Box EV: what a box is worth opened, from published pull rates and today's prices
Screen 6 sums each card's pull probability times its observed value into an expected value per pack, then compares it with sealed prices. Three sets have a published sample; opened value covers 7 to 36% of the sealed price.
Expected value screens exist elsewhere, and the plan says so: this one is included, not led with. What it adds is a published sample behind every rate and a refusal to count anything modelled.
Pull rates
The rates come from TCGplayer's published pack-opening studies, which give per-tier odds of any card and of a specific card, with a 95% interval, the sample size and the number of cards in the tier. Three seeded sets have a large enough published sample: Evolving Skies from more than 8,000 packs, Scarlet & Violet 151 from more than 1,500, and Prismatic Evolutions from more than 1,200. Vintage sets have no published sample of that size and get nothing, rather than a rate from memory.
Each tier is mapped onto the catalog by rarity label, and by name pattern or explicit card numbers where the catalog's label does not split a tier; Evolving Skies' six alternate-art VMAX cards, for instance, carry the same "Rare Rainbow" label as the rainbow rares. The seed warns when a mapping's card count differs from the study's; all sixteen tiers match.
The sum
For each card, the per-pack probability is one over its tier's specific-card odds. Expected value per pack is the sum over every card of that probability times the card's observed raw value; modelled values are never counted. A product's expected value is its pack count times that. The ratio shown is expected value over the product's sealed price. Tiers whose 95% interval is wider than the rate itself are badged thin.
The first result
On 13 September 2026, expected value per pack was $6.34 for Evolving Skies, $9.25 for 151 and $4.04 for Prismatic Evolutions. The card carrying the largest share of a pack's expected value was Umbreon VMAX #215 in Evolving Skies, Charizard ex #199 in 151 and Umbreon ex #161 in Prismatic Evolutions. Opened value covered 7 to 36% of sealed prices across the three sets' products. In each set the single most valuable card carried 18 to 24% of the pack's expected value on its own, which is the concentration screen's point made a second way.
What it does not say
A ratio under one is not a verdict on sealed product; sealed carries option value and scarcity that an opened pack does not. The screen shows what a pack is worth at today's prices and today's published odds, with the sample behind each rate, and leaves the comparison to the reader.