How we calculate “Should you rip it?”

For every booster product, we simulate 10,000 random packs using community-tracked pull rates and price each pulled card at its live secondary-market value. The mean of those 10,000 outcomes is the expected value(EV). We compare EV to the product's current market price — if EV exceeds price, the math says rip it.

• Card prices & sealed-product prices: JustTCG— live secondary-market data sourced from TCGPlayer, updated multiple times per day. We use Near Mint English prices as the canonical value, falling back to the next-best variant if Near Mint isn't available.
• Pull rates: Per-set community polls and publisher-published rates where available. For Lorcana, we use r/Lorcana community polls (most recent: u/Narzghal n=700+ for Set 9 Fabled, n=479 for Set 8 Reign of Jafar). For sets without a community poll, we use a generic baseline derived from average rates across the game. For One Piece, we use r/OnePieceTCGFinance tracking and Bandai-published rates.
• Pack composition: Manufacturer-confirmed (12 cards/pack for Lorcana and One Piece; 10/pack for modern Pokémon).

The closed-form “average pack value” formula (Central Limit Theorem) is faster, but produces unrealistic tail estimates — it can predict outcomes below $0 or wildly above realistic ceilings. Monte Carlo simulation re-draws actual random packs from the rarity distribution, which respects natural bounds and gives much tighter, more believable confidence bands.

This matches the methodology used by TheExpectedValue.com, the established MTG/Pokémon EV calculator.

EV is the mean outcome across 10,000 simulated packs — that is, the long-run average if you ripped a huge number of packs. Your individual pack will vary widely.

Most Lorcana packs return $1–$3 in market value. A small fraction return $100+ because of a single Enchanted or Iconic pull. The mean is pulled up by those rare high-value pulls. EV does not promise you a $50 pack; it tells you whether the math favors the ripper across many packs.

We'll surface confidence bands (p25/p50/p75) on individual product pages soon so you can see the full distribution, not just the mean.

• Foil printing approximation: Our card pool stores one canonical price per card (typically Near Mint Normal). The foil slot in a Lorcana pack actually draws a Holofoil variant, which can have a different price for non-chase rarities. The pricing impact at the Common/Uncommon level is small (cents); the chase rarities (Enchanted, Iconic, Epic) only exist as foils and are correctly priced.
• Pull rates are estimates:Where community polls exist, sample sizes are 400–700+ packs — large enough for high-confidence rare/super-rare rates, but chase-tier rates (Enchanted ~1/96, Iconic ~1/125) have wider confidence intervals. Newer rarities (Iconic, Epic, introduced in Fabled) have placeholder rates we'll refine as more community data lands.
• Stale or anomalous prices:JustTCG occasionally has sparse data on low-volume sealed products (small reprints, obscure SKUs). When a sealed product's listed price looks orders of magnitude off from realistic market, our headline leaderboard caps the displayed ROI at +100% to avoid misleading numbers — but the detail page shows the raw calc anyway.
• Snapshot, not real-time: Card prices refresh on JustTCG every few hours. Our EV recalculation runs once a day. The dashboard timestamps the last calc on each product so you can see how fresh the math is.
• Market price ≠ retail price:Sealed product prices on TCGPlayer reflect the resale market, not what your LGS or big-box store charges. A pack listed at $4 on TCGPlayer might be $5 at retail — meaning sometimes “hold” packs are actually rip-it at MSRP. Compare against your local price.

PackMeta may earn a commission when you click through to TCGPlayer to buy a product — currently 3.5%. The affiliate link only appears on product pages; it does not influence the EV math, the ranking on the leaderboard, or the verdict we display. We profit when you click, regardless of whether you rip or hold.

PackMeta is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Disney, Ravensburger, Bandai, The Pokémon Company, or any other trading-card publisher. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.