Is Stellar Crown worth opening? Box EV, pull rates and top cards

Verdict

Stellar Crown is a small set that is cheap to complete, with a decent box ratio and a thin top end. As of mid-September 2026 a booster box costs about $309 and holds about $124 of expected raw card value, a ratio of 0.40 against the 30 to 35 cents per dollar a typical box returns. Chase share is low, about 16 percent, with Special Illustration Rares at about 1 in 90 packs and modestly priced. What carries the set is a pair of Illustration Rares, Squirtle at about $100 and Bulbasaur at about $97. One of every card costs about $609, roughly two booster boxes, so anyone who wants the cards should buy singles. For opening, the booster box is fair value for the era and the Elite Trainer Box is not.

What Stellar Crown is

Stellar Crown released on September 13, 2024 as the seventh main expansion of the Scarlet & Violet series (set code SCR). The printed checklist is 142 cards and the full list is 175, small next to the 279 of Paldea Evolved from the same series. The 33 cards numbered above the printed total are 13 Illustration Rares, 11 Ultra Rares, 6 Special Illustration Rares and 3 Hyper Rares. Under them are 14 Double Rares, 3 ACE SPEC Rares and 125 commons, uncommons and rares.

The sealed line-up on the set page includes a 36-pack booster box, an 18-pack half booster box, a nine-pack Elite Trainer Box and an 11-pack Pokémon Center version, a six-pack booster bundle, a four-pack Build & Battle Box, blisters, and loose and sleeved packs. The set is two years old, and part of today's sealed price is a premium for the sealed item itself, not for its contents.

The numbers

This is the live snapshot of card prices across the set.

All 175 cards carry a TCGplayer market price, and the median is about 26 cents. Only 12 cards clear $10 and only three clear $50: Squirtle, Bulbasaur and the Dachsbun ex Special Illustration Rare. Those three are worth about $272 together, about 45 percent of the set's summed value.

One of every card at market costs about $609, close to the price of two booster boxes, which hold about $249 of expected card value between them. Of that $609, the 13 Illustration Rares and 6 Special Illustration Rares hold about $493, roughly 81 percent, and the other 156 cards about $116.

Sealed EV by product

Expected value is what the cards in a product are worth on average at today's raw market prices, and the methodology page sets out how it is built. Here is the live table for Stellar Crown.

Each pack holds about $3.46 of expected value whatever it comes in, so the comparison is price per pack. The booster box at about $309 is about $8.58 per pack with an EV ratio of 0.40, the best in the table. Loose booster packs at about $10.66 come in at 0.32, and the booster bundle, about $72 for six packs or about $12.04 each, at 0.29. On the wider sealed EV board a typical bundle returns a little under 30 cents per dollar, so this bundle is ordinary while the box is clearly above average.

The half booster box costs about $246 for 18 packs, about $13.68 each and a ratio of 0.25, when a full box is only about $63 more for twice the packs. The Elite Trainer Box costs about $156 for nine packs, about $17.33 each, for a ratio of 0.20, the worst of the three main products. Worst of all is the Miraidon premium checklane blister: about $21 for one pack, 0.16. If the table lists a Sleeved Booster Master Carton near zero, ignore it: it is a bulk carton at about $1,152 that the table counts as one pack.

Net EV for the booster box, after a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of shipping per card worth $1 or more, is about $83, or about 27 cents per dollar. Chase share is about 16 percent: the Special Illustration Rare slot adds only about 36 cents to each pack and the Hyper Rare slot about 6 cents, while the Illustration Rare slot adds about $1.76, half of the pack's entire EV.

That low chase share is only half the story. Squirtle and Bulbasaur hold about two thirds of their tier's value, about $1.17 of every pack's $3.46. Remove them from the average and a box holds about $82 of cards. About two boxes in three contain neither starter, so that lower figure is what most boxes look like.

Chase cards

These are the most valuable Stellar Crown cards at today's market prices.

The top card is an Illustration Rare: Squirtle #148 at about $100, with Bulbasaur #143 just behind at about $97. Third is the Dachsbun ex #169 Special Illustration Rare at about $75, then prices step down: Hydrapple ex #167 at about $37, Terapagos ex #170 at about $35 and Galvantula ex #168 at about $19.

The six Special Illustration Rares average about $33. The 13 Illustration Rares average about $23, but only about $9 without the two starters. Ultra Rares average about $3, Hyper Rares about $8, Double Rares about $1.28 and ACE SPEC Rares about 48 cents. Set the three cards over $50 aside and the average hit, whether Ultra Rare, Hyper Rare or Illustration Rare, is worth $3 to $9.

Pull rates

Stellar Crown has its own published rates: the table uses midpoints of published pack-opening counts for this set, not an era default. Pull rates by set shows how they compare.

A 36-pack box averages just under three Illustration Rares and two or three Ultra Rares. About one pack in five has something rarer than a Double Rare, counting the 1 in 20 ACE SPEC Rares, so virtually every box has one, against about 86 percent of Elite Trainer Boxes and 73 percent of bundles.

Special Illustration Rares land about once in 90 packs, a much longer shot than the 1 in 33.5 measured for Paldea Evolved: about one box in three contains one, and a nine-pack Elite Trainer Box has about a 10 percent chance.

In dollars, at about $8.58 per pack you spend about $772 on packs for each Special Illustration Rare, and the average one is worth about $33. Squirtle, one of 13 Illustration Rares at 1 in 13, is about 1 in 169 packs if the tier is printed evenly: nearly five boxes, around $1,450 of sealed product, for a card that costs about $100. The published counts do not confirm even printing, so treat this as scale, not exact odds.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

Players should buy singles: the Double Rares, ACE SPEC Rares and Ultra Rares all average far less than the price of one pack.

Set collectors should buy singles. Two boxes cost about the same as the full set and would typically leave you with five or six Illustration Rares and quite possibly none of the six Special Illustration Rares.

If you want Squirtle or Bulbasaur, buy them. Both together cost about $197, less than two thirds of one booster box, and a box has only about a one in three chance of holding either.

If you like opening packs, Stellar Crown is a reasonable choice at about $8.58 per pack from a box. You will see plenty of small hits, and the downside is a box with nothing above $10 in it. Booster box vs ETB vs bundle explains why an Elite Trainer Box rarely makes sense for the packs alone.

How to buy it cheaper

The site's working rule is that "below market" means a landed price, item plus shipping, at least 12 percent under the adjusted market price, and that a seller's "was $X" claim means nothing. Every Stellar Crown card page and sealed product page shows the TCGplayer market price, its price history, the price 12 percent below market, and two eBay buttons. One opens eBay's own search results: Buy It Now listings from US sellers only, with proxies, lots, code cards and look-alike products excluded, sorted by price plus shipping, and capped at 12 percent under market. The other runs the identical search with no price cap. These buttons are affiliate links. Directly below are those searches for Stellar Crown's main sealed products, with the first button on each already capped under the below-market price.

For the booster box, market is about $309 and the below-market line is about $272. That cap is on the item price only, so add the shipping yourself. A capped search on the booster box page that returns nothing means no seller is under that line today. The uncapped button then shows the real spread of asking prices, and saving that search with eBay's own "Save this search" option means eBay emails new matches.

Every card price on the site is raw Near Mint, and the Deal Score method measures a Lightly Played copy against 85 percent of it. A Lightly Played Squirtle has an adjusted market of about $85 and a below-market line of about $75. Under the method a listing cannot qualify when the card's adjusted market is under $5, which rules out most of this set, so for cheap cards the shipping charge matters more than the sticker price. The methodology page walks through every step.

Bottom line

Stellar Crown offers a better box ratio than the typical box on the board, about 40 cents of raw card value per dollar, inside a set where only 12 cards are worth $10 or more. Expect about $124 of cards from a $309 box on average, about $82 if neither Squirtle nor Bulbasaur turns up, and a Special Illustration Rare in roughly one box in three. Open a booster box if you open anything, leave the Elite Trainer Box and the half box alone, and buy Squirtle, Bulbasaur or any other card you want as a single: each card's page is linked from the set page, and its capped eBay button tells you whether a copy is listed under the 12 percent line.