It is widely believed that booster packs with a higher weight are more likely to have rarer and more valuable art cards inside. Is this theory true for the Chilling Reign expansion set? We decided to find out if Chilling Reign pack weight affected the pull rate. At the same time we analysed whether different artworks were more or less likely to contain rarer cards.
Our Sample Packs
Booster packs for the Chilling Reign expansion can be purchased as single Booster Packs, or can be found in special collection boxes, gift/collectable tins and Booster Boxes.
A Booster Box is a sealed product containing 36 sealed Booster Packs. We decided that this would be ideal for our experiment.
After unsealing the box we sorted the packs into the five different artworks. We had:
8 packs with Ice Rider Calyrex artwork
7 packs with Shadow Rider Calyrex artwork
7 packs with Articuno artwork
7 packs with Moltres artwork
7 packs with Zapdos artwork
Chilling Reign Pack Weight
We used a highly sensitive digital scale to get an accurate weight for each pack.
The Chilling Reign pack weight ranged from 22g to 24g.
22g – 11 packs
23g – 21 packs
24g – 4 packs
The Results
All packs had the usual energy card, reverse holo card, 3 x uncommon and 5 x common cards and these were not logged. We also decided not to log the non-holo rare cards. We did log the colour of the code cards – white code cards signify the presence of a holo, half art or full art card, while green code cards indicate no special cards.
The 22g Packs
The first Chilling Reign packs to be opened were the 11 x 22g weight packs.
8 of the packs contained green code cards and no special art cards.
3 of the packs contained white code cards. From these packs we pulled the following cards:
Greedent – Rare Holo 128/198
Coballion – Rare Holo 114/198
Blaziken VMAX – Full Art Secret Rare
This card has amazing artwork and is a main chase card for the Chilling Reign set.
The 23g Packs
Next we opened the 21 x 23g packs
12 packs contained green codes and no art or holo cards.
9 packs contained white code cards and from these we pulled the following cards:
Single Strike Beedrill – Rare Holo 003/198
Gengar – Rare Holo 057/198
Single Strike Urshifu – Rare Holo 108/198
Rapid Strike Blaziken V – Half Art 020/198
Zapdos V – Half Art 058/198
Moltres V – Half Art 097/198
Rapid Strike Metagross V – Half Art 112/198
Sandaconda VMAX – Full Art 090/198
Tornadus V – Full Art Ultra Rare 184/198
The 24g Packs
Lastly we opened the 4 Chilling Reign 24g weight packs.
3 of the packs contained green code cards and no art or holo cards.
The remaining pack revealed a white code card and contained
Liepard V – Half Art 104/198
Conclusion
From the 11 x 22g packs we pulled 1 Secret Rare and 2 Holo cards – a 27% pull rate.
From the 21 x 23g packs we pulled 1 Full Art Ultra Rare card, 1 Full Art, 4 Half Art cards and 3 Holo cards – a 43% pull rate.
From the 4 x 24g packs we pulled just 1 Half Art card – a 25% pull rate.
The mid-range 23g packs had the best pull rate. So overall, we would conclude that the the pack weight makes little difference to the pull rate of this set.
Does Pack Art Make a Difference?
In addition to examining the pull rate of the different weight packs we also logged results by artwork. Here the results are very striking.
We had 8 packs with Ice Rider Calyrex artwork. These packs contained no art or holo cards a 0% pull rate.
The 7 packs with Shadow Rider Calyrex artwork revealed just 1 x rare holo card, a 25% pull rate.
The 7 Articuno artwork packs contained 1 Secret Rare card, 1 Half Art card and 4 x Holo cards, an 86% pull rate.
7 packs with Moltres artwork revealed 1 Full Art and 4 Half Art cards, a 71% pull rate.
The 7 packs with Zapdos artwork revealed 1 Full Art Ultra Rare card, a 14.2% pull rate
The results from this Booster Box would suggest that packs with Articuno or Moltres artwork will offer a better pull rate. However, it may be that this booster box was an exception rather than the norm and therefore more packs need to be opened to draw any definite conclusion.
