Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet Pull Rates

Highlights From Scarlet & Violet

Let’s start with some of the popular cards from this set and it wouldn’t be a Scarlet & Violet guide without mentioning Miriam SAR in it. This card shot out of the gates, immediately pushing over £100. Luckily for most people, it has since dropped to a far more ‘reasonable’ valuation and can be picked up for around £40 - £60 now.

Tera Gyarados and Tera Arcanine are both beautiful Full Art cards and, although they are not the most playable cards, they have been a massive hit with collectors. They can be grabbed fairly cheap now though and do not seem to have held a high value, despite being reasonably difficult to pull from packs. Both can be bought for less than £20 each.

Koraidon and Miraidon, the poster boys of the video games and the mascots of the set, were rewarded with their own Special Illustration Rares and Gold cards (Hyper Rares) for the set. They both feature beautiful artwork and the texture on the cards is simply stunning.

Pull Rates For Scarlet & Violet

Thankfully, the kind folks over at the TCGPlayer Authentication Centre opened up a whole bunch of booster packs. I say a whole bunch, they opened over 8,000 packs! They logged all of their data and we will use this as the basis for this section to help explain the pull rates for the set.

Gold Miraidon was found in 1:309 packs whereas gold Koraidon was slightly rarer, being found in 1:376 packs. It was a similar story for the SAR cards for these two as well, with Miraidon SAR having the same pull rate as its gold card, 1:309, and Koraidon SAR had a much lower pull rate of 1:393. This was actually the hardest card to pull according to the TCGPlayer data. So if you managed to pull one from a pack, congratulations! This was definitely not reflected in the prices though, despite the relative rarity it would seem. Prices settled recently at around £45 for the Miraidon and £33 for the Koraidon.

One thing that was noticeable was how close in pull rate some different versions of cards were. Miriam Full Art and Miriam SAR for example. We would expect the SAR to be much harder to pull from packs, and it was, but only slightly. Miriam Full Art had a pull rate of 1:320 packs whereas the SAR version was only 1:376.

They calculated the chances of opening a Hyper Rare, Illustration Rare, Special Illustration Rare or Ultra Rare as being 18%. That’s not bad, a 1 in 5 chance of opening one of those epic cards is pretty nice odds. To break this down further, they gave us pull rates for every type of rare card:

• Double Rare - 1:7

• Ultra Rare - 1:15

• Illustration Rare - 1:13

• Special Illustration Rare - 1:32

• Hyper Rare - 1:54

Of course it is always prudent to note that these are randomised booster packs and so your own experience with them may be different.

If you are unsuccessful in opening packs and can’t get the cards that you want, then there are other ways of picking them up. You can purchase singles, which might save you some money in the long run compared to ripping tons of booster packs (although it’s not nearly as fun), or you can trade for the cards you need. Both of these are effective ways of getting hold of cards and can help you complete the full set if that’s what you are aiming for.

Prices & Investment Guide

As with all sets, the initial prices for prerelease and on initial release are always much higher and they then settle out as the cards become more available. This is why we see some cards pushing well over £100 on release and within a few weeks they can be down to £40 or less.

I think this set will be a good investment for the future. It is the first set in the new block and introduced lots of new cards and mechanics. It also brought us a new rarity system and these are all things that can help with future values.

Now is a good time to pick up cards from the set as prices have come down to very low ranges as people focus on the hype of the next sets. If you are a collector, then a solid strategy for buying single cards is to wait until the next set is released, try not to get caught up in the FOMO of the initial release or you will pay through the nose for some cards. Gardevoir ex Full art is a good example of this as the card was around £30 on release. It can now be picked up for £5. £5 for a full art card is mental and I will happily scoop those up as I go along. Most of the cards in the set can be picked up for less than £10 so now is a great time to pick them up!

Any full art cards are likely to increase in value in the future and so if you are looking to invest in cards in the hope of making a nice return, it is a long term game. It happens, but is very rare, that cards will suddenly shoot up over night. As with most things, it is worth picking up the cards now and sitting on them for years. Display them and enjoy them in the meantime, that’s what they are really for.

Whatever your motivation is for collecting, I hope you have found our little guide useful. Remember that the pull rates quoted may be different for you, you might only open one pack and hit a gold card, which would give you a fantastic pull rate! Or you might open a thousand packs and pull nothing, which I’m sure has happened to us all at some point! Buy the cards you like for a price which you think is fair and you won't be too far wrong.