Is Champion's Path worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

As of September 28, 2026, a Champion's Path Elite Trainer Box holds about 16 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and about half of the pack value behind that figure is two Charizards counted at era-average odds. Prices in this guide are TCGplayer market values from TCGplayer's September 27 update. The Elite Trainer Box sells for about $216 and its 10 packs are expected to hold about $34 of cards at raw market, an EV ratio of about 0.16. A loose pack at about $20 comes to about 0.18, and the Marnie Premium Collection, at about 0.20, has the highest ratio of any Champion's Path product with both an EV and a market price. Across the sealed EV board a typical Elite Trainer Box holds roughly 15 to 20 cents per dollar, so this one sits inside the usual range, near its lower end.

The pack-opening datasets behind the site's per-set rates do not cover Champion's Path, so every rate here is a Sword & Shield era average. A Rare Secret and a Rare Rainbow are each counted at 1 in 100 packs because that is the era figure, and those two tiers carry about 52 percent of the $3.43 pack EV. Every rarity above the ordinary slots has an era rate, so none is missing from the EV, but it cannot include odds specific to this set, any unevenness within a tier, or anything in a product besides its booster packs.

What Champion's Path is

Champion's Path is a Sword & Shield series special set released on September 25, 2020, with the set code CPA. Its printed checklist runs to 73 numbers and the card database carries 80 cards, seven of them numbered above that. The ordinary slots draw on 20 Commons, 24 Uncommons and 10 Rare Holos. Above them sit 11 Rare Holo V, 3 Rare Holo VMAX, 5 Rare Ultras, 5 Rare Rainbows and 2 Rare Secrets.

Champion's Path has no booster box. Its packs come in a 10-pack Elite Trainer Box, where a Sword & Shield main-set box holds eight, in loose packs, sold singly or as a four-pack art bundle, and in the eight-pack Marnie Premium Collection. Pin collections and the Hatterene V and Dubwool V collections are also filed under the set, with no pack count on the site. The set is out of print, so every sealed price includes a collector premium for the sealed product itself, a large part of why the ratios sit where they do.

The block below reads the set's 80 cards and updates daily.

All 80 cards carry a price. The median card is about 23 cents, three cards reach $10 and two reach $50. One of every card comes to about $559, roughly 2.6 Elite Trainer Boxes. The two Charizards are about $472 of that, about 84 percent, and the other 78 cards together come to about $88, less than half the price of one Elite Trainer Box.

The chase cards

The grid below ranks the set's eight most valuable cards on each day's prices.

Charizard V #79, a Rare Secret illustrated by 5ban Graphics, leads at about $262, more than one Elite Trainer Box on its own. Charizard VMAX #74, a Rare Rainbow by aky CG Works, follows at about $210. Then the drop: Gardevoir VMAX #76, another Rare Rainbow, is about $18, under a tenth of the card above it, and the only other card at $10 or more. Drednaw VMAX #75 and Alcremie VMAX #23 come next at about $7.16 each.

The Rare Secret tier holds two cards and averages about $131, yet neither card is near that figure: one is the Charizard at about $262 and the other, Suspicious Food Tin #80, is worth about a dollar. The five Rare Rainbows average about $48, and the Charizard VMAX is about 87 percent of their combined $242; the other four run from Gardevoir VMAX at about $18 down to Kabu #77 at about $3.04.

Below them, the three Rare Holo VMAX average about $4.75, the five Rare Ultras about $2.03 and the 11 Rare Holo V about $1.72, led by Lucario V #27 at about $3.76.

Pull rates and what "1 in N" means

No rate in this section was counted from Champion's Path packs. The era averages stand in: a Rare Holo V about 1 in 8 packs, a Rare Holo VMAX about 1 in 22, a Rare Ultra about 1 in 30, and a Rare Secret and a Rare Rainbow about 1 in 100 each. With no set-specific counts, the set has no pull-rate page of its own.

The table lists the five tiers the set prints, and its note marks the rates as era defaults.

The era table gives one rate per tier, so the site treats every card in a tier as equally likely, and one named card is the tier rate times the cards in the tier. One named Rare Holo V is about 1 in 88 packs, one named Rare Holo VMAX about 1 in 66 and one named Rare Ultra about 1 in 150. Charizard V #79 shares a two-card tier, which puts it at about 1 in 200 packs; Charizard VMAX #74 and Gardevoir VMAX #76 share a five-card tier at about 1 in 500 each.

A 10-pack Elite Trainer Box averages about 1.25 Rare Holo V, 0.45 Rare Holo VMAX, a third of a Rare Ultra and a tenth each of a Rare Secret and a Rare Rainbow. The site counts Rare Ultras, Rare Rainbows and Rare Secrets as hits, not a regular V or VMAX, so about one pack in 19 holds a hit. On that definition an Elite Trainer Box has about a 42 percent chance of at least one, the Premium Collection about 35 percent and the art bundle about 19 percent. About five in eight of those hits are Rare Ultras, which average about $2.03, and at these rates an Elite Trainer Box has about a 7 percent chance of holding at least one of the two Charizards.

Sealed EV

At the era rates a pack comes to about $3.43 of raw card value. By tier the EV splits into the Rare Secret line at about $1.31, the Rare Rainbows at about $0.48, the Rare Holo VMAX at about $0.22, the Rare Holo V at about $0.21 and the Rare Ultras at about $0.07, with the remaining $1.14 or so the baseline for the rare slot, the reverse holo and the commons and uncommons.

The Rare Secret line alone is about 38 percent of the pack EV, and nearly all of it is Charizard V #79: at 1 in 200 packs and about $262, that card adds about $1.31 a pack by itself. Add the Charizard VMAX's share of the rainbow line, about $0.42, and the two Charizards make up about half of the $3.43. Chase share, the part of the five rated tiers' contribution to a pack that comes from Rare Secrets and Rare Rainbows, is about 78 percent.

The live table below updates daily and ranks the loose pack, the art bundle and the Elite Trainer Box; the Premium Collection's EV is on its own product page, and the footer counts it as unranked.

Per pack, the Marnie Premium Collection is about $17 (about $139 for eight), a loose pack about $20, the art bundle about $21 (about $84 for four) and the Elite Trainer Box about $22. Every pack carries the same EV, so the ratios run the other way: about 0.20, 0.18, 0.16 and 0.16.

Net EV takes off a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of shipping for each card worth $1 or more, and counts cheaper cards as bulk: about $23 for the Elite Trainer Box, 11 cents per dollar, and about $2.30 for a loose pack, 12 cents. The method is set out at /methodology and in how sealed EV works.

The Elite Trainer Box case counts as 10 boxes, 100 packs, with a gross EV of about $343 and no ratio, because the data holds no TCGplayer market price for it. The pin and V collections carry no EV, because the site gives a collection a pack count only once its contents are verified and every pack is of the set it is filed under. Among them is the Champion's Path product with the highest TCGplayer market price in the data, the Stow-on-Side Special Pin Collection at about $273.

What the EV cannot include

Every card above the ordinary slots sits in a rated tier, so no chase card is left out of the $3.43. The rare slot is priced at the model's 25-cent fallback rather than from the 10 Rare Holos, whose mean is about 26 cents. The limits are these.

• Odds measured on this set. If Champion's Path printed Rare Secrets and Rare Rainbows half as often as the era average, the pack EV would fall to about $2.53; twice as often, and it would rise to about $5.23. The site has no count for this set that says which way the truth lies.
• Uneven odds inside a tier. The model gives Charizard V #79 the same chance as the set's other Rare Secret, Suspicious Food Tin #80, and nothing in the site's data says the two are printed in equal numbers. If they are not, 1 in 200 is wrong in one direction or the other.
• Anything that is not a booster pack. The EV multiplies packs by the pack value, so the rest of an Elite Trainer Box or of the Premium Collection has no value in it.
• Graded copies. Every card price on the site is a raw Near Mint market price.
• The collector premium. The ratio sets the cards against the price of an out-of-print product, and nothing in the EV measures that premium.

Who opens it and who buys singles

For the chase cards the pack route is long. At the era rates, Charizard V #79, about $262 as a single, takes an average of about 200 packs, or 20 Elite Trainer Boxes at about $216 each, roughly $4,320. Charizard VMAX #74, about $210, takes about 500 packs, 50 boxes or roughly $10,800.

For the V, VMAX and Rare Ultra cards, one of each of the 11 Rare Holo V comes to about $19, a little under one loose pack. Adding the three Rare Holo VMAX and the five Rare Ultras brings one of each of those 19 cards to about $43, about a fifth of one Elite Trainer Box.

Buying it below market

Every Champion's Path card page, and every sealed product page with a TCGplayer market price, shows that price, its history and an eBay button for Buy It Now listings from US sellers, lowest price plus shipping first. Where the market price is $5 or more, and not more than 10 percent above the dearest copy TCGplayer lists, the page adds the price that counts as 12 percent below market and a first button capped under it; at the prices in this guide, 75 of the 80 cards sit under $5 and get only the uncapped search. An empty capped search means nothing is listed below market when it runs. The cap applies to the item price, so add shipping: a listing counts as below market only when its landed price is at least 12 percent under the adjusted market price, and a seller's "was" price counts for nothing. eBay's own "Save this search" emails new matches.

eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $200 or more in the US, a sale price, not a market price. The capped search stops at about $230 for Charizard V #79, so only its listings from $200 up to the cap qualify, and at about $185 for Charizard VMAX #74, under the line, so no listing in its capped search does. For sealed product of a set released in 2020, the guide to spotting resealed product sets out what to check.

The block below is the site's eBay feed for this set: listings matched to an exact Champion's Path card or sealed product and scored at least 12 percent under market after shipping, with links to every deal for the set and to a set alert.

What changes and what stays

The dated figures are every price and everything computed from one: the $3.43 pack EV, product EVs, ratios, price per pack, the median card, the counts at $10 and $50, the one-of-every-card total, the Charizards' shares and the eBay caps. The set statistics, chase grid and EV table on this page show each day's values.

The lasting facts are the September 25, 2020 release, the 80-card list and its rarity structure, the pack counts (10 in an Elite Trainer Box, eight in the Premium Collection, four in the art bundle, 100 in the case), which tiers count as hits, and the era-average rates. A published pack-opening count for Champion's Path entering the site's source would give the set its own rates and a pull-rate page and move every EV figure; a revision of the site's Sword & Shield era averages would move them too. A change to the site's hit definition would change which tiers count as hits, the card list changes only if the card database adds or re-files a Champion's Path printing, a verified contents list would give a pin or V collection a pack count and an EV, and a reprint would end the out-of-print status the collector premium rests on.

Bottom line

Champion's Path holds about 16 cents of raw card value per dollar in an Elite Trainer Box, inside the roughly 15 to 20 cents a typical Elite Trainer Box holds on the board, and about 18 in a loose pack and about 20 in the Marnie Premium Collection. Its value is stacked, not spread: two Charizards are about 84 percent of the cost of one of every card and about half of the pack EV, while half the checklist sits at 23 cents or less. Every EV figure counts booster packs only and rests on Sword & Shield era-average odds, because the site's pull-rate source has no count for this set.