What's in a Pokémon Booster Pack? 10 Cards, Slot by Slot

What's in a Pokémon booster pack is set by Pokémon: 10 game cards, then an Energy and a code card that don't count toward the 10. In Pitch Black, the July 2026 English set, about four packs in five hold no full art and no illustration rare if the two hit slots fill independently, and an average pack held $1.44 of hit cards against a $5.86 price.

If you're buying your first packs, or wondering why a pack felt empty, here's the answer slot by slot, with the odds TCGplayer measured and prices from October 23, 2026. Two of the ten slots decide what a pack is worth, and the table shows which.

Sources: Pokémon Support (contents); TCGplayer's Pitch Black pull rates (4,000+ packs) and market prices, US shipping, read October 23, 2026. Averages by SetPulls. The one Mega Hyper Rare, at 0.09% of packs, has no slot named.

Chart: SetPulls. Sources: Pokémon Support; TCGplayer Pitch Black pull rates.

Overview: the ten cards follow a fixed recipe

Pokémon's support page puts it in one line: "Each booster pack contains 10 game cards: 4 commons, 3 uncommons, and 3 foils (at least one of which will be rare or higher)." Pokémon's Pitch Black showcase says the same of that set, 36 packs to a display box, "each pack has 10 cards and one Basic Energy inside."

Seven of the ten cards are worth less than a seller fee

The four commons and three uncommons are the bulk. On October 23, Pitch Black's 37 commons averaged $0.12 on TCGplayer and its 26 uncommons $0.11, and not one of them reached $0.30. That's the fixed fee TCGplayer adds to every order on top of its 10.75% commission and 2.5% transaction fee, so none of these cards is worth listing alone. Count them as the deck-building part of the pack.

The plain reverse holo is a foil you keep

One foil is an ordinary card in reverse holo. Our reverse holo guide priced 153 plain ones from Pitch Black and Perfect Order on October 21, and none reached $1.

The rare slot hits in about three packs in ten

The Pitch Black pull-rate study from TCGplayer's Authentication Center opened more than 4,000 packs. It puts a Double Rare "in the Rare slot" of 21.02% of packs and an Ultra Rare in 8.30%, so 29% of packs upgrade that slot. The rest get a plain rare, which averaged $0.18. A Double Rare isn't much better on price: the set's ten averaged $0.56 and the dearest, Mega Slowbro ex, was $0.72.

The second reverse holo is where the money is

The art cards come from a different slot. TCGplayer found an Illustration Rare "in the second Reverse Holo slot" of 11.01% of packs and a Special Illustration Rare in 1.25%, about 1 in 80. Pitch Black's six SIRs averaged $51.91, led by Mega Darkrai ex 116/084 at $143.37 on TCGplayer on October 23. Our rarity symbol guide shows how to read which of these you've pulled from the card's corner.

At the table: what one Pitch Black pack is likely to hold

TCGplayer doesn't say whether the two slots are filled independently. If they are, about 80% of Pitch Black packs have no Ultra Rare, no Illustration Rare, no SIR and no Mega Hyper Rare. Count Double Rares as a hit and the empty share is still about 62%. TCGplayer's write-up adds that Pitch Black's rates "appear to be identical" to those of Phantasmal Flames, Perfect Order and Chaos Rising, so these odds are a fair guide to those three sets too.

Chart: SetPulls. Source: TCGplayer, Pokémon TCG Pitch Black Pull Rates, read Oct 23, 2026.

On r/PokemonTCG in August, a 326-point thread asked what to call the feeling after a big stack of packs with no hits. u/iStraphe (7 points) set the bar:

"If you are expecting an SIR with fewer than 100 packs you're going to have a bad time." For Pitch Black, that's roughly right. At 1.25% a pack, 100 packs give a 72% chance of at least one SIR, so more than one 100-pack run in four ends with none. Under iStraphe's own definition, "I consider IRs and full arts hits," one pack in five has one.

One reply under iStraphe's comment describes a run below that bar. u/the_man2434 (1 point, August 12) wrote that they'd "opened about 70 packs of PB with no SIR," while their "very first pack of prismatic ever in a poster collection pulled Umbreon." PB is Pitch Black; the Umbreon came from Prismatic Evolutions, a different set. At the same SIR rate, 70 Pitch Black packs end with no SIR about 41% of the time, two runs in five, and iStraphe's answer put it at "on or slightly below par for PB."

Price that out and the pack looks thin. Multiply each rarity's rate by its average card price on October 23 and an average Pitch Black pack held $1.44 of Double Rares and better, before fees. After TCGplayer-style selling costs, with anything under $2 counted as unsellable, it's $0.99. The pack itself was $5.86 at TCGplayer market. So on paper the hits return about 25% of the price, and 45% of that comes from SIRs that turn up about once in 80 packs. Our Pitch Black worth-opening page runs that sum for each sealed product; priced on October 19, it showed $1.48 before fees and $1.04 after.

Chart: SetPulls. Sources: TCGplayer market prices and pull rates, Oct 23, 2026. Computed by SetPulls.

Before you trust the recipe: three kinds of pack break it

30th Celebration packs hold five cards, all foil

Pokémon's 30th Celebration showcase says each pack holds "five foil cards (including one of 30 unique illustrations of Pikachu) and one foil Basic Energy card." So the whole pack is five cards, every one of them foil, plus a foil Energy, half a regular pack's ten game cards.

Japanese packs hold five cards

Pokémon Japan lists a Storm Emeralda pack at 5 cards for 200 yen, and says that set's packs contain no Basic Energy at all. So a pack count from Japan doesn't translate one for one. Our Japanese vs English guide covers what else differs.

Older English packs promise less

Pokémon's support page adds a note for sets before Scarlet & Violet: they "only guarantee at least 1 reverse foil card per booster pack." The same page says the art on the wrapper shows "some of the Pokémon featured in the expansion, not the contents of the individual booster pack," and that Pokémon can't guarantee any Pokémon or card type in a given pack.

Common mistakes: reading a dry run as a bad batch

The commonest one is treating a short dry spell as proof that something's wrong with the packs. In the same thread, u/Musa_2050 (3 points) replied: "Chaos Rising and Pitch Black hate me. I got one AR out of about 30 packs." That's about 30 packs across two sets. Reading AR as an Illustration Rare, and taking TCGplayer at its word that the two sets' rates look the same, the odds don't need an explanation. At Pitch Black's 11.01%, 30 packs average 3.3 Illustration Rares, and one or none happens in about 14% of 30-pack runs, about one buyer in seven. iStraphe, the_man2434 and Musa_2050 are three commenters in a 202-comment thread; TCGplayer's rates come from more than 4,000 packs.

The second is paying single-pack prices for a long run. On October 23, a 36-pack Pitch Black Booster Box came to $5.05 a pack at TCGplayer market against $5.86 for a loose one. That gap is $29 over 36 packs. The box rate still doesn't make a chase cheap: a named SIR such as Mega Darkrai ex is 1 in 480 packs, and 480 packs at the box rate cost more than $2,400 for a card listed at $143.37.

Our read: open packs for the opening, buy singles for the card

The call: buy a booster pack for the ten cards and the moment you open it, and if you check one thing first, check the set's SIR rate: in Pitch Black, SIRs were 45% of an average pack's hit value. On October 23, an average Pitch Black pack held $1.44 of hit cards at market price for a $5.86 pack, and, if its two hit slots fill independently, about four in five held no full art or art card. If one card is the goal, the single is cheaper than the packs it takes. Our Special Illustration Rare pull rates compare the odds set by set.

What would change our mind: a regular set whose average pack holds hit cards worth more than the pack's market price, on TCGplayer's measured rates. Pitch Black is at 25%.

References

• What can I expect in a Pokémon Trading Card Game booster pack?, Pokémon Support
• Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution Pitch Black product showcase, pokemon.com
• Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration product showcase, pokemon.com
• Storm Emeralda, Pokémon Card Game official site (Japanese)
• Pokémon TCG Pitch Black Pull Rates, TCGplayer
• Pitch Black Booster Pack and Pitch Black singles, TCGplayer, market prices read Oct 23, 2026
• TCGplayer Fees, TCGplayer Help Center
• What do you call the feeling after you rip a huge stack with no hits?, r/PokemonTCG, comments by u/iStraphe and u/Musa_2050