The Card: What It Costs, When It Comes, How to Get One
A new one every spring, $14 or $15, and one buying mistake that gets a surprising number of people — including the counterfeits.
On this page
The National Mah Jongg League card costs $14 for the standard size and $15 for large print. A new one comes out every year. It is mailed across March and April, arriving around the first of April, and you order it from the League's own store.
Every other guide here tells you that you need your own current card. This one is about getting hold of one. No page on this site reproduces a line from the card, and none ever will, so this is the one job the site cannot do for you.
What it costs
Read from the League's store on 21 August 2026:
| What | Size | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Standard card | 5⅛" × 4" | $14.00 |
| Large print card | 6⅛" × 4¾" | $15.00 |
| Mega card | 8.5" × 11", three panels front and back | $35.00 |
The large print card costs one dollar more. The standard card is a dense grid of very small type. If anyone at your table squints at it, that dollar is the best value in the game.
The Mega card is the wall-poster version, mailed separately in late March. A class or a club buys one. An individual player usually does not.
Racks from the League are $52 for four. A full set with tiles and a bag is $225. Their instruction book is $15.95. Nobody in this hobby thinks $14 a year is the expensive part of it — it is simply the part you cannot skip.
When the new one arrives
The card is reissued every year and mailed across March and April. It lands around the first of April. Ordering opens well before that, and the store takes orders for the coming year while the current card is still in play.
One detail saves confusion at a table: the colour alternates. Even years are red, odd years are blue. So 2026 is red and 2027 will be blue. Somebody holding the wrong colour is holding last year's card, and you can see that from across the room.
As soon as everyone at the table has one. That is Tom Sloper's answer, put more briskly than we would dare: no, of course you do not wait for April.
The League itself publishes no expiry date for last year's card, so this rests on one source rather than two. It is also the only sensible answer — half a table on one card and half on another is not a game.
How to order
Two routes, both direct from the League:
- Online — the store at nationalmahjonggleague.org, under "The Store".
- By post — a cheque to the League's Newark address. Write your name, your address, and the exact number of cards you want. The store page gives the current address. We are not reprinting it here, because an address for cheques is exactly the detail that goes stale on a page like this and misdirects somebody's money.
There is a third route. Collectors place large orders for a group and pass the cards on, and the League runs this as a programme. If you go that way, make sure the collector passes your address to the League. Otherwise you drop off the list described next.
Why buy direct rather than from wherever is cheapest
Two reasons, and the first is not sentimental.
You get the bulletins. Buying direct puts you on the League's mailing list. Bulletins are how rule clarifications actually reach players. This is the least-transmitted part of the whole game. A rule gets clarified in a bulletin, the people who did not buy direct never hear about it, and that is a good part of why tables end up playing slightly different games.
There are counterfeits. Tom Sloper's rules FAQ warns that vendors on Amazon and Temu sell fake cards. They can look just like the real thing and still contain mistakes.
The trap is that the League itself also sells on Amazon. So "it was on Amazon" tells you nothing. You have to check that the seller is the League. A card with an error on it is no bargain, because you will not find out which line is wrong until it costs you a hand.
A third reason, if you want one: the League and its collectors give card proceeds to charity. Counterfeiters do not.
No, and that is deliberate here. The guides, the four cheat sheets and the forty drills all work without one, because none of them reproduces a hand. You need the card to play, not to learn how the game works. Learn first, then buy a card that will still be current when you sit down.
What else the League sells
Two of these come up constantly, and people often buy them elsewhere for more. Mah Jongg Made Easy is the League's own instruction book, revised in 2024, at $15.95. Racks are $52 for four and pushers $48 for four. Their online game is a subscription: $4.99 a month, $12.99 for three, $49.99 for a year, with no refunds on digital purchases.
The instruction book is the League's rulebook. It is the document most rule arguments end up pointing at. If you are the person at your table who settles disputes, $15.95 to be the one holding it is money well spent.
Reading it is the other half
Once the card arrives, the notation is its own wall: what the colours mean, matching and opposite dragons, X and C, and soap as a zero.
How to read the cardWhen you have read it all: the rules workbook, 105 questions with an answer key that cites the rule behind every answer, $19.
Where this comes from
Prices, sizes and the product list were read from the League's own store page on 21 August 2026. They are what the League was charging that day. The League is the only authority on its own prices, and prices change — the card is reissued every year.
The March-and-April mailing, the annual reissue, the red-and-blue alternation, the collector route and the counterfeit warning all come from Tom Sloper's mah-jongg FAQ.
The League publishes no expiry date for the previous card. Sloper's FAQ 19 does answer the question — start when everyone at the table has the new one — so that point is marked Single rather than Silent. One credible source, with no second one to confirm it.
No hand, value or arrangement from the card is reproduced here, or anywhere else on this site. JokerTile is not affiliated with the National Mah Jongg League.