Is Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) worth buying right now?

Our current verdict is CAUTION (score 64/100). The average only beats the price because of one card. Drop this pack's single biggest recent pull and cash-out EV falls to $872.12 against a $999 price — so the buy case rests on that one pull repeating.

What is the EV of Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)?

The calibrated EV is $1,184.34 against a pack price of $999.00, with a typical (median) pull of $848.00 across 59 indexed pulls.

What are the real odds of beating the pack price on Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)?

30.5% of indexed pulls met or beat the pack price, and 8.5% returned at least double the price. These are observed odds reconstructed from real pulls, not the posted odds.

What is the typical pull from Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)?

The median pull is $848.00 — half of all indexed rips returned less than that. The single best recorded pull is $3,551.60.

Pokémon

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) is a $999 Courtyard Pokémon mystery pack with a calibrated expected value of $1,184.34, worth $1,001.95 at its observed 85% buyback — a cash-out ratio of 1.003x (1.186x at sticker FMV), so it currently pays out more than it costs on average, after Courtyard's buyback haircut (+EV). 30.5% of 59 indexed pulls met or beat the pack price. Rip Advisor verdict: CAUTION (64/100).

Ranked #7 of 76 ranked packs by cash-out ratio, #1 of 14 Pokémon packs.

This pack is no longer sold on Courtyard — the numbers below are its historical record.

Cash-out ratio

1.003x

$1,001.95 back on a $999 pack, at this pack's observed 85% buyback. At sticker FMV it is 1.186x.

95% range $771.84–$1,232.06 — that still includes the $999 price, so this edge is inside the noise of the sample.

CAUTION+0.3% ROI

HIGH CONFIDENCE · 59 pulls (33 effective) · 3dSIGNAL Stale · 3 days ago

Calibrated EV: $1,184
Cash-out EV: $1,002
Pack price: $999
Typical pull: $848
Hit rate: 30.5%
Lifetime EV: $1,064
Pulls indexed: 59
Last pull: 3d ago

01 / Rip Advisor

Is Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) worth it right now?

score 64/100CAUTION

050100

The average only beats the price because of one card. Drop this pack's single biggest recent pull and cash-out EV falls to $872.12 against a $999 price — so the buy case rests on that one pull repeating.
Cash-out EV is $1,002 on a $999 pack (0.3% net after the ~85% buyback) — the average rip beats the price.
Cash-out EV is $1,001.95 against a $999.00 price, and that gap is smaller than the uncertainty around it — the 95% range is $771.84 to $1,232.06. On this sample the pack cannot be told apart from break-even in either direction.
The typical pull (median) is $848 — most rips return less than the pack price; the EV is carried by rare chase cards.
Recent pulls are averaging 10.8% above where they were 7 days ago. A restock would look like this; so would a lucky week. We cannot see inventory, so this is a change in what came out, not a confirmed change in what is in there.
Calibrated EV (recent pulls weighted) is $1,184 vs $1,064 lifetime — the pool has improved recently.
30.5% of pulls meet or beat the pack price, across 59 indexed pulls.

Downside · bottom-quartile rip

−$438

1 in 4 rips returns ≤ $561 cash — covering 56% of the price.

Upside · top-decile rip

+$609

1 in 10 rips returns ≥ $1,608 cash. Both figures use the observed buyback ratio.

Log this decision:

Verdict is computed transparently from indexed pulls: cash-out ROI, median pull, 7-day trend, hit rate, and sample size. Redemption shipping (typically $16+) is not included — cards worth less than a few times the shipping cost are usually better instant-sold than shipped. Not financial advice.

02 / Pool signals

What's happening in the Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) pool

Lifecycle stage, health, and chase removals — read from indexed pulls, never guessed.

EV up 11% in 7 days and recent pulls run above lifetime — a restock signal, not a confirmed restock.

RESTOCK SIGNAL

EV up 11% in 7 days and recent pulls run above lifetime — a restock signal, not a confirmed restock.

Pro adds the Pool Health score and chase-removal impact.

Not observable: packs remaining, value remaining, and which chases are still in the pool — Courtyard publishes a pull feed, not inventory. We label those unavailable rather than estimate them. Everything above is computed from indexed pulls and EV snapshots; thin or stale data pulls the score toward neutral. Formula

Chase tracker

chase tier ≥ $4,995 · confidence 89%

No chase-tier pulls (≥ $4995) observed in the last 30 days.

Removals are facts; what's left is not. Each row is a unique graded card observed leaving this pack, so it is no longer in the pool — though a card can return after a buyback, which is why re-listings are flagged. We show no “chance it remains”: Courtyard publishes pulls, not inventory, so that number would be guesswork. Formula

Signal lifetime

SIGNAL Stale · 3 days ago

No new pulls for well past this pack's usual gap (typically 9.0 h). It may be paused, sold out, or no longer indexed. At the observed pull rate, half the evidence behind this read is replaced in about 22 days.

Newest pull: 3 days; observed
Pull rate: 2.7/day; observed
Pulls, 7d: 8; observed
Half-life: Pro

Aged, not predicted. Half-life counts how fast new evidence arrives, measured from real pull timestamps — it is not a forecast of where EV is heading. We publish no EV-drift half-life because our snapshot history is still too short for a regression to mean anything. The seeded placeholder points this note used to warn about have been flagged in the database and excluded from every chart, trend and score, so what you see plotted is observed data. Note the headline EV is decay-weighted, so it reacts to new pulls sooner than this whole-sample horizon implies. Methodology

03 / Contents

What has come out of Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)

The eras, sets and cards this pack has actually produced. A record of past pulls — Courtyard publishes no inventory, so this is not a statement about what is left.

By era

Cards seen range from 1996 to 2025.

Retro (2000-2009)47%$1,062 avg
Modern (2010-2019)31%$977 avg
Current (2020+)14%$1,224 avg
Vintage (pre-2000)8%$1,134 avg

Most common sets

Sets these pulls came from.

Pokémon Aquapolis3%$2,073 avg
Pokémon Game3%$1,982 avg
Pokémon Rocket3%$751 avg
Pokémon Sun & Moon Unified Minds3%$1,306 avg
Pokémon Sword & Shield Lost Origin3%$2,214 avg
Pokémon VS3%$891 avg
Pokémon XY Promo3%$1,483 avg
EX Holon Phantoms2%$850 avg

Cards seen most often

Named on 98% of readable pulls. The rest do not print a card number, and without one the card cannot be told apart from the set name.

Charizard5%$1,593 avg
Giratina V3%$2,214 avg
Latios3%$766 avg
Pikachu3%$730 avg
Alakazam 4 LV.X2%$588 avg
Alakazam EX2%$603 avg
Blastoise2%$936 avg
Brigette2%$848 avg

Built from the 59 indexed pulls of this pack so far — a record of what has come out, not a promise about what is left.

04 / Floor safety

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) floor safety & buyback reality

The two ways average EV lies to you — how top-heavy the pack is, and what FMV actually converts to in cash — then which exit pays most.

In Pokémon Diamond (Spicy), the top 2% of pulls account for 10% of all pulled value — low dilution. Value is spread fairly evenly across the pool, so the average is close to what a typical rip returns. The observed instant-offer ratio is 85% of FMV, which is the cash number every verdict on this page already uses.

Floor safety

low dilution

10% of everything this pack has paid out came from just the top 2% of pulls. Value is spread broadly across pulls, so the average sits closer to the typical rip here than it does on a top-heavy pack. It still sits above the median — check both.

Buyback reality

84.6% of FMV observed

Across 58 indexed pulls that carry a recorded bid, a $100 FMV pull cashes out around $85 if you instant-sell — in line with the platform's 84.6%. This is the figure every verdict on the site multiplies by.

Holding, listing, or physically redeeming can beat the instant offer — but redemption shipping (typically $16+) eats small wins.

Net exit value

58 paired pulls · 98% bid coverage · confidence 88%

Instant-selling the average (mean) pull here returns $901.66 — $164.13 below sticker FMV (15.4% haircut). That figure is the average of bids we actually recorded, not the platform rate applied blind.

Pro compares all three exits side by side, with the redemption breakeven and the value-by-value haircut curve for this pack.

Bids are recorded, resale is not. Instant-buyback figures are real offers captured at index time and can move. Redemption shipping starts near $16 in the US, is higher internationally, and is charged per shipment — batching pulls lowers it. We publish no resale estimate, liquidity score, or time-to-sell, because no such data is available to us. How buyback works

05 / Observed odds

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) odds — observed, not posted

Reconstructed from real pulls, so it shows what has actually been coming out — posted odds can't do that. It is a record of pulls, not a count of what is left.

Across 59 indexed pulls, 30.5% returned at least the $999 pack price and 8.5% returned double or more; the single best recorded pull is $3,552.

Under $5000.0%· stable
$500 – $99969.5%· stable
$999 – $1,998 · beats the pack22.0%· stable
$1,998 – $4,995 · big hit8.5%· stable
$4,995+ · chase0.0%· stable

Observed across 59 indexed pulls — what actually came out of this pack, independent of the posted odds. The 48h column shows tier drift: a falling green tier means fewer of the good cards have come out lately — which may mean they are running out, or may just be a quiet 48 hours.

06 / Simulator

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) rip simulator

What ripping 1–20 packs looks like, using this pack's actual pull distribution.

Packs to rip5Hoping for

Averaged over

$1,184.34 per pull

Cost: $4,995
Expected cash-out: $5,010
Expected net: +$15
≥1 hit chance: 83.8%

Recent pool: pulls are weighted so newer ones count for more, the same basis as this pack’s headline, verdict and the budget tool. The 59 pulls behind the hit chance are unweighted either way, and the 85% buyback is applied to both. These two disagree here: $2.95 per pack recent-weighted against -$98.85 all-time. The pool has moved, so which number you want depends on whether you think the recent run continues. Averages describe many rips — any single rip can land anywhere on the distribution.

Monte Carlo · 10,000 trials

Packs5

P(profit) 29.4%

Mean net −$498

Cost $4,995

Worst 5%: −$2,004
Bottom quartile: −$1,381
Median: −$682
Top quartile: +$184
Best 5%: +$1,663

Bootstrap resampling of 59 observed pulls with the 85% cash-out applied. Every pull is drawn with equal probability, so this is an all-time average: it will sit below the headline whenever the recent pool has run better than the lifetime one, and above it when the reverse is true. It also assumes the pool doesn't change as you rip — for top-heavy packs the downside is understated once the grail leaves. Estimates, not financial advice.

07 / Big hits

Biggest Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) pulls

2022 Pokémon Sword & Shield Lost Origin #186 Giratina V - Holo Full Art (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$3,552PSA 10 GEM MINT

2003 Pokémon Aquapolis #104 Psyduck - Reverse Foil (PSA 7 NM)

$2,849PSA 7 NM

2010 Pokémon Lost Link #011 Magnezone - Holo (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$2,296PSA 10 GEM MINT

1999 Pokémon Game #4 Charizard - Holo Shadowless (PSA 6 EX-MT)

$2,237PSA 6 EX-MT

2006 Pokémon Holon Phantoms #035 Deoxys - 1st Edition Holo (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$2,098PSA 10 GEM MINT

2016 Pokémon XY Promo #212 Shaymin EX - Holo Premium Pokekyun Set (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$1,934PSA 10 GEM MINT

2008 Pokémon Diamond & Pearl Legends Awakened #11 Mewtwo - Holo (PSA 9 MINT)

$1,893PSA 9 MINT

2019 Pokémon Sun & Moon Unified Minds #242 Mewtwo & Mew GX - Holo Full Art Secret (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$1,838PSA 10 GEM MINT

08 / EV history

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) EV over time

Snapshot per scraper run. The dashed line is break-even — EV above it is +EV.

Calibrated EV currently sits at $1,184.34, above the $999 pack price, and has moved up 10.8% over the last 7 days.

1.003xCash-out ratio

09 / Quick answers

Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) — quick answers

Is Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) worth buying right now?: Our current verdict is CAUTION (score 64/100). The average only beats the price because of one card. Drop this pack's single biggest recent pull and cash-out EV falls to $872.12 against a $999 price — so the buy case rests on that one pull repeating.
What is the EV of Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)?: The calibrated EV is $1,184.34 against a pack price of $999.00, with a typical (median) pull of $848.00 across 59 indexed pulls.
What are the real odds of beating the pack price on Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)?: 30.5% of indexed pulls met or beat the pack price, and 8.5% returned at least double the price. These are observed odds reconstructed from real pulls, not the posted odds.
What is the typical pull from Pokémon Diamond (Spicy)?: The median pull is $848.00 — half of all indexed rips returned less than that. The single best recorded pull is $3,551.60.

10 / Pull log