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

Verdict

Chaos Rising is a hold. A booster box at about $199 holds roughly $80 of expected card value, an EV ratio near 0.40 that is the weakest of the four most recent Mega Evolution sets. 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, returns very little. If you want Mega Greninja ex, buy it as a single for about $166. Open this set only if opening packs is the point.

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 is about 26 cents, and only seven cards are worth $10 or more. 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 $166 and the Mega Hyper Rare at about $161, together are worth more than half of the set's total summed market value (about $599 across all 122 cards). The remaining five Special Illustration Rares are much cheaper: Cinccino ex at about $53, then Mega Dragalge ex, Mega Floette ex, AZ's Tranquility and Roxie's Performance in a band between roughly $20 and $32. 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 under $9, and the 18 Ultra Rares average about $2.80, the lowest of any recent Mega set. Illustration Rares average about $3.50 and top out under $6. Double Rares average about 75 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.

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 about 1 in 82 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, which is between four and five sealed cases.

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.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by the product's market price. The booster box at about $199 carries about $80 of expected card value, a ratio of roughly 0.40, at the low end of the 0.3 to 0.55 range modern boxes normally occupy. 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 $48 for the box, so the realistic resale of an average box is under a quarter of what you paid.

Chase share is where Chaos Rising stands out, and not in a good way for openers: about 54 percent of the hit EV comes from the Special Illustration Rares and the Mega Hyper Rare, the highest share among the small Mega sets. Because roughly two boxes in three have no SIR, most boxes land well under the $80 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 $80. No one sells the box for that, which is fine; the gap between $80 and $199 is the price of the entertainment.

Ranking products by EV per dollar: loose booster packs at about $5 (ratio about 0.43) and the full booster box case (about 0.43) are the best, with the booster box just behind at about 0.40. The Elite Trainer Box sits near 0.30, meaning you pay about $67 for roughly $20 of expected cards plus accessories. The Pokémon Center ETB at about 0.16 and the single-pack blisters with a promo card, which cost about $25 for one pack (ratio under 0.09), are the worst; with those you are buying the promo, not the pack.

Who should open this

Players: buy singles. The playable ex cards are Double Rares that average about 75 cents and the best of them is about a dollar.

Set collectors: build from singles. The whole set summed at market is about $599, and the non-chase cards are cheap enough that a near-complete set without the two Greninjas costs very little. Boxes are an expensive way to get commons in duplicate.

Chase hunters: buy the single. The Mega Greninja ex SIR is about $166, 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, and the Mega Hyper Rare is rarer still.

People who like opening packs: this is a fine set to rip if you accept the numbers. Prefer loose packs or a booster box over the ETB, and expect most boxes to give back a few $3 to $6 cards.

How to buy it cheaper

Below-market Chaos Rising listings appear here as the eBay scans find them. To qualify, a listing must be at least 12 percent under adjusted market on landed price (item plus shipping), and seller "was $X" claims are ignored.

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. If no qualifying listing is up today, set an alert and let the 15-minute rescans do the watching: /alerts?set=me4.

For singles, condition matters. A Lightly Played Greninja SIR is scored against 85 percent of Near Mint market, so read the condition descriptor before assuming a low price is a discount. The methodology page covers the full Deal Score.

Bottom line

Chaos Rising is a hold. The booster box returns about 40 cents of raw card value per dollar, the lowest of the recent Mega 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. If you want the cards, buy them as singles from the deals page or the set page. If you want to open packs, buy loose packs or a box, not an ETB, and treat the difference between the box price and the roughly $80 of expected cards as the cost of the fun.