Written on November 24th, 2023
Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving and Black Friday for those celebrating!
As we got our Charizard #199 from 151 (hurray to us, Youtube going up soon), we faced an existential thought. Do we continue buying packs to fill in everything else that is needed or do we switch to getting individual cards to round out our collection? Based on the evidence and some math, it made more sense to buy singles. Not only did it make sense to buy singles but to sell Ultra Rares and Hyper Rares we own.
SV151 pull rates
TCGPlayer does a great analysis before a set releases by opening 1500 151 packs. They calculate 95% confidence intervals with error bars. Here is a list of the percentages converted into pack pull rates to pull a specific 151 card.
- Specific Hyper Rare 1/154 packs
- Specific Special Illustration Rare 1/225 packs
- Specific Illustration Rare 1/188 packs
- Specific Ultra Rare 1/248 packs
- Specific Double Rare 1/90 packs
- Specific Foil Energy 1/32 packs
SV151 is the most valuable set in Scarlet & Violet over Paradox Rift. I previously reported that Paradox Rift was the most valuable set. Spreadsheet mistake, I am sorry! As of 11/17, SV151 was worth $1,035.41 and Paradox Rift $851.98 for cards valued above $3.
Expected Value of a 151 pack
On 11/17, the price of a 151 pack on TCGPlayer was $5.76. A pack makes sense if the value you get from a card, averaged over many times opening a pack, exceeds how much you pay for it. If you opened one pack and got a Charizard #199, your value at today’s prices would be $119.01 at TCGPlayer market prices. Your chance of pulling a Charizard #199 is 1/225 packs. Therefore, your expected value of pulling a Charizard #199 in one pack is $119.01 multiplied by 1/225 packs. That gives us $0.53 expected value.
Here are a few more examples.
- Charizard Ex #6 Double Rare $5.61 multiplied by 1/90 is $0.062 expected value
- Charizard Ex #183 Ultra Rare $32.93 multipled by 1/248 is $0.133 expected value per pack
Expected value per pack is a game of of pennies. When we did this for all cards above $3 (their price times the expected packs to pull), we had an expected value per pack of $3.81. From above, if we bought every card as a single, it would cost us $1,035.41. That means it would take us 271 packs to pull every card ($1,035.81 divided by $3.81). 271 packs would cost us $1,560.96. It would be cheaper to buy singles.
Expected value would go down if you include all the duplicated commons and uncommons, and the cost to dispose of or store them. Our business goal is to get rid of this box.
Almost no one wants to buy singles. The thrill of the pack opening! The big chase card coming up! Streaming on social media! All those things are addicting. It’s a calculated form of gambling.
The odds are not in your favor.
What if you have a partial collection?
Suppose you bought a few elite trainer boxes to get commons, uncommons, rares, and whatever pulls you get. Does it make sense to continue pulling packs until the end? The answer is no. We had about $400 remaining of the 151 set after getting Charizard and Blastoise Special Illustration Rare’s. When we looked at the odds of pulling low value Illustration Rare’s and Special Illustration Rare’s versus how many packs it would take, the math didn’t work.
To see for yourself, see the value of cards you are missing. Add them up. For us, it was $400. Calculate your expected value of the missing cards by pack. We were missing most Ultra Rares, many Special Illustration Rares, and some Illustration Rares. Our missing value per pack was $1.97. $400 missing value divided by $1.97 expected pack value multiplied by $5.76 cost per pack gave us $1,169.54, far above buying the cards directly.
What could Pokémon TCG do to improve?
Paradox Rift suffers from worse problems than 151. Pull rates are worse, meaning it would take more packs to fully pull every card than buying singles. We’ll write more in a follow up. From a newbie Pokémon player, Pokémon collector, and experienced investor, here are things Pokémon TCG can do to improve the user experience.
A specific Paradox Rift Special Illustration Rare might occur only 1 in 712 packs!!!
- Get rid of gold hyper rares. They have similar pull rates as Illustration Rares yet set after set shows the same card in gold form is less than the price of a card in full art form.
- Increase pull rates! This means it takes less packs to complete a set and leads to more people collecting a full set. A deeper market pool is better for players, collectors, investors, and traders.
- To offset the higher pull rates, reduce the number of packs printed by an equivalent amount. If pull rates increased by 40%, lower the amount printed overall by 29%. This would preserve rarity value. (1.4 multiplied by (1 – 29%) is close to 1).
- With less supply, more demand, pack prices will remain closer to MSRP, meaning Pokémon TCG makes more money.
- Card shops will have less money tied up in inventory, which will lead to fewer sudden sales to clear inventory, pressuring card prices. They can use the savings to invest in newer sets.
- Most Pokémon cards are a depreciating investment. The changes here would slow the depreciation.
- A pet peeve of mine is whales getting early access to sets to drum up interest. They get what they want first and take advantage of high single prices to make above market profits.
- Pokémon TCG should follow the Mario Kart rule, those that are ahead get less special treatment, and those that are behind get more.
- Finally, a good friend of mine on Threads, glimmerousdream, suggested having curated mini collection products, similar to the Southern Island set handled by Wizards of the Coast.
- “I think more curated mini collection products would be excellent, like how the Southern Islands set was handled by WoC. You get the cards advertised, no gambling, small set number so hopefully better quality.” – glimmerousdream
Thanks for reading with us on our Pokémon investing journey!
Sincerely yours,
smilingdad
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