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

Verdict

Not if the cards are what you want. A Shining Fates Elite Trainer Box costs about $148 as of mid-September 2026, and its 10 packs are expected to yield about $32 of raw cards, about 21 cents back per dollar. That is about $3.18 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. Buy the Charizard as a single, and open Shining Fates only because pulling shinies is fun.

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 most hold nine, 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.

Half of those 73 cards are worth about 32 cents or less, and not one reaches $10. The most valuable is the Rare Ultra Skyla #72 at about $9.82, and one copy of all 73 cards costs about $86.

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 $3.18, 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 $2.62 or so is the Shiny Vault plus the baseline for the bulk slots.

At about $14.81 a pack, the Elite Trainer Box has an EV ratio of about 0.21. Across the sealed EV board most Elite Trainer Boxes give back roughly 15 to 20 cents 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, about 12 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 $15.68: a ratio of about 0.20.
• Mini tins with two packs each, about $29 to $34: between about $14.40 and $17.24 a pack, ratios of 0.18 to 0.22.
• V tins, about $68 to $72: at or near the top of the table, and still well under 30 cents per dollar.

The two Premium Collections, about $107 and about $126, are not in the table. They cost more per pack than the Elite Trainer Box.

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 $8.77 and Alcremie V #64 at about $5.85.

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 Sword & Shield era rates are published: by printed rarity or tier, not card by card, with no separate rate for alternate-art style cards. 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 $577, more than four times the cost of the single. And if the Charizard is harder to pull than its tier mates, $3.18 per pack overstates the set.

Nor do the baby shinies rescue the math: two or three $21 Morpekos would still be about $52 of cards in a $148 box.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

For the shiny Charizard VMAX, buy the single: it is cheaper than one Elite Trainer Box, 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. Players can skip sealed product too: the main set's V cards average about $1.07.

As an opening experience, Shining Fates is gentle: about 39 percent of packs hold a hit, mostly a baby shiny. Buy whichever product is cheapest per pack that day and expect about $3.18 of cards from each.

Opening an Elite Trainer Box you already own swaps about $148 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 gives you four things: the TCGplayer market price, the price history, the figure 12 percent below market, and a pair of eBay buttons. 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. The block that follows has the same two buttons for the set's main sealed product, the Elite Trainer Box.

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 $130 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. The methodology page's Deal Score method multiplies market by 0.85 for a Lightly Played card, which puts the qualifying landed price for the Charizard VMAX at about $102 in Lightly Played and about $120 in Near Mint; 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 $3.18 of expected cards. The Elite Trainer Box returns about 21 cents per dollar, and about 12 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. If that search is empty, nobody is selling a copy under market at that moment.