Is Obsidian Flames worth opening? EV, pull rates and Charizard ex

Verdict

Obsidian Flames is an easy set to hit in and a hard set to get paid by. Its Special Illustration Rares arrive about once in 29.5 packs, so about seven booster boxes in ten contain at least one. Of the six, only Charizard ex at about $100 carries real money, and the other five average under $8. As of mid-September 2026 a booster box costs about $373 and holds about $128 of expected raw card value, a ratio of about 0.34, which is ordinary. The Elite Trainer Box is the mainstream product to avoid opening: about $286 buys nine packs and about $32 of expected cards. One of every card costs about $482 at market, so unless the opening itself is what you are paying for, buy singles.

What Obsidian Flames is

Obsidian Flames came out on August 11, 2023, a main Scarlet & Violet series expansion with the set code OBF. The printed checklist is 197 cards and the full set is 230 with the secret rares. It is a Charizard set: Charizard ex appears four times, as a Double Rare (#125), an Ultra Rare (#215), a Special Illustration Rare (#223) and a gold Hyper Rare (#228), and those four cards are worth about $158 together, close to a third of the set's summed value.

The sealed line-up is a 36-pack booster box (six to a case), a nine-pack Elite Trainer Box, an 11-pack Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box, a six-pack booster bundle, a four-pack Build & Battle Box, a Build & Battle Stadium, loose packs, art bundles and blisters. The set is just over three years old, and sealed prices for a set this age include a collector premium for the sealed product itself. That is why several ratios below look so low.

The numbers

These are the live figures from the Obsidian Flames set page.

All 230 cards carry a TCGplayer market price, and the median is about 28 cents. Only 12 cards are worth $10 or more, and exactly one, the Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare, clears $50. Temporal Forces, a slightly smaller set, has 36 and seven.

One of every card at market comes to about $482, about 1.3 booster boxes. That one Charizard is about 21 percent of the total. As a group, the 12 Illustration Rares (about $186) are worth more than the six Special Illustration Rares (about $139).

Sealed EV by product

Expected value is the average worth of a product's cards at raw market prices. The table is live and recomputed daily, and the cross-set comparison is on the sealed EV board.

Each pack carries about $3.56 of expected value. The booster box at about $373 is about $10.37 a pack and a ratio of about 0.34, inside the 0.30 to 0.35 band where a typical box lands, and it is the best mainstream way to open the set. Loose packs run about $13.17 (0.27) and the three-pack blisters about $38 to $40 (0.27 to 0.28). The one row above the box, a two-blister lot at about $50 (0.43), is priced well under two individual blisters, so verify it on its product page.

Then there is the Elite Trainer Box. At about $286 for nine packs it costs about $31.78 a pack, three times the box rate, and its ratio is about 0.11 against a typical 0.15 to 0.20 for ETBs. It costs about 77 percent of a booster box and holds a quarter of the packs. The booster bundle has the same problem on a smaller scale: about $120 for six packs is about $20 a pack and 0.18, where a typical bundle is a little under 0.30. Booster box vs ETB vs bundle covers how the formats usually compare.

The worst products to open are the Pokémon Center Elite Trainer Box, about $634 for 11 packs (0.06), and the single-pack blisters with Kingambit (about $50) and Annihilape (about $64), at about 6 to 7 cents per dollar.

For the box, break-even is the gross EV of about $128. Net EV deducts a 15 percent marketplace fee, then $1 of shipping for each card worth $1 or more, and lands at about $85, under a quarter of the price. Chase share is about 39 percent, the portion of hit EV supplied by Special Illustration Rares and Hyper Rares, and most of that is one Pokémon: the Special Illustration Rare slot adds about 79 cents to each pack's EV, and about 56 cents of it is Charizard ex #223.

Chase cards

Below are the set's top cards by current TCGplayer market price.

Charizard ex #223, the Special Illustration Rare illustrated by AKIRA EGAWA, is the only card above $50 at about $100. After it come two Illustration Rares, Ninetales #199 at about $39 and Cleffa #202 at about $36, then the Hyper Rare Charizard ex #228 at about $32, the Illustration Rare Gloom at about $24 and the Ultra Rare Charizard ex #215 at about $21.

The six Special Illustration Rares average about $23, but without Charizard the other five average under $8: Pidgeot ex is about $20, Eiscue ex about $6.50, and the remaining three miss the set's top 15, which puts each under $6. The Hyper Rares repeat the pattern: Charizard ex is about $32 and the other two together about $5.

The Illustration Rares are the steadier tier. Twelve cards average about $15.50 and eight are worth more than $10. Ultra Rares average about $3.35, or under $2 without Charizard ex, and Double Rares about $1.32.

Pull rates

These rates were measured for Obsidian Flames itself, not taken from an era average: each is the midpoint of published pack-opening counts.

A 36-pack box averages about five Double Rares, three Illustration Rares, two or three Ultra Rares, a little over one Special Illustration Rare and about 0.7 Hyper Rares. About 71 percent of boxes contain at least one Special Illustration Rare and about half contain a Hyper Rare.

Those odds are generous by later standards: the Special Illustration Rare comes about 1 in 74.5 packs in Temporal Forces and 1 in 90 in Stellar Crown. Two other 2023 sets are similar, Paldea Evolved at about 1 in 33.5 and 151 at about 1 in 32, and Obsidian Flames is the shortest of the three. Pull rates by set compares the rates across sets.

Generous odds are not generous value: at about $10.37 a pack you open about $306 of packs per Special Illustration Rare, and the average one is worth about $23. Assume the six are printed in equal numbers, something the opening counts cannot confirm, and Charizard ex #223 appears about once in 177 packs: about five boxes, or more than $1,800 of packs, for a card that sells for about $100. A nine-pack Elite Trainer Box has about a 1 in 20 chance of it.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

People who enjoy frequent hits: a booster box delivers them, with probably a Special Illustration Rare and a coin flip on a Hyper Rare. The averages are modest: about $3 for an Ultra Rare and about $16 for an Illustration Rare.

Charizard hunters: go straight to the single. About $100 gets you the card, while the pack route averages about five boxes.

Set collectors: buy the cards directly. All 230 cards cost about $482 at market, only about $108 more than one box.

Players: regular ex cards are Double Rares, about $1.32 on average and about $5.47 at most (Charizard ex #125).

How to buy it cheaper

Each Obsidian Flames card and sealed product has its own page, linked from the set page, with the TCGplayer market price, the price history, the figure that is 12 percent below market and two eBay buttons (affiliate links). Button one opens eBay's own search results: Buy It Now only, US sellers only, no proxies, lots, code cards or look-alike products, sorted by price plus shipping, with the item price capped at 12 percent under market. Button two is the same search with no cap. The block below gathers the capped eBay search buttons for the main Obsidian Flames sealed products.

An empty capped search means nobody is listing that item under market right now. Button two shows every current price, and eBay's own "Save this search" on those results gets eBay to email new matches.

Judge every listing on its landed price, item plus shipping, because the cap applies to the item price only. The site's rule of thumb is that a listing is below market only when its landed price is at least 12 percent under the adjusted market price. For the booster box at about $373 that is about $329 delivered. A seller's "was $X" price tells you nothing.

For singles, the adjusted market depends on condition. Site prices are raw Near Mint, and the Deal Score method marks them down: 85 percent for Lightly Played, 70 percent for Moderately Played and 90 percent when no condition is stated. For the Charizard ex Special Illustration Rare at about $100, a Near Mint copy has to land at about $88 to qualify and a Lightly Played copy at about $75. It is also under the $250 mark where eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards in the US, so check photos and seller feedback yourself. The methodology page sets out each step.

Bottom line

Obsidian Flames gives you more Special Illustration Rares per box than later sets such as Temporal Forces and pays less for them. A booster box returns about 34 cents of raw card value per dollar, and about 39 percent of its hit value rests on the rare tiers, which in practice means Charizard ex. The Elite Trainer Box, at about $31.78 a pack and a ratio near 0.11, carries a collector premium that makes it a poor thing to open. If you want the experience, buy a booster box and enjoy the hit rate. If you want Charizard ex #223 or the whole set, buy singles, using the eBay button on each card page. Prices move daily, and the sealed EV board has the current figures.