Why is the Paradox Rift Pull Rate Important?
The pull rate of a set is one of the most important metrics for any fan of the game. The pull rate is the ratio of packs that have rare art cards to those that don’t. Sets that have a good pull rate tend to be more popular than those with a low pull rate.
Although a huge number of packs should be opened to get a truly definitive answer to this question, most people only buy one or two booster boxes at most and we wanted to emulate the experience of the average Pokémon fan by determining the Paradox Rift Pull Rate of three random booster boxes.
The Paradox Rift Set
The Paradox Rift Set is the fourth main expansion set of the Scarlet and Violet Series. It was released on 3rd November 2023 with a presale price in many stores of around £99 ($100). We ordered our boxes from different suppliers to ensure they were completely random boxes.
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 featuring terastalized Pokémon – Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, Armarouge and Garchomp
How good is the Paradox Rift pull rate?
The Scarlet and Violet Base Series introduced a revamping of rarity categories with each type of rare card having its own unique symbol. Non-holo rare cards were discontinued meaning all rare cards were holographic. For the purpose of our pull rate test we deemed a pull to be an art card – Double Rare ex, Ultra Rare, Illustration Rare, Special Illustration Rare or Hyper Rare.
The Paradox Rift Set contains 266 cards and includes 20 Double Rare ex Cards, 34 Illustration Rare Cards, 15 Special Illustration Rare Cards, 28 Ultra Rare Cards and 7 Hyper Rare Gold Cards.
In addition to logging the overall Paradox Rift pull rate we also logged the pull rate for each pack art design – Roaring Moon, Iron Valiant, Armarouge and Garchomp.
Paradox Rift Pull Rate Results by Pack Art
Our three booster boxes contained 108 Booster Packs:
27 Roaring Moon artwork, 28 Iron Valiant, 26 Armarouge and 27 Garchomp.
Roaring Moon Artwork
Our 27 packs featuring Charizard included 24 that had no art cards.
From the other 3 packs we pulled:
089/182 Iron Valiant ex (Double Rare)
201/182 Minior (Illustration Rare)
225/182 Iron Valiant ex (Ultra Rare)
This represents a pull rate of 12.5%
Iron Valiant Artwork
Out of the 28 packs featuring Iron Valiant, 16 packs had no art cards. From the remaining 12 packs one pack had two art cards making a total of 13 cards pulled:
027/182 Armarouge ex (Double Rare)
058/182 Mewtwo ex (Double Rare) x 2
140/182 Altaria ex (Double Rare)
155/182 Maushold ex (Double Rare)
206/182 Morpeko (Illustration Rare)
208/182 Steelix (Illustration Rare)
214/182 Porygon-Z (Illustration Rare)
242/182 Roark (Ultra Rare)
243/182 Shauntal (Ultra Rare)
257/182 Professor Turo’s Scenario (Special Illustration Rare)
260/182 Garchomp ex (Gold Hyper Rare)
262/182 Roaring Moon ex (Gold Hyper Rare)
This represents a pull rate of 46.4%
Armarouge Artwork
Out of our 26 packs, 15 packs contained no art cards. From the other 11 packs we pulled:
038/182 Garchomp ex (Double Rare)
076/182 Cofagrigus ex (Double Rare)
124/182 Roaring Moon ex (Double Rare)
135/182 Aegislash ex (Double Rare)
184/182 Dottler (Illustration Rare)
186/182 Magby (Illustration Rare)
190/182 Vanillish (Illustration Rare)
203/182 Slither Wing (Illustration Rare)
221/182 Golisopod ex (Ultra Rare)
227/182 Toxtricity ex (Ultra Rare)
228/182 Sandy Shocks ex (Ultra Rare)
This represents a pull rate of 42.3%
Garchomp Artwork
Our 27 packs featuring Garchomp included 19 that had no art cards. From the remaining 8 packs we pulled:
038/182 Garchomp ex (Double Rare)
046/186 Tsareena ex (Double Rare)
070/182 Iron Hands ex (Double Rare)
100/182 Toxtricity ex (Double Rare)
108/182 Sandy Shocks ex (Double Rare)
135/182 Aegislash ex (Double Rare)
235/182 Larry (Ultra Rare)
239/182 Professor Sada’s Vitality (Ultra Rare)
This represents a pull rate of 29.6%
Conclusion
From our 108 booster packs we pulled 16 Double Rare cards, 8 Illustration Rare, 8 Ultra Rare, 1 Special Illustration Rare and 2 Gold Hyper Rare cards.
This represents an overall Paradox Rift pull rate of 35/108 or 32.4%.
When this is broken down by rarity the pull rate from 3 booster boxes is:
Double Rare – 14.8%
Illustration Rare – 7%
Ultra Rare – 7%
Special Illustration Rare – <1%
Gold Hyper Rare – 1.8%
The results analysed by pack art showed that packs with Iron Valiant artwork had the best pull rate of 46.4%, closely followed by Armarouge artwork with 42.3%. The Garchomp artwork packs had a combined pull rate of 29.6%, while the Roaring Moon artwork had the worst score at just 12.5%.
Interestingly, the overall Paradox Rift pull rate of 32.4% is slightly lower than the pull rate for Obsidian Flames and Paldea Evolved sets, both of which came out at 34.2%.
As always it should be remembered that the Paradox Rift pull rate results posted here were taken from a sample of three booster boxes. If the sample were larger with more booster boxes being analysed, the result could be different.
