Is Destined Rivals worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

No Destined Rivals product holds its price in raw card value: EV ratios run from about 0.07 to about 0.38 as of October 21, 2026. A Destined Rivals booster box sells for about $394, the second highest of the four sets compared in this guide (Journey Together, Destined Rivals, Mega Evolution and Phantasmal Flames) and about $2 under the Phantasmal Flames box, and the cards inside are worth about $115 at raw market, an EV ratio of about 0.29. That is just below the roughly 30 to 35 cents of raw card value per dollar that a typical booster box holds, and the lowest of the four sets. The set itself is strong, with eleven Special Illustration Rares averaging about $86 and Illustration Rares worth more than the other three sets' on average, but the sealed price is about 3.4 times the raw value of the cards inside. Among the products with more than one pack, the four-pack art bundle has the highest ratio, about 0.33, with the six-pack booster bundle a fraction behind.

What Destined Rivals is

Destined Rivals (set code DRI) released on May 30, 2025 in the Scarlet & Violet era. It is a large set: 182 cards in the printed numbering and 244 in total. The rarity names show the SV-era structure: Double Rares are the standard ex cards, Ultra Rares the full-art versions, Illustration Rares the alternate-art single Pokémon, Special Illustration Rares the alternate-art ex and Trainer cards, and Hyper Rares the gold cards. The set is built around Trainer's Pokémon, cards owned by named characters, which is why the top of the list is full of Team Rocket's, Cynthia's, Ethan's and Misty's Pokémon.

Here is where the set stands today.

All 244 cards are priced: 22 are worth $10 or more and five are worth $50 or more. The whole set at market sums to roughly $1,380, narrowly the highest total of the four sets covered here, about $2 above Mega Evolution. As of October 21, 2026, the median card is about $0.21. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about $0.33, a figure that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one.

The chase cards

Here are the most valuable cards in the set right now.

Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex #231, the Special Illustration Rare, is about $347 and accounts for about a quarter of the entire set's market value on its own. Cynthia's Garchomp ex #232 is about $173, Ethan's Ho-Oh ex #230 about $138, Team Rocket's Nidoking ex #233 about $72 and Team Rocket's Moltres ex #229 about $68. Those five SIRs add up to roughly $800, or about 58% of the set.

What sets Destined Rivals apart is the layer below. Misty's Psyduck #193 is an Illustration Rare at about $46, Misty's Lapras #194 about $21 and Ethan's Typhlosion #190 about $18. The 23 Illustration Rares average about $8.85, above the roughly $4.50 to $6.40 IR averages in the other three sets covered here. The six Hyper Rares average about $19, led by the gold Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex #240 at about $46. The 22 Ultra Rares average about $3.30 and the 17 Double Rares under a dollar.

Pull rates and what "1 in N" means

The published pull rates for this set cover three rarities, in packs per hit; the two rows labeled "era average" are explained below the block.

Illustration Rares come about once every 12 packs, Special Illustration Rares about once every 94 packs, and Hyper Rares about once every 149 packs. The source lists no rate for Double Rares or Ultra Rares in this set, so the site uses the Scarlet & Violet era averages: 1 in 6 packs for a Double Rare and 1 in 15 for an Ultra Rare. With Ultra Rares counted as hits, the per-pack hit rate reads about 0.16, or about 1 pack in 6, a little under the roughly 1 in 5 shown for Mega Evolution and Phantasmal Flames. A Double Rare, the standard ex, is not counted as a hit. The full tier list is on the Destined Rivals pull-rate page.

A 36-pack booster box averages three Illustration Rares, about 0.38 Special Illustration Rares (36 ÷ 94) and about 0.24 Hyper Rares, plus about six Double Rares and two or three Ultra Rares at the era averages. Roughly one box in three contains an SIR; the model puts the chance of at least one hit of any kind at more than 99%. If the eleven SIRs are equally likely, a specific one such as the Mewtwo is about 1 in 1,034 packs, or about 29 boxes.

A 9-pack Elite Trainer Box averages under one Illustration Rare and has roughly a 1 in 11 chance at an SIR. The model gives an ETB about a 79% chance of at least one hit, so about one ETB in five opens to nothing better than a Double Rare.

Sealed EV

Here is the expected value of each Destined Rivals product against its current market price.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by market price. Net EV is what you would actually clear on resale after a 15% marketplace fee and $1 shipping per card worth at least $1, with cards under $1 counted as bulk at about two cents. Chase share is the fraction of hit EV that comes from Special Illustration Rares and Hyper Rares. The table ranks boxes, Elite Trainer Boxes, bundles, packs and blisters; the Build & Battle Box and three of the sealed cases carry an EV that it does not rank. The booster bundle case and the Build & Battle Box display carry no pack count on the site and so no EV, and none is quoted here.

The per-pack EV is about $3.21, the second highest of the four sets covered here, behind Phantasmal Flames. Special Illustration Rares add about $0.92 of that, Illustration Rares about $0.74, Ultra Rares about $0.22, Hyper Rares about $0.13 and Double Rares about $0.12, with the Ultra Rare and Double Rare lines at the era-average rates, and the baseline for the common, uncommon and rare slots makes up the remaining $1.09 or so. The ratio is low because of the sealed price. The booster box at about $394 has a gross EV of about $115 and a net EV of about $75, for a ratio of about 0.29. Break-even, where gross EV equals price, is about $115 a box, and the market price is about 3.4 times that.

Per dollar, a loose booster pack at about $8.50 has the highest ratio, about 0.38 as of October 21, 2026, followed by the booster pack art bundle, four packs at about $39, and the six-pack booster bundle at about $59, both about 0.33, and the sleeved booster pack (about $10) and the sleeved art bundle, both about 0.32. The Elite Trainer Box at about $113 is about 0.26, below the box: its packs work out to about $12.60 each against about $10.90 in a box. The half booster box at about $316 for 18 packs is about 0.18, or about $17.60 a pack. The Pokémon Center exclusive ETB at about $418 and the premium checklane blister for Togekiss at about $39 are both about 0.08, and the Skeledirge blister at about $46 is about 0.07; a loose pack is about $8.50, so the one pack inside is about a fifth of each blister's price.

The chase share is about 0.49. About half of the hit value depends on the SIR and Hyper Rare slots, but the Illustration Rares carry a real share, so a box without an SIR still averages about three IRs at about $9 each.

Who should open this

Players: Double Rares, the standard ex cards, average under a dollar as singles and Ultra Rares about $3.30, while a pack costs about $10.90 in a booster box and holds a Double Rare about one time in six.

Set collectors: the 239 cards outside the top five SIRs sum to roughly $580 at market, spread across many cards under a dollar, and the five big SIRs are about $800 together. One of every card at market, about $1,380, is the price of about three and a half booster boxes, and three and a half boxes contain about $404 of raw card value on average.

Chase hunters: the Mewtwo is about $347 as a single. At about 28.7 boxes per expected pull, the sealed route to that one card runs to roughly $11,300 of booster boxes at the October 21, 2026 price.

People who like ripping packs: a pack costs about $8.50 loose, about $9.70 in the art bundle, about $9.80 in the booster bundle, about $10.90 in the booster box and about $12.60 in the Elite Trainer Box, and the ratios fall in the same order, from about 0.38 to about 0.26. Every pack has the same odds, a hit in about one pack in six, whatever it came in.

How to buy it cheaper

Every Destined Rivals sealed product page on this site shows the TCGplayer market price, the price history and the price that counts as 12% below market (none when the market is under $5, more than 10% above the highest TCGplayer listing, or more than 25% above the middle one), which is the figure to hold a listing against once shipping is included. 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% under market; if the site's eBay scan were off, it would show eBay searches for the set's main sealed products instead.

The eBay buttons on the booster box, art bundle and booster bundle pages open eBay's own search results, limited to Buy It Now listings from US sellers, with common junk keywords excluded and sorted by price plus shipping. If no box or bundle is listed under the price today, use eBay's own "Save this search" on that results page so that eBay emails new matches. Compare the landed price, item plus shipping, to the market price for that exact product, and ignore seller strikethrough prices. A box at 20% below market, about $315, would have a ratio of about 0.37, still far below 1.0. The Deal Score method, which you can apply by hand to any listing, is documented at /methodology and every product for this set is on /sets/destined-rivals.

Bottom line

Destined Rivals has the highest set total of the four sets compared here, narrowly, about $1,380, and Illustration Rares that average about $8.85, and its per-pack EV of about $3.21 is the second highest of the four. The booster box costs about $394 and holds about 29 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, the lowest ratio of the four. Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex is about $347 as a single and about 1 in 1,034 packs from sealed product. Among the sealed products, the loose pack at about 0.38 and the four-pack art bundle at about 0.33, with the booster bundle a fraction behind, have the highest ratios, and the booster box at about 0.29 sits below both. Figures are as of October 21, 2026 and move daily; the live board is on /sealed-ev.