Some packs pay out better than the site says they will
We started sampling live feeds to catch packs that underdeliver. The more interesting finding was the packs whose own published odds sell them short.
The premise of this site is that a published odds table is a claim, not a fact, and that the only way to check it is to count what actually comes out. We sample operators' live pull feeds every couple of minutes and value every reveal, which after a while adds up to a real measurement of a pack rather than a promise about it.
We expected that to be mostly a story about packs falling short. Some do. But a genuine surprise sits in the data: several packs measurably outperform the expected value their own site advertises.
The clearest case
Courtyard's Sealed Pokémon Booster costs $15.00. Its published odds imply a return of about 99.5% — near break-even, which is roughly what you would expect a site to advertise. Across 2,131 sampled pulls, the typical rip came back at 130.0%.
That is not a rounding difference. The odds table describes a pack that roughly returns your money; the measured record describes one that typically returns noticeably more than it costs, before any cash-out. 65.6% of sampled pulls came back worth at least what the card cost.
The full measured record, updated as the feed accruesCourtyard · measured from the live feed→Why an operator would understate its own pack
There is no single answer, and we can only reason about mechanism rather than intent. Two explanations fit what we see.
- Value bands are wide, and the estimate uses their midpoints. When a top band spans a wide range, the midpoint is a blunt stand-in for what actually sits in it. If the real inventory in that band skews high, the published estimate lands low.
- Inventory moves faster than the odds table. Card prices change. A pack whose odds were set when the underlying cards were cheaper will quietly outperform its own published figure until someone updates it.
Both are ordinary operational drift rather than anything sinister. That is rather the point: an odds table is a snapshot of what a site believed when it wrote it, and drift runs in both directions. The only way to know which direction a particular pack has drifted is to count.
Everything currently running hot
These are the packs whose measured typical rip currently clears their own published estimate by more than 5%, on samples of at least 100 pulls. This table is computed live, so it reflects today's data rather than the day this was written.
| Pack | Site | Published | Typical rip | Pulls |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sealed Pokémon Booster | Courtyard | 99.5% | 130.0% | 2,131 |
| Pro Pack | Phygitals | 101.2% | 126.1% | 112 |
| Starter Pack | Phygitals | 102.4% | 123.8% | 186 |
| Soccer Starter | Trove | 88.9% | 100.0% | 2,598 |
| Wildcard Starter Pack | Courtyard | 102.8% | 113.3% | 2,238 |
What this does and does not mean
A measured median describes pulls that already happened. It is a far better guide than a published estimate, and it is still history, not a promise. Inventory changes, prices move, and a pack running hot today can be repriced tomorrow — which is exactly why we keep sampling instead of publishing a number once.
It also does not mean these packs are free money. Every figure here is gross — the value of the card, not what you keep. Cash out instantly and the site's buyback takes its cut; take store credit and the value never leaves. The payout terms sit on every row for that reason, and on packs where the cash-out is steep they can undo the entire margin shown above.
What it does mean is that the published number is not the last word in either direction. Sites that publish real odds and a live feed with values on it — the ones that make this checkable at all — deserve some credit for that, including when the check comes out in their favour.
Common questions
How can a pack return more than its published expected value?+
Published expected value is usually computed from value bands at their midpoints. If the cards actually sitting in a band skew toward the top of it, or if card prices have risen since the odds were set, the real return runs above the published figure. It is ordinary drift rather than anything deliberate, and it runs in both directions.
Does a pack beating its odds mean it is profitable to open?+
Not necessarily. Every measured return we publish is gross — the market value of the card that came out. What you keep depends on the payout route: instant buybacks typically take 10–17%, store credit cannot be withdrawn at all, and shipping the card means selling it yourself. A pack running above its published odds can still return less than it cost once the cash-out is applied.
How do you measure what a pack really returns?+
We sample operators' public live pull feeds every couple of minutes, record each revealed card with the value the operator itself publishes for it, and divide by what that card cost. Once a pack has 100 attributed pulls we rank it on the median of those returns.