The Pokemon Company publishes no pull rates, but TCGplayer's Authentication Center has ripped thousands of packs of nearly every modern set and published what came out. Line their per-set studies up chronologically and the quiet policy change is unmissable: the top-tier hit got roughly three times rarer between mid-2023 and late 2024, and it has stayed rare since. Not one set announcement mentioned it.
The squeeze, set by set
Special Illustration Rare odds by set
| Set | Released | SIR odds (packs) | Expected per box |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scarlet & Violet | Mar 2023 | 1 in 32 | 1.13 |
| Paldea Evolved | Jun 2023 | 1 in 32 | 1.13 |
| Obsidian Flames | Aug 2023 | 1 in 32 | 1.13 |
| 151 | Sep 2023 | 1 in 32 | 1.13 |
| Paradox Rift | Nov 2023 | 1 in 47 | 0.77 |
| Temporal Forces | Mar 2024 | 1 in 86 | 0.42 |
| Twilight Masquerade | May 2024 | 1 in 86 | 0.42 |
| Stellar Crown | Sep 2024 | 1 in 90 | 0.40 |
| Surging Sparks | Nov 2024 | 1 in 87 | 0.41 |
| Journey Together | Mar 2025 | 1 in 86 | 0.42 |
| Destined Rivals | May 2025 | 1 in 94 | 0.38 |
| Mega Evolution | Sep 2025 | 1 in 101 | 0.36 |
| Phantasmal Flames | Nov 2025 | 1 in 80 | 0.45 |
| Ascended Heroes | Jan 2026 | 1 in 70 | 0.51 |
| Perfect Order | Mar 2026 | 1 in 81 | 0.44 |
The 2023 buyer opened a booster box expecting slightly more than one Special Illustration Rare. The 2025 buyer expects one every second or third box. TCGplayer's own Temporal Forces study published the turning point as a comparison table: Paldea Evolved SIRs measured 3.17 percent per pack, Paradox Rift 2.11, Temporal Forces 1.17. Their Surging Sparks study then confirmed the new floor had held for a full year of releases, with per-rarity odds effectively constant from set to set.
The consolation got cheaper as the jackpot got rarer
Over the same stretch, the lower tiers loosened. Double rares went from 1 in 7 packs in early 2023 to 1 in 5 by 2025; Illustration rares from 1 in 13 to 1 in 9 in the Mega era; Ultra rares from 1 in 15 to 1 in 12 in three of the four studied Mega-era sets (Ascended Heroes is the outlier at 1 in 21). The pack's TOTAL hit frequency looks healthier than ever while its expected value concentrates ever harder into cards you will mostly never pull. That is not an accident of print sheets; it is product design, and the one time the dial turned the other way proves it: Prismatic Evolutions shipped SIRs at a measured 1 in 45, twice the surrounding rate, for a premium-priced special set built around exactly that promise.
Every rate is a published measurement from TCGplayer Infinite's per-set pull-rate studies (typically 8,000+ packs; 700 to 5,000+ for special or recent sets), extracted verbatim; the 1-in-N figures are the studies' own rounded rates, and per-box expectations are 36 divided by N, rounded to two decimals. Release months are the sets' English release dates. Shrouded Fable is omitted from the table because TCGplayer published no study for it; its community-measured rate (1 in 64, sample 2,354 packs) is shown on its set page with its own attribution. Sources for every set are linked on the set pages under Pull rates.