Is Black Bolt worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

A Black Bolt pack holds about 26 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and the two most valuable cards in the set are not part of that figure. As of September 25, 2026 a loose pack sells for about $14.94 and the cards in it come to about $3.94 at raw market prices, an EV ratio of about 0.26. Across the sealed EV board a typical booster bundle holds a little under 30 cents per dollar and a typical Elite Trainer Box about 15 to 20 cents, so Black Bolt sits in ordinary company on the ratio while being an unusual set underneath it.

Black Bolt released alongside White Flare and the two are near mirrors of each other: same day, same size, same structure, and ratios within a hundredth of one another.

Two things qualify that number and both cut the same way. No published pack-opening count covers this set, so the site values it on Scarlet and Violet era averages rather than measured rates for Black Bolt itself. And about 31 percent of the value of one of every card sits in two cards that carry no rate at all, so the EV is built without them.

What Black Bolt is

Black Bolt released on July 18, 2025 as a Scarlet and Violet set with the code BLK. The checklist runs to 86 printed numbers and 174 cards in the database once the numbered extras are counted.

The shape of it is what makes it unusual. Sixty nine of those cards are Illustration Rares, close to 40 percent of everything printed, and they carry the set rather than a handful of ultra rares at the top. The median card is about $11.13 and 96 cards sit at $10 or more, which is high for a modern set and follows directly from that structure.

The other half of the shape is what is cheap. The six Double Rares average about $0.69 and the dearest of them, Genesect ex #67, is about $1.14. The eight Ultra Rares average about $2.08. In most Scarlet and Violet sets the ex cards are the first thing a player checks; here they are the cheapest tier on the sheet, and an Illustration Rare of a common Pokemon is worth many times a full art ex.

The chase cards

Victini #171 is the most valuable card in the set at about $627.44, and the card database files it as a plain Rare. The set's ten other Rares hold about $2.42 between them, so it is not a rare in any sense the rest of that group shares.

Next to it, Zekrom ex #172 at about $625.23 is the set's only Black White Rare. After those two the drop is steep: Zekrom ex #166, a Special Illustration Rare, is about $278.35, and Seismitoad #105 leads the Illustration Rares at about $221.32.

Ten cards in the set reach $50 or more. The seven Special Illustration Rares average about $81.33, and the 69 Illustration Rares average about $23.23, which is the number that matters most for anyone opening packs, because that tier is where the volume is.

Pull rates and what "1 in N" means

The pull rates below are era averages, not counts from Black Bolt packs. The source behind the site's per-set rates does not cover this set, so the Scarlet and Violet era figures stand in: a Double Rare about 1 in 6 packs, an Ultra Rare about 1 in 15, an Illustration Rare about 1 in 12.5 and a Special Illustration Rare about 1 in 80. The block below says so under the table, and the site's own product pages mark the set "era default" for the same reason.

That caveat carries more weight here than it would on a normal set, because Black Bolt is not shaped like the sets those averages were drawn from. A set printing 69 Illustration Rares is not obviously printing them at the same frequency as a set printing 25 of them, and nothing published settles the question either way.

Within a tier every card is treated as equally likely, which is what turns a tier rate into odds on one card. One Illustration Rare about every 12.5 packs across 69 cards puts any one named Illustration Rare near 1 in 860 packs. One named Special Illustration Rare is about 1 in 560, one named Ultra Rare about 1 in 120 and one named Double Rare about 1 in 36. A nine pack Elite Trainer Box averages about 0.7 Illustration Rares and about one Special Illustration Rare every nine boxes.

Sealed EV

The $3.94 a pack splits by tier: Illustration Rares about $1.86, Special Illustration Rares about $1.02, Ultra Rares about $0.14 and Double Rares about $0.12, with the remaining $0.81 or so the baseline for the ordinary slots. The Illustration Rare line alone is about 47 percent of the pack, and the two cheap ex tiers together are about 6 percent.

Black Bolt has no booster box. Its packs reach shelves in bundles, Elite Trainer Boxes and collections, and the loose pack is the cheapest way to buy one. Per pack, a loose pack is about $14.94, the Booster Bundle about $16.91 for six, the Elite Trainer Box about $18.19 for nine, the Elite Trainer Box case about $20.68 for 90, and the Pokemon Center Elite Trainer Box about $24.96 for 11. The ratios follow the same order, from about 0.26 on the loose pack down to about 0.16 on the Pokemon Center box, where the extra money buys the box itself rather than more packs.

Net EV is lower again. The site subtracts a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of shipping for each card worth a dollar or more, and counts cheaper cards as bulk: about $2.81 a pack against $3.94 gross. Against a $14.94 pack that is the figure to hold in mind, because it is what the cards would clear rather than what they list at. How that is computed is set out at /methodology and in how we compute sealed EV.

What the EV leaves out

Two cards, and they are the two dearest in the set.

Victini #171 is filed as a plain Rare, a rarity the site treats as part of the ordinary slots of a pack rather than as a hit. At $627.44 it is far too valuable for that treatment, so the site excludes it from the pack's baseline rather than letting one card set the value of every common slot, and no published rate exists to count it as a hit instead. Zekrom ex #172 is the set's only Black White Rare and no rate covers that tier either.

Together those two are about 31 percent of the value of one of every card in the set, and none of it reaches the $3.94. The figure is a floor on that account, and a reader comparing Black Bolt with a set whose chase cards are all counted is not comparing like with like. This is stated on the product pages too, in the notes under the per rarity table.

Who opens it and who buys singles

The arithmetic points in different directions depending on which card is wanted.

For one named Illustration Rare, packs are a long road: about 1 in 860, or roughly 96 Elite Trainer Boxes on average for a specific card. The same card as a single is a single purchase at market, and the tier averages about $23.23. For Illustration Rares as a group the position is different, because a reader who wants any of the 69 gets one about every 12.5 packs and the tier's spread runs from a few dollars up to Seismitoad's $221.32.

For players, the set is cheap. The six Double Rares average about $0.69 and the eight Ultra Rares about $2.08, so one of each Double Rare comes to about $4.14 at market, against about $14.94 for one pack. One of each Double Rare and Ultra Rare together is about $20.78.

For the two top cards, no pack maths applies at all: neither carries a published rate, so the odds on them are unknown rather than long.

Buying it below market

Every Black Bolt card and sealed product page carries the TCGplayer market price, its history, the price that counts as 12 percent below market, and two eBay buttons. The first shows Buy It Now listings from US sellers capped under that below market price; the second shows every current listing, lowest first. If the capped search is empty, nothing is listed below market at that moment. The price cap applies to the item price, so add shipping yourself: a listing only counts as below market when the landed price is at least 12 percent under the adjusted market price, and a seller's own "was" price counts for nothing.

The block below opens eBay searches for this set's main sealed products, already filtered under the below market price.

Bottom line

Black Bolt holds about 26 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price on a loose pack as of September 25, 2026, about 0.23 on a bundle and about 0.22 on an Elite Trainer Box, against roughly 15 to 20 cents for a typical Elite Trainer Box on the board. The value is spread rather than stacked: 69 Illustration Rares carry about 47 percent of a pack, while the ex cards that usually lead a Scarlet and Violet set average under a dollar. Two caveats travel with every figure here. The rates are era averages because no published count covers this set, and its unusual shape is exactly the case such averages handle worst. And the two most valuable cards in the set, together about 31 percent of the value of one of every card, carry no rate and are not in the EV at all.