Is White Flare worth opening? EV, pull rates and chase cards

Verdict

A White Flare pack holds about 26 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price, and the two most valuable cards in the set are not part of that figure. As of September 25, 2026 a loose pack sells for about $13.94 and the cards in it come to about $3.69 at raw market prices, an EV ratio of about 0.26. Across the sealed EV board a typical booster bundle holds a little under 30 cents per dollar and a typical Elite Trainer Box about 15 to 20 cents, so the ratio itself is unremarkable while the set behind it is not.

Two caveats travel with that number. No published pack-opening count covers this set, so the site values it on Scarlet and Violet era averages rather than on rates measured from White Flare packs. And about 29 percent of the value of one of every card sits in two cards that carry no rate at all, so the figure is built without them.

White Flare released alongside Black Bolt and the two are near mirrors of each other: same day, same size, same structure, and ratios within a hundredth of one another.

What White Flare is

White Flare released on July 18, 2025 as a Scarlet and Violet set with the code WHT. The checklist runs to 86 printed numbers and 173 cards in the database once the numbered extras are counted, and every one of them carries a market price.

Sixty nine of those cards are Illustration Rares, close to 40 percent of the set, and they hold its value rather than a short list of ultra rares. The median card is about $11.19 and 98 cards sit at $10 or more, both unusually high for a modern set and both a direct consequence of that shape.

What is cheap is as striking as what is not. The six Double Rares average about $0.58, and the dearest of them, Jellicent ex #45, is about $0.63, which puts the whole tier inside the price of a single pack. The eight Ultra Rares average about $2.23. In most Scarlet and Violet sets the ex cards lead; here an Illustration Rare of an ordinary Pokemon is worth many times a full art ex.

The chase cards

Victini #172 is the most valuable card in the set at about $560.43, and the card database files it as a plain Rare. The set's ten other Rares hold about $2.33 between them, so whatever it is, it is not the same kind of card as the rest of that group.

Behind it, Reshiram ex #173 at about $483.61 is the set's only Black White Rare. The Special Illustration Rares follow, led by Reshiram ex #166 at about $189.51 and Keldeo ex #167 at about $78.39, and then the Illustration Rares, led by Oshawott #105 at about $87.57.

Nine cards in the set reach $50 or more. The seven Special Illustration Rares average about $65.95 and the 69 Illustration Rares average about $22.18. That second figure is the one that matters for opening packs, because the Illustration Rare tier is where almost all the volume sits.

Compared with Black Bolt, White Flare's top end is flatter. Its best Illustration Rare is about $87.57 where Black Bolt's is about $221.32, and its Special Illustration Rares average about $16 less, which is most of the gap between the two sets' pack figures.

Pull rates and what "1 in N" means

The rates below are era averages rather than counts from White Flare packs. The source behind the site's per-set rates does not cover this set, so the Scarlet and Violet era figures stand in: a Double Rare about 1 in 6 packs, an Ultra Rare about 1 in 15, an Illustration Rare about 1 in 12.5 and a Special Illustration Rare about 1 in 80. The block says so under the table, and the site marks the set "era default" wherever its EV appears.

The caveat matters more here than on a typical set. A set printing 69 Illustration Rares is not self-evidently printing them as often as a set printing 25 of them, and no published count settles it in either direction for White Flare.

Within a tier every card is treated as equally likely, which is what turns a tier rate into odds on a single card. One Illustration Rare every 12.5 packs across 69 cards puts any one named Illustration Rare near 1 in 860 packs. One named Special Illustration Rare is about 1 in 560, one named Ultra Rare about 1 in 120, one named Double Rare about 1 in 36. A nine pack Elite Trainer Box averages about 0.7 Illustration Rares, and about one box in nine holds a Special Illustration Rare.

Sealed EV

The $3.69 a pack splits by tier: Illustration Rares about $1.77, Special Illustration Rares about $0.82, Ultra Rares about $0.15 and Double Rares about $0.10, with the remaining $0.85 or so the baseline for the ordinary slots. The Illustration Rare line is about 48 percent of the pack on its own, and the two ex tiers together are about 7 percent.

White Flare has no booster box. Its packs come in bundles, Elite Trainer Boxes and collections, and the loose pack is the cheapest route to one. Per pack, a loose pack is about $13.94, the Booster Bundle about $15.75 for six, the Elite Trainer Box about $16.46 for nine, the Elite Trainer Box case about $18.13 for 90, and the Pokemon Center Elite Trainer Box about $21.75 for 11. The ratios run in the same order, from about 0.26 on a loose pack to about 0.17 on the Pokemon Center box, where the extra outlay buys the box rather than more cards.

Net EV is lower again: about $2.60 a pack against $3.69 gross, after a 15 percent marketplace fee and $1 of shipping for each card worth a dollar or more, with cheaper cards counted as bulk. Against a $13.94 pack that is the figure that reflects what the cards would clear rather than what they list at. The method is at /methodology and in how we compute sealed EV.

What the EV leaves out

Two cards, and they are the two best in the set.

Victini #172 is filed as a plain Rare. The site treats that rarity as part of the ordinary slots of a pack, not as a hit, and at $560.43 this card is far too valuable for that treatment, so it is excluded from the baseline rather than allowed to set the value of every common slot. No published rate exists to count it as a hit instead. Reshiram ex #173 is the set's only Black White Rare, and no rate covers that tier either.

Between them those two are about 29 percent of the value of one of every card in the set, and none of it is inside the $3.69. The pack figure is a floor for that reason, and comparing White Flare against a set whose chase cards are all counted compares two different things. The product pages say so in the notes under the per rarity table.

Who opens it and who buys singles

The numbers point different ways depending on what is wanted.

For one named Illustration Rare, packs are a long route: about 1 in 860, which is roughly 96 Elite Trainer Boxes on average for a specific card, against one purchase at market for the same card as a single, in a tier averaging about $22.18. For the tier as a whole the position changes, because a reader happy with any of the 69 sees one about every 12.5 packs, and the spread runs from a few dollars to Oshawott's $87.57.

For players the set is inexpensive. The six Double Rares average about $0.58 and the eight Ultra Rares about $2.23, so one of each Double Rare comes to about $3.48 at market against about $13.94 for one pack, and one of each Double Rare and Ultra Rare together is about $21.32.

For the two cards at the top, no pack arithmetic applies. Neither carries a published rate, so the odds on them are unknown rather than long, which is a different thing and worth keeping separate.

Buying it below market

Every White Flare card and sealed product page carries the TCGplayer market price, its history, the price that counts as 12 percent below market, and two eBay buttons. The first shows Buy It Now listings from US sellers capped under that price; the second shows every current listing, lowest first. An empty capped search means nothing is listed below market at that moment. The cap applies to the item price, so add shipping yourself: a listing counts as below market only when the landed price is at least 12 percent under the adjusted market price, and a seller's own "was" price counts for nothing.

The block below opens eBay searches for this set's main sealed products, already filtered under the below market price.

Bottom line

White Flare holds about 26 cents of raw card value per dollar of sealed price on a loose pack as of September 25, 2026, about 0.23 on a bundle and about 0.22 on an Elite Trainer Box, against roughly 15 to 20 cents for a typical Elite Trainer Box on the board. Its value is spread rather than stacked: 69 Illustration Rares carry about 48 percent of a pack while the six Double Rares average about $0.58 and the eight Ultra Rares about $2.23. The same two caveats apply to every figure above. The rates are era averages because no published count covers this set, and a set shaped like this one is the case such averages handle worst. And the two most valuable cards, together about 29 percent of the value of one of every card, carry no rate and are not in the EV at all.