Is Chaos Rising worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

No Chaos Rising product holds its price in raw card value: as of September 20, 2026, EV ratios run from about 0.08 to about 0.37. A booster box at about $192 holds roughly $71 of expected card value, an EV ratio near 0.37 that is the lowest of the three most recent Mega Evolution main sets, below Perfect Order at about 0.46 and Pitch Black at about 0.44. The Special Illustration Rare odds are actually better than Pitch Black's, but the cards around the chase tier are cheap: Ultra Rares average under $3 and Illustration Rares under $4, so a box without a Special Illustration Rare, which is about two boxes in three, holds very little. Mega Greninja ex costs about $162 as a single, less than one box.

What Chaos Rising is

Chaos Rising released on May 22, 2026 as the fourth main set of the Mega Evolution series (set code CRI). The printed checklist is 86 cards and the full set is 122 with the secret rares numbered above the printed total. Mega Greninja ex headlines, joined by Mega Dragalge ex, Mega Floette ex and Cinccino ex, with a Kalos flavor running through the Illustration Rares (Froakie, Frogadier, Chespin, Xerneas).

The rarity ladder is the standard Mega-era stack: Double Rares (regular ex), Ultra Rares (full-art ex and Trainers), Illustration Rares (single-Pokémon art), Special Illustration Rares (alternate-art ex and Trainers) and one Mega Hyper Rare, the gold Mega Greninja ex at 122/86. There is no Mega Attack Rare slot here, so the tier between Ultra Rare and Special Illustration Rare is empty.

The live set-level numbers from the Chaos Rising set page are below.

The chase cards

Every one of the 122 cards is priced, but the median card, recomputed on September 27, 2026, is about 16 cents, and only seven cards are worth $10 or more. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about 25 cents, a figure that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one. Here are the current top cards.

This is one of the most top-heavy small sets of the era. The two Mega Greninja ex secret rares, the Special Illustration Rare at about $162 and the Mega Hyper Rare at about $148, together are worth more than half of the set's total summed market value (about $562 across all 122 cards). The remaining five Special Illustration Rares are much cheaper: Cinccino ex at about $51, then Mega Dragalge ex, Mega Floette ex, AZ's Tranquility and Roxie's Performance in a band between roughly $18 and $30. Those seven cards together hold about 80 percent of the set's raw value.

Everything else is thin. The best Ultra Rare is the full-art Mega Greninja ex at about $9, and the 18 Ultra Rares average about $2.70, against about $3.65 in Perfect Order and about $4.64 in Pitch Black. Illustration Rares average about $3.30 and top out under $6. Double Rares average about 61 cents. In practical terms, a Chaos Rising box without a Special Illustration Rare typically yields a handful of $3 to $6 cards and bulk.

Pull rates

The rates below are midpoints of published pack-opening counts collected in September 2026; the Chaos Rising pull-rate page has the full tier list.

For a 36-pack booster box, those rates mean about eight Double Rares (1 in 4.5), three or four Illustration Rares (1 in 9.5) and only about two Ultra Rares, because the Ultra Rare rate of 1 in 16.5 is the stingiest of the Mega era. Nearly every box (about 99.9 percent) contains at least one hit above Double Rare. The Special Illustration Rare, at 1 in 82.5 packs, comes out to roughly one every two to three boxes, so about a third of boxes contain one. The Mega Hyper Rare at about 1 in 975 packs is roughly one per 27 boxes.

A nine-pack Elite Trainer Box has about an 81 percent chance of at least one hit above Double Rare and roughly a 1 in 10 chance of a Special Illustration Rare.

Sealed EV

Expected value is the average raw market value of the cards inside a product, built from the pull rates above and the mean price of each rarity. This is the live table for every Chaos Rising product we track; every set is compared on the sealed EV board.

As of September 20, 2026 one Chaos Rising pack carries about $1.97 of expected value: about 62 cents from Special Illustration Rares, 35 cents from Illustration Rares, 16 cents from Ultra Rares, 15 cents from the Mega Hyper Rare, 13 cents from Double Rares and the rest from the common, uncommon and rare slots.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by the product's market price. The booster box at about $192 carries about $71 of expected card value, a ratio of roughly 0.37, slightly above the roughly 30 to 35 cents per dollar of a typical booster box across the site's whole board. Net EV, which subtracts a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 shipping per card worth at least $1 and treats sub-$1 cards as bulk, is about $43 for the box, so the net figure is under a quarter of the box price.

Chase share is where Chaos Rising stands out: about 54 percent of the hit EV comes from the Special Illustration Rares and the Mega Hyper Rare, above Perfect Order at about 45 percent and Pitch Black at about 49 percent, though below Phantasmal Flames at about 67 percent. Because roughly two boxes in three have no SIR, most boxes land well under the $71 average and a few land far above it. The EV figure describes the long run, not your box.

Break-even for the booster box is the gross EV, about $71. No one sells the box for that; the gap between $71 and $192 is the price of the entertainment.

Ranking products by EV per dollar: loose booster packs at about $5.33 and the booster box are level at about 0.37, followed by the booster bundle at about 0.32. Sealed cases carry no EV on the site. The Elite Trainer Box sits near 0.26, meaning you pay about $69 for roughly $18 of expected cards plus accessories. The Pokémon Center ETB and the Build & Battle Box are both at about 0.18, the premium checklane blisters at about 0.13, and the two single-pack blisters named Zacian/Mimikyu and Reshiram/Moltres, which cost about $24 for one pack (ratio about 0.08), are lowest, against about $7.33 for the Toxel single-pack blister (ratio about 0.27).

Who should open this

Players: the playable ex cards are Double Rares that average about 61 cents as singles, and the best of them is about 94 cents, against about $5.33 for one loose pack.

Set collectors: the whole set summed at market is about $562, a little under the price of three booster boxes, and the 120 cards other than the two Greninja secret rares sum to about $252. A box delivers its commons in duplicate and, about two times in three, no Special Illustration Rare.

Chase hunters: the Mega Greninja ex SIR is about $162 as a single, less than one box. If the six Special Illustration Rares were printed evenly, a specific one would be roughly a 1 in 500 pack pull, about 14 boxes or roughly $2,600 of sealed product at the September 20, 2026 box price, and the Mega Hyper Rare is rarer still.

People who like opening packs: the price per pack is about $5.33 loose and about $5.34 in a booster box, against about $6.14 in the booster bundle and about $7.67 in the Elite Trainer Box, which adds accessories. Most boxes hold a few $3 to $6 cards and no Special Illustration Rare.

How to buy it cheaper

A Chaos Rising listing only counts as below market when its landed price (item plus shipping) is at least 12 percent under market; seller "was $X" claims count for nothing. Each Chaos Rising 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 sits 12 percent below market (none when the market is under $5, more than 10 percent above the highest TCGplayer listing, or more than 25 percent above the middle one), 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.

Compare landed price to the TCGplayer market price, never the sticker price. For sealed product, shipping and sales tax are the whole game: a $185 box with $15 shipping is not cheaper than a $195 box shipped free. The price cap in the eBay search applies to the item price, so add shipping yourself before deciding. If the under-market button on the booster box page comes back empty, nothing is listed below market at that moment: open the second button to see every current price, then use eBay's own "Save this search" on that results page so eBay emails new matches.

For singles, condition matters. Site prices are Near Mint, and since October 8, 2026 the Deal Score method scores only a card listing stated as Near Mint: a Lightly Played Greninja SIR, or one whose condition is not stated, gets no score, so read the condition descriptor before assuming a low price is a discount. The methodology page covers the full Deal Score, written out so you can apply it by hand to any listing.

Bottom line

As of September 20, 2026 the Chaos Rising booster box holds about 37 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, the lowest of the three most recent Mega Evolution main sets, and over half of the hit value is locked in seven cards led by two Mega Greninja ex secret rares, which most boxes will not contain. For singles, start from the set page, open the card you want, such as Mega Greninja ex at about $162, and use the eBay button on its page to look for a copy listed under market. Among sealed products, loose packs and the booster box carry the highest ratio, about 0.37, against about 0.26 for the Elite Trainer Box, and the difference between the box price and the roughly $71 of expected cards is the cost of the fun.