Is Shining Fates worth opening? ETB EV and shiny Charizard odds

Verdict

No Shining Fates product holds its price in raw card value: EV ratios run from about 0.18 to about 0.28. A Shining Fates Elite Trainer Box costs about $147 as of September 20, 2026, and its 10 packs are expected to yield about $32 of raw cards, about 22 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price. That is about $3.19 a pack, whichever product the pack comes from. Only one card is worth more than about $21: the shiny Charizard VMAX SV107 from the Shiny Vault subset, about $136 as a single, less than the box. Baby shinies turn up about one pack in four, but only nine of them reach $10. Per pack, the baby shiny tier adds about $1.05 of the $3.19 and the shiny VMAX tier about 62 cents, about four fifths of it from the Charizard.

What Shining Fates is

Shining Fates is a Sword & Shield series special set from February 19, 2021, with the set code SHF. Its main set is small: 72 cards on the printed checklist plus one secret card, the rainbow Alcremie VMAX #73, for 73 in all.

The companion subset is bigger than the set itself: the Shiny Vault has 122 cards, numbered with an SV prefix, that come out of the same packs. Most are what collectors call baby shinies: ordinary Pokémon printed in their shiny colors, listed on this site with the rarity Rare Shiny. Above them sit shiny Pokémon V, shiny VMAX and a gold tier. Pullnomics lists the Shiny Vault as a separate set page, but the sealed EV of Shining Fates counts every Shiny Vault card.

Like other special sets, Shining Fates has no booster box. Its Elite Trainer Box holds 10 packs, where a Sword & Shield main-set box holds eight, and Pullnomics also tracks V tins, two-pack mini tins, Premium Collections, loose packs and a four-pack art bundle. None of it is still printed, so sealed prices include a collector premium for staying sealed.

The numbers

The block below has the figures for the 73 main-set cards from the Shining Fates set page. The Shiny Vault is listed separately and is not included.

As of September 27, 2026, half of those 73 cards are worth about 24 cents or less, and only one is worth about $10. An earlier version of this page gave the median as about 32 cents, a figure that valued each card at its dearest printing rather than its standard one. The most valuable is the Rare Ultra Skyla #72 at about $10, and one copy of all 73 cards costs about $77.

Charizard VMAX SV107, at about $136, is worth more than one and a half times the whole main set. Eleven Shiny Vault cards clear $10. The subset's top 12 together come to about $293, and the Charizard is nearly half of that.

Sealed EV by product

Sealed EV is the average resale value of the cards a product should contain, at today's TCGplayer market prices; the methodology sets out the calculation. Each Shining Fates pack comes to about $3.19, and the Shiny Vault is already counted in every row of the table.

Multiply each main-set rarity's average price by its pull rate and the main set's five hit tiers contribute about 56 cents per pack. The other $2.63 or so is the Shiny Vault plus the baseline for the bulk slots.

At about $14.71 a pack, the Elite Trainer Box has an EV ratio of about 0.22. Across the sealed EV board most Elite Trainer Boxes hold roughly 15 to 20 cents of raw card value per dollar, which puts Shining Fates just above the normal range. Selling costs bite: take off the 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of shipping on each card worth $1 or more, and the box nets about $18.50, about 13 cents per dollar.

No other product changes the picture:

• Four-pack art bundle, about $60: about $14.91 a pack and a ratio of about 0.21.
• Single loose booster pack, about $16.28: a ratio of about 0.20.
• Mini tins with two packs each, about $29 to $36: between about $14.54 and $17.81 a pack, ratios of 0.18 to 0.22.
• V tins with six packs each (the US tin; the European one held five), about $68 to $72: about $11.30 to $12.05 a pack, ratios of about 0.26 to 0.28, the highest in the table.

The two Premium Collections hold seven packs each. At about $107 and about $126 they cost about $15.25 and $17.95 a pack, more than the Elite Trainer Box at about $14.71, for ratios of about 0.21 and 0.18.

Chase share is about 4 percent, but it counts only the rarest tiers, here the Rare Rainbow and the gold Shiny Vault cards, so the Charizard, a Shiny Vault VMAX, is not in it.

Chase cards

The grid below ranks cards from the main set and the Shiny Vault together; the Shiny Vault takes all eight places.

Leading the Shiny Vault's list is Charizard VMAX SV107 at about $136. Behind it are Morpeko SV044 at about $21, Yamper SV039 at about $18, Suicune SV022 and Galarian Ponyta SV047 at about $17 each, and Ditto VMAX SV119 at about $14.

The Charizard costs about six and a half times the next card, and nine of the subset's 12 most valuable cards are baby shinies, not V or VMAX cards. A popular baby shiny such as Morpeko or Suicune is worth more than every shiny VMAX except the Charizard.

The main set's own list is modest: behind Skyla are Poké Kid #70 at about $8.64 and Alcremie V #64 at about $5.81.

Pull rates

Shining Fates has published pull rates of its own, so nothing in this table is an era default. The figures are midpoints of pack-opening tallies from TCGplayer and community counters, gathered in September 2026; the methodology lists the sources. Main-set rarities come first, then the four Shiny Vault tiers.

The main set runs from 1 in 9 packs for a Rare Holo V to 1 in 91 for the Rare Rainbow. In the Shiny Vault, a baby shiny is 1 in 4, a shiny V 1 in 14, a shiny VMAX 1 in 39 and a gold card 1 in 156.

Across the 10 packs of an Elite Trainer Box, expect two or three baby shinies and, on average, less than one shiny V. About 23 percent of boxes contain any shiny VMAX. The site's hit rate counts a Shiny Vault card, an Amazing Rare, a Rare Ultra or the Rare Rainbow, and about 39 percent of packs have at least one.

Keep in mind how these rates are published: by tier, not card by card. The EV spreads each tier's odds evenly across its cards, so a specific card is much rarer than its tier's rate. The Charizard shares the 1 in 39 tier with the other shiny VMAX cards. Even if every shiny VMAX were the Charizard, 39 packs at the Elite Trainer Box price is about $574, more than four times the cost of the single. And if the Charizard is harder to pull than its tier mates, $3.19 per pack overstates the set.

Nor do the baby shinies rescue the math: two or three $21 Morpekos would still be about $53 of cards in a $147 box.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

The shiny Charizard VMAX costs about $136 as a single, less than one Elite Trainer Box at about $147, and fewer than one box in four holds a shiny VMAX of any kind.

Completing the Shiny Vault from packs is a long road: one baby shiny every four packs, duplicates included, against a 122-card checklist where only 11 cards cost $10 or more. A player who wants the main set's V cards pays about $1.05 each on average as singles, against about $14.71 for one Elite Trainer Box pack and a Rare Holo V in about one pack in nine.

As an opening experience, Shining Fates is gentle: about 39 percent of packs hold a hit, mostly a baby shiny. The price per pack runs from about $11.30 in the cheapest V tin to about $17.95 in the dearer Premium Collection, and every pack carries the same expected value, about $3.19.

Opening an Elite Trainer Box you already own swaps about $147 of sealed product for about $32 of cards, on average.

How to buy it cheaper

Any Shining Fates card or sealed product page on Pullnomics, code cards aside, gives you four things: the TCGplayer market price, the price history, the figure 12 percent below market, and a pair of eBay buttons, except where the market price is under $5, more than 10 percent above the dearest copy TCGplayer lists or more than 25 percent above TCGplayer's middle listing, which leaves no below-market figure and only the uncapped button. The capped button limits eBay to US sellers with Buy It Now prices, filters out proxies, lots, code cards and look-alike products, orders the rest by price plus shipping, and shows only items priced at least 12 percent under market. The other button is the same search without the cap. Both buttons are affiliate links. 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.

The cap looks at the item price alone, so add the shipping. The test is the landed price: item plus shipping must come in 12 percent or more below market, about $129 delivered for the Elite Trainer Box. A crossed-out "was $X" price proves nothing. If the capped search is empty, nothing is listed under market at the moment; the uncapped button shows every current price, and with eBay's own "Save this search" turned on, eBay emails new matches.

Condition matters: the site's card prices are all for raw Near Mint copies. Under the methodology page's Deal Score method, the qualifying landed price for the Charizard VMAX is about $120 in Near Mint. Since October 8, 2026 the method scores only a card listing stated as Near Mint, so a Lightly Played copy, or one that states no condition, gets no score. The condition guide shows what each condition looks like. The method also distrusts anything landed under 10 percent of market, about $14 here, as a likely mismatch or scam. eBay's Authenticity Guarantee starts at $200 for trading cards in the US, and at market price no Shining Fates card gets there. The checking is yours, so read the guide to spotting fake cards first.

Bottom line

Shining Fates packs cost about $15 and hold about $3.19 of expected cards. The Elite Trainer Box holds about 22 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and about 13 after selling costs. The Shiny Vault makes the packs fun, with a baby shiny about one pack in four, but only one card in the product is expensive, and it costs less than the box. For the Charizard or any other card, open its page from the Shiny Vault set page and try the capped eBay button where the page has one. If that search is empty, nobody is selling a copy under market at that moment.