Want to see what a Vendetta box actually returns before you buy one? Our Pack Lab simulates the real slot structure.
Open Riftbound Pack LabWhat we would check before paying ask
- Ask versus market on the day. The spread on this card has run from 5% to 129% inside two weeks. Our card page shows both numbers side by side and updates daily.
- Listing depth. A market price built on a handful of sales moves hard on the next one. Fourteen days of history is not a trend you should size a $500 purchase against.
- Which Akali you are buying. 189/166 and 189*/166 are a $2,200 difference on August 11, 2026 figures, separated in the listing title by one character.
- Condition and grading. Showcase-band cards from a set this new have not been through a grading cycle at volume yet, so graded comparables are scarce.
Common questions
What is Akali — Rogue Assassin (Overnumbered) worth?
$404.49 market price with a $549.99 lowest ask on our August 11, 2026 daily TCGplayer snapshot. Lowest ask is the cheapest active listing, not a sold price. We have 14 days of history on this card, so treat the level as an estimate.
What does "Overnumbered" mean in Riftbound?
A collector number higher than the set's total card count. Vendetta's main set runs 1–166, so anything numbered 167 and above is Overnumbered, a premium showcase printing. Akali's is 189/166. The signed Signature Legends use the same numbers with an asterisk, as in 189*/166.
Why is Akali more expensive than the other Overnumbered Legends?
Her collector base is larger. She has been in League since 2010, carries audience from Arcane and K/DA, and fronts Vendetta's promotional art. Her competitive standing does not explain it: Riftbound.gg ranks her fifth among Vendetta Legends and she has not yet won a tournament.
Do I need the expensive version to play Akali?
No. The base printing was $0.11 market on our August 11, 2026 snapshot and carries identical rules text. The Overnumbered and Signature printings are cosmetic treatments with no gameplay difference.
Is the Signature version worth the jump?
That depends entirely on whether you collect signed cards. The Signature sat at $2,627.33 market against a $5,000.00 lowest ask on August 11, 2026 — roughly 6.5× the Overnumbered. It has only 5 snapshots in our price history and the ask is nearly double the market figure, so the gap between those two numbers is wide enough that we would not treat either as settled.