Is Perfect Order worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

If you are going to open one of the small Mega Evolution sets, Perfect Order is the one to open. The booster box is the cheapest of the group at about $178, the Special Illustration Rare rate of about 1 in 80 packs is the best of the four, and the box's EV ratio of roughly 0.47 is the highest. That is still less than half of the purchase price coming back as cards, so this remains an entertainment buy rather than a value buy. Chase hunters should buy Meowth ex or Mega Zygarde ex as singles; players and set collectors should skip sealed entirely.

What Perfect Order is

Perfect Order released on March 27, 2026 as the third main set of the Mega Evolution series (set code POR). The printed checklist is 88 cards, with 124 in the full set once the secret rares numbered above the printed total are included. Mega Zygarde ex is the headliner, with Mega Clefable ex, Mega Starmie ex and a standalone Meowth ex rounding out the ex cards, plus Trainer cards for Rosa and Jacinthe.

The rarity ladder runs Double Rare (regular ex), Ultra Rare (full-art ex and Trainers), Illustration Rare (single-Pokémon art), Special Illustration Rare (alternate-art ex and Trainers) and a single Mega Hyper Rare, the gold Mega Zygarde ex at 124/88. Published pull rates also list a Mega Attack Rare slot for this set at about 1 in 40 packs, but our catalog does not break that rarity out for Perfect Order, so it contributes nothing to the EV figures below; treat them as slightly conservative.

The live set-level numbers from the Perfect Order set page follow.

The chase cards

All 124 cards are priced. The median card is about 27 cents, ten cards clear $10 and four clear $50, which is a slightly deeper top end than Pitch Black or Chaos Rising. These are the current leaders.

Unusually for a Mega set, the most expensive card is the Mega Hyper Rare rather than a Special Illustration Rare: the gold Mega Zygarde ex is about $122, with the Meowth ex SIR close behind at about $114. Together those two are about 40 percent of the set's summed market value (about $590 across all 124 cards), a lighter concentration than the two-card dominance in Chaos Rising or Pitch Black. The other five Special Illustration Rares are spread between about $21 (Jacinthe) and about $54 (the Zygarde SIR), with Mega Clefable ex, Rosa's Encouragement and Mega Starmie ex in the $40 to $50 band. Those seven cards together hold roughly three quarters of the set's raw value.

The middle tier is a little healthier than in its neighbors. The Illustration Rare Clefairy is about $17, the best single Illustration Rare in any of the four recent small sets, and the 11 Illustration Rares average about $4. Ultra Rares average under $4, with the full-art Meowth ex and Poké Pad both above $10. Double Rares average about 90 cents, and the regular Meowth ex is the only one worth more than $2.

Pull rates

The rates below are midpoints of published pack-opening counts collected in September 2026.

Translate those to a 36-pack booster box and you should expect about four Illustration Rares (1 in 9) and three Ultra Rares (1 in 11), so essentially every box (about 99.97 percent) has at least one hit above Double Rare. The Special Illustration Rare at about 1 in 80 packs averages a little under one every two boxes; about 36 percent of boxes contain one. The Mega Hyper Rare is the catch: at about 1 in 1,400 packs it is the rarest gold card of the era, roughly one per 39 boxes, or one in about six and a half sealed cases.

A nine-pack Elite Trainer Box has about an 87 percent chance of at least one Illustration Rare or better and roughly a 1 in 9 chance of a Special Illustration Rare.

Sealed EV

Expected value is the average raw market value of the cards inside a product, built from the pull rates above and the mean price of each rarity. Here is the live table for every Perfect Order product we track, and the sealed EV board compares every set side by side.

EV ratio is gross EV divided by the product's market price. The booster box at about $178 carries about $84 of expected card value, a ratio of roughly 0.47, in the upper half of the 0.3 to 0.55 range where modern boxes usually sit. Net EV subtracts a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 shipping per card worth at least $1 and treats cards under $1 as bulk; for the box that is about $54, so the realistic resale of an average box is a bit under a third of its price.

Chase share is about 49 percent, meaning half of the hit EV comes from the Special Illustration Rares and the Mega Hyper Rare. Since roughly 64 percent of boxes contain no SIR, the typical box lands under the $84 average, propped up by a $17 Clefairy or a $12 full-art Meowth if you are lucky. The Mega Hyper Rare's contribution to EV is real but spread across 1,400 packs; do not count on it.

Break-even for the booster box is the gross EV, about $84. That gap between $84 and $178 is what you pay for the opening.

By EV per dollar, the booster box case (about 0.51) is the best buy for anyone opening in volume, followed by the booster box (about 0.47) and loose booster packs at about $5 (about 0.46). The booster bundle (about 0.37) and the 3-pack blister (about 0.34) are acceptable. The Elite Trainer Box at about $65 sits near 0.32; the Pokémon Center ETB (about 0.17) and the premium checklane blisters at $15 to $18 for one pack (about 0.13 to 0.16) are the products to avoid.

Who should open this

Players: singles only. The regular ex cards are Double Rares averaging about 90 cents; even the regular Meowth ex is about $2.40.

Set collectors: build from singles. The entire set summed at market is about $590, and the non-chase cards are cheap. A box gives you duplicates of commons long before it gives you a Zygarde.

Chase hunters: buy the single. The Meowth ex SIR is about $114 and the gold Zygarde about $122, each less than a box. If the six Special Illustration Rares were printed evenly, a specific one would be around a 1 in 480 pack pull, about 13 boxes, and the gold Zygarde is about 1 in 1,400 packs on its own.

People who like opening packs: this is the best of the four recent small sets for you. The box is the cheapest, the SIR rate is the friendliest, and the middle tier has a few cards worth keeping. Open a box or loose packs, not an ETB.

How to buy it cheaper

Below-market Perfect Order listings appear here as the eBay scans find them. A listing must be at least 12 percent under adjusted market on landed price (item plus shipping), and seller "was $X" discounts are ignored.

For sealed, compare landed price with the TCGplayer market price for the exact product. Shipping and tax decide whether a box is a deal; a $175 box with $15 shipping is not cheaper than a $185 box shipped free. If nothing qualifies right now, set an alert and let the 15-minute rescans watch for you: /alerts?set=me3.

For singles, check the condition descriptor. A Lightly Played Meowth ex SIR is scored against 85 percent of Near Mint market, so a low price may simply be a played copy at a fair price. The methodology page explains the Deal Score in full.

Bottom line

Perfect Order is the best small Mega set to open and still not a set you open for value. About 47 cents of raw card value comes back per dollar spent on a box, the Special Illustration Rare shows up about once every two boxes, and the gold Mega Zygarde ex at 1 in 1,400 packs is a card you buy rather than pull. If ripping packs is what you enjoy, buy a booster box at or under about $178 landed and know that about $84 of cards is the average result. If you want specific cards, use the deals page or the set page and buy them outright.