Pokémon TCG · swsh3 · 2020-08-14
Darkness Ablaze — Booster Pack
Where the value comes from
| Tier | Odds / pack | Avg card value | EV / pack | Priced | P(≥1) / product |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Double Rare | 11.0% | $2.19 | $0.24 | 11.0% | |
| Ultra Rare | 8.9% | $5.32 | $0.47 | 8.9% | |
| Hyper Rare | 2.1% | $7.64 | $0.16 | 2.0% | |
| Bulk / regular cards | 78.0% | ≈ $0.01 | — | — |
Expected hits per product: 0.22 (counting every tier the pull-rate table enumerates). The Bulk / regular cards row is the rest of a pack — commons, uncommons and plain rares worth about a cent — shown so the odds add up to the whole pack.
What are the odds you profit?
EV is the average; this is the distribution. 20,000 simulated openings of this exact product, using the same sources, odds and prices as everything above.
Same assumptions as the EV: odds are uniform within each tier (real sets short-print their biggest chases, so true odds are usually a touch worse than this), cards sell at today's market price, and selling costs nothing. Read it as a ceiling, not a promise.
Chase cards
13 priced · biggest hits first
$45.10
$18.21
$14.29
$13.27
$11.04
$8.84
$7.36
$6.78
$6.47
$6.00
$5.44
$5.19
$5.08Each tile: card value (top-right), then the odds of pulling that exact cardfrom a single pack — shown as “1 in N packs” and as a percentage (the same number, two ways). Per-card odds assume every card in a tier is equally likely — no public data quantifies short prints. See methodology.
Is it worth grading?
PSA US fees, approx · Jul 2026What a PSA 10 sells for vs the raw price plus PSA's fee — the upside if the card grades a 10. The odds of actually getting a 10 are a separate column, still pending.
| Card | Raw | PSA fee | PSA 10 value | Net if 10 | Chance of 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charizard VMAX #20 | $45.10 | $79.99 (Regular) | $150.50 | +$25.42 | 72%n=33,033 |
| Butterfree VMAX #190 | $18.21 | $79.99 (Regular) | $77.75 | $-20.45 | 84%n=2,186 |
| Salamence VMAX #194 | $14.29 | $79.99 (Regular) | $90.01 | $-4.27 | 83%n=2,785 |
| Scizor VMAX #193 | $13.27 | $79.99 (Regular) | $67.39 | $-25.87 | 84%n=2,479 |
| Eternatus VMAX #192 | $11.04 | $79.99 (Regular) | $54.43 | $-36.60 | 85%n=2,053 |
Net if 10= PSA 10 value − raw − fee, the gain assuming a perfect grade (an upper bound — most cards won't 10). Chance of 10is this card's own PSA population — of every copy graded, the share that came back a 10 — and it drives the graded EV toggle instead of one flat assumption. Read it as a ceiling, not a coin flip: it counts cards people CHOSE to submit, which skews toward good copies, and a card pulled from a pack today may fare worse. A “—” means too few graded copies to quote. PSA 10 prices come from Scrydex and PokemonPriceTracker. Fees exclude shipping and use the cheapest PSA tier for each card's declared (graded) value. PSA paused its cheaper Value tiers in June 2026 under a grading backlog, so Regular ($79.99) is the current floor — grading a card much under ~$100 rarely makes sense.
How many packs for…
No number of packs guarantees it — that is what a -90.4% market ROI pays for.
Sword & Shield era estimate, RECALIBRATED against the two large primary studies that exist for this era: the TCGplayer Authentication Center's 8,000+-pack openings of Evolving Skies (swsh7, Aug 2021) and Lost Origin (swsh11, Sep 2022). Those two independent samples agree closely tier by tier - plain V 10.56% and 11.63%, the VMAX plus full-art/alt-art band 9.48% and 8.32%, and the secret rainbow/gold band 2.05% in BOTH - so this set uses their midpoints: double_rare 11.0%, ultra_rare 8.9%, hyper_rare 2.05%. This REPLACES an earlier community-aggregate guess that put hyper_rare at 4.2%, roughly double what both measured studies found, which inflated every Sword & Shield set's EV. Confidence stays LOW deliberately: the numbers are now anchored to real measurements, but they are measurements of two OTHER sets in the same era, not of this one - per-set rates do vary, and no primary study of this set has been found. Tier averages also assume every card in a tier is equally likely, which understates the headline chases (in Evolving Skies the Umbreon VMAX alt is about 1 in 2,000 packs, far rarer than a uniform tier implies), so the residual error runs conservative.
Market price history
4 days · 2026-08-14 → 2026-08-25Daily median of eBay-sold (PriceCharting) sealed prices. Updates each time the price job runs.