Is Mega Evolution worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

A Mega Evolution booster box holds about 34 to 36 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and its top end is twelve cards rather than one: about 31 percent of a box's EV, roughly $32 of $104, comes from the ten Special Illustration Rares and two Mega Hyper Rares. As of October 21, 2026, a Mega Evolution booster box sells for about $304, the Enhanced Booster Box about $288, and the cards inside are worth about $104 at raw market, an EV ratio of roughly 0.34 to 0.36. Those sit a little above the middle of the site's board, where the median booster box ratio was about 0.32 on October 21, 2026, but the top-end value here is spread across ten Special Illustration Rares averaging about $75 and two Mega Hyper Rares averaging about $192, with seven cards in the set worth $50 or more. On paper a box at market costs about $184 to $199 more than the cards inside it. Of every Mega Evolution product with an EV on the site, the Enhanced Booster Box has the highest ratio and the lowest price per pack, about $8.00.

What Mega Evolution is

Mega Evolution (set code MEG) released on September 26, 2025 and opened the era of the same name, bringing Mega ex Pokémon back to the game. It is a full-size set: 132 cards in the printed numbering and 188 in total. Double Rares are the Mega ex cards in their regular frames, Ultra Rares are the full-art versions, Illustration Rares are alternate-art single Pokémon, Special Illustration Rares are alternate-art ex and Supporter cards, and the two Mega Hyper Rares are the gold cards at the very end of the numbering.

Here is where the set stands today.

All 188 cards are priced: 18 are worth $10 or more, and seven are worth $50 or more. As of October 21, 2026, the median card is about $0.19 and the whole set at market adds up to roughly $1,378. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about $0.29 and the 176 cards below Special Illustration Rare as roughly $285, figures 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.

The top of the set is a tight cluster rather than one runaway card. Mega Lucario ex #188, the Mega Hyper Rare, is about $224. The Special Illustration Rares of the same two Pokémon, Mega Gardevoir ex #178 and Mega Lucario ex #179, are about $168 and $167, both above Mega Gardevoir ex #187, the other Mega Hyper Rare, at about $160, and Mega Venusaur ex #177 is about $131. Below them, Mega Latias ex #181 is about $70, Mega Kangaskhan ex #182 and Lillie's Determination #184 about $51 and $49 as of October 21, 2026, and Mega Absol ex #180 about $48.

The ten SIRs average about $75 and the two MHRs about $192; as of October 21, 2026, those twelve cards together make up roughly $1,131 of the set's $1,378 total, so the value is concentrated in the top rarities, but not in any single card. Five of the ten SIRs are worth $50 or more. The 22 Illustration Rares average about $5.70, led by Vulpix #138, Bulbasaur #133 and Ivysaur #134 at about $16 to $19. The 22 Ultra Rares average about $4.40 and the ten Double Rares about $0.75.

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 9, Ultra Rares once every 12.5, Special Illustration Rares about once every 101 packs, and Mega Hyper Rares about once every 1,260. Roughly 1 pack in 5 (0.191) contains a hit above Double Rare: an Ultra Rare, an Illustration Rare, a Special Illustration Rare or a Mega Hyper Rare.

Over a 36-pack booster box, that works out to about seven Double Rares, four Illustration Rares, three Ultra Rares, and about 0.36 Special Illustration Rares. Put differently, only around three boxes in ten contain an SIR, and you would open about 35 boxes on average to see a Mega Hyper Rare. Ten SIRs share that 1-in-101 slot, so if they are equally likely, any particular one, say the Mega Lucario, is about 1 in 1,010 packs, or about 28 boxes.

An Elite Trainer Box has 9 packs: expect one Illustration Rare, under one Ultra Rare, and roughly a 9% chance at an SIR. The model gives the ETB an 85% chance of at least one hit of any kind; the missing 15% is an ETB that holds nothing better than a Double Rare.

Sealed EV

Here is the expected value of each Mega Evolution product against its current market price.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by market price. Net EV is what you would clear after selling: a 15% marketplace fee and $1 shipping per card worth at least $1 come off, and cards under $1 count as bulk at about two cents. Chase share is the fraction of hit EV that comes from SIRs and Mega Hyper Rares.

As of October 21, 2026, the per-pack EV is about $2.90. For the regular booster box: market about $304, gross EV about $104, net EV about $66, ratio about 0.34. The Enhanced Booster Box holds the same 36 packs but sells for about $288, so its ratio is about 0.36, the highest of any product for this set. The break-even box price, where gross EV equals price, is about $104 either way, so a box at market costs about $184 to $199 more than its gross EV. A loose pack at about $9.05 has a ratio of about 0.32, and the four-pack art bundle about 0.33; those are close to the box, so the ratio changes little between a handful of packs and a whole box.

Further down the list, the booster bundle is about 0.26, and the regular Elite Trainer Boxes at about $121 are about 0.22. The Pokémon Center exclusive ETBs, which hold 11 packs, are both about 0.16 at about $197 and $201, and the premium checklane blisters at about $28 to $33 are around 0.09 to 0.11. The Mega Heroes mini tins (about $21 to $23) carry no EV, because their contents list does not name the set the packs are from. The Build & Battle display and the mini tin display are priced as retail displays, and the site computes no EV for them. The Enhanced Booster case and the booster bundle case carry no EV either; the booster box, sleeved booster and Elite Trainer Box cases do, but the table above does not rank them.

The chase share is about 0.44, meaning less than half of the hit value depends on the two rarest slots. Illustration Rares, at about $0.63 of each pack's EV, and Ultra Rares, at about $0.35, carry most of the rest, which is why a box with no SIR or Mega Hyper Rare in it still averages cards worth roughly $72 at raw market rather than next to nothing.

Who should open this

Players: Double Rares average under a dollar as singles, about $0.75, and even the full-art Ultra Rares average about $4.40. A loose pack costs about $9.05 and holds a Double Rare about 1 time in 5.

Set collectors: everything below Special Illustration Rare is cheap. As of October 21, 2026, those 176 cards add up to roughly $248 as singles, less than the price of one Enhanced Booster Box, and the twelve top cards, the expensive part, come to about $1,131 combined. Pulling any one specific SIR takes about 28 boxes on average, roughly $8,100 of Enhanced Booster Boxes at the October 21, 2026 market price, and a specific Mega Hyper Rare about 70 boxes.

Chase hunters: ten SIRs share the 1-in-101 slot here instead of one dominant card. A box has about a 30% chance of an SIR, and the SIR you hit is worth about $75 on average, with four of the ten at about $70 or more. The ratio is 0.36 at most, and the chase share of about 0.44 compares with about 0.66 for Phantasmal Flames.

People who like ripping packs: the main products differ mainly in price per pack, which runs from about $8.00 in the Enhanced Booster Box and about $9.05 for a loose pack to about $11.20 in the booster bundle and about $13.43 to $13.49 in a regular Elite Trainer Box. The Enhanced Booster Box at about $288 is about $108 less than the Phantasmal Flames box and carries the higher ratio of the two, about 0.36 against about 0.32.

How to buy it cheaper

Each Mega Evolution sealed product page on this site shows the TCGplayer market price and the price history; as of October 8, 2026, a page whose market price is at least $5, no more than 10% above the highest TCGplayer listing and no more than 25% above the middle one also shows the price that counts as 12% below market, 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 Enhanced Booster Box and regular booster box 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 nothing is listed under the price for the product you want, use eBay's own "Save this search" on that results page so that eBay emails new matches. Compare the landed price, item plus shipping, against the market price for that exact product; the Enhanced Booster Box and the regular box are listed separately for a reason, and a Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box costs far more than a regular one. A box at 12% below the Enhanced Box market, about $253, brings the ratio to about 0.41. The Deal Score method, which you can work through by hand for any listing, is documented at /methodology and every product for this set is listed on /sets/mega-evolution.

Bottom line

As of October 21, 2026, a Mega Evolution booster box holds about 34 to 36 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price: a ratio of about 0.34 to 0.36, ten Special Illustration Rares that average about $75, and a chase share of about 0.44, so a box with no SIR or Mega Hyper Rare still averages about $72 of cards. Every box at market costs about $184 to $199 more than its gross EV, and the twelve top cards cost about $1,131 combined as singles. Among the products with an EV, the Enhanced Booster Box has the highest ratio and the lowest price per pack, about $8.00, and the odds work out to roughly one SIR every three boxes.