Is Chilling Reign worth opening? Box EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

No Chilling Reign product with an EV holds its sealed price in raw card value: ratios run from about 0.08 to 0.22. As of September 20, 2026 a Chilling Reign booster box is about $482, and the average pulls from its 36 packs are worth about $92 at TCGplayer market prices, before any selling fees. The EV ratio is about 0.19, or roughly 19 cents of raw card value for each dollar of sealed price. Typical booster boxes on the Sealed EV board show roughly 30 to 35 cents. The set is out of print, so the sealed price includes a collector premium for sealed product itself. The top card, Blaziken VMAX #201, is an alternate art at about $383, and the published rate for the set's three alternate-art VMAX cards works out to about 1 in 1,365 packs for that one card.

What Chilling Reign is

Chilling Reign, set code CRE, belongs to the Sword & Shield series and was released on June 18, 2021. Its single checklist has 233 cards: a printed count of 198 plus 35 with higher numbers, the same count as its 23 Rare Rainbow and 12 Rare Secret cards combined. The other hits by printed rarity are 15 Rare Holo V, 8 Rare Holo VMAX and 39 Rare Ultra cards.

Products with a pack count on the site include the 36-pack booster box, eight-pack Elite Trainer Boxes for Ice Rider Calyrex and Shadow Rider Calyrex (10 packs in the Pokémon Center versions), the four-pack Build & Battle Box, loose and sleeved packs and blisters. The V Boxes, the Fun Pack and the Build & Battle display have no pack count on the site, so no EV.

The numbers

The block below is drawn from the Chilling Reign set page and covers all 233 cards.

As of September 27, 2026, the median card is worth 29 cents. At September 20, 2026 prices, 35 cards are worth $10 or more and nine are worth $50 or more. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about 37 cents, a figure that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one. Recomputed on September 27, 2026, one copy of every card at market comes to about $2,042. Those nine cards make up about $1,267 of it, about 62 percent, which leaves about $775 for the remaining 224. At September 20, 2026 prices, Blaziken VMAX #201 alone is about 19 percent of the set, and Galarian Moltres V #177 at about $235 brings two cards to about 30 percent.

Sealed EV by product

Sealed EV is what a product's packs hold on average, with each card counted at its current TCGplayer market price. The formula is in the methodology. Every Chilling Reign pack works out at about $2.57 of expected cards.

The EV ratio is gross EV divided by the sealed market price: about $92 over about $482 for the booster box, or 0.19. Net EV, after a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of shipping per card worth $1 or more, is about $60.

A typical Elite Trainer Box on the board holds about 15 to 20 cents per dollar. Chilling Reign's ratio is low because the sealed price is high: about $13.40 a pack against $2.57 of expected cards is the collector premium on an out-of-print box, not a flaw in the cards.

A loose booster pack is about $12, less than the box's price per pack, for a ratio of about 0.21. The five-pack Booster Pack Art Bundle, about $59, is the highest row at about 0.22. The Elite Trainer Boxes, about $144 and $152 for eight packs, are both at about 0.14, and the 10-pack Pokémon Center versions both at about 0.13. The lowest row, the Blaziken Premium Checklane Blister, is about $34 for one pack: about 0.08. EV counts packs only, so anything else in a blister or an Elite Trainer Box adds nothing.

The ten alternate-art V cards, at 1 in 147 packs and a mean of about $79.92, add about 54 cents of the $2.57, and the three alternate-art VMAX cards, at 1 in 455 and about $163, add about 36 cents. The 29 regular full arts, at 1 in 27 and about $8.62, add about 32 cents, the 20 rainbow cards, at 1 in 122 and about $10.73, about 9 cents, and Rare Holo VMAX, at 1 in 30 and about $2.44, about 8 cents.

Two tiers rest on era averages: the source lists no rate for this set's 15 regular Pokémon V cards (Rare Holo V) or its 12 gold Rare Secret cards, so the site uses the Sword & Shield era averages: 1 in 8 packs and 1 in 100. The regular V cards, at about $1.14, add about 14 cents, and the Rare Secret cards, Snorlax #224 at about $139 among them, at about $18.39, add about 18 cents.

The rest, about 85 cents, is the baseline for common, uncommon and rare slots. Chase share, the part of hit EV from the rarest tiers, is about 68 percent, because both alternate-art tiers count towards it.

Chase cards

Here are the set's eight highest-priced cards.

Blaziken VMAX #201, listed as Rare Rainbow, leads at about $383. Galarian Moltres V #177 (Rare Ultra) follows at about $235, then Snorlax #224 (Rare Secret) at about $139 and Galarian Slowking V #179 (Rare Ultra) at about $115. The other four, led by Zeraora V #166 at about $93, run down to about $66.

By printed rarity, Rare Ultra averages about $26.90 over 39 cards, alternate arts included, roughly $1,049 in total. Nine of the alternate arts account for about $775 of that, and the other 30 cards average about $9. Take Blaziken VMAX #201 out of Rare Rainbow and the other 22 average about $15. One of them is a second Blaziken VMAX, #200, with the same printed rarity, at about $31: it is a rainbow card, not an alternate art, so the EV counts it in the rainbow tier. In Rare Secret, the 11 cards other than Snorlax average about $7.

These are raw Near Mint prices. A PSA 10 of a modern English card usually sells for more than a raw Near Mint copy, but hobby guides do not agree on the size of the gap: see raw vs graded.

Pull rates

This set has published pull rates of its own for five tiers, not an era-wide stand-in: each is the midpoint of pack-opening counts for Chilling Reign gathered in September 2026. Sources are in the methodology.

That table has seven rows. Five are published rates: its Rare Ultra and Rare Rainbow rows are the source's regular full-art and rainbow tiers, and the two alternate-art tiers have rows of their own. The Rare Holo V and Rare Secret rows are labeled era average. A 36-pack box averages about 1.3 regular full arts (1 in 27 packs) and 1.2 Rare Holo VMAX cards (1 in 30), with a rainbow card (1 in 122) in roughly one box out of four. Counting the alternate-art and Rare Secret rows as well, the chance of at least one Rare Ultra, Rare Rainbow or Rare Secret of any kind is about 6.3 percent per pack and about 90 percent in a booster box, so roughly one box in ten has none.

Alternate arts have published tiers of their own in this set: about 1 in 147 packs for any of 10 alternate-art V cards and about 1 in 455 for any of three alternate-art VMAX cards. The counts stop at the tier, not the card, so take the cards of a tier as equally likely. Galarian Moltres V #177, an alternate-art V, is then about 1 in 1,470 packs: about 41 boxes, roughly $19,700 at September 20, 2026 prices, for a card of about $235. Blaziken VMAX #201, an alternate-art VMAX, is about 1 in 1,365 packs, about 38 boxes or roughly $18,300.

Both tiers feed the EV above. The site's card data has the printed rarity and no alternate-art mark, so Pullnomics keeps its own list of this set's 13 alternate arts, taken from TCGplayer's product names and checked against the card counts the source gives for each tier. Those cards get the alternate-art rates. The 29 regular full arts share the 1 in 27 rate, about 1 in 783 packs for any one of them, and the 20 rainbow cards share 1 in 122, about 1 in 2,440 each. Before September 20, 2026 the EV left the alternate-art tiers out and split each printed rarity's rate evenly: about 1 in 1,053 packs for any one of 39 Rare Ultra cards and about 1 in 2,806 for any one of 23 Rare Rainbow cards. That made the alternate-art V cards easier to pull than the counts say and every other card here harder. The two errors nearly cancelled: at September 20, 2026 prices the regular full-art, rainbow and two alternate-art tiers add about $1.31 a pack, against about $1.25 for the two printed rarities split evenly. The era-average tiers were added the same day, and at those prices the pack EV is about $2.57. Every published tier is on the Chilling Reign pull-rate page.

Opening packs versus buying singles

For one named card, on the alternate-art tiers, one box at about $482 has about a 2.4 percent chance of holding Galarian Moltres V #177 and about 2.6 percent for Blaziken VMAX #201.

For the whole set, one of every card is about $2,042 as of September 27, 2026. The same money is a little over four boxes, about 153 packs. Those packs average six or seven Rare Ultra pulls across 39 cards, alternate arts included, and one or two Rare Rainbow pulls across 23, duplicates included.

Checking prices below market

Every Chilling Reign card and sealed product page, code cards aside, shows the TCGplayer market price, its history, the price 12 percent below market, and two eBay buttons, except where the market price is under $5, more than 10 percent above the dearest copy TCGplayer lists or more than 25 percent above TCGplayer's middle listing, which leaves no below-market price and only the uncapped button. One button opens eBay's own search results: Buy It Now listings from US sellers, sorted by price plus shipping, without proxies, lots, code cards or look-alike products, and capped at 12 percent under market. The other opens 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.

The cap looks at the item price alone, so add shipping yourself. A listing counts as below market only when its landed price, item plus shipping, is at least 12 percent under the market price: about $424 for the booster box. If the capped search is empty, nothing is listed below market at that moment. The uncapped button shows every current price, and eBay's own "Save this search" emails new matches.

Since October 8, 2026 the Deal Score steps in the methodology score only a card listing stated as Near Mint, because the site has no sourced price for a played copy: a played copy, or a listing that states no condition, gets no Deal Score. For a Near Mint Blaziken VMAX #201 the 12 percent line is a landed price of about $337. eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $200 or more in the US. Two Chilling Reign cards have a market price above $200: Blaziken VMAX #201 and Galarian Moltres V #177. For sealed product of this age, how to spot resealed booster boxes and packs covers what to check.

Bottom line

Chilling Reign's sealed price is a collector's price. A box is about $482 against about $92 of average pulls at TCGplayer market prices before any selling fees, an EV ratio of about 0.19. A pack holding about $2.57 of expected cards costs about $12 loose or about $13.40 by the box. On the published alternate-art tiers Galarian Moltres V #177 is about 1 in 1,470 packs and Blaziken VMAX #201 about 1 in 1,365. Current prices for every card and product are on the Chilling Reign set page.