Is Pokémon Starter Pack worth buying right now?

Our current verdict is NO DATA (score 0/100). No new pulls in 0 days — this pack normally yields one every 0.0 days, so it has gone quiet.

What is the EV of Pokémon Starter Pack?

The calibrated EV is $26.31 against a pack price of $25.00, with a typical (median) pull of $22.00 across 23,021 indexed pulls.

What are the real odds of beating the pack price on Pokémon Starter Pack?

27.6% of indexed pulls met or beat the pack price, and 3.4% 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 Starter Pack?

The median pull is $22.00 — half of all indexed rips returned less than that. The single best recorded pull is $271.90.

Pokémon

Pokémon Starter Pack

Pokémon Starter Pack is a $25 Courtyard Pokémon mystery pack with a calibrated expected value of $26.31, worth $23.47 at its observed 89% buyback — a cash-out ratio of 0.939x (1.052x at sticker FMV), so it currently returns less than its price on the average rip once the buyback haircut is taken. 27.6% of 23,021 indexed pulls met or beat the pack price.

Ranked #10 of 74 ranked packs by cash-out ratio, #2 of 14 Pokémon packs.

Buy on Courtyard ↗Opens courtyard.io — PullValue is independent and earns nothing from purchases.

Cash-out ratio

0.939x

$23.47 back on a $25 pack, at this pack's observed 89% buyback. At sticker FMV it is 1.052x.

95% range $23.16–$23.78, clear of the $25 price.

-6.1% ROI

MEDIUM CONFIDENCE · 23,021 pulls (7,042 effective) · todaySIGNAL Weakening · 7.5 h ago

Calibrated EV: $26
Cash-out EV: $23
Pack price: $25
Typical pull: $22
Hit rate: 27.6%
Lifetime EV: $25
Pulls indexed: 23,021
Last pull: 7h ago

01 / Rip Advisor

Is Pokémon Starter Pack worth it right now?

score 0/100NO DATA

050100

No new pulls in 0 days — this pack normally yields one every 0.0 days, so it has gone quiet.

Downside · bottom-quartile rip

−$7

1 in 4 rips returns ≤ $18 cash — covering 70% of the price.

Upside · top-decile rip

+$6

1 in 10 rips returns ≥ $31 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 Starter Pack pool

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

First indexed pull 2 day(s) ago — the pool is new, so early numbers move fast and mean little yet.

NEWLY LAUNCHED

First indexed pull 2 day(s) ago — the pool is new, so early numbers move fast and mean little yet.

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 ≥ $125 · confidence 100%

7 chase-tier cards left this pack recently, carrying 7% of its observed average. Pro shows which cards and when.

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 Weakening · 7.5 h ago

Pull flow has slowed past the usual gap of 3 min, so this read is ageing faster than the pack is producing evidence. At the observed pull rate, half the evidence behind this read is replaced in about 50 days.

Newest pull: 7.5 h; observed
Pull rate: 461.9/day; observed
Pulls, 7d: 1000; 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 Starter Pack

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 1997 to 2026.

Current (2020+)89%$26 avg
Modern (2010-2019)5%$32 avg
Vintage (pre-2000)4%$30 avg
Retro (2000-2009)2%$39 avg
Year not stated<1%$22 avg

Most common sets

Sets these pulls came from.

Mega Evolution - MEG EN3%$21 avg
Pokémon M2a-Mega Dream EX3%$29 avg
Black Star Promos - Mega Evolution MEP EN3%$21 avg
Pokémon M2-Inferno X2%$29 avg
Pokémon M3-Nullifying Zero2%$29 avg
VMAX Climax2%$22 avg
Pokémon M4-Ninja Spinner2%$28 avg
Prismatic Evolutions - PRE EN2%$24 avg

Cards seen most often

Named on 99% of readable pulls. The rest do not print a card number, and without one the card cannot be told apart from the set name.

Oricorio ex2%$20 avg
Pikachu2%$25 avg
Charizard ex1%$24 avg
Charizard1%$20 avg
Mega Charizard X ex1%$20 avg
N's Zekrom1%$24 avg
Charmander1%$24 avg
Dreepy1%$27 avg

Built from the 1000 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 Starter Pack 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 Starter Pack, the top 2% of pulls account for 9% 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 90% of FMV, which is the cash number every verdict on this page already uses.

Floor safety

low dilution

9% 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

89.2% of FMV observed

Across 22,573 indexed pulls that carry a recorded bid, a $100 FMV pull cashes out around $89 if you instant-sell — better than the platform's 84.6%. This is the figure every verdict on the site multiplies by.

Measured per card rather than per dollar the ratio is 90.3% — higher because cheaper cards draw proportionally better offers. That one describes a single card; the 89.2% above describes a basket, which is what an expected value needs.

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

Net exit value

999 paired pulls · 100% bid coverage · confidence 100%

Instant-selling the average (mean) pull here returns $24.07 — $2.38 below sticker FMV (9.0% 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 Starter Pack 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 23,021 indexed pulls, 27.6% returned at least the $25 pack price and 3.4% returned double or more; the single best recorded pull is $272.

Under $130.0%· stable
$13 – $2565.1%▲ 0.5pt · 48h
$25 – $50 · beats the pack31.5%▼ 0.5pt · 48h
$50 – $125 · big hit2.9%· stable
$125+ · chase0.5%· stable

Observed across 1,000 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 Starter Pack rip simulator

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

Packs to rip5Hoping for

Averaged over

$26.31 per pull

Cost: $125
Expected cash-out: $117
Expected net: -$8
≥1 hit chance: 83.5%

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 400 pulls behind the hit chance are unweighted either way, and the 89% buyback is applied to both. These two disagree here: -$1.53 per pack recent-weighted against -$2.30 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) 22.8%

Mean net −$7

Cost $125

Worst 5%: −$34
Bottom quartile: −$25
Median: −$16
Top quartile: −$2
Best 5%: +$59

Bootstrap resampling of 1,000 observed pulls with the 89% 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 Starter Pack pulls

2025 Pokémon Holiday Calendar #025 Pikachu (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$373PSA 10 GEM MINT

2000 Gym Challenge #11/132 Lt. Surge's Raichu - Holo (CGC 10 GEM MINT)

$355CGC 10 GEM MINT

1999 Fossil #20/62 Gengar (CGC 10 GEM MINT)

$352CGC 10 GEM MINT

2019 Pokémon Sun & Moon Double Blaze #045 Cubone (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$272PSA 10 GEM MINT

2023 Pokémon Mew EN-151 #176 Poliwhirl - Illustration Rare (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$260PSA 10 GEM MINT

1999 Pokémon Fossil #12 Moltres - Holo (PSA 9 MINT)

$252PSA 9 MINT

2023 Pokémon Sword and Shield Crown Zenith #GG03 Magmortar - Full Art (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$246PSA 10 GEM MINT

2022 Pokémon Sword & Shield Lost Origin #TG17 Pikachu Vmax - Full Art (PSA 10 GEM MINT)

$244PSA 10 GEM MINT

08 / EV history

Pokémon Starter Pack EV over time

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

Calibrated EV currently sits at $26.31, above the $25 pack price, and has moved up 1.7% over the last 7 days.

0.939xCash-out ratio

09 / Quick answers

Pokémon Starter Pack — quick answers

Is Pokémon Starter Pack worth buying right now?: Our current verdict is NO DATA (score 0/100). No new pulls in 0 days — this pack normally yields one every 0.0 days, so it has gone quiet.
What is the EV of Pokémon Starter Pack?: The calibrated EV is $26.31 against a pack price of $25.00, with a typical (median) pull of $22.00 across 23,021 indexed pulls.
What are the real odds of beating the pack price on Pokémon Starter Pack?: 27.6% of indexed pulls met or beat the pack price, and 3.4% 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 Starter Pack?: The median pull is $22.00 — half of all indexed rips returned less than that. The single best recorded pull is $271.90.

10 / Pull log