Is 151 worth opening? EV, price per pack and the Charizard chase

Verdict

No 151 product holds its price in raw card value: EV ratios run from about 0.09 to about 0.40. As of September 20, 2026 every pack carries about $10.15 of expected raw card value, high for a modern pack, but the set is out of print and the cheapest packs cost about $25 to $29. That puts a cheap mini tin or a booster bundle at roughly 38 to 40 cents of raw card value per dollar. The Elite Trainer Box, at about $511 for nine packs, holds about 18 cents per dollar, because about half of its price is a premium for the sealed box itself. The Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare, the set's most valuable card, is about $360 as a single.

What 151 is

151 released on September 22, 2023 as a special set in the Scarlet & Violet series (set code MEW), built on the first generation of Pokémon. The printed checklist is 165 cards and the full set is 207. The 42 cards numbered above the printed total are what people open packs for: 16 Illustration Rares, 16 Ultra Rares, 7 Special Illustration Rares (SIRs) and 3 gold Hyper Rares. Below them sit 12 Double Rares, the regular ex cards.

As a special set, its packs came only inside other products. The main ones Pullnomics tracks with a known pack count are the Elite Trainer Box (nine packs), the Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box (11), the booster bundle (six), the Ultra-Premium Collection (16), the Blooming Waters Premium Collection (12), ten mini tins (two each) and loose packs. The Poster, Binder, Alakazam ex and Zapdos ex Collections are tracked by price only. The set is out of print, so every sealed price includes a premium for the product still being sealed.

The numbers

These are the live set-level figures from the 151 set page.

As of September 27, 2026, the median card is worth about 24 cents and 30 cards clear $10. At September 20, 2026 prices, 12 cards clear $50, every one of those 12 an Illustration Rare or an SIR. Recomputed on September 27, 2026, one of every card at market costs about $1,789. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about 98 cents and one of every card as about $1,963, figures that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one.

The seven SIRs average about $115 and the 16 Illustration Rares about $48, so those 23 cards hold about $1,568. Against the September 27, 2026 total for the set, that is more than four fifths of its value, and Charizard ex alone is about a fifth.

Rarity and price do not line up in this set. The gold Hyper Rares are the hardest pull and average about $12, the same as the Ultra Rares. Both are worth about a quarter of an average Illustration Rare, which is easier to pull than either.

Sealed EV by product

Sealed EV is the average value, at today's TCGplayer market prices, of the cards a product should contain; the methodology has the formula. Every 151 pack has the same EV, about $10.15 as of September 20, 2026, so the only thing separating these products is the price per pack. The cross-set view is the sealed EV board.

The cheapest mini tin (Magneton and Ekans, about $51 for two packs) works out to about $25 per pack and an EV ratio of about 0.40, the highest in the set. The dearest tin (Gengar and Poliwag, about $61) holds the same two packs at about 0.33, so among tins the ratio follows the price alone. A loose pack is about $29 (about 0.35). The booster bundle is about $161 for six packs, about $27 each, with about $61 of gross EV and a ratio of about 0.38. A typical bundle across the board holds a little under 30 cents of raw card value per dollar, so this one sits above most. The Blooming Waters Premium Collection, about $327 for 12 packs, is also about $27 per pack, a ratio of about 0.37.

The Elite Trainer Box costs about $57 per pack and holds about $91 of expected cards, a ratio of about 0.18, inside the 15 to 20 cent range normal for the format. Nine loose packs would cost about $259, so roughly $250 of the $511 pays for the sealed box and its extras. The Ultra-Premium Collection is about $921 for 16 packs, about $58 per pack, with about $162 of expected cards and a ratio of about 0.18. The lowest ratio in the set belongs to the Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box: about $1,284 for 11 packs, about $117 each, a ratio of about 0.09.

Net EV, which deducts a 15 percent marketplace fee plus $1 shipping on every card worth at least $1, is about $47 for the bundle. Chase share is about 43 percent: that much of the hit value sits in SIRs and Hyper Rares, which most bundles will not contain. The cheapest mini tin has the highest ratio on paper at about 0.40, and the booster bundle, at about 0.38, is six packs in one factory-sealed product. Our cost per pack comparison covers how the sealed formats differ.

Chase cards

These are the set's eight most valuable cards right now.

Charizard ex #199 at about $360 is the chase, worth more than the next two cards combined: Blastoise ex #200 at about $133 and Venusaur ex #198 at about $114. Zapdos ex (about $90) and Alakazam ex (about $73) follow, and the last two SIRs add only about $31 between them.

The Illustration Rares are the largest single line of the pack EV, led by Charmander #168 at about $96, Squirtle about $90, Pikachu #173 about $82, Bulbasaur about $80 and Psyduck about $62. Each Kanto starter line shares one illustrator across its three art cards: miki kudo for the Charmander line, Mitsuhiro Arita for Squirtle and Yoriyuki Ikegami for Bulbasaur (see the artists index). As singles the Charizard line costs about $514, the Squirtle line about $285 and the Bulbasaur line about $235. All three Charizard art cards together cost about the same as one sealed Elite Trainer Box.

Below the art cards, the most valuable Ultra Rare is the full-art Charizard ex #183 at about $40, and the most valuable Hyper Rare is Mew ex #205 at about $27.

Pull rates

151 has its own measured rates, not an era average: midpoints of published pack-opening datasets (TCGplayer opening counts plus community counts), collected in September 2026. The methodology lists the sources.

The last column scales the odds to 36 packs, which for 151 means six booster bundles. One bundle averages 0.75 Double Rares (1 in 8 packs), 0.5 Illustration Rares (1 in 12) and about 0.4 Ultra Rares (1 in 16). About 70 percent of bundles contain at least one hit above Double Rare, so three in ten contain nothing better than a regular ex.

The SIR, at 1 in 32 packs, is the main chase tier. The chance of at least one is about 17 percent in a bundle and about 25 percent in an Elite Trainer Box. In dollars, 32 packs is a little over five bundles, about $860, to average one SIR worth about $115. The Illustration Rare slot carries more of the pack: a $48 card every 12 packs contributes about $3.99 of each pack's $10.15, against about $3.58 from the SIRs.

An SIR is not the Charizard. If the seven were printed evenly, which the datasets do not confirm, a specific one would be about 1 in 224 packs: about 37 bundles, roughly $6,000 at September 20, 2026 prices, for a $360 card.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

If you play the game, the regular ex cards are Double Rares averaging about $2.67 as singles, against about $25 to $29 for one pack.

If you are building the set, the $1,789 that one of every card cost on September 27, 2026 would buy about 11 bundles, roughly 66 packs. On average that yields about two of the seven SIRs and five or six of the 16 Illustration Rares, duplicates included.

If you want Charizard ex, or any one art card, the single costs a small fraction of the sealed product that would on average produce it: about $360 against roughly $6,000 of bundles.

If you like opening packs, the odds are the comparison to look at: an SIR turns up about every 32 packs, against every 75 to 90 in Temporal Forces, Twilight Masquerade and Stellar Crown, and the 16 Illustration Rares, at 1 in 12 packs, average about $48. Sealed product is entertainment with a resale value: a $161 bundle holds about $61 of cards on average, and about $47 after selling costs.

If you own a sealed Elite Trainer Box, opening it swaps a $511 item for about $91 of expected cards.

How to buy it cheaper

On every 151 card page and sealed product page, code cards aside, you get the TCGplayer market price and the price history and, unless that market is under $5 or, as of October 8, 2026, more than 10 percent above TCGplayer's highest listing, the figure that counts as 12 percent below market and two eBay buttons; otherwise there is only the uncapped search. The first runs an eBay search limited to Buy It Now listings from US sellers, leaves out proxies, lots, code cards and look-alike products, sorts by price plus shipping, and caps the item price at 12 percent under market. The second runs the same search without the cap. Both are affiliate links. Since October 8, 2026, a page where TCGplayer's market is more than 25 percent above its middle listing is an exception: it gives no below-market figure and has only the uncapped search. Since September 23, 2026, the block below lists the best-scored of this set's eBay listings that are matched and scored at least 12 percent under market; if the site's eBay scan were off, it would show eBay searches for the set's main sealed products instead.

The cap applies to the item price, so add shipping yourself. A listing is only worth calling below market when the landed price, item plus shipping, comes in 12 percent or more under market. For the bundle that means about $142 delivered. Seller "was $X" discounts count for nothing. If the capped search on the booster bundle page comes back empty, nothing is listed below market at that moment: open the uncapped button to see what everything is listed at, then use eBay's own "Save this search" so eBay emails you new matches.

For singles, condition matters, because site prices are raw Near Mint. A Near Mint Charizard ex SIR must land near $317 to count as below market under the Deal Score method on the methodology page. Since October 8, 2026, the method scores only a card listing whose condition is stated as Near Mint: a Lightly Played copy, or a listing that states no condition, gets no Deal Score, because the site has no sourced price for a played copy. eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $200 or more in the US, which includes this card.

Bottom line

As of September 20, 2026, 151 packs hold about $10.15 of expected cards and cost about $25 to $29 in the cheapest formats, so those formats hold roughly 35 to 40 cents of raw card value per dollar, and an Elite Trainer Box about 18 cents. An SIR turns up about every 32 packs and the Illustration Rares carry about $3.99 of every pack, but no product in the set holds its price in cards: the rest of a sealed price is the premium for an out-of-print product. For Charizard ex, a starter line or the full set, open the card pages from the 151 set page and use the eBay buttons there to look for copies listed under market.