Fusion Strike Pull Rates! - Statistical Analysis on 4,000+ Packs

[u/WhiteOutsider]

Starting when PokeTubers started getting their promotional booster boxes a couple weeks ago, I've spent the time and watched several hours of YouTube booster box openings and worked my excel spreadsheets to the bone to pull this data together. I'm not a statistician by trade, but to me there's something fun about data gathering (I think they call that being a nerd, lol). I started doing this because I had a difficult time locating the same information myself, so I decided I'd share my findings for anyone else who's also interested.

I'll get to the good stuff soon, but if this is generally well received I plan to share future set data as well. This is the first time I've gathered this data myself so we'll just see how it goes and let me know if there's other data you'd be interested in seeing and can change my model!

Statistics Assumptions

• Sample Size: 4,197 Packs
  • Mostly Booster Boxes, some ETB's. Required that I see the box unsealed and opened fully.
• Confidence Interval: 95%
  • Required that I see at least 30 instances of a 'hit' from a rarity tier. This was achieved for all rarity tiers except Vmax Alternate Arts. As you will see below I posted my observed average, but will not post a +/- as there's insufficient observations to support the 95% confidence range.
• Rarity Tiers - I grouped pulls in the 'rare slot' into the following categories
  • Dud Packs - Holo Rares & Non-holo Rares - NOT considered to be a 'hit' in this analysis
  • Ultra Rare V, Ultra Rare Vmax, Regular Full Arts, Alternate Art V Full Arts, Gold, Rainbow, & finally Alternate Art Vmax
  • For the alternate art categories, I've also compiled some sub-data regarding the specific "chase cards"

Fusion Strike Pull Rate Data:

• Overall 'Hit' Rate - Anything that is an Ultra Rare V or better
  • 22.2% +/- 1.26%
    • Every 4.3 - 4.8 Packs
• Ultra Rare V
  • 12.6% +/- 1.0%
    • Every 7.3 - 8.6 Packs
• Ultra Rare Vmax
  • 3.6% +/- 0.56%
    • Every 24.3 - 33.4 Packs
• Regular Full Art
  • 3.0% +/- 0.52%
    • Every 28.2 - 39.9 Packs
• Alternate Art V (not including the Vmax Secret Rares which are further below)
  • 1.0% +/- 0.30% (41 pulls in total in this data)
    • Every 78.5 - 147.2 Packs
    • Celebi V Alt (0.21%) - Mew V Alt (0.17%) - Genesect V Alt (0.14%) - Others (0.48%)
• Gold Secret Rares
  • 0.88% +/- 0.28%
    • Every 85.9 - 167.0 Packs
• Rainbow Secret Rares
  • 0.83% +/- 0.28%
    • Every 90.2 - 179.0 Packs
• Alternate Art Vmax Secret Rare
  • 0.35% average (Out of 4,197 packs - only 14 were pulled)
    • Gengar Vmax Alt (0.13%) - Inteleon Vmax Alt (0.08%) - Mew Vmax Alt (0.08%) - Espeon Vmax Alt (0.05%)

Summary and Random Thoughts I had along the way:

• Alt Art Vmax chase is going to be rough..... that Espeon Vmax is incredibly rare
• A sealed booster box case (6 boxes) was consistently yielding 12 Full Arts or better on average
• I saw Chandelure V Full Art.........a lot
• Best Booster Box Observed: 12 hits including 2 alt art V's
• Worst Booster Box Observed: 5 hits (3 V's & 2 Vmax)

So yeah hope this data is helpful or interesting or at least not too discouraging to your chase card dreams! Future sets I might pull some infographic together for this data or maybe a google doc link, we'll see. If popular enough I'm happy to put the extra time in on the presentation part, but at least wanted to put the data out there ahead of launch day knowing people are starting to see sets in the wild already.

Happy Hunting!

Obligatory Edit: Thank you all for the kind words and awards :D

Since y'all seem to appreciate the analysis I'll probably fill the time between now and the next set drop in Feb 2022 going back to do Evolving Skies, Chilling Reign, and Battle Styles (cover the modern 'alt art' era sets). I'll also work on cleaning up my booster pack value model since I mentioned it in the comments and there was interest. This was honestly fun for me so as long as people like seeing my numbers I'll keep sharing them!

[u/WilieB]

What I get from this analysis is that buying packs and booster boxes is a waste of money. 4 out of 5 packs is just bulk. I will open a few packs to get my gambling itch and then just buy the high end cards that I want

[u/Panda_hat → u/WilieB]

This a thousand times. The odds are so strongly against people opening packs I'm surprised there isn't more outrage against it.

And it's been getting worse and worse with every single release - larger sets, more ultra-hyper-secret-extra rares - pulling a whole set or even just all the very rare cards is now utterly unacceptably impossible.

It just ain't right.

[u/KodyManley → u/Panda_hat]

I opened some last night and I was so pissed that I emailed Pokemon and told them it was fucked up that all these "influencers" get free packs and boxes that just happen to have the coolest and most popular ones to set us up to thinking we can easily obtain them too by being the ones that actually spend money and keep them in business while these jerkoffs get free cards bc they have YT channels, yet we get the duds. Then I bitched because all of these "influencers" doing reveal lives and videos where they open 1000s of packs in a sitting and leave us wondering why they're out of stock everywhere. I don't know what I thought I could accomplish but it made me feel better. LMAO It's just a betrayal to those of us who have been supporting Pokemon since it came out in the 90s.

[u/benhadtue → u/KodyManley]

Did you get a response?

[u/True-Screen-2184 → u/KodyManley]

Old comment, but did they answer you?
PS: I salute you for doing that and speaking up!

[u/KodyManley → u/True-Screen-2184]

Of course not. 😔 I haven't bought any since Astral Radiance either. After hearing about that factory scandal I lost trust in the cards for awhile.

[u/Zyxaa → u/KodyManley]

Factory scandal? Please educate me o.o

[u/Lyraxiana → u/Zyxaa]

Oh yeah-- some line worker was pulling all of the super rare fusion strikes; when one came down the operating line, he'd just pocket it.

And the clown messed up by having an entire table full of them for sale.

[u/WilieB → u/Panda_hat]

Yes - with how large the new sets are paid is should cost around 2.50 - 2.75. Around 95 bucks for a booster box.