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

Verdict

Paldean Fates pairs a deep list of high-priced cards with sealed products that hold well under their price in card value. As of October 21, 2026 a loose booster pack costs about $24 and holds about $6.48 of expected raw card value, roughly 27 cents per dollar. The Elite Trainer Box holds about 13 cents, because about half of its $438 price is for the sealed box as a collectible. The Mew ex Special Illustration Rare (about $860), the Charizard ex (about $257) and any of the 120 Shiny Rares cost far less as singles than the packs it takes to pull them. Per pack, the eleven-pack Great Tusk ex & Iron Treads ex Premium Collection costs the least, about $22.90, with the highest EV ratio, about 0.28, and the Elite Trainer Boxes cost 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, eight-pack and eleven-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 $2.45. That is high for a modern set, because nearly half the checklist is Shiny Rares averaging about $8.19 each.

Thirty-six cards clear $10 and four clear $50: the three Pokémon ex Special Illustration Rares plus the shiny Pikachu. One of every card costs about $2,488 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 40 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. It leaves out the premium collections and the Elite Trainer Box case, whose figures are on their product pages. The sealed EV board compares every set.

Every pack has the same expected value, about $6.48, so the products differ only in price per pack, and no EV ratio (gross EV divided by market price) gets above about 0.28.

The Great Tusk ex & Iron Treads ex Premium Collection leads: about $252 for eleven packs is about $22.90 a pack, the lowest in the set, and a ratio of about 0.28, the highest. Next come loose packs at about $23.60 and the four-pack booster art bundle at about $96, about $24 a pack, both with a ratio of about 0.27. The Flamigo, Tinkatink and Finizen mini tins (about $50 to $51 for two packs), the Iron Treads ex tin (about $128 for five packs) and the mini tin set of five sit between 0.25 and 0.26. The Great Tusk ex tin, about $139 for five packs, is at about 0.23, the Smoliv mini tin at about 0.21 and the Maushold mini tin at about 0.15. The International tins, from about $112, the displays and most cases are listed with a market price only: the site gives them no pack count, so it computes no EV. EV counts only the packs, not promo cards or accessories.

The booster bundle sits below the usual bundle figure. About $180 for six packs is about $30.10 a pack and a ratio of about 0.22, where a typical bundle holds a little under 30 cents of raw card value per dollar. The eight-pack premium collections sit just above it: Quaquaval ex at about $223, about $27.90 a pack and 0.23, and Meowscarada ex and Skeledirge ex at about $238, about $29.70 to $29.80 a pack and 0.22. The Charizard ex tin ranks lower still at about 0.16.

The Elite Trainer Boxes cost the most per pack. The standard Elite Trainer Box is about $438 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 holds 15 to 20 cents per dollar. A case of ten of them, about $4,093, works out to about $45.50 a pack and a ratio of about 0.14. The Pokémon Center version, about $545 for eleven packs, is lowest of all at about 0.13 (0.131 against the standard box's 0.133), for the same eleven packs as the $252 collection. The set is more than two and a half years old, and sealed prices as of October 21, 2026 include a collector premium: nine loose packs cost about $213, roughly half the Elite Trainer Box price.

Net EV, which takes off a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 shipping for each card worth $1 or more, is about $4.61 a pack. Chase share, the part of hit EV from the rarest tiers, is about 57 percent. The Special Illustration Rare slot is worth about $2.71 of the $6.48 (a mean of about $169 divided by 62.5 packs) and the Shiny Rare slot about $2.05. The Double Rares add about $0.16: the source lists no rate for them in this set, so the site uses the era average of 1 in 6.

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 $860 for a raw Near Mint copy. Charizard ex #234 follows at about $257 and Gardevoir ex #233 at about $165. Those three cards are about 52 percent of the set's value.

The $169 tier average hides a split. The other five Special Illustration Rares are worth about $72 combined, led by Iono at about $24 and Clive at about $21. Most of the $2.71 a pack credited to this slot is Mew ex.

Among the Shiny Rares, Pikachu #131 leads at about $73, then Mimikyu at about $48 and Snorlax at about $47. The other tiers are minor: the 12 Shiny Ultra Rares average about $5.04 (Mew ex #216 tops them at about $31) and the six Hyper Rares about $9.90.

Pull rates

These are published rates for this set, midpoints of published pack-opening counts, except the Double Rare row, which is the 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, not counting Double Rares, 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, 12 percent in an eight-pack collection, 13 to 14 percent in an Elite Trainer Box and 16 percent in an eleven-pack product. In dollars, 62.5 loose packs cost about $1,480, 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 $11,800 of packs for a card that costs about $860.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

For players, the playable cards are cheap as singles: the five Ultra Rares average about 76 cents, the dearest, Judge, at about $1.22, and the Double Rares average about 99 cents.

Chase hunters pay far less for the single. Mew ex at about $860 is about 7 percent of the expected pack spend to pull one.

Set collectors face the same gap. The 120 Shiny Rares cost about $983 combined, while pulling them all would take about 480 packs on average even with no duplicates, about $11,300 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 five-pack tin. For the most packs per dollar, the eleven-pack collection costs about $22.90 a pack and carries about a 16 percent chance of a Special Illustration Rare. Loose packs, the art bundle and the Iron Treads ex tin run about $24 to $26 a pack, the Great Tusk ex tin, the eight-pack collections and the bundle about $28 to $30, and the Elite Trainer Boxes about $49 to $50. Sealed product here is entertainment with some resale value: a $24 pack holds about $4.61 of raw card value 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 market price. A seller's "was $X" discount counts for nothing.

Every Paldean Fates card and sealed product page, code cards aside, carries the TCGplayer market price and its history and, unless that market is under $5 or, as of October 8, 2026, more than 10 percent above TCGplayer's highest listing, the figure that is 12 percent below market and two eBay buttons; otherwise it has only the uncapped search. 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. Since October 8, 2026, a page where TCGplayer's market is more than 25 percent above its middle listing is an exception: it gives no below-market figure and has only the uncapped search. 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 percent under market; if the site's eBay scan were off, it would show eBay searches for the set's main sealed products instead.

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 $180, the line is about $159 landed.

For singles, site prices are raw Near Mint. For Mew ex the line is about $757 landed for a Near Mint copy. Since October 8, 2026, the method scores only a card listing whose condition is stated as Near Mint, so a Lightly Played copy, or a listing that states no condition, gets no Deal Score at any price: the site has no sourced price for a played copy. eBay's Authenticity Guarantee covers trading cards sold for $200 or more in the US, which takes in Mew ex and, at its October 21, 2026 price, Charizard ex. The eBay buying guide covers the other checks.

Bottom line

Paldean Fates has a deep list of high-priced cards, and its sealed prices carry a collector premium. Every pack holds about $6.48 of expected value, so a $24 loose pack holds about 27 cents of raw card value per dollar, a bundle about 22 and an Elite Trainer Box about 13. The eleven-pack Great Tusk ex & Iron Treads ex Premium Collection has the lowest price per pack in the set, about $22.90, and the highest ratio, about 0.28. A specific chase card is still roughly a 1 in 500 pull if its tier is printed evenly. 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.