Is Ascended Heroes worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

As of October 9, 2026, no Ascended Heroes product holds its price in raw card value: EV ratios run from about 0.16 for the Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box to about 0.45 for the four-pack tins. A pack carries about $4.92 of expected card value, more than double a pack of Perfect Order, Chaos Rising or Pitch Black, but the market has priced that in: loose packs trade near $12.16 and an ETB near $156, so the ETB holds only about 28 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price. The highest ratio belongs to the Mega Emboar ex, Mega Meganium ex and Mega Feraligatr ex tins at about $43 to $45 for four packs: about $10.81 to $11.14 a pack, the lowest price per pack in the set, and roughly 44 to 45 cents per dollar. With 22 Special Illustration Rares, the odds of pulling the one you want are remote, and the packs it would take cost far more than any single in the set.

What Ascended Heroes is

Ascended Heroes released on January 30, 2026 as a special set in the Mega Evolution series (set code ASC). It is large: 217 cards on the printed checklist and 295 in the full set, more than twice the size of Perfect Order, Chaos Rising or Pitch Black. The line-up mixes Mega ex cards (Mega Charizard Y, Mega Gengar, Mega Dragonite and others) with owner-named Pokémon such as Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex, Lillie's Clefairy ex and N's Zoroark ex, plus two different Pikachu ex Special Illustration Rares.

The rarity ladder is the fullest in the era: below the 22 Special Illustration Rares and two Mega Hyper Rares sits a Mega Attack Rare tier of seven cards, then 33 Illustration Rares and 39 Double Rares. Our catalog lists no booster box for this set; packs come in Elite Trainer Boxes, booster bundles, four-pack tins, two-pack mini tins and collection boxes.

Here are the live set-level numbers from the Ascended Heroes set page.

The chase cards

All 295 cards are priced. As of October 9, 2026, the median card is about 23 cents, but 29 cards clear $10 and 14 clear $50. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about 34 cents, a figure that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one. These are the current leaders.

The danciao Mega Gengar ex is about $836, the booota Pikachu ex about $821 and the DOM Mega Dragonite ex about $485. Those three alone are about 47 percent of the set's summed market value (about $4,550 across all 295 cards). The two Mega Hyper Rares, Mega Charizard Y ex at about $308 and Mega Dragonite ex at about $188, are worth less than the top three SIRs, which is unusual for the era.

The 22 Special Illustration Rares average about $166 and the two Mega Hyper Rares about $248; those 24 cards account for roughly 91 percent of the set's raw value. Unlike the small sets, though, the value is spread across many chase cards, and the middle tier is real: the seven Mega Attack Rares average about $12 (Mega Gengar ex tops them at about $35), the 33 Illustration Rares average about $6.40 with the REND Psyduck at about $46, and Double Rares average about $1.17. Ultra Rares are the weak tier at about $1.75.

Pull rates

The rates below are midpoints of published pack-opening counts collected in September 2026. PokeBeach counted the Special Illustration Rare closer to 1 in 70, so the SIR line here is the conservative end. The source lists no rate for Double Rares in this set, so the site uses the era average of 1 in 5 packs, and the block labels that row "era average"; at about $1.17 a card, that adds about 23 cents to a pack.

Outside 30th Celebration, which has no Mega Attack Rare or Mega Hyper Rare tier, these are the friendliest Illustration Rare, Mega Attack Rare and Mega Hyper Rare odds of the Mega era: Illustration Rares at about 1 in 8.5 packs, Mega Attack Rares at about 1 in 35, and the Mega Hyper Rare at about 1 in 540, versus 1 in 1,315 in Pitch Black and 1 in 1,400 in Perfect Order. The Special Illustration Rare rate, 1 in 88.5, is longer than Perfect Order's 1 in 80.

With no booster box, think in ETBs and tins. A nine-pack Elite Trainer Box should produce about one Illustration Rare and slightly under one Ultra Rare; it has about a 91 percent chance of at least one hit above Double Rare, roughly a 1 in 4 chance of a Mega Attack Rare and a 1 in 10 chance of a Special Illustration Rare. A Mega Hyper Rare is about one per 60 ETBs. A four-pack tin has about a 65 percent chance of a hit above Double Rare and roughly a 1 in 22 chance of a Special Illustration Rare.

Sealed EV

Expected value is the average raw market value of the cards inside a product, from the pull rates above and the mean price of each rarity. Here is the live table for the Ascended Heroes tins, loose packs, booster bundle and Elite Trainer Boxes; the Elite Trainer Box case and the Sam's Club premium collection carry an EV that the table does not rank, and both appear in the ranking below. The sealed EV board compares sets. Sealed cases other than the Elite Trainer Box case, displays, the Mini Tins 5-Pack and every collection box other than the Sam's Club premium collection carry no pack count on the site, so the site gives them a price and no EV.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by the product's market price. The four-pack tins carry about $19.70 of expected cards for about $43 to $45, a ratio of about 0.44 to 0.45. Loose booster packs at about $12.16 hold about $4.92, a ratio near 0.40. The Elite Trainer Box at about $156 holds about $44.24, a ratio near 0.28, and the booster bundle at about $85 for six packs is about 0.35. Net EV subtracts a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 shipping per card worth at least $1 and treats cards under $1 as bulk: about $13 for a tin, about $30 for an ETB.

Chase share is about 61 percent, higher than Perfect Order's: just over three fifths of the hit EV comes from Special Illustration Rares and Mega Hyper Rares, and nine ETBs in ten contain neither. The typical ETB holds an Illustration Rare, maybe a Mega Attack Rare, and bulk, well under the $44.24 average; the occasional one holds a card worth $500 or more. EV describes the long-run average, not the box in your hands.

Break-even for an ETB is its gross EV, about $44.24, and for a tin about $19.70. Thirty-six packs would break even near $177, a little under the price of a whole Pitch Black or Chaos Rising box, but 36 loose packs of Ascended Heroes cost roughly $440 and four ETBs roughly $620.

Ranked by EV per dollar, with the price per pack: four-pack tins (about 0.44 to 0.45, about $10.81 to $11.14), the set of all three tins at about $144 for 12 packs (about 0.41, $11.98), loose packs (about 0.40, $12.16), the Sam's Club Focused Fighters Premium Collection at about $173 for 14 packs (about 0.40, $12.32), the booster bundle (about 0.35, $14.10), the ETB (about 0.28, $17.33), mini tins (about 0.27 to 0.31, overlapping the ETB, about $16 to $18) and the Elite Trainer Box case at about $1,653 for 90 packs (about 0.27, $18.37). The Pokémon Center ETB at about $347 for 11 packs has the lowest ratio, about 0.16, and the highest price per pack, about $31.54.

Who should open this

Players: the playable cards are cheap as singles. The regular ex cards are Double Rares averaging about $1.17, and the most expensive one is about $5.77.

Set collectors: packs fill the bottom of the checklist and singles the top. The full set summed at market is about $4,550, most of it in 24 cards. Packs of any product supply the cheap bottom half of the checklist; each of the 24 cards at the top is a long-odds pull, as the next paragraph shows.

Chase hunters: the single is far cheaper than the packs. With 22 Special Illustration Rares sharing a 1 in 88.5 rate, a specific one printed evenly is roughly a 1 in 1,900 pack pull, more than 200 ETBs, which costs far more than any single in the set.

People who like opening packs: the four-pack tins have the lowest price per pack in the set, about $10.81 to $11.14, and the highest ratio, about 0.44 to 0.45, with about a 65 percent chance of a hit above Double Rare per tin. A nine-pack ETB has about a 91 percent chance at about $17.33 a pack. Mini tins cost about $16 to $18 a pack and the Pokémon Center ETB about $31.54, with the same odds per pack.

How to buy it cheaper

An Ascended Heroes listing is below market only when its landed price (item plus shipping) is at least 12 percent under the market price; seller "was $X" discounts tell you nothing. Every Ascended Heroes card and sealed product page linked from the set page, which leaves out code cards, shows the TCGplayer market price, its price history, the price that counts as 12 percent below market unless that market is under $5, more than 10 percent above the dearest copy TCGplayer lists or more than 25 percent above TCGplayer's middle listing, and buttons that open eBay's own search results filtered to Buy It Now listings from US sellers, with proxies, lots and code cards excluded, sorted by price plus shipping. 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.

For sealed, compare landed price with the TCGplayer market price for the exact product. A tin at $40 plus $8 shipping is not cheaper than one at $46 shipped free. The price cap in the eBay search applies to the item price, so add shipping yourself before you decide. Seller spreads on this set are wide: if the under-market button on a product page such as the Mega Emboar ex tin shows no results, nothing is listed below market at that moment, so open the second button to see every current price and use eBay's own "Save this search" on that results page so eBay emails new matches.

For singles at $200 and up, eBay's Authenticity Guarantee applies to trading cards in the US, which covers the top Pikachu, Gengar and Dragonite cards. Check condition too: the market price is a Near Mint price, so a low price on an $800 card may be a played copy. Since October 8, 2026, the Deal Score method scores only a card listing whose condition is stated as Near Mint; a played copy, or a listing that states no condition, gets no score, because the site has no sourced price for a played one. The methodology page explains the full Deal Score so you can apply it by hand; graded copies are not scored, because the baseline is a raw Near Mint price and a graded slab is a different product with its own price, which depends on the grade and the company and can be above or below the raw price.

Bottom line

Ascended Heroes has the richest packs in the Mega era after 30th Celebration and a hit rate of about 23 percent per pack, and the market charges accordingly. Elite Trainer Boxes hold about 28 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price; the four-pack tins hold about 44 to 45 cents at about $10.81 to $11.14 a pack, the highest ratio and the lowest price per pack in the set. With 22 Special Illustration Rares and a 61 percent chase share, most of what you open will be bulk and Illustration Rares while the value sits in 24 cards that nine ETBs in ten do not contain. Start from the set page, open the card you want, and use the eBay button on its page to look for a copy listed under market.