Is Twilight Masquerade worth opening? EV, pull rates, chase cards

Verdict

Twilight Masquerade is a slightly better than average set to open and still a losing one on the numbers. As of mid-September 2026 a booster box costs about $356 and holds about $135 of expected raw card value, roughly 38 cents per dollar, against 30 to 35 cents for a typical box. The Greninja ex Special Illustration Rare, at about $351, carries the set. It costs about what a box does and, if its tier is printed evenly, is roughly a 1 in 946 pack pull, so buy it as a single. To open, pick the booster box or loose packs. The Elite Trainer Box is good for its format, and the booster bundle is the weakest of the three.

What Twilight Masquerade is

Twilight Masquerade released on May 24, 2024 as a regular expansion in the Scarlet & Violet series. The printed checklist is 167 cards and the full set is 226.

The rarity ladder is the familiar Scarlet & Violet one: 14 Double Rares (the regular ex cards), 21 Ultra Rares, 21 Illustration Rares, 11 Special Illustration Rares and six gold Hyper Rares. The set also has six ACE SPEC Rares, powerful cards limited to one per deck.

Pullnomics tracks the 36-pack booster box, the nine-pack Elite Trainer Box and its eleven-pack Pokémon Center version, the six-pack booster bundle, a four-pack Build & Battle Box, blisters, and loose and sleeved packs, all listed on the Twilight Masquerade set page.

The numbers

Here is where the set stands today.

All 226 cards are priced, and the median is 31 cents, so more than half of the set is bulk. Twenty-four cards clear $10 and five clear $50: Greninja ex, Perrin, the Eevee and Chansey Illustration Rares, and Carmine. One of every card costs about $1,337 at market.

The 11 Special Illustration Rares average about $70.57 and hold about 58 percent of that total. The 21 Illustration Rares average about $16.48 and hold about 26 percent. So 32 cards carry about 84 percent of the value, and Greninja ex alone is about 26 percent.

Sealed EV by product

Expected value, or EV, prices a product's cards at their average raw market value, and the methodology shows how it is built. This table is live and recomputed daily, with every other set on the sealed EV board.

A Twilight Masquerade pack is worth about $3.75 in expected value wherever it comes from, so products differ only in price per pack and therefore in EV ratio (gross EV divided by market price).

Loose booster packs are the best product to open, with a ratio of about 0.41 at roughly $9.10 each. The booster box is close behind and better for volume: about $356 for 36 packs is roughly $9.89 a pack, a ratio of about 0.38.

The Elite Trainer Box is about $103 for nine packs, roughly $11.40 a pack, a ratio of about 0.33. That is well above the 15 to 20 cents per dollar a typical Elite Trainer Box returns. Nine loose packs cost about $82, so you pay about $21 for the box and accessories.

The booster bundle, at about $74 for six packs, is roughly $12.28 a pack, more per pack than the Elite Trainer Box. Its ratio of about 0.31 is ordinary for a bundle, but six loose packs cost about $55. Of the three main formats, it is the one to skip.

The worst product to open is the premium checklane blister: about $23 to $30 for a single pack, ratios of roughly 0.13 to 0.16. The set is more than two years old, and sealed prices on older sets include a premium for the sealed product itself.

Once a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of postage on every card worth $1 or more come off, net EV for the booster box is about $90, a quarter of its price. Chase share, the slice of hit EV that comes from the rarest tiers, is only about 31 percent. The Illustration Rare slot is the reason: a mean of about $16.48 at 1 in 13 packs is worth about $1.27 a pack, more than the Special Illustration Rare slot at about 82 cents ($70.57 divided by 86).

Chase cards

The top of the price list looks like this right now.

Greninja ex #214 carries the set at about $351 for a raw Near Mint copy, about 45 percent of the value of its whole tier. Perrin #220 is second at about $166. Then the tier falls away quickly, from Carmine at about $54 to Teal Mask Ogerpon ex at about $20, with three more under $15 each. Without Greninja ex and Perrin, the other nine average about $29.

The Illustration Rares are the pleasant surprise. Eevee #188 is the third most valuable card in the set at about $93, Chansey is about $53, and Hisuian Growlithe and Tatsugiri are in the $20s. The other 17 average about $9.

The six ACE SPEC cards average about $4.30, and Unfair Stamp at about $15 is the only one with real value; the other five average about $2. Ultra Rares average about $4.19, Hyper Rares about $7.27 and Double Rares about $1.13.

Pull rates

These rates are measured for this set: midpoints of published pack-opening counts, not a Scarlet & Violet era average. The pull rates guide puts them beside other sets.

A 36-pack booster box averages about six Double Rares, nearly three Illustration Rares, two or three Ultra Rares and almost two ACE SPEC cards. About one pack in five holds a hit above Double Rare, which gives an Elite Trainer Box about an 86 percent chance of at least one.

The Special Illustration Rare, this set's main chase tier, comes about once in 86 packs. A box has about a 34 percent chance of one, so about two boxes in three contain none. An Elite Trainer Box is about a 10 percent shot and a bundle about 7 percent. In dollars, 86 packs at the box price of $9.89 cost about $850, and the average card in the tier is worth about $71.

With 11 cards in the tier, Greninja ex is roughly a 1 in 946 pack pull if the tier is printed evenly, an assumption the datasets do not verify. That is about 26 booster boxes, or about $9,400, for a card that costs about $351. The gold Hyper Rares are the hardest tier at about 1 in 146 packs, a 22 percent chance per box, and they average about $7.

Who should open it and who should buy singles

Players should buy singles. An ACE SPEC is limited to one per deck, so one copy is all you need, and only Unfair Stamp costs more than a few dollars.

Chase hunters should buy singles. Greninja ex costs about the same as one booster box, and if the tier is printed evenly a box has a little under a 4 percent chance of containing it.

Set collectors should buy singles. One of every card is about $1,337, less than four booster boxes, and four boxes produce fewer than two of the 11 Special Illustration Rares on average.

Pack openers do better here than in a typical set: nearly every box has several hits, and the Illustration Rare slot alone averages about $46 a box. Buy a booster box for volume or loose packs otherwise, choose the Elite Trainer Box only if you want the accessories, and pass on the bundle and the checklane blisters. Booster box vs ETB vs bundle covers that choice across sets. Treat it as entertainment with some resale value.

How to buy it cheaper

The test is the one on the methodology page. A listing counts as below market only when item price plus shipping, its landed price, comes in 12 percent or more below the adjusted market price. A seller's "was $X" claim is ignored.

Each card and product page lists the TCGplayer market price with its history and the price that sits 12 percent below market, plus two eBay buttons. The first button opens eBay's own search results: Buy It Now listings from US sellers, sorted by price plus shipping, with proxies, lots, code cards and look-alike products excluded and the item price capped at 12 percent under market. The second runs the same search with no cap. These are affiliate links. Next comes a block of the same buttons for the three main sealed products, the booster box, Elite Trainer Box and booster bundle, all pre-filtered under their below-market prices.

An empty result on the capped button means nobody is listing below market at that moment. The uncapped button then shows what sellers are asking, and saving that search on eBay ("Save this search") gets eBay to email new matches. Because the cap is on the item price, shipping is yours to add. With the booster box at about $356, the line is about $313 landed.

For singles, the benchmark moves with condition. Site prices are raw Near Mint, and the method values Lightly Played at 85 percent of that, Moderately Played at 70 and an unstated condition at 90. For Greninja ex the line is about $309 landed for Near Mint and about $263 for Lightly Played, so a played copy in the high $200s is a fair price, not a discount. Greninja ex is also the only card in the set that, at today's price, reaches the $250 threshold of eBay's Authenticity Guarantee for trading cards sold in the US.

Bottom line

Twilight Masquerade is a better than average set to open, which still means about $135 of cards from a $356 box. Its strength is depth: 21 Illustration Rares averaging about $16 keep ordinary boxes from feeling empty. Its headline card is another matter, since Greninja ex is roughly a 1 in 946 pull on an even-print assumption and costs about the same as a box. Open a booster box or loose packs if you enjoy it, skip the bundle, and for Greninja ex, Perrin or Eevee, start at the set page, pick the card and use its capped eBay button to see whether a copy is listed under market.