Every booster pack is a lottery ticket, and every set prints its tickets at a different price for a different jackpot. We track real cheapest booster-box prices across 44 modern sets and every set's top chase card, so we can compute what nobody prints on the box: the chase-to-pack ratio, how many packs of jackpot the ticket is worth. The spread across sets is enormous, and it is not the famous sets that offer the best tickets.
The Lottery Ticket Index, top of the board, late August 2026
| Set | Real pack price | Top chase | Chase-to-pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phantasmal Flames | $10.78 (box $388.23) | Mega Charizard X ex, $799.23 | 74.1x |
| Pitch Black | $4.73 (box $170.18) | Mega Darkrai ex, $288.75 | 61.0x |
| Chaos Rising | $4.93 (box $177.37) | Mega Greninja ex, $239.52 | 48.6x |
| Destined Rivals | $12.20 (box $439.20) | Team Rocket's Mewtwo ex, $532.10 | 43.6x |
| Lost Origin | $20.18 (box $726.44) | Giratina V alt, $837.71 | 41.5x |
| Surging Sparks | $8.56 (box $308.12) | Pikachu ex, $325.97 | 38.1x |
| Evolving Skies | $67.92 (box $2,445.10) | Umbreon VMAX alt, $2,242.68 | 33.0x |
The cheap tickets are hiding in the Mega era
The three cheapest tickets on the whole board with a three-figure jackpot are all current Mega-era sets: Perfect Order at $4.50 a pack, Pitch Black at $4.73, Chaos Rising at $4.93. Pitch Black is the standout: a sub-five-dollar pack whose top chase trades at $288.75. Meanwhile the most famous chase in the modern game, the Evolving Skies Umbreon, now sits behind a $67.92 pack because the box price inflated toward the card it contains. Fame is priced in; obscurity is not yet.
Now the honest part
A high chase-to-pack ratio is NOT an expected value. Pull rates on top chases run in the hundreds of packs, most packs are worth less than they cost, and sealed product often appreciates unopened, which means the box you rip was itself an asset. The ratio measures the size of the jackpot relative to the ticket, nothing more. Two honest uses: if you were going to rip for fun anyway, rip where the ticket is cheap and the jackpot is real; and if you are buying singles, the ratio tells you which chases are propped up by expensive tickets around them.
Pack prices are the cheapest tracked booster box for each set divided by 36, from our daily sealed sync, late August 2026. Chase prices are each set's top card by market value. Vintage WOTC and e-era boxes are excluded: their catalog prices are unreliable and a genuine vintage box is an investment asset, not a rip candidate. 44 modern sets qualified.