Is Vivid Voltage worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

A Vivid Voltage booster box holds about 25 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and about 45% of the set's card value sits in its 12 rainbow rares. As of September 22, 2026, a box sells for about $314 and the 36 packs inside hold about $78.73 of cards at raw market, an EV ratio of about 0.25. Across the Sealed EV board a typical booster box holds roughly 30 to 35 cents per dollar and a typical Elite Trainer Box roughly 15 to 20 cents, so both of this set's main products sit under the usual range: the Elite Trainer Box is about 0.13. Vivid Voltage released in 2020 and is no longer printed, and its sealed price carries a collector premium for the sealed product itself on top of the cards inside, a large part of why the ratios land where they do.

What Vivid Voltage is

Vivid Voltage (set code VIV) released on November 13, 2020 in the Sword & Shield series. The database carries 203 cards, 185 in the printed numbering and 18 above it. Six rarities sit above the ordinary slots: Rare Holo V (11 cards), Amazing Rare (6), Rare Holo VMAX (6), Rare Ultra (20), Rare Rainbow (12) and Rare Secret (6). The other 142 are 33 Rares, 19 Rare Holos, 46 Uncommons and 44 Commons. This set has no alternate arts, so each of those six tiers has one published rate, with no separate line split out of it.

Here is where the set stands today.

All 203 cards carry a price. The median is about $0.36, eight cards are worth $10 or more and exactly one $50 or more. One of every card comes to about $560.82 at market, less than two booster boxes.

The chase cards

These are the most valuable cards in the set right now.

Pikachu VMAX #188, the Rare Rainbow illustrated by aky CG Works, leads at about $174.99, roughly 31% of the whole set's card value on its own. Pikachu V #170 is next at about $46.33, then Rayquaza #138 at about $22.77 and Pokémon Center Lady #185 at about $22.11. After those four the set drops away quickly: Togekiss VMAX #191 about $13.34, Pikachu VMAX #44 about $13.20, the rainbow Nessa #196 about $11.21 and Nessa #183 about $10.24. Those eight are every card in the set at $10 or more.

The rarity averages show where the money sits. The 12 Rare Rainbows average about $21.09 and come to roughly $253 together, about 45% of the $560.82 total. The 20 Rare Ultras average about $7.40, the six Amazing Rares about $8.50, the six Rare Holo VMAX about $3.54, the six Rare Secrets about $3.24 and the 11 Rare Holo V about $1.02. The spread inside a tier is wide: Rare Ultra runs from Pikachu V #170 at about $46.33 down through Nessa #183 at about $10.24 and Bea #180 at about $8.85, and the six Amazing Rares sit behind Rayquaza #138 at about $22.77, with Jirachi #119 next at about $8.65.

Pull rates and what "1 in N" means

The table below gives packs per hit. Every rate in it is published for Vivid Voltage itself rather than carried over from a Sword & Shield era average, which is why no row is labelled "era average".

A Rare Holo V arrives about once every 8 packs, an Amazing Rare about once every 18.5, a Rare Holo VMAX about once every 23.5, a Rare Ultra about once every 25, a Rare Rainbow about once every 74.5 and a Rare Secret about once every 93. Every card in a tier is treated as equally likely, because the source gives one rate per tier, so one named Rare Rainbow is about 1 in 894 packs (74.5 x 12), one named Rare Ultra about 1 in 500, one named Amazing Rare about 1 in 111 and one named Rare Secret about 1 in 558. The full tier list is on the Vivid Voltage pull-rates page, and the method is at /methodology#pull-rates.

A booster box holds 36 packs. At these rates a box averages about 4.5 Rare Holo V, 1.9 Amazing Rares, 1.5 Rare Holo VMAX, 1.4 Rare Ultras, half a Rare Rainbow and 0.4 Rare Secrets. The site counts Amazing Rare, Rare Ultra, Rare Rainbow and Rare Secret as hits; a regular V and a regular VMAX are not, as with the combined VMAX and VSTAR tier the source uses for Astral Radiance, Lost Origin, Silver Tempest and Crown Zenith. On that definition about one pack in nine holds a hit (0.1137), roughly four per box, and the model gives a box about a 99% chance of holding at least one.

An Elite Trainer Box holds 8 packs, the Sword & Shield count rather than the nine used from Scarlet & Violet onward: about one Rare Holo V, 0.4 Amazing Rares, 0.3 Rare Holo VMAX and 0.3 Rare Ultras, with about a 62% chance of holding at least one hit.

Sealed EV

Here is the expected value of each product against its current market price.

Three numbers do the work here. The EV ratio sets gross EV against the market price, so at 0.25 a dollar of sealed price buys about 25 cents of raw card value. Net EV is what is left after the cost of selling: a 15% marketplace fee, a dollar of shipping on every card that sells for a dollar or more, and a flat bulk rate of about two cents for the rest. A booster box goes from $78.73 gross to about $46.72. Chase share, about 0.24, is the Rare Rainbow and Rare Secret portion, roughly $0.32, the $0.28 rainbow line plus a little over $0.03 of Rare Secrets, of the $1.35 that all six rated tiers add to a pack.

A pack is worth about $2.19 at raw market, and it splits by tier like this: Amazing Rares about $0.46, Rare Ultras about $0.30, Rare Rainbows about $0.28, Rare Holo VMAX about $0.15, Rare Holo V about $0.13 and Rare Secrets about $0.03, with the remaining $0.84 or so the baseline for the common, uncommon and rare slots. Two things stand out. The biggest single line is not a hit at all: the baseline is more than a third of the pack. And the biggest hit line is the Amazing Rare tier, which averages less per card than the rainbows but arrives about four times as often.

For the booster box: market about $314, gross EV about $78.73, net EV about $46.72, ratio about 0.25, break-even price about $78.73. That works out to about $8.72 a pack, the lowest price per pack of any Vivid Voltage product with an EV on the site. A loose pack is about $10.99 at about 0.20, a sleeved pack about $11.65 at about 0.19, the four-pack art bundle about $38.34, or $9.59 a pack, at about 0.23, and the sleeved four-pack about $40.65, or $10.16 a pack, at about 0.22.

At the other end sits the Elite Trainer Box: about $137.04 for 8 packs, about $17.13 a pack, gross EV about $17.50, net about $10.38, ratio about 0.13. The Build & Battle Box is about $58.15 for 4 packs, or $14.54 a pack, at about 0.15; the 3-pack blisters about $42.77 (Vaporeon) and $43.65 (Sobble), near 0.15; the single-pack blisters about $14.06 (Grookey) and $16.75 (Scorbunny), at about 0.16 and 0.13; and the Appletun premium checklane blister about $10 at about 0.22. Leaving the multi-box cases aside, ratios run from about 0.13 for the Elite Trainer Box to about 0.25 for the booster box.

Several listings carry no EV at all, because the site gives a product a pack count only when its contents have been checked and every pack in it belongs to the set it is filed under. That leaves out the Orbeetle V Box at about $67.23, the Alakazam V Box at about $60.71, the Fall 2020 Collector's Chest Tin at about $85.84, the Build & Battle Box Display at about $625.80, and the two Sword & Shield Elite Trainer Box Plus boxes, about $232.52 (Zamazenta) and $250.69 (Zacian), which hold three packs each of four different sets. The two theme decks, Charizard at about $24.97 and Drednaw at about $11.19, and the Theme Deck Display at about $150.98 hold no booster packs at all, so no pack count applies to them either.

Who opens it and who buys singles

Players: the 11 Rare Holo V average about $1.02 and the dearest, Pikachu V #43, is about $2.75. Four copies of an average one cost about $4 as singles, against about $8.72 for a pack out of a booster box, and a pack holds a Rare Holo V about 1 time in 8. The 33 Rares average about $0.62 and top out at Charizard #25, about $4.51.

Set collectors: one of every card at market is about $560.82. Take out the 12 Rare Rainbows, roughly $253 together, and the other 191 come to about $308, a little under one booster box.

Chase hunters: Pikachu VMAX #188 is about $174.99 as a single, against an average of about 894 packs, which is about 25 booster boxes or roughly $7,800 at $314 a box. Pikachu V #170 at about $46.33 averages about 500 packs, close to 14 boxes or about $4,400, and Rayquaza #138 at about $22.77 averages about 111 packs, roughly three boxes or about $970.

People who like opening packs: a booster box is about $8.72 a pack against about $17.13 in an Elite Trainer Box and $14.54 in a Build & Battle Box. A box averages about four hits plus about 4.5 Rare Holo V and 1.5 Rare Holo VMAX, and about $235 of its $314 price is the gap between sealed price and raw card value.

Buying it below market

Each priced Vivid Voltage product page here shows the TCGplayer market price, the history behind it and, for anything at $5 or more, the 12% below market figure a listing has to come in under once shipping is counted. The block below opens eBay searches for this set's main sealed products, already filtered under the below-market price.

Every button runs the search on eBay itself: Buy It Now only, US sellers, sorted by price with shipping added, and the usual junk keywords filtered out. The same buttons sit on the booster box and Elite Trainer Box pages, and an empty capped search means no seller is under that price at the moment, with eBay's own "Save this search" on the results page sending an alert when one appears. The comparison that matters is market price against what the listing costs delivered: shipping counts toward that, a crossed-out higher price in the listing does not, and on a set this old the product itself has to be English and factory sealed. A booster box bought at 12% below market moves the ratio from about 0.25 to about 0.28, and an Elite Trainer Box from about 0.13 to about 0.15. The full method is at /methodology, the EV model is set out in how sealed EV works, and every sealed product for the set is listed at /sets/vivid-voltage.

Bottom line

Vivid Voltage is a set whose card value is concentrated in 12 rainbow rares and, inside those, in one Pikachu. As of September 22, 2026, a booster box costs about $314 and holds about $78.73 of raw card value, a ratio of about 0.25, against roughly 30 to 35 cents per dollar for a typical box on the board; the Elite Trainer Box is about 0.13 against a typical 15 to 20 cents. About $0.84 of the $2.19 pack EV is baseline commons, uncommons and rares rather than any hit, and the Rare Rainbow and Rare Secret tiers together are about 24% of the $1.35 the six rated tiers add to a pack. Pikachu VMAX #188 is about $174.99 as a single, against an average of about 25 booster boxes to pull one.