Pokémon booster boxes ranked by expected value per dollar

Rank every booster box Pullnomics prices by expected value per dollar and the Temporal Forces booster box comes first. As of September 20, 2026 it costs about $317 and holds about $168 of raw card value on average, a ratio of roughly 0.53. Three boxes are bunched behind it at about 0.44 to 0.46: Perfect Order, Pitch Black and Paradox Rift. Nothing on the board comes close to 1.0: a typical booster box holds roughly 30 to 35 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and the leader a little more than half.

The ratio is only the first number to read. Behind it sit four others: how much value rides on a few chase cards, what each pack costs, whether the price includes an out-of-print premium, and whether the odds were measured for that set or borrowed from an era average.

What the EV ratio measures

Expected value (EV) is what the cards in a sealed product are worth on average at raw TCGplayer market prices. For each hit rarity, Pullnomics divides one by the packs per hit and multiplies by the mean TCGplayer market price of that rarity in the set, then adds a capped baseline for the common, uncommon and rare slots. Thirty-six packs make a box's gross EV. The EV ratio is gross EV divided by the box's market price, and the break-even price is the gross EV itself.

Net EV, shown on each product page, takes off a 15 percent marketplace fee plus $1 of shipping for every card worth $1 or more, and counts cheaper cards as bulk. For Temporal Forces it is about $116, or about 37 cents per dollar of box. The methodology page has the full method, and how sealed EV works runs one box line by line.

The live ranking

The table below is a live extract from the sealed EV board: the twelve booster boxes with the highest EV ratio today. Prices refresh daily, so the order can drift from this guide's snapshot of September 20, 2026. Figures here are for full 36-pack boxes. The board also lists a few 18-pack half boxes.

The top of the board, box by box

Temporal Forces, about 0.53. The chase share is only about 16 percent, because the value sits in the middle of the set: Temporal Forces has 22 Illustration Rares averaging about $26, led by Gastly at about $97, and they turn up about once every 12.5 packs, close to three per box.

Perfect Order, about 0.46. The cheapest box in the top ten at about $177, or about $4.91 per pack, holding about $82 at a chase share of about 45 percent. The source lists no rate for Double Rares in this set, so the site uses the era average of 1 in 5.

Pitch Black and Paradox Rift, about 0.44. Pitch Black is about $186 for about $82. At about $5.16 per pack it is the second cheapest box in the top ten, but about 49 percent of its hit value sits in the rarest tiers. The Pitch Black guide shows the effect on one box. Paradox Rift is about $280 for about $123 with a chase share of about 18 percent.

Paldea Evolved, about 0.39. Its gross EV of about $185 is the second highest among booster boxes, helped by 36 Illustration Rares that average about $38 and include Magikarp at about $377. But the box costs about $478, or about $13.26 per pack, so it ranks seventh.

Just above it, Stellar Crown (about $308) and the Scarlet & Violet base box (about $294) sit at about 0.40 to 0.41. Just below, Twilight Masquerade (about $356) is at about 0.38, and Journey Together (about $238) and Chaos Rising (about $192) are at about 0.37. Mega Evolution and Journey Together each list a standard and an Enhanced booster box with the same packs and EV, so the cheaper one ranks higher: for Mega Evolution, the Enhanced box at about $295 against about $312.

Why the highest ratio is not the whole picture

Chase share

Chase share is the share of hit EV that comes from the rarest tiers: Special Illustration Rares, Hyper Rares, secret rares and similar. When it is high, the average is built from cards most boxes lack, so most boxes finish under the EV and a few finish far over it.

Temporal Forces, Stellar Crown, Paradox Rift and Paldea Evolved sit between 16 and 21 percent. The three Mega Evolution series boxes released in 2026 are top-heavy: Perfect Order about 45 percent, Pitch Black about 49, Chaos Rising about 54. Further down, Phantasmal Flames is about 67 percent. A 0.44 box at 49 percent is a swingier purchase than a 0.44 box at 18 percent.

Price per pack and the size of the bill

A ratio is a share of the price, not a dollar amount. Subtract gross EV from the box price and you get the gap an average box leaves: about $149 for Temporal Forces, about $104 for Pitch Black, about $95 for Perfect Order. Per pack, that is about $4.15 on Temporal Forces against about $2.64 on Perfect Order. In dollars per 36 packs, Perfect Order and Pitch Black have the smallest gaps on the board. Per dollar spent, the leader has the smallest.

Out-of-print premiums

Counting full 36-pack boxes, the twelve Sword & Shield era boxes fill the bottom twelve places, from Astral Radiance at about 0.29 down to Evolving Skies at about 0.10. Evolving Skies has the highest gross EV on the board, about $253, but the box sells for about $2,426, or about $67 per pack. Once a set is out of print, the sealed box carries its own collector premium, and the EV ratio only measures the cards inside. Umbreon VMAX, about $2,283 as a single, costs less than the box, and the source's alternate-art VMAX rate of 1 in 312 packs, spread over six cards, puts that one card at about 1 in 1,872 packs.

The card database behind the EV files a Sword & Shield alternate-art card under its printed rarity, Rare Ultra or Rare Rainbow, with nothing to mark it. For five sets (Chilling Reign, Evolving Skies, Astral Radiance, Lost Origin and Silver Tempest) the published counts give alternate arts a tier of their own, and the EV uses it: Pullnomics keeps a checked list of those sets' alternate-art cards, and each set's page on the pull-rate board shows the tier. For every other Sword & Shield set the EV treats an alternate art as equally likely as any other card of that rarity. Since September 20, 2026 the EV of Astral Radiance, Lost Origin and Silver Tempest also counts the source's "VMAX & VSTAR" tier, about 8 to 9 cents a pack.

Era-default flags

Each row uses pull rates published for that set or an era default, an average for sets with no measured rates. Four booster boxes rely on the era default: Battle Styles, Darkness Ablaze, Rebel Clash and the Sword & Shield base set. All four rank in the bottom half. The flag matters more among Elite Trainer Boxes, where White Flare and Black Bolt are flagged in the upper part of the board. Those ratios are estimates. The 30th Celebration box was released on September 16, 2026. It was flagged too on September 20, 2026, and since September 22, 2026 its EV has used the set's own published rates.

A narrower flag applies inside nine measured sets: the source lists no rate for a rarity the set prints, and since September 20, 2026 the EV uses the era average for that tier. Five of the nine have a booster box: Perfect Order and Phantasmal Flames (Double Rares, 1 in 5 packs), Surging Sparks (Double Rares, 1 in 6, and ACE SPECs, 1 in 20), Destined Rivals (Double Rares, 1 in 6, and Ultra Rares, 1 in 15) and Chilling Reign (regular V cards, 1 in 8, and gold Rare Secrets, 1 in 100). Those lines add about 15 to 39 cents to a pack. The EV panel on each product page marks such a line "era average".

Elite Trainer Boxes and booster bundles

Packs are identical across products, so an Elite Trainer Box or a bundle inherits the set's per-pack EV at a different price per pack. A typical Elite Trainer Box holds about 15 to 20 cents of raw card value per dollar and a typical booster bundle a little under 30 cents. These are the eight Elite Trainer Boxes with the highest ratio today.

The leader is the Shrouded Fable Elite Trainer Box at about 0.39, about $115 for about $44 of cards. Its pack EV uses era averages for Double Rares (1 in 6) and ACE SPECs (1 in 20), which the source does not list. Only the top seven rows reach 0.30, a typical booster box's level. Pokémon Center versions in the live table hold 11 packs. Two of those seven are Temporal Forces boxes with the same nine packs and the same EV of about $42 that sell for about $123 and about $139: the variant moves the price, not the packs inside. Even the cheaper one works out to about $13.64 per pack, against about $8.80 in the set's booster box.

Bundles matter most for special sets, which have no booster box. Shrouded Fable is the clearest case: its booster bundle, about $59 for about $30 of EV, has a ratio of about 0.50, which would place second on the booster box board. The 151 bundle, about $161 at about 0.38, has the highest per-pack EV in this snapshot, about $10.15, at about $27 per pack. Booster box vs ETB vs bundle covers the trade-offs.

Which box fits which purpose

Temporal Forces and Paradox Rift are the only boxes that combine a top-four ratio, a chase share under 20 percent and published rates for every tier. Perfect Order and Pitch Black have the cheapest packs in the top ten, about $5 each, at chase shares of about 45 and 49 percent.

The price you pay changes your own ratio. Each sealed product page, code cards aside, shows the TCGplayer market price and, unless that price is under $5, more than 10 percent above the dearest copy TCGplayer lists or more than 25 percent above TCGplayer's middle listing, the price that counts as 12 percent below market and two eBay buttons: eBay's own search of Buy It Now listings from US sellers, capped at that below-market price, and the same search without the cap. If the capped search comes back empty, nothing is listed below market at that moment. The cap applies to the item price, before shipping. A Temporal Forces box landed at about $279, 12 percent under market, lifts your ratio from about 0.53 to about 0.60, still well short of break-even.

Bottom line

As of September 20, 2026 the highest EV ratio among booster boxes is Temporal Forces at about 0.53, followed by Perfect Order at about 0.46 and Pitch Black and Paradox Rift at about 0.44. Chase share is the next number to read: Temporal Forces and Paradox Rift spread their value across many cards, while the 2026 Mega Evolution series boxes lean on a few chase cards but cost the least per pack. Sword & Shield era boxes rank last because their prices include a sealed collector premium. No box holds its full price in raw card value. Today's numbers are on the sealed EV board, and each card page shows what that card costs as a single.