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

Verdict

No Astral Radiance product holds its price in raw card value: EV ratios run from about 0.11 to about 0.32. As of September 20, 2026 the Astral Radiance booster box is priced near $412, while the 36 packs inside carry an expected value of about $118 in raw cards: about 29 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price. 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 $197, is more than a fifth of the main set's value and costs less than half a box. A loose pack is about $10.67, against a pack EV of about $3.27.

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.

Recomputed on September 27, 2026, half the checklist is worth 29 cents or less, only 16 cards reach $10 and one copy of every main-set card comes to about $901. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about 43 cents, a figure that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one. On September 20, 2026, four cards reached $50.

About two thirds of the main-set total sits in one rarity group: the 30 Rare Ultra cards hold about $609. The Rare Rainbows add about $151 and the Rare Secrets about $66, leaving about $75 of the September 27, 2026 total for the other 159 cards. Inside Rare Ultra, the six alternate-art V cards total about $488, or 54 percent of that total. 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 raw card value in a product's packs, and the methodology sets out the formula. Each Astral Radiance pack comes to about $3.27 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 $11.44, for an EV ratio of about 0.29. Net EV, after selling fees and shipping, is about $75. Across the board a typical booster box holds roughly 30 to 35 cents of raw card value per dollar, so this one sits just under that range.

Nor is the box the cheapest source of packs. A loose booster pack is about $10.67, a ratio of about 0.31. The 12-pack Build & Battle Stadium, about $124 or $10.36 a pack, has the highest ratio of any product here, about 0.32. The Elite Trainer Box (about $143 for eight packs) is about $18 per pack and 0.18, inside the 15 to 20 cents per dollar that a typical Elite Trainer Box holds, and the 10-pack Pokémon Center version (about $209) is about 0.16.

As for what carries the $3.27, at average prices and pull rates the six alternate-art V cards contribute about 60 cents per pack, Rare Holo V about 17 cents, Rare Rainbow and Rare Secret about 16 cents between them, the 24 regular full arts about 10 cents, the nine regular VMAX and VSTAR cards (one tier in the source, 1 in 29 packs) about 8 cents and Radiant Rare about 6 cents: about $1.17 from the main set's hit tiers. Run on the main set alone, the method gives about $2.05 per pack, the other 88 cents being the baseline for the common, uncommon and rare slots. The Trainer Gallery supplies the rest, about $1.22: 37 percent of the pack and twice what the alternate arts bring.

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 32 percent. It counts the alternate-art tier together with the main set's rainbow and gold tiers, which are cheap here, and leaves out the upper gallery tier, where the other expensive cards sit.

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 $197, Origin Forme Palkia V #167 about $87, 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 $121 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 $14.05.

The standard full-art Machamp V #171 is about $10.76 against about $197 for #172, which is why the group average misleads: Rare Ultra averages about $20.31, 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, one or two regular VMAX or VSTAR cards, three gallery holos, one or two cards from the upper gallery tier and about 0.7 of a regular full art: the 1 in 50.5 in the table is the source's full-art tier, and the alternate-art tier (1 in 135, described below) has a row of its own. Counting both, a box averages about one Rare Ultra, and about 37 percent of boxes hold none 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.

The published counts give Astral Radiance's six alternate-art V cards a tier of their own, about 1 in 135 packs. No count goes card by card, so take the six as equally likely: a specific one, Machamp V #172 included, is then about 1 in 810 packs. That is between 22 and 23 booster boxes, or roughly $9,300, to chase a $197 single. The EV in this guide uses that tier. The card database counts the six inside Rare Ultra, with nothing to mark them as alternate arts, so Pullnomics keeps its own list of them, taken from TCGplayer's product names and checked against the source's card count. The six get the 1 in 135 rate, and the other 24 Rare Ultras share the 1 in 50.5 rate, about 1 in 1,212 packs each. Before September 20, 2026 the EV left the alternate-art tier out and gave all 30 an equal share of the 1 in 50.5 rate, about 1 in 1,515 packs each; on the same prices the pack EV came to about $2.89, then about $3.19 with that tier, and about $3.27 with the VMAX & VSTAR tier counted as well. The Astral Radiance pull-rate page lists every tier.

Inside the gallery, the 1 in 24 tier holds 18 cards, so with every card taken as equally likely a specific one such as Starmie V is about 1 in 432 packs.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

For Machamp V #172, or any one alternate art, the single costs about $197 at most, and one box is about a 1 in 23 shot at a named alternate art.

The gallery compares the same way. The twelve most valuable gallery cards cost about $332 in all, less than one booster box, and each of the other 18 is under $9.

For a complete set the gap is wider still. Recomputed on September 27, 2026, the $901 that buys one of everything pays for about 79 packs at the box price, which average a little over two of the 30 Rare Ultras, alternate arts included.

For a deck, the 19 Rare Holo V cards average about $1.24 apiece as singles, and a pack holds one about once in 7.5 packs.

If the point is the fun of opening, a loose pack at about $10.67 holds about $3.27 in cards on average.

How to buy it cheaper

On Pullnomics, every Astral Radiance card page and sealed product page, code cards aside, carries the TCGplayer market price, its history, the figure that marks 12 percent below market, and a pair of eBay buttons, except that, as of October 8, 2026, a page whose market is under $5, more than 10 percent above TCGplayer's highest listing or more than 25 percent above its middle listing gives no below-market figure and only the uncapped button. 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. 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.

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 $362 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. Under the Deal Score method on the methodology page, Machamp V #172 qualifies near $173 landed in Near Mint. Since October 8, 2026 the method scores only a card listing stated as Near Mint, so a Lightly Played copy, or one that states no condition, gets no score. 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

As of September 20, 2026 Astral Radiance is a $3.27 pack that costs about $10.67 loose and about $11.44 inside a booster box. About 37 percent of that EV comes from the Trainer Gallery, about 60 cents from the six alternate arts, and the rainbow and gold cards add little. The main set's value sits in six alternate arts, and the published alternate-art rate puts Machamp V #172 at about 1 in 810 packs. The Astral Radiance set page lists every card, and the capped eBay search on each card page that has one shows whether a copy is listed under market right now.