{
  "url": "https://www.moonstonehq.com/articles/no-box-pays-for-itself",
  "slug": "no-box-pays-for-itself",
  "title": "260,000 Simulated Boxes: Not One Set Pays for Its Own Box",
  "summary": "We ran the full Monte Carlo across 26 sets, 10,000 boxes each, pricing every card that falls out at its live market value. Expected value never reaches the box price. Neither does the median. What actually differs between sets is the SHAPE of the loss, and that difference is worth more to a buyer than the averages everyone quotes.",
  "section": "Investment research",
  "published": "2026-09-03",
  "readMinutes": 9,
  "publisher": "moonstone",
  "findings": [
    {
      "value": "26 / 0",
      "measures": "sets simulated / sets that clear their box price",
      "basis": "at the mean or the median, 10,000 boxes each"
    },
    {
      "value": "0.37",
      "measures": "median expected value per dollar of box",
      "basis": "range 0.10 to 0.68 across the 26"
    },
    {
      "value": "4.2%",
      "measures": "median chance a box beats its own cost",
      "basis": "eight of the 26 sit at exactly 0.0%, and most of those eight are Sword and Shield rows the methodology disqualifies"
    },
    {
      "value": "2.9x",
      "measures": "widest mean-over-median gap",
      "basis": "Phantasmal Flames: $189 expected, $65 typical"
    }
  ],
  "tables": [
    {
      "title": "Rip simulation, eleven of the 26 sets, chosen to span the range rather than as a top eleven, 10,000 boxes per set, sims stamped August 28 to September 2, 2026",
      "columns": [
        "Set",
        "Box price",
        "Expected box",
        "EV per $1",
        "Median box",
        "P(box beats cost)",
        "P(box loses half)",
        "Bulk share of EV"
      ],
      "rows": [
        {
          "Set": "[Pitch Black](/set/pitch%20black)",
          "Box price": "$170.18",
          "Expected box": "$116",
          "EV per $1": "0.68",
          "Median box": "$75",
          "P(box beats cost)": "26%",
          "P(box loses half)": "55%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "14%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Fusion Strike](/set/fusion%20strike)",
          "Box price": "$969.06",
          "Expected box": "$647",
          "EV per $1": "0.67",
          "Median box": "$403",
          "P(box beats cost)": "30%",
          "P(box loses half)": "57%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "4%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Perfect Order](/set/perfect%20order)",
          "Box price": "$161.96",
          "Expected box": "$105",
          "EV per $1": "0.65",
          "Median box": "$82",
          "P(box beats cost)": "23%",
          "P(box loses half)": "50%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "14%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Chaos Rising](/set/chaos%20rising)",
          "Box price": "$177.37",
          "Expected box": "$106",
          "EV per $1": "0.60",
          "Median box": "$64",
          "P(box beats cost)": "24%",
          "P(box loses half)": "64%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "14%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Mega Evolution](/set/mega%20evolution)",
          "Box price": "$303.83",
          "Expected box": "$178",
          "EV per $1": "0.59",
          "Median box": "$119",
          "P(box beats cost)": "19%",
          "P(box loses half)": "57%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "10%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Phantasmal Flames](/set/phantasmal%20flames)",
          "Box price": "$394.85",
          "Expected box": "$189",
          "EV per $1": "0.48",
          "Median box": "$65",
          "P(box beats cost)": "14%",
          "P(box loses half)": "77%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "11%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Temporal Forces](/set/temporal%20forces)",
          "Box price": "$312.25",
          "Expected box": "$144",
          "EV per $1": "0.46",
          "Median box": "$134",
          "P(box beats cost)": "2%",
          "P(box loses half)": "63%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "17%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Evolving Skies](/set/evolving%20skies)",
          "Box price": "$2,445.10",
          "Expected box": "$820",
          "EV per $1": "0.34",
          "Median box": "$406",
          "P(box beats cost)": "12%",
          "P(box loses half)": "74%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "4%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Astral Radiance](/set/astral%20radiance)",
          "Box price": "$411.18",
          "Expected box": "$91",
          "EV per $1": "0.22",
          "Median box": "$89",
          "P(box beats cost)": "0%",
          "P(box loses half)": "100%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "52%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Silver Tempest](/set/silver%20tempest)",
          "Box price": "$504.40",
          "Expected box": "$85",
          "EV per $1": "0.17",
          "Median box": "$81",
          "P(box beats cost)": "0%",
          "P(box loses half)": "100%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "32%"
        },
        {
          "Set": "[Lost Origin](/set/lost%20origin)",
          "Box price": "$726.45",
          "Expected box": "$73",
          "EV per $1": "0.10",
          "Median box": "$70",
          "P(box beats cost)": "0%",
          "P(box loses half)": "100%",
          "Bulk share of EV": "44%"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "charts": [],
  "sections": [
    "The board, ranked by what a dollar of box buys back",
    "Two distributions wearing the same word",
    "Where the money in a box actually is",
    "The rule the simulation supports"
  ],
  "method": [
    "Source: moonstone's rip simulator output, read from production on September 2, 2026. 26 distinct sets, 10,000 simulated boxes each. The odds are the weakest input and an earlier version of this methodology described them wrongly. The simulator does NOT roll each set's own published study. It rolls one hardcoded per-pack triple, a double rare 1 in 4, an illustration rare 1 in 12 and a secret 1 in 20, taken from community-documented Scarlet and Violet and Mega-era averages, and applies that triple to every set in the panel whatever its era. It also assigns cards to those tiers by a Scarlet and Violet rule: a card is a double rare only if its name ends in the word ex, and it is a hit at all only if it is numbered above the set's printed total. Within a tier the draw is uniform, so the pool's dearest card is as likely to fall out as its cheapest, which flatters any tier holding one very expensive card. Prices are each pulled card's live market value. Two known limitations of that construction both push expected value DOWN, which means they flatter this piece's thesis rather than the ripper's, and an earlier draft described them backwards: cards with no price count as zero, and the bulk term applies a 50% haircut to the median non-hit card. Anyone who believes bulk is worth more than we credit, or that unpriced cards are worth something, should read every EV figure here as a floor. Seed sensitivity is real and is now stated rather than implied: the published run for each set is a single 10,000-box draw, and across twenty independent seeds a set's EV per dollar moves by up to 0.027 with a standard deviation of 0.0003 to 0.007 depending on how heavy its tail is. Rows within about three points of each other in the EV-per-dollar column are therefore not ranked. Probabilities are frequency counts over 10,000 draws, not analytic solutions, and carry Monte Carlo error of roughly half a percentage point. Individual set sims carry their own build stamps spanning August 28 to September 2, 2026, so a box price quoted here can differ slightly from today's sealed catalog quote (Evolving Skies: $2,445.10 in the sim, $2,474.88 in the catalog; Pitch Black: $170.18 in the sim, $175.46 in the catalog). The Umbreon VMAX figure of $2,378.74 is the canonical printing price on both the sim's tier table and today's catalog; the $2,310.74 quoted in an earlier draft was a different FIELD of the same cache row, the flagship-printing price, not a different date. One set is simulated but excluded from the table above: Legendary Treasures, whose catalog box price of $18,750.00 sits against a simulated pool holding exactly two priced illustration rares and no secrets, so its 0.07 EV per dollar is a statement about our pool coverage rather than about the product, and 17% of what little EV it has is the bulk term. It is a data-quality artifact and we would rather delete it than rank it. That disqualification, applied consistently, reaches further than one row, and on a recheck it reaches every Sword and Shield set in the panel, because all of them are classified by a Scarlet and Violet rule and rolled at Scarlet and Violet odds. It fails in both directions. Where the era's alt arts are numbered inside the printed set, as in Astral Radiance, Silver Tempest, Lost Origin, Chilling Reign, Rebel Clash, Darkness Ablaze, Vivid Voltage, Brilliant Stars, Battle Styles and Sword & Shield, those cards are valued as bulk and the box reads flatter and poorer than it is. Where they are numbered above it, as in Fusion Strike and Evolving Skies, they are dealt at illustration-rare odds many times their measured rate and the box reads richer. Treat every Sword and Shield row here as a statement about our classifier rather than about the product. The Scarlet and Violet and Mega-era rows, where the classifier and the odds were built for the era in front of them, are the ones this piece defends, and for any single set the closed-form recheck across 27 sets published on September 22, 2026 as [Booster Box Expected Value Has Error Bars](/articles/booster-box-expected-value) is the figure to prefer. The headline, that no set clears its own box price, is unchanged by all of this and is reproduced independently by that study. Nothing here is financial advice."
  ],
  "terms": "Figures are moonstone's own recorded measurements, dated as published. Quote them with the population stated beside them. The article at `url` is the human form of this file."
}