Is Temporal Forces worth opening? Box EV, pull rates, chase cards

Verdict

Temporal Forces is the most defensible booster box to open on the Pullnomics board right now, and it is still a losing trade on average. As of mid-September 2026 a box sells for about $318 and holds about $167 of expected raw card value, a ratio of roughly 0.53. No other booster box we track returns more per dollar today, and a typical box returns 30 to 35 cents. Only about 16 percent of the hit value comes from the rarest tiers, so the average is built from cards you will actually pull, not one lottery card. If you enjoy opening packs, buy the booster box. If you want one particular card, buy the single: the most expensive one costs less than a third of a box.

What Temporal Forces is

Temporal Forces released on March 22, 2024 as a main expansion in the Scarlet & Violet series (set code TEF). The printed checklist is 162 cards and the full set runs to 218 with the secret rares. The headline Pokémon are Raging Bolt ex, Gouging Fire ex, Walking Wake ex, Iron Crown ex, Iron Leaves ex and Gengar ex. The hit tiers are the usual Scarlet & Violet ones plus one that earlier sets such as Obsidian Flames lack: seven ACE SPEC Rares.

Sealed, there is a 36-pack booster box and a six-box case, two nine-pack Elite Trainer Boxes (Iron Leaves ex and Walking Wake), 11-pack Pokémon Center versions of both, a six-pack booster bundle, a four-pack Build & Battle Box, loose packs, art bundles and blisters. The set is about two and a half years old, so part of every sealed price is a premium for the sealed item itself.

The numbers

Here are the live figures from the Temporal Forces set page.

All 218 cards carry a TCGplayer market price. The median is about 31 cents, normal for a modern set. The depth above it is not normal: 36 cards are worth $10 or more and seven clear $50, in a set where no card reaches $100. Obsidian Flames, a slightly larger set, has 12 and one.

One of every card at market adds up to about $1,258, roughly four booster boxes. The 22 Illustration Rares hold about 46 percent of that and the 10 Special Illustration Rares about 31 percent, while the most valuable card is under 8 percent.

Sealed EV by product

Expected value is what a product's cards are worth on average at raw market prices, and how sealed EV works has the arithmetic. This is the live table, recomputed daily.

Every pack carries about $4.65 of expected value, so products differ only in price per pack. The booster box at about $318 is about $8.83 a pack and a ratio of about 0.53, the top booster box on the sealed EV board today. Loose packs at about $9.73 (0.48) and the four-pack art bundle at about $37 (0.50) are close behind. The six-box case is currently worse than a single box, at about $10.39 a pack (0.45).

The Iron Leaves ex Elite Trainer Box is about $123 for nine packs, about $13.64 a pack, for 0.34, and the Walking Wake version is about $138 and 0.30. Both are high for an ETB, where 0.15 to 0.20 is typical. The booster bundle is the surprise: about $90 for six packs is about $15 a pack, more than the Iron Leaves ETB charges, for 0.31. The worst products to open are the Pokémon Center ETBs (about $197 and $200 for 11 packs, near 0.26), the Togekiss premium checklane blister (about $20 for one pack, 0.23) and the Elite Trainer Box case (0.21).

Break-even for the box is its gross EV, about $167. Net EV, which takes off a 15 percent marketplace fee plus $1 of shipping for each card at $1 or more, is about $116, a little over a third of the box price.

Chase share is the other half of the story: the portion of hit EV that comes from the rarest tiers, here Special Illustration Rares and Hyper Rares. For Temporal Forces it is about 16 percent, against about 49 percent for Pitch Black and about 58 for Destined Rivals. An average that leans on a 1 in 75 pull is one most boxes never reach: you hit the big card or finish well under it. When 84 percent of hit value comes from tiers you hit two to six times per box, a typical box lands much closer to the average.

Chase cards

These are the most valuable cards at current TCGplayer market prices.

The top card is neither an ex nor a Special Illustration Rare. Gastly #177, an Illustration Rare illustrated by Mousho, leads at about $97. Then come Raging Bolt ex #208 at about $63 and Morty's Conviction at about $62, both Special Illustration Rares, the Illustration Rare Sawsbuck #166 at about $59 and the Ultra Rare Gengar ex #193 at about $55. Gouging Fire ex and Iron Crown ex, both about $51, complete the seven cards above $50.

Eight of the 15 most valuable cards are Illustration Rares, a rarity you hit about once in 12.5 packs. The 22 average about $26: the top eight run from about $30 (Arbok) up to Gastly, and the other 14 average roughly $15. The 10 Special Illustration Rares average about $39, not much more.

Below that, the 18 Ultra Rares average about $6, or about $3 without Gengar ex, and the seven ACE SPEC Rares about $7. The six Hyper Rares average about $11, so the hardest pull is among the least rewarding.

Pull rates

Temporal Forces has its own measured rates: each figure in the table is the midpoint of published pack-opening counts for this set, not an era average.

A 36-pack box averages about six Double Rares, three Illustration Rares, two or three Ultra Rares and two ACE SPEC Rares. The Special Illustration Rare, at 1 in 74.5 packs, is roughly one every two boxes: about 39 percent of boxes contain at least one and about six in ten contain none. The Hyper Rare, at 1 in 139, shows up in fewer than one box in four.

In dollars, at about $8.83 a pack you open about $660 of packs per Special Illustration Rare, a card worth about $39 on average. The Illustration Rare slot contributes about $2.11 of the $4.65 pack EV, against about 53 cents from the Special Illustration Rare slot and 8 cents from the Hyper Rare slot, so a box that misses both rare tiers gives up only about $22 of its $167 average. Results still vary with which Illustration Rares you pull.

If the 22 Illustration Rares are printed evenly, which the opening counts neither confirm nor rule out, a specific one such as Gastly appears about once in 275 packs, between seven and eight boxes. A particular Special Illustration Rare would be about 1 in 745 packs, more than 20 boxes.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

If you open packs for fun: get the booster box, or the art bundle or loose packs if you want fewer, and expect about $167 of cards from a $318 box on average.

Buyers after one card: skip the packs. Gastly at about $97 would take seven or eight boxes to pull on average, and every Special Illustration Rare is under $65.

Set collectors: singles are the cheaper route. All 218 cards total about $1,258, and four boxes at that cost average about two of the 10 Special Illustration Rares.

Players: the regular ex cards are Double Rares averaging about $1.23 and the ACE SPEC Rares average about $7. Buy the copies you need.

How to buy it cheaper

Open any card or sealed product page from the set page. It gives the TCGplayer market price and its history, the price that sits 12 percent under market, and two eBay buttons (affiliate links). The first sends you to eBay's own search results, narrowed to Buy It Now listings from US sellers and sorted by price plus shipping, with proxies, lots, code cards and look-alike products filtered out and the price capped at 12 percent under market. The second drops the cap. The block below has the same eBay search buttons for the main Temporal Forces sealed products, each capped under its below-market price.

If a capped search comes back empty, no seller has it listed under market right now. The uncapped button shows every current price, and eBay's own "Save this search" on that page means eBay emails new matches.

The cap looks only at the item price, so add shipping yourself. The site's rule of thumb: a listing counts as below market only when item plus shipping, the landed price, comes in at least 12 percent under the adjusted market price. For the booster box at about $318 that means about $280 landed. Seller "was $X" discounts count for nothing.

For singles, condition sets the adjusted market. Site prices are raw Near Mint, and under the Deal Score method Lightly Played is measured against 85 percent of that, Moderately Played 70 percent and no stated condition 90 percent. A Lightly Played Gastly is judged against about $82, not $97, and has to land near $72 to count. The methodology page sets out each step, and how to buy Pokémon cards on eBay goes deeper.

Bottom line

Temporal Forces has the best booster box EV ratio on the board today, about 0.53, and one of the lowest chase shares among Scarlet & Violet boxes, about 16 percent. An average box returns about $167 of raw card value for about $318, and an ordinary box has a fair chance of landing near that, because the money sits in 22 Illustration Rares, not one chase card. It is still a loss on average. Open a booster box if the opening is the point, and skip the Pokémon Center ETBs and checklane blisters. If you want Gastly or another specific card, use the eBay button on its card page. Prices move daily, so check the sealed EV board first.