It is widely believed that booster packs with a higher weight are more likely to have rarer and more valuable art cards inside. Individual booster packs are frequently advertised on selling sites with the word ‘heavy’ suggesting that the weight indicates there will be special cards inside. We decided to find out if the Fusion Strike pack weight affects the pull rate.
Our Sample Packs
Fusion Strike products were heavily allocated and appear to have been less readily available than previous sets. For this reason we received less packs than expected on release day.
Nevertheless, we did receive a sealed booster box and decided to use this for our test. Booster boxes contain 36 booster packs and are factory sealed with a plastic covering bearing the Pokémon logo.
After removing the outer sealed covering we began weighing the packs.
Fusion Strike Pack Weight
We used a highly sensitive digital scale to get an accurate weight for each pack.
The Fusion Strike pack weights ranged from 22g to 24g.
22g – 14 packs
23g – 18 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 – those with a black border signify the presence of a holo, half art or full art card, while those with a white border indicate no special cards.
The 22g Packs
The first Fusion Strike packs to be opened were the 14 x 22g weight packs. 5 packs had code cards with a white border and no art or holo cards. The remaining 9 packs had the following cards:
4 Holo Rare
2 x Landorus 148/264
1 x Butterfree 003/264
1 x Melmetal 189/264
4 Half Art Cards
Breloom V 006/264
Pikachu V 086/264
Gengar V 156/264
Genesect V 185/264
Ultra Rare Card
Celebi V 245/264
The 23g Packs
The 18 x 23g weight packs were opened next. 11 packs had code cards with a white border and no art or holo cards. The remaining 8 packs had the following cards:
2 Holo Rare
Butterfree 003/264
Swampert 064/264
2 Half Art Cards
Tsareena V 021/264
Genesect V 185/264
1 Full Art Card
Rillaboom VMAX 023/264
1 Ultra Rare Card
Schoolgirl 262/264
1 Secret Rare
Chili & Cilan & Cress 273/264
The 24g Packs
The 4 x 24g weight packs were opened next. 3 packs had code cards with a white border and no art or holo cards. The remaining pack contained a holo rare Butterfree 003/264
Conclusion
From the 14 x 22g packs we pulled 4 Holo Rare cards, 4 Half Art V cards and 1 Ultra Rare – a 64% pull rate.
From the 18 x 22g packs we pulled 2 Holo Rare cards, 2 Half Art V, 1 Full Art VMAX, 1 Ultra Rare and 1 Secret Rare card – a 38% pull rate.
From the 4 x 23g packs we pulled 1 Holo Rare card – a 25% pull rate.
The results of our Fusion Strike pack weight experiment show that it is the lighter packs that have the best pull rate.
Excluding Holo Rares from the results also gave the same conclusion that lighter packs have a better pull rate.
14 x 22g packs = 4 Half Art V cards and 1 Ultra Rare – a 35% pull rate.
18 x 23g packs = 2 Half Art V, 1 Full Art VMAX, 1 Ultra Rare and 1 Secret Rare card – a 27% pull rate.
4 x 24g packs = No art cards – a 0% pull rate.
It should be remembered that only 36 packs were used for this experiment. Using a greater number of packs may give a different result.
