How Many Packs to Pull a Special Illustration Rare You Want

How many packs to pull a Special Illustration Rare you've picked out? For an even chance, 142 to 1,063, depending on the set, at TCGplayer's odds for one named SIR. On October 30, 2026, that many packs cost 5 to 36 times the price of each set's priciest SIR as a single.

This is for anyone eyeing a booster box to chase one card. The odds and our October 30 prices come first, then a worked example with Mega Charizard X ex, the chase that came closest to making sense.

A named SIR is 5 to 22 times rarer than "any SIR"

The number that gets quoted is the rate for any Special Illustration Rare, about 1 in 80 packs in a Mega set. The card you want is one of five to 22 SIRs, so its odds are that rate split among them. Our Special Illustration Rare pull rates article covers the any-SIR side for all seven sets; this one stays with the single card.

TCGplayer's named-card odds run from 1 in 205 to 1 in 1,533

TCGplayer's Authentication Center prints a "Specific Special Illustration Rare Card" line in each set's count, and it equals the any-SIR rate divided by the number of SIRs: 1.25% ÷ 5 = 0.25% in Phantasmal Flames, 1 in 400. That treats every SIR in a set as equally likely, and so do our numbers. Ascended Heroes is the worst set for one card despite the best any-SIR rate of the six Mega sets, because it splits 1 in 70 across 22 cards.

Half of chasers are done by 69% of the average, and one in ten needs 2.3 times it

Odds of one in 400 make 400 packs the average wait, and the wait has a long tail: half of all chasers pull the card within 277 Phantasmal Flames packs, about 37% go past 400, and one in ten opens more than 920. The ratios are the same in every set: the coin-flip count is 0.69 times the average and the 90% count is 2.3 times it.

Source: TCGplayer Authentication Center pull-rate articles, re-read October 30, 2026. Packs for a chance c: the smallest n with 1 − (1 − 1/X)^n ≥ c. Last column: the any-SIR rate at the low and high end of TCGplayer's 95% interval, split evenly. Our arithmetic. All English sets.

Chart: SetPulls. Source: TCGplayer Authentication Center odds, read Oct 30, 2026.

The margin moves the 90% mark by hundreds of packs

TCGplayer opened 2,000+ to 8,500+ packs per set, and its 95% intervals carry into the pack counts. Chaos Rising, the 8,500-pack count, pins the 90% mark between 959 and 1,409 packs. Ascended Heroes, at 2,000+ packs, only gets it to between 2,611 and 5,388. TCGplayer's own margin for one named Ascended Heroes SIR, ± 0.11%, is wider than the 0.07% rate it sits on. If you set a budget, set it from the high end. Our pull rate calculator runs the 50% and 90% counts for any card in these sets, with the margin shown.

On October 30, a coin flip at each set's priciest SIR cost 5 to 36 times the card

We priced every SIR and every set's packs on TCGplayer on October 30, then took each set's priciest SIR as the card being chased.

A booster box is the cheaper pack in the five sets that have one

Divided by 36, a booster box beat a loose pack by 74 cents (Chaos Rising) to $1.51 (Phantasmal Flames) on October 30, so the table uses the box. Ascended Heroes and 30th Celebration have no booster box on TCGplayer, so they get the loose pack, $10.66 and $12.09.

Your chance of pulling it for less than the single runs from 1.9% to 12.4%

Divide the single's price by the pack price and you get how many packs the card is worth. The chance that your copy shows up within those packs is the chance chasing beats buying.

Source: TCGplayer market prices, US shipping, read October 30, 2026, 05:36 to 05:37 UTC. Pack = booster box market price ÷ 36; a loose Booster Pack for Ascended Heroes and 30th Celebration. Our arithmetic, counting only the card you want.

Chart: SetPulls. Source: TCGplayer market prices read Oct 30, 2026; TCGplayer Authentication Center odds.

Mega Lucario ex is the worst chase on the list: Mega Evolution has the lowest any-SIR rate of the seven sets, 0.99%, split ten ways, for a $163.66 card. Phantasmal Flames comes out best even with the dearest box pack, $10.84, because it has only five SIRs and one of them is a $582.91 card. Our Chaos Rising chase cards and Mega Evolution chase cards pages run the same average-pack cost for the top chase cards in those two sets, gold cards included.

Mega Charizard X ex, the one close call, run through every check

Mega Charizard X ex 125/094 is one of the five Phantasmal Flames SIRs, 0.25% a pack. The average chase is 400 packs, $4,336 at the October 30 box price; the coin flip is 277 packs, $3,003; and 53 packs, the $582.91 the single costs, give a 12.4% chance. A 36-pack box gives 8.6%.

Card image: pokemon.com card database (both cards). $582.91 and $183.83 on TCGplayer, October 30, 2026.

On October 4, u/Former_Being5895 posted the same kind of table to r/PokemonTCG, ten chase cards priced against their packs, and wrote that Charizard X was "still 7x, but at 1 in 400 it's the most realistic pull here." A comment with 82 points when we read it on October 30, from u/Mental-Draw7997, pushed back: "When people do this math and come up with the $, it never includes all other hits you get…"

That's a fair point, so here are the other hits. In 400 Phantasmal Flames packs, TCGplayer's rates put about 43.9 Illustration Rares, 83.1 Double Rares, 32.2 Ultra Rares and a third of a gold Mega Hyper Rare in your stack. At October 30 market prices, those, with the other four SIRs, add up to $489.16. The chase still costs $3,847 net, 6.6 times the single. The poster's own reply to that comment came to about 5 times, with the single at $654 when they wrote; it has since slid to $582.91.

Chart: SetPulls. Source: TCGplayer market prices and odds, read Oct 30, 2026. Commons, uncommons, rares and reverse holos not counted.

The other SIRs come along about once each

If every SIR in a set is equally likely, you pull, on average, one copy of each other SIR before the one you want. In Phantasmal Flames that's Rotom ex, Mega Sharpedo ex, Mega Lopunny ex and Dawn, $57.34 together on October 30. It matters more in Ascended Heroes: chasing Mega Gengar ex brings about one of each of the other 21, $2,271.07, still only 13.9% of the $16,342 average bill there. These are market prices before any selling fees, so the real return is lower. Our Ascended Heroes pull rates piece works out the odds per pack and the math for each of that set's products.

Three numbers that get mixed up in chase math

The first is the rate. 1 in 80 is any Phantasmal Flames SIR; Charizard X alone is 1 in 400. A PokéWallet guide to the set goes the other way and gives Charizard X "estimated 1:1,296 pack odds", more than three times rarer than TCGplayer's measured count. Use the count.

The second is the average. About 37% of chasers in every set in the table open more packs than it, so a Charizard budget of 400 packs runs out before the card shows up a bit more than a third of the time.

The third is the set. TCGplayer's count puts the average at 913 Phantasmal Flames packs to own all five SIRs, about 2.3 times the 400 for Charizard alone, and 5,658 packs for all 22 in Ascended Heroes. If the whole binder page is the goal, our master set cost breakdown prices it, and the gold cards get their own odds in Mega Hyper Rare pull rates.

Buy the SIR you want, Charizard X included

Buy the single. On October 30, the best chase among the seven sets still left a 7-in-8 chance of paying more than $582.91 for Mega Charizard X ex, and the worst asked $5,855 for an even shot at a $163.66 Mega Lucario ex. Open packs because you like opening them.

u/rp1414 answered the October 4 post with the other side, 67 points when we read it: "I'm assuming with this post you're trying to change the minds of people who chase cards. You won't. They like the gambling part of it." Fair enough, as long as the price of the gamble is on the table. At $10.84 a pack, the coin flip at Charizard X costs $3,003. Delta Reign, out November 6, had no TCGplayer pull-rate count when we looked on October 30; when it gets one, run the same check before buying a case.

What would change this: a Phantasmal Flames box under about $76, which would bring the coin-flip packs down to the price of the single. On October 30 it was $390.26.

References

• Phantasmal Flames pull rates, TCGplayer Authentication Center (one such article per set, all re-read Oct 30, 2026)
• Ascended Heroes pull rates, TCGplayer Authentication Center
• Mega Evolution pull rates, TCGplayer Authentication Center
• Mega Charizard X ex 125/094, TCGplayer product page, market price read Oct 30, 2026
• Phantasmal Flames Booster Box, TCGplayer product page, market price read Oct 30, 2026
• Phantasmal Flames Special Illustration Rares, TCGplayer search (one such search per set, Oct 30, 2026)
• Phantasmal Flames products, pokemon.com, on what a booster display box holds
• Pokémon TCG release schedule, press.pokemon.com, Delta Reign date
• Pulling the Prismatic Evolutions Umbreon ex from packs costs ~$20,000 on average, r/PokemonTCG, post by u/Former_Being5895 and replies by u/Mental-Draw7997 and u/rp1414
• Phantasmal Flames complete guide, PokéWallet blog, for its 1:1,296 estimate

Related Reading

• What's in a Pokémon booster pack: the slots a Mega pack fills and what the hit cards in them pay back.
• Perfect Order vs Pitch Black vs Chaos Rising: the three cheapest Mega sets compared pack by pack.
• 30th Celebration pull rates: every slot in the five-card 30th Celebration pack, with TCGplayer's count.