Is a Mega Evolution booster box worth opening?
You pay €226, a typical box gives back ~€49 in cards.
It pays for itself 1 time in 46. On average, counting the big hits few boxes get, it gives back €70.
All prices are for the English booster box and English cards on Cardmarket.
In short: As of 13 October 2026, a Mega Evolution booster box costs €226.22 on Cardmarket. The hits inside (double rare and up) are worth €70.32 on average, 31% of the price. That average is pulled up by the chase cards: the typical box returns €49, and only 2.2% of boxes pay for themselves. One pack in 2.8 holds at least one hit. The top chase, Mega Lucario ex 188/132 (€151.79), turns up in 1.4% of boxes.
What you pay, what you get back
for one boxYour odds
- 1 pack in 2.8holds at least one hit (double rare or better)
- ~14.8 hitsin a box, on average
- 1 box in 70holds Mega Lucario ex, the top card (€152)
- 1 box in 46pays for itself in cards
The cards people open it for
Tap a card for its price
in 1 box in 70
in 1 box in 29
in 1 box in 70
Cheapest way to open it
Cardmarket prices
Where a pack’s value comes from
Each rarity and what it adds to one pack, on average- Double rare1 pack in 510 cards · €0.75 on average€0.16 a pack
- Ultra Rare1 pack in 1222 cards · €4.32 on average€0.36 a pack
- Illustration rare1 pack in 922 cards · €5.63 on average€0.61 a pack
- Special illustration rare1 pack in 10110 cards · €71.82 on average€0.71 a pack
- Mega Hyper Rare1 pack in 1,2602 cards · €145.61 on average€0.12 a pack
Total: €1.95 a pack, so €70 for a box.
Frequently asked questions
Is a Mega Evolution booster box worth opening?
You pay €226 for the box. A typical box gives back ~€49 in cards. It pays for itself 1 time in 46. On average its hits are worth €70.32, 31% of its price (Cardmarket prices as of 13 October 2026).
What are the odds of pulling Mega Evolution’s top chase card in a box?
Mega Lucario ex 188/132, priced at €151.79, turns up about once every 2,500 packs, so in 1.4% of 36-pack boxes.
Mega Evolution booster box or ETB: which should you buy to open?
Cheapest per pack today: Booster box (36 packs), at €6.28 per pack (€226.22 on Cardmarket). The packs are the same; an ETB adds accessories, a box only packs.
How many hits are in a Mega Evolution booster box?
14.8 on average across 36 packs (double rare and up): one pack in 2.8 holds at least one, per the TCGplayer study.
How it is calculated, and its limits
- Pull rates
- For each hit rarity (double rare and up), the chance of pulling one per pack, from the published pack-opening study for the set. Commons, uncommons, regular rares and reverse holos do not count.
- Card price
- The card’s Cardmarket trend price in euros. When it is more than three times what the card actually sold for on average, it is one stale listing: the 30-day sold average replaces it.
- Value of a hit
- The mean price of the rarity’s cards, each card being equally likely. A median would understate the rarity whose chase card is the reason to open the set.
- Average return
- The sum, rarity by rarity, of “odds per pack × mean value”, times 36 packs.
- Typical box
- 20,000 boxes opened at random (a reproducible draw, same seed on every update); the median: half return less, half more. It is the honest number, since the average is pulled up by cards most boxes never see.
- Pays for itself
- Share of the 20,000 simulated boxes whose hits are worth at least the box price.
- Box price
- The Cardmarket trend price of the 36-pack English booster box; cards are priced in their English version too. Without a priced box, 36 packs at the price of the cheapest format per pack.
Limits
- Getting value back is not cashing in: selling cards costs fees and postage, and a price is a guide, not an offer.
- Only hits count: commons, uncommons, rares and reverse holos add a few cents to a few euros per box.
- The draw treats each rarity independently, pack by pack; in a real pack, two big hits together are a little rarer than that. The average does not depend on this detail.
- Special prints (Poké Ball and Master Ball patterns) are not counted.
- Pull rates come from opening samples: they are estimates, not the official print rules.
Where the numbers come from
Pull rates: TCGplayer study (more than 5,000 booster packs), published 30 September 2025, read on 14 October 2026. Card and product prices: Cardmarket trend as of 13 October 2026. 20,000 boxes drawn at random for the typical box.
