One of the most important metrics for a new expansion set is the pull rate – the ratio of packs that have rare cards to those that don’t. This is determined by analysis of the contents of booster boxes. With Chilling Reign recently released we decided to do an experiment to determine the Chilling Reign booster box pull rate.
What is in the Chilling Reign Booster Box?
Chilling Reign is the 6th main expansion set in the Pokémon Sword and Shield series.
The set was released on 18th June and most stockists had sold out on pre-release.
New booster boxes are sealed a with clear film covering which has the Pokémon logo imprinted in white.
Each booster box contains 36 sealed booster packs. The booster packs for this set have five different artworks – Calyrex Ice Rider, Calyrex Shadow Rider, Articuno, Moltres and Zapdos.
How good is the Chilling Reign Booster box pull rate?
The term ‘pull rate’ refers to the numbers of holo, half art, and full art (including ultra and secret rare) that are found in booster boxes. The higher the numbers of these cards, the better the pull rate.
Booster packs containing one of these cards generally contain a white online code card. Other code cards are green.
We opened two booster boxes – a total of 72 booster packs. Both boxes had been purchased from different suppliers. Results were logged by artwork and also as a total:
Booster Box 1
This box contained 8 packs with Ice Rider Calyrex artwork and 7 of each of the other artworks. Out of the 36 packs 13 contained white code cards – a pull rate of 36%
The 13 packs with white code cards contained – 5 holo rare cards, 5 V cards, 1 VMAX and 2 full art ultra rare cards.
We also examined the pull rate by artwork:
Ice Rider Calyrex artwork – All green cards
Shadow Rider Calyrex artwork – 1 rare holo
Zapdos artwork – 1 ultra rare full art
Moltres artwork – 4 V half art cards and 1 VMAX full art card
Articuno artwork – 4 holo rare, 1 V half art card and 1 secret rare full art card.
Booster Box 2
This box contained 8 packs with Moltres artwork and 7 of each of the other artworks. Out of the 36 packs 15 contained white code cards – a pull rate of 42%
The 15 packs with white code cards contained – 8 holo rare cards, 4 V cards, 1 VMAX and 2 full art ultra rare cards.
The pull rate by artwork for this box was:
Ice Rider Calyrex artwork – 1 VMAX
Shadow Rider Calyrex artwork – all green cards
Zapdos artwork – 2 V half art cards and 2 ultra rare full art cards
Moltres artwork – 5 holo rare cards and 2 V half art cards
Articuno artwork – 3 holo rare cards
Booster Boxes 1 and 2 combined
Altogether the 2 boxes contained 15 packs with Moltres and Ice Rider Calyrex artwork and 14 of each of the other artworks. Out of the 72 packs 28 contained white code cards – a pull rate of 39%
The 28 packs with white code cards contained – 13 holo rare cards, 9 V cards, 2 VMAX and 3 full art ultra rare and 1 full art secret rare card.
The pull rate by artwork for both boxes was:
Ice Rider Calyrex artwork – 1 VMAX – a pull rate of just 1/15 = 6%
Shadow Rider Calyrex artwork – 1 holo rare card – 1/14 = 7%
Zapdos artwork – 2 V half art cards and 3 ultra rare full art cards – 5/14 = 36%
Moltres artwork – 5 holo rare cards, 6 V half art and 1 VMAX card – 12/15 = 80%
Articuno artwork – 7 holo rare cards, 1 V half art card and 1 secret rare – 9/14 = 64%
Conclusion
When looked at the two boxes combined, the Chilling Reign booster box pull rate is quite good, working out at 39% overall and packing 13 holo rare, 9 half art V, 2 full art VMAX, 3 ultra rare and 1 secret rare card.
However, when the results by artwork are examined the results are very different with a large discrepancy in the pull rates of the various artworks. Both Calyrex artworks performed badly scoring a poor 6 and 7%, while the packs with legendary birds artwork performed significantly better with 36%, 64% and a whopping 80% for the Moltres artwork packs.
It should be remembered that this experiment was carried out using just 2 booster boxes and may not be indicative of all booster boxes. To draw any definitive conclusions with regard to the Chilling Reign booster box pull rate a far greater number of booster packs need to be analysed.
