Holding modern Pokémon cards: sealed vs singles, by the numbers

The short version

Prices in this guide are TCGplayer market prices as of October 3, 2026. At those prices the 12 standard Sword & Shield booster boxes, released from February 2020 to November 2022, cost a median of about $14.00 per pack and held a median of about 20 cents of raw card value per dollar of box price (four of the twelve rest on era-average pull rates; the eight with published rates had a median of about 22 cents). The 15 Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolution boxes, released from March 2023 to July 2026, held about 38 to 39 cents at the median, and every Sword & Shield box held less than any of them. In a Sword & Shield box, 71 to 89 cents of each dollar sat above the expected raw value of the cards inside, against 45 to 69 cents in the later boxes; for the older sets that gap includes a premium for the box itself staying sealed.

A Darkness Ablaze or Sword & Shield base box cost more than one copy of every card in its set, while a Mega Evolution, Chilling Reign, Paradox Rift or Paldea Evolved box cost under a quarter of that. The ten most valuable cards held about 40 percent of a set's total in Paradox Rift and 93 percent in Phantasmal Flames. Sealed or singles, an eBay resale of anything bought for $25 or more has to clear roughly 15 to 17 percent above the purchase price to cover eBay's fees, before shipping, supplies and any sales tax paid when buying. The site's English price history begins on September 15, 2026, so it shows nothing earlier.

Where the figures come from

TCGplayer's market price is built from recent sales (the market price guide explains how); the low price is the cheapest TCGplayer listing that day. Card prices are for raw Near Mint copies, under the one-price-per-card rule on the methodology page. In this guide, "modern" means Sword & Shield (February 2020) and later, so no box or card from before 2020 is compared. Only standard 36-pack booster boxes are compared, not half or enhanced boxes; booster box vs Elite Trainer Box vs bundle compares price per pack across product types.

Card value per dollar is the site's EV ratio: the average raw value of the cards in a box's packs, from published pull rates with the era average for any rarity the source gives no rate for, divided by the box's price (how sealed EV works). The Sword & Shield base set, Rebel Clash, Darkness Ablaze and Battle Styles use the era average throughout, so their ratios are estimates. In Fusion Strike and Brilliant Stars the source folds the alternate arts into a wider full-art tier, and giving every card of that tier an equal share flatters the alternate arts and those two ratios. "One of every card" is one copy of each card in a set at market, one printing per card, so it is not a master set. The Trainer Gallery cards in Brilliant Stars, Astral Radiance, Lost Origin and Silver Tempest packs are filed as sets of their own and left out of those totals.

Price per pack by series

ICv2 listed the Brilliant Stars and Lost Origin booster displays, in November 2021 and June 2022, at an MSRP of $143.64, or $3.99 a pack. On December 9, 2022 The Pokémon Company announced that a US booster pack would go from $3.99 to $4.49 with the Scarlet & Violet series. Displays for Paldea Evolved (ICv2, March 2023), Journey Together (ICv2, January 2025) and Pitch Black (the distributor PHD Games, May 2026) listed at $161.64, or $4.49 a pack.

On October 3 the market price was about 1.19 times that MSRP for the Pitch Black box, 1.27 for Journey Together, 2.91 for Paldea Evolved, 3.95 for Brilliant Stars and 5.10 for Lost Origin. The Lost Origin Elite Trainer Box had an MSRP of $39.99 (ICv2, June 2022) and a market price of $195.68; Pitch Black's had an MSRP of $49.99 (PHD Games) and a market price of $75.27. MSRP is not what any given buyer paid, and one day's market price shows no path between the two.

Price per pack: the set matters more than the age

Within each series, price per pack spread further than the median moved from one series to the next. Sword & Shield boxes ran from $8.03 per pack for Battle Styles (March 2021) to $63.35 for Evolving Skies (August 2021), sets five months apart, nearly eight times the price. Battle Styles, Vivid Voltage and Darkness Ablaze, from 2020 and 2021, all cost less per pack than Phantasmal Flames from November 2025 ($10.68). In no series did price per pack rise in step with age.

The Evolving Skies box, at $2,280.47, held about $255.89 of expected raw card value, about 11 cents per dollar, leaving some $56 a pack above its expected card value. Astral Radiance, the highest-ratio Sword & Shield box, held about 29 cents per dollar, leaving about $8.06 a pack above the expected card value; Pitch Black held about 42 cents, leaving about $3.09 a pack. None of the 27 boxes held its price in raw card value (the highest ratio, Temporal Forces, was about 0.55); booster boxes ranked by EV reads the ratio box by box.

The live table below lists the twelve booster boxes with the highest ratio, which can include the enhanced boxes this comparison leaves out, and updates daily.

A sealed box against one of every card

In three Sword & Shield sets a sealed box cost about as much as one of every card, or more: the Darkness Ablaze box at $359.98 against $254.38 for the set's 201 cards, about 1.42 times; the Sword & Shield base box at $688.99 against $543.75 for 216 cards, about 1.27 times; and Rebel Clash at $484.68 against $509.15, about 0.95. At the other end, the Mega Evolution box at $308.03 cost about 21 percent of its set's $1,469.32, Chilling Reign about 23 percent, Paradox Rift about 24 percent and Paldea Evolved, at $470.44 against $1,907.77, just under 25 percent.

A box is 36 packs whose contents vary; one of every card is a fixed list that can take many separate orders, each with its own shipping. What it costs to complete a Pokémon set breaks the totals down for Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolution sets.

How concentrated singles value is

The median card in each of the 27 sets had a market price between $0.16 and $0.32. The ten most valuable cards held about 40 percent of one of every card in Paradox Rift and 45 percent in Temporal Forces, against about 90 percent in Fusion Strike and 93 percent in Phantasmal Flames. In Fusion Strike, Gengar VMAX alone was $1,024.03 of $2,262.27, about 45 percent, and the 274 cards outside the top ten came to about $228.

What it costs to sell

eBay charges sellers roughly 13.25 percent plus $0.30 per order on trading cards. Getting the purchase price back after those fees takes a sale of:

The Tax Foundation's midyear 2026 sales tax report puts the population-weighted average combined state and local sales tax rate at 7.53 percent as of July 1, 2026; average combined rates by state run from zero in Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon to 10.13 percent in Louisiana. A $100 purchase taxed at 7.53 percent needs an eBay sale of about $124.30 to come back whole; at Louisiana's average, about $127.30.

A Pitch Black box bought at its $161.64 MSRP and sold on eBay at its October 3 TCGplayer market price of $192.37 would leave the seller about $166.58 after fees, $4.94 above its cost, before shipping. With 7.53 percent sales tax on the purchase, a cost of about $173.81, it would fall about $7.23 short.

TCGplayer's June 23, 2025 seller guide says it charges no listing fees, with commission due when an item sells, and has sellers ship a card sleeved, in something like a top loader, inside a bubble mailer or secure envelope. From February 10, 2026 the commission for Level 1 to 4 Marketplace Sellers rose from 10.25 to 10.75 percent and the commission fee cap from $50 to $75 (Seller Blog, January 8, 2026). The posts we could read do not give the standard Marketplace transaction fee, so there is no all-in TCGplayer figure here. Cards sold through TCGplayer Direct or Store Your Products carry a per-item fee from June 18, 2026 (Seller Blog, May 13, 2026), on top of commission and transaction fees: half the sale price at $2.49 or less, $1.12 above that. The median card of each of the 27 booster box sets compared here is below the $0.40 minimum price TCGplayer has set since February 10, 2026 for Pokémon items sold that way, and a $5 card gives up about 22 percent to the per-item fee alone.

Risks the prices do not show

Reprints. The Pokémon Company has said more than once that it reprints products in high demand. In February 2021 it said it was "actively working to print more" of the affected products "as quickly as possible and at maximum capacity" (PocketMonsters, February 10, 2021), and on January 15, 2025, two days before Prismatic Evolutions launched, the official Pokémon TCG account used the same phrase, which Wargamer, in an article updated January 16, 2025, said matched past reprint statements "almost word for word." In December 2025 WRAL reported that Millennium Print Group, described as a subsidiary of The Pokémon Company International, would take almost 1.3 million square feet in Morrisville, North Carolina, part of it a facility still to be built, with operations expected in late 2028; MPG told WRAL it had signed a long-term lease for the campus. What makes prices go up or down covers production totals and how reprints have moved singles.

Fakes and resealing. A sealed price assumes a factory-sealed product, and a card price a genuine card; see the guides to resealed boxes and packs and fake cards. For single cards, eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $200 or more in the US.

Condition. Every card price here is Near Mint. The site's own working factors, not a TCGplayer publication, put Lightly Played at 0.85 of that price, Moderately Played at 0.70, Heavily Played at 0.50 and Damaged at 0.35 (the condition guide explains the grades). TCGplayer's March 25, 2025 Authentication Center post says cards should be stored in a dry, temperature-controlled space.

Thin markets. The low price shows how close the cheapest listing stood to the market price. The two were within 5 percent for 22 of the 27 boxes and for 56 of the 122 Elite Trainer Boxes and booster bundles released from February 2020 to September 2026 that have a pack count on the site. The Fusion Strike Elite Trainer Box had a market price of $329.54 and no TCGplayer listing under $385. Pitch Black (July 2026) ran the other way: the lowest listing was 9 percent under market for its box, 20 percent for its Elite Trainer Box and 23 percent for its booster bundle.

Grading. Graded copies trade in a market these raw prices do not measure; raw vs graded covers what is known about the gap.

A short record. The site began recording English price history on September 15, 2026. Nothing here shows whether a box or card rose, fell or held level before that.

What changes and what stays

Every price, ratio, box-to-set multiple, top-ten share, median, low-to-market gap and MSRP multiple here is a reading from October 3, 2026 and moves with the market. The live table above shows the twelve highest booster box ratios, each set page its "One of everything" total, and each product page its market price and EV. The fees and tax rates can change too: eBay lowered its Authenticity Guarantee threshold from $250 to $200 in 2026, TCGplayer changed its commission in February 2026 and its Direct fees in June 2026, and the tax rates are as of July 1, 2026.

Pack counts, release dates, card lists and the announced MSRPs are fixed; a reprint adds copies without changing a card list. The four era-average ratios would change if published pull rates for those sets appeared, every set total if the site changed which printing stands for a card, and the Brilliant Stars, Astral Radiance, Lost Origin and Silver Tempest totals if it counted their Trainer Gallery cards with them. The price history's start date is fixed.

Bottom line

At October 3, 2026 prices, Sword & Shield booster boxes cost a median of about $14.00 per pack and held about 20 cents of raw card value per dollar; Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolution boxes cost about $8.49 and $5.34 per pack and held about 38 to 39 cents. Within a series, the set moved price per pack more than the release date did. A box cost more than one of every card in two sets and under a quarter of it in four, and a set's singles value can sit almost entirely in a few cards: about 90 percent of Fusion Strike's was in its top ten. Sealed or singles, an eBay resale of anything bought for $25 or more has to clear about 15 to 17 percent before shipping and tax. The sealed EV board and the card and product pages show where prices stand, with their history only from September 15, 2026.