Is Paldean Fates worth opening? EV, pull rates and shiny odds

Verdict

Paldean Fates pairs a deep list of desirable cards with weak sealed math. As of mid-September 2026 a loose booster pack costs about $25 and holds about $6.42 of expected raw card value, roughly 26 cents per dollar. The Elite Trainer Box returns about 13 cents, because about half of its $442 price is for the sealed box as a collectible. If you want the Mew ex Special Illustration Rare (about $872), the Charizard ex (about $277) or any of the 120 Shiny Rares, buy singles. If you open packs for fun, the Great Tusk ex and Iron Treads ex tins and loose packs cost the least per pack and the Elite Trainer Boxes the most.

What Paldean Fates is

Paldean Fates released on January 26, 2024 as a special set in the Scarlet & Violet series (set code PAF). The printed checklist is 91 cards and the full set is 245. Of the 154 cards numbered above the printed total, 120 are Shiny Rares, alternate-color printings of Pokémon such as Pikachu, Mimikyu and Snorlax, and 12 are Shiny Ultra Rares, topped by a shiny Mew ex. Eight Special Illustration Rares, six Hyper Rares, three Illustration Rares and five Ultra Rares make up the rest.

As a special set, its packs are sold in the Elite Trainer Box (nine packs), its Pokémon Center version (eleven), the six-pack booster bundle, five-pack tins, two-pack mini tins, six-pack premium collections and as loose packs, all listed on the Paldean Fates set page.

The numbers

These are the live set-level figures.

All 245 cards carry a TCGplayer market price, and the median is about $2.68. That is high for a modern set (Twilight Masquerade, from the same year, has a median of 31 cents), because nearly half the checklist is Shiny Rares averaging about $8.49 each.

Thirty-eight cards clear $10 and six clear $50: the three Pokémon ex Special Illustration Rares plus the shiny Pikachu, Mimikyu and Snorlax. One of every card costs about $2,588 at market. The eight Special Illustration Rares hold about 54 percent of that, with Mew ex alone at about a third, and the 120 Shiny Rares roughly another 39 percent.

Sealed EV by product

Expected value, or EV, is the average worth of a product's cards at raw TCGplayer market prices (the method is here). The table below is live and recomputed daily, and the sealed EV board compares every set.

Every pack has the same expected value, about $6.42, so the products differ only in price per pack, and no EV ratio (gross EV divided by market price) gets above about 0.30.

The best product to open is the international Great Tusk ex tin: about $106 for five packs, roughly $21 a pack, a ratio of about 0.30. The other Great Tusk ex and Iron Treads ex tins ($119 to $123), loose packs and most mini tins ($48 to $51 for two packs) sit between 0.25 and 0.27. EV counts only the packs, not promo cards or accessories.

The booster bundle disappoints. About $170 for six packs is roughly $28 a pack and a ratio of about 0.23, where a typical bundle returns a little under 30 cents per dollar. The Charizard ex tins (0.21 and 0.16) and the six-pack premium collections at about $221 to $240 (0.16 to 0.17) rank lower still.

The worst products to open are the Elite Trainer Boxes. The standard Elite Trainer Box is about $442 for nine packs, roughly $49 a pack, with about $58 of expected cards: a ratio of about 0.13, where a typical Elite Trainer Box returns 15 to 20 cents. The Pokémon Center version, about $593 for eleven packs, is lowest of all at about 0.12. The set is more than two and a half years old, and sealed prices now include a collector premium: nine loose packs cost about $223, so roughly half of the Elite Trainer Box price is for the sealed box itself.

Net EV, which takes off a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 shipping for each card worth $1 or more, is about $4.73 a pack. Chase share, the part of hit EV from the rarest tiers, is about 59 percent. The Special Illustration Rare slot is worth about $2.80 of the $6.42 (a mean of about $175 divided by 62.5 packs) and the Shiny Rare slot about $2.12.

Chase cards

The table below ranks the set's top cards by current TCGplayer market price.

Mew ex #232, illustrated by USGMEN, is the chase at about $872 for a raw Near Mint copy. Charizard ex #234 follows at about $277 and Gardevoir ex #233 at about $173. Those three cards are about 51 percent of the set's value.

The $175 tier average hides a split. The other five Special Illustration Rares are worth about $79 combined, led by Iono at about $26 and Clive at about $23. Most of the $2.80 a pack credited to this slot is Mew ex.

Among the Shiny Rares, Pikachu #131 leads at about $78, then Mimikyu and Snorlax at about $51 each, Charmander at about $42 and Ditto at about $38. The other tiers are minor: the 12 Shiny Ultra Rares average about $5.20 (Mew ex #216 tops them at about $33), the six Hyper Rares about $10.60, the Double Rares about $1.19 and the Ultra Rares 68 cents.

Pull rates

These are published rates for this set, midpoints of published pack-opening counts, not an era average. The pull rates guide compares them with other sets.

A Shiny Rare lands about once every four packs and a Shiny Ultra Rare about 1 in 12. About 42 percent of packs contain at least one card from the tiers in the table, so a five-pack tin has about a 94 percent chance of a hit and an Elite Trainer Box about 99 percent.

The main chase tier, the Special Illustration Rare, sits at about 1 in 62.5 packs, easier than Twilight Masquerade's 1 in 86. That is about an 8 percent chance in a five-pack tin, 9 percent in a bundle and 13 to 14 percent in an Elite Trainer Box. In dollars, 62.5 loose packs cost about $1,550, and if the tier is printed evenly, five times in eight the card you hit will be one of the five cheap ones.

With eight cards in the tier, Mew ex is roughly a 1 in 500 pack pull under that even-print assumption, which the datasets do not verify: around $12,400 of packs for a card that costs about $872. By the same arithmetic the shiny Pikachu, one of 120 Shiny Rares at 1 in 4, is roughly a 1 in 480 pull.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

Players should buy singles: every Ultra Rare costs under a dollar and the Double Rares average about $1.19.

Chase hunters should buy singles. Mew ex at about $872 is about 7 percent of the expected pack spend to pull one.

Set collectors should buy singles. The 120 Shiny Rares cost about $1,019 combined, while pulling them all would take about 480 packs on average even with no duplicates, about $11,900 at the loose pack price.

Pack openers are the audience for sealed Paldean Fates: a shiny about every fourth pack and a hit in nearly every tin. Choose by price per pack: Great Tusk ex or Iron Treads ex tins and loose packs first, the bundle second, the Elite Trainer Boxes last. Treat it as entertainment with some resale value: a $25 pack returns about $4.73 on average after fees and shipping.

How to buy it cheaper

The rule, set out on the methodology page: a listing is below market only if its landed price, meaning item plus shipping, is 12 percent or more under the adjusted market price. A seller's "was $X" discount counts for nothing.

Every Paldean Fates card and sealed product page carries the TCGplayer market price and its history, the figure that is 12 percent below market, and two eBay buttons. The first opens eBay's own search results with a ceiling on the item price 12 percent under market. Only Buy It Now listings from US sellers show, lowest price plus shipping first, and proxies, lots, code cards and look-alike products are filtered out. The second opens the same search without the cap. Both are affiliate links. Below is a block of those buttons for the set's two main sealed products, the Elite Trainer Box and the booster bundle, each capped under its own below-market price.

If the capped search comes back empty, nothing is listed below market at that moment. The second button shows every current price, and eBay's own "Save this search" option will have eBay email new matches. The cap is on the item price, so add shipping yourself. With the bundle at about $170, the line is about $150 landed.

For singles, site prices are raw Near Mint, and the method measures Lightly Played against 85 percent of that, Moderately Played against 70 and an unstated condition against 90. For Mew ex the line is about $768 landed for Near Mint and about $652 for Lightly Played, so a Lightly Played copy at $700 is a fair price, not a discount. Anything under 10 percent of market, about $87 here, is treated as a mismatch or a scam. eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $250 or more in the US, which takes in Mew ex and, at its current price, Charizard ex. The eBay buying guide covers the other checks.

Bottom line

Paldean Fates is a strong set of cards in expensive packaging. Every pack holds about $6.42 of expected value, so a $25 loose pack returns about 26 cents per dollar, a bundle about 23 and an Elite Trainer Box about 13. A specific chase card is still roughly a 1 in 500 pull if its tier is printed evenly. Open a tin or a few loose packs if you enjoy it. For Mew ex, Charizard ex or the shiny Pikachu, go to the card's page through the set page, where the capped eBay button opens a search for copies listed under market.