Last updated . Recalculated nightly.
As of November 2026, not one of the 115 Pokémon sets ranked here returns what its packs cost. The best, 30th Celebration, returns about 44% — roughly 44 cents of card value for every dollar spent, on a pack that costs $9.28. The median set returns 10%, so a typical pack gives back about 10 cents on the dollar.
That is the honest answer to “which packs are worth opening”, and it is the same answer every time it has been computed: opening sealed product is, on average, a losing trade against buying the cards you want. The ranking below is therefore a list of which sets lose you the least, not a list of which ones pay.
The figures are recomputed every night from TCGplayer market prices and published pull rates — not written up once a month. A set’s position here can change between one day and the next when a chase card moves.
Ranked 115 sets · November 2026. 100% is break-even; every figure is the return on one pack at the $10+ card threshold.
Every card in a set is priced at its current TCGplayer market price, then weighted by the published pull rate for its rarity tier. Summing that across a pack’s slots gives the expected value of one pack; dividing by what the pack costs gives the expected return shown in the table.
Cards under $10 are excluded by default, because a pack full of commons has a theoretical value nobody can realise — you are not selling 40-cent cards one at a time. The threshold is adjustable on the page itself.
A set only appears here if it has BOTH a published pull rate and a priced pack. Sets whose odds have never been counted are left out rather than estimated.
Because that is how sealed product is priced. The manufacturer, the distributor and the retailer are all paid out of the price of a pack, and the cards inside it are the residue. A set that reliably returned more than it cost would be bought by the case until it no longer did.
The gap is also why the singles market exists. We measured this directly across 2,324 cards: not one was cheaper to pull from packs than to buy outright, with a median gap of 829x.
Because expected value is not the only reason to open something. Opening is entertainment, it is how sealed product becomes singles in the first place, and a pack is a lottery ticket whose upside is real even when the average is negative.
What this ranking is for is knowing the price of that entertainment before you pay it — and knowing which sets charge the least for it.
Every rate is sourced, never estimated by us. Official TCGplayer Authentication Center articles are preferred; counted community samples are used where no official article exists and are labelled as such, with the sample size shown.
Sets with no counted sample show TBD rather than a guess, which is why the ranking covers fewer sets than the site carries.
30th Celebration, at about 44% expected return as of November 2026 — the highest of 115 sets with published pull rates and a priced pack.
No. Not one of the 115 ranked sets currently returns what its packs cost, so opening sealed product is on average a losing trade against buying singles.
Nightly. Card prices are re-read from TCGplayer every day and the expected value of every pack is recomputed, so a set's position can change from one day to the next.
A set needs both a published pull rate and a priced pack to be ranked. Sets whose odds have never been counted show TBD rather than an estimate.