Is Journey Together worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict: open it if you want to open something cheap; buy singles if you want the cards. A Journey Together booster box sells for about $240, the cheapest box of the four recent sets covered in these guides, and returns about $91 in cards at raw market, an EV ratio of about 0.38, the best of the four. Both of those are good news for anyone who just likes ripping packs. The catch is that the set is thin: all 190 cards at market add up to roughly $495, only two cards are worth $50 or more, and the per-pack EV of about $2.54 is the lowest of the four. You lose less per box here than anywhere else, but you also pull less. Set collectors and players should buy singles; the whole set costs about two boxes.

What Journey Together is

Journey Together (set code JTG) released on March 28, 2025 in the Scarlet & Violet era, with 159 cards in the printed numbering and 190 in total. The rarity names follow the SV pattern: 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 introduced Trainer's Pokémon to the era, which is why the top cards belong to Lillie, N, Iono and Hop.

Here is where the set stands today.

All 190 cards are priced. The median card is about $0.30, eleven cards are worth $10 or more and two are worth $50 or more. The total market value of the set, about $495, is well under half of the other three sets' totals, which run from about $1,180 to $1,780.

The chase cards

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

Lillie's Clefairy ex #184, the Special Illustration Rare, leads at about $102, roughly a fifth of the set's total value. Salamence ex #187 is about $57, N's Zoroark ex #185 about $46, Iono's Bellibolt ex #183 about $38, Hop's Zacian ex #186 about $31 and Volcanion ex #182 about $19. Those six SIRs average about $49 and together make up roughly $293, or about 59% of the set.

Below them, Articuno #161 at about $20 and N's Reshiram #167 at about $16 lead the eleven Illustration Rares, which average about $7.90. The three Hyper Rares average about $10, an unusually low figure for gold cards; N's Zoroark ex #189 tops them at about $14. The eleven Ultra Rares average about $2.20 and the 16 Double Rares about $1.10.

Pull rates and what "1 in N" means

These are the published pull rates for the set, in packs per hit.

Double Rares come about once every 5 packs, Illustration Rares once every 11, Ultra Rares once every 15, Special Illustration Rares about once every 93, and Hyper Rares about once every 131. About 1 pack in 6 (0.167) has a hit of Illustration Rare quality or better.

A 36-pack booster box averages about seven Double Rares, three Illustration Rares, two Ultra Rares, about 0.39 Special Illustration Rares (36 ÷ 93) and about 0.27 Hyper Rares. Roughly one box in three contains an SIR. If the six SIRs are equally likely, any one of them, say the Clefairy, is about 1 in 558 packs, or about 15 boxes, the shortest odds on a specific top card of the four sets, because only six SIRs share the slot.

A 9-pack Elite Trainer Box averages under one Illustration Rare, under one Ultra Rare, and has about a 1 in 10 chance at an SIR. The model gives an ETB an 81% chance of at least one hit of any kind.

Sealed EV

Here is the expected value of each Journey Together product against its current market price.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by market price; 0.38 means 38 cents of cards for every dollar. Net EV is what you would 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 per-pack EV is about $2.54. The booster box at about $240 has a gross EV of about $91 and a net EV of about $54, for a ratio of about 0.38. Break-even, where gross EV equals price, is about $91 a box. The Enhanced Booster Box at about $250 is about 0.37; unlike Mega Evolution, the enhanced version is the slightly worse buy here.

Per dollar, the four-pack booster art bundle at about $25 is the most efficient standard product at about 0.40, followed by the box at 0.38, a loose pack at about $6.73 and 0.38, and the enhanced box at 0.37. The six-pack booster bundle at about $47 is about 0.33, the three-pack Yanmega blister about 0.32, and the Build & Battle Box at about $40 about 0.26. The Elite Trainer Box at about $140 is only about 0.16, the weakest regular ETB ratio of the four sets; you are paying for the accessories. The Pokémon Center ETB at about $195 is about 0.12, the Melmetal single-pack blister at about $27 is under 0.10, and the Rhyperior premium checklane blister at about $42 is about 0.06. The Fun Pack shows the highest ratio on the list at about 0.65 because it is priced at about $3.89; the model treats it as a standard pack, so check what a Fun Pack actually contains before reading much into that.

The chase share is about 0.36, the lowest of the four sets. Most of the hit value comes from Illustration Rares, Ultra Rares and Double Rares, which is the main reason the ratio holds up: a box with no SIR in it still returns Illustration Rares and Ultra Rares in the $2 to $20 range.

Who should open this

Players: singles, but the Build & Battle Box at about $40 is a fair way to get four packs plus a deck if you want to play the set.

Set collectors: buy singles. The whole set at market is about $495, roughly the price of two boxes, and two boxes give you 72 packs with close to even odds of no SIR at all. Assemble the commons through Ultra Rares cheaply and buy the six SIRs individually.

Chase hunters: the Clefairy at about $102 is the only card that qualifies, and at about 15 boxes per expected pull it costs far more to chase than to buy. Buy it.

People who like ripping packs: yes, this is the set for it among the four. The box is about $240, the ratio is the best of the group, a hit comes about every six packs, and a loose pack at about $6.73 is nearly as efficient as a box, so you can open a few at a time without a penalty.

How to buy it cheaper

The site rescans eBay every 15 minutes for Journey Together sealed listings that land at least 12% below TCGplayer market once shipping is included. These are the current ones.

Set an alert at /alerts?set=sv9 for boxes and art bundles. Compare landed price, item plus shipping, against market for the exact product, and ignore strikethrough prices. A box at 15% below market moves the ratio from about 0.38 to about 0.45, and because the box price is lower to begin with, the dollar amount you are risking is the smallest of the four sets. The scoring rules are on /methodology and every product for this set is on /sets/journey-together.

Bottom line

Journey Together is the cheapest of the four recent sets to open and the least punishing per box: about $240 for a ratio of about 0.38, with the hit value spread across ordinary rarities rather than stacked on one card. It is also the thinnest, with a total set value of about $495 and a per-pack EV of about $2.54. If you want the cards, buy them; the whole set costs about two boxes. If you want to open packs, this is where to do it, and do it below market.