Open packs or buy singles? Set completion simulator
Collecting the 38 commons and 26 uncommons of Chaos Rising from packs would take about 40 packs (around €208 at €5.21 a pack), and one collector in ten would need 56 or more; the whole set in singles cost €461.93 on 27 October 2026. Enter the rarity groups of your set, how many cards of each a pack holds and the pack price, and compare the result with what the same cards cost as singles.
For a rarity that turns up once every N packs, write 1/N (for example 1/12). Pokémon does not publish pull rates, so any such figure is your estimate. The singles total for any Pokémon set, by rarity, comes from the set completion cost tool; the example uses €2.20, the trend total of those 64 cards on 27 October 2026.
How the simulation works
Each simulated opening adds packs until every card of every group has appeared at least once, and it repeats that 20,000 times. Inside a pack the cards of one group are all different, and every card of a group is equally likely; with “1/N” a pack holds one card of that group with probability 1/N. The tool shows the median (half the collectors finish sooner), the number of packs that one collector in ten exceeds, and the duplicates the median opening leaves you with.
It is a model, not a forecast. Pokémon’s support centre lists what a current pack contains (10 game cards: 4 commons, 3 uncommons and 3 holo cards, at least one of them rare or higher) and says it cannot guarantee any specific card in any pack; it gives no odds by rarity. Reverse holo slots can also hold commons, which the model ignores.
Reading the result
If the singles total is far below the cost of the median opening, buying or trading for the missing cards is cheaper, and the gap grows with every rare group you add. Opening packs can still be worth it as entertainment: our budget guide suggests keeping separate amounts for opening and for target cards.
Sources and checks
Pack contents and the Chaos Rising example checked on 27 October 2026.