Is Astral Radiance worth opening? Box EV and the Trainer Gallery

Verdict

Only for fun, and only by the pack. In mid-September 2026 the Astral Radiance booster box is priced near $413, while the 36 packs inside carry an expected value of about $105 in raw cards: 25 cents back on the dollar. The set is out of print, so part of that price is a collector premium for the sealed box itself, which is why the ratio is low. The chase is narrow, and cheap next to the box: the alternate-art Machamp V #172, at about $199, is more than a fifth of the main set's value and costs less than half a box. Singles are the sensible way to own the chase cards. To open something anyway, a loose pack at about $10.67 is the cheapest way in.

What Astral Radiance is

Astral Radiance released on May 27, 2022 in the Sword & Shield series (set code ASR). It has 189 cards in the printed checklist and 216 in all, the last 27 being secret cards numbered past 189. The theme is the Hisui region, with Origin Forme Dialga and Origin Forme Palkia as the headline Pokémon.

Its hits follow the usual Sword & Shield rarity ladder: 19 Rare Holo V, seven Rare Holo VSTAR, two Rare Holo VMAX, three Radiant Rares, 30 Rare Ultra (the full arts, alternate-art V cards among them), 18 Rare Rainbow and nine gold Rare Secrets. Underneath sit 128 Commons, Uncommons, Rares and Rare Holos.

The same packs also hold the 30-card Astral Radiance Trainer Gallery. Pullnomics lists the gallery as its own set page, but every sealed EV figure for Astral Radiance counts its cards.

The numbers

The next block comes from the Astral Radiance set page and covers the 216 main-set cards only. The gallery's 30 cards have their own page.

Half the checklist is worth 42 cents or less. Only 15 cards reach $10 and four reach $50, and one copy of every main-set card comes to about $921.

About two thirds of that sits in one rarity group: the 30 Rare Ultra cards hold about $613. The Rare Rainbows add about $151 and the Rare Secrets about $65, leaving about $93 for the other 159 cards. Inside Rare Ultra, the six alternate-art V cards total about $491, or 53 percent of the main set. Machamp V alone is about 22 percent.

Sealed EV by product

Sealed EV combines pull rates with today's TCGplayer market prices to give the average return of a product's packs, and the methodology sets out the formula. Each Astral Radiance pack comes to about $2.91 whatever it is packaged in, so the products on the sealed EV board are separated only by price per pack.

Divide the box price by 36 and a pack costs about $11.46, for an EV ratio of about 0.25. Net EV, after selling fees and shipping, is about $65. Across the board a booster box typically returns roughly 30 to 35 cents per dollar, so this one falls short.

Nor is the box the cheapest source of packs. A loose booster pack is about $10.67, a ratio of about 0.27 and the best of the ordinary products. The Elite Trainer Box (about $144) is about $16 per pack and 0.18, inside the 15 to 20 cents a typical Elite Trainer Box returns, and the Pokémon Center version (about $212) is about 0.15.

As for what carries the $2.91, at average prices and pull rates Rare Ultra contributes about 40 cents per pack, Rare Holo V about 17 cents, Rare Rainbow and Rare Secret about 16 cents between them and Radiant Rare about 6 cents: about 79 cents from the main set's hit tiers. Run on the main set alone, the method gives about $1.69 per pack, the other 90 cents being the baseline for the common, uncommon and rare slots. The Trainer Gallery supplies the rest, about $1.22: 42 percent of the pack and three times what Rare Ultra brings.

The source publishes two gallery rates here, one for holo character cards and one for everything above them, and each tier is valued at its own average price.

Chase share is about 8 percent, but it only measures the main set's rainbow and gold tiers, which are cheap here. The expensive cards sit one step down, in Rare Ultra and the upper gallery tier.

Chase cards

The block below shows the eight most valuable cards across the main set and the Trainer Gallery.

Six of the eight come from the main set's list, and they are its six alternate arts: Machamp V #172 at about $199, Origin Forme Palkia V #167 about $88, Beedrill V #161 about $78, Origin Forme Dialga V #177 about $62, Hisuian Sneasler V #175 about $36 and Hisuian Lilligant V #163 about $28. The other two come from the Trainer Gallery's list: Starmie V TG13 at about $120 and Garchomp V TG23 at about $78.

The rarest tiers are not where the money is. The top Rare Rainbow, Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR #198, is about $17.55, and the top gold card, Origin Forme Palkia VSTAR #208, about $13.85.

The standard full-art Machamp V #171 is about $10.76 against about $199 for #172, which is why the group average misleads: Rare Ultra averages about $20.42, but outside the six alternate arts the other 24 cards average about $5.

Pull rates

Astral Radiance has its own published pull rates, so the table below does not lean on a Sword & Shield era average. Every figure is a midpoint of published pack-opening counts collected in September 2026, with the sources listed in the methodology.

A 36-pack box averages about five Rare Holo V cards, three gallery holos, one or two cards from the upper gallery tier and about 0.7 of a Rare Ultra. About half of all boxes hold no Rare Ultra at all. Counting Radiant Rares, gallery cards and Rare Ultra or better as hits, about one pack in five has one, and one in eight has a gallery card.

Sword & Shield pack-opening data sorts cards by printed rarity, and nobody publishes a separate rate for alternate arts. Here the six alternate arts are counted inside Rare Ultra, and the EV assumes each is pulled as often as any other card of that rarity, so the real odds of one particular alternate art are much longer than the 1 in 50.5 headline rate. Even on the equal assumption, 30 Rare Ultras at 1 in 50.5 put a specific card at about 1 in 1,515 packs: about 42 booster boxes, or roughly $17,400, to chase a $199 single. If alternate arts are scarcer than that, the $2.91 flatters the set.

Inside the gallery, the 1 in 24 tier holds at least ten V and VMAX cards plus the Trainer and gold cards, so the odds of a specific one such as Starmie V are longer than 1 in 240 packs.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

Collectors after Machamp V #172, or any one alternate art, are better served by singles. Even on the generous equal-odds assumption, one box is about a 1 in 42 shot at a named Rare Ultra.

Gallery collectors are in the same position. The twelve most valuable gallery cards cost about $332 in all, and each of the other 18 is under $9.

Completing the set from packs makes less sense still. The $921 that buys one of everything pays for about 80 packs at the box price, which average fewer than two of the 30 Rare Ultras.

For a deck, sealed product is the slow route: the 19 Rare Holo V cards average about $1.26 apiece.

If the point is the fun of opening, keep it to a loose pack or two and expect about $2.91 in cards, on average, from each $10.67 pack.

How to buy it cheaper

On Pullnomics, every Astral Radiance card page and sealed product page carries the TCGplayer market price, its history, the figure that marks 12 percent below market, and a pair of eBay buttons. Button one runs eBay's own search with fixed filters: Buy It Now, US sellers, no proxies, lots, code cards or look-alike products, sorted by price plus shipping, item price capped 12 percent under market. Button two is that search uncapped. Both are affiliate links. The block below offers the same search for the set's main sealed products, each capped under its own below-market price.

Shipping is not part of the cap, so add it yourself. The rule of thumb is a landed price, item plus shipping, at least 12 percent under market: about $363 delivered for the booster box. When the capped search comes back empty, no copy is listed below market at that moment. Open the uncapped search to see what sellers are asking, and use eBay's own "Save this search" so eBay sends you new matches. Before buying loose packs, read how to spot resealed boxes and packs.

Card prices on the site are all raw Near Mint. The Deal Score method on the methodology page marks a Lightly Played copy against 85 percent of market, so Machamp V #172 qualifies near $175 landed in Near Mint and near $149 in Lightly Played. Anything landed under about $20, a tenth of market, should be read as a mismatched listing or a scam. eBay's Authenticity Guarantee starts at $200 for trading cards sold in the US. No Astral Radiance card reaches that line at market price, though Machamp V sits just under it.

Bottom line

Astral Radiance is a $2.91 pack that costs about $10.67 loose and about $11.46 inside a booster box. About 42 percent of that EV comes from the Trainer Gallery, about 40 cents from Rare Ultra, and the rainbow and gold cards add little. The main set's value sits in six alternate arts, and even the generous assumption puts Machamp V #172 at about 1 in 1,515 packs. For the cards, go to the Astral Radiance set page, pick the single you want, and let the capped eBay search on its page show whether a copy is listed under market right now.