Pitch Black Pull Rates: Is a Booster Box Worth It

Two independent early-opener samples of Mega Evolution: Pitch Black — 55 packs and 117 packs — are landing Special Illustration Rares at roughly the rate the Mega Evolution block has run all year, not better. The one Mega Darkrai ex Hyper Rare pulled so far came in well ahead of schedule, and the openers who found it say so themselves. At $160.99 for a 36-pack box, the math says buy it to open, not to flip.

What are Pitch Black's official pull rates?

Pokemon hasn't published official slot odds for Pitch Black. What exists instead are two independent pack-opening samples from the days before the July 17 release, plus the Mega Evolution block's established community-tracked baseline to compare them against.

Content creator Amanda Kay Oaks opened 55 review-access packs and published the results July 9: 15 ex cards (about 1 in 4 packs), 3 full-art ex cards (just over 1 in 20), 5 Illustration Rares (1 in 11), and 5 Ultra Rares (1 in 11). She pulled zero Special Illustration Rares and zero copies of the Mega Darkrai ex Hyper Rare in that sample. TCGTalk's tracker, pooling 117 packs across seven sessions including two full 36-pack boxes, found a similar picture: Illustration Rares at 11.1% of packs, Ultra Rares at 3.4%, and both the Special Illustration Rare slot and the Mega Hyper Rare slot landing at 0.9% each — with only one pull apiece behind that percentage.

That one Mega Hyper Rare pull matters more than the stat suggests. It was a gold Mega Darkrai ex, #118 of 120, worth about $498 by TCGTalk's estimate. The tracker's own write-up calls it "well above expectation" for the sample size — in plain terms, whoever opened those boxes got lucky, and the 0.9% figure built on a single hit is not a rate anyone should plan a purchase around.

How does that compare to the rest of the Mega Evolution block?

Pitch Black's early Special Illustration Rare rate is landing almost exactly where the Mega Evolution block has sat since ME1, while its one early Hyper Rare pull is running far hotter than the block's tracked baseline. Community pull-rate tracking for the original Mega Evolution set (ME1), last updated July 14, 2026, puts the Special Illustration Rare rate at 1 in 101 packs and the Mega Hyper Rare rate at 1 in 1,260 packs — with Illustration Rares at 1 in 9 and Ultra Rares at 1 in 12.

Converted to a 36-pack box, ME1's tracked numbers work out to roughly one Special Illustration Rare every 2.8 boxes and one Mega Hyper Rare every 35 boxes. TCGTalk's Pitch Black sample — one SIR and one MHR each in 117 packs, or about 3.25 boxes — is in the same range for the SIR slot and dramatically ahead of it for the Hyper Rare slot.

Rarity	ME1 tracked baseline (per box)	Pitch Black early sample (per box)
Illustration Rare	~4	~4 (11.1% per pack)
Ultra Rare	~3	~1 (3.4% per pack)
Special Illustration Rare	~1 per 2.8 boxes	~1 per 3.25 boxes
Mega Hyper Rare	~1 per 35 boxes	1 pulled in 3.25 boxes

Sources: ME1 baseline from ThePriceDex community tracking (updated July 14, 2026); Pitch Black figures from TCGTalk's 117-pack tracker and Amanda Kay Oaks' 55-pack review sample (published July 9, 2026).

Two samples that both land the SIR slot within striking distance of ME1's number is a genuinely useful data point — it says Pitch Black isn't quietly worse than the rest of the block. The Hyper Rare result is a different story. A single pull in roughly 3 boxes' worth of packs, against a block baseline of 1-in-35 boxes, is exactly the kind of outlier a bigger sample usually erases. Treat the SIR rate as a reasonable working estimate and treat the Hyper Rare rate as noise until more boxes get opened after Thursday.

Is a Pitch Black booster box worth buying?

At MSRP, a booster box is worth buying if you want the cards inside it — not as a reliable way to pull a $498 card. A 36-pack box lists for $160.99 at Best Buy ahead of the July 17 release. Using the Hyper Rare's real block-wide rate (about 1 in 35 boxes, not the 1-in-3.25 the early sample implies), the expected dollar value the Mega Darkrai ex Hyper Rare slot alone contributes to a single box is roughly $498 ÷ 35, or about $14. That's a small fraction of the box price, and it assumes you pull the specific $498 card rather than a lower-value gold — there's only the one Hyper Rare in the set, so that part of the math is at least clean.

The Special Illustration Rare slot is murkier. Pitch Black carries six Special Illustration Rares, and the Mega Darkrai ex SIR is the valuable one at an estimated $409 (TCGTalk, mid-July 2026). Landing an SIR roughly once every three boxes doesn't mean landing that specific $409 card once every three boxes — the other five are the more common outcome, and their prices weren't part of either opener's public data. A buyer chasing the Darkrai SIR specifically should budget for multiple boxes and expect most of those pulls to be a different, cheaper card.

None of this accounts for what boxes actually cost once shelves empty. Our Pitch Black presale coverage already showed Mega Darkrai ex trading for hundreds of dollars before the set was even out — a sign demand is running well ahead of supply, the same pattern that's pushed sealed Mega Evolution product above MSRP release after release this year. Anyone paying above $160.99 for a box is stacking a worse price onto already thin expected value.

Should collectors buy Pitch Black at release?

Buy it to build the set or open packs for fun — the odds are in line with the rest of the Mega Evolution block, not secretly worse. Don't buy a box as a way to reliably land the $498 Hyper Rare or the $409 Special Illustration Rare; both numbers above show those pulls are still rare even when a small early sample makes them look common. If the goal is a specific card, buying that card directly on the secondary market once early-opener supply hits TCGplayer will usually beat gambling on packs, especially once Thursday's release adds a much larger, more reliable sample to pull-rate trackers.

For anyone tracking what they already own or plan to open, running a Pitch Black pull through Valusaur's card scanner gives an instant read on live TCGplayer and Cardmarket pricing the moment a card comes out of the pack, which matters more than usual this week given how far the presale price on the chase card has already moved. Anyone opening more than a box or two is also better off logging pulls straight into a collection tracker than trying to remember which of the six Special Illustration Rares actually landed.

FAQ

When does Pitch Black release? Mega Evolution: Pitch Black releases Friday, July 17, 2026, as the fifth English-language set in the Mega Evolution TCG block, following prerelease events that ran from July 4 through July 12.

What's the chase card in Pitch Black? Mega Darkrai ex is the headline chase card, printed as both a Special Illustration Rare (estimated around $409 as of mid-July 2026) and the set's sole Mega Hyper Rare gold card at #120 (estimated around $498 in the same tracking window).

How rare is a Special Illustration Rare in Pitch Black? Two independent early samples put it at roughly 1 in 101 to 1 in 117 packs, or about one per three 36-pack boxes — in line with the rest of the Mega Evolution block rather than notably better or worse.

Is the early Mega Hyper Rare pull rate for real? Probably not as good as it looks. One sample pulled a Mega Darkrai ex Hyper Rare in just 117 packs, but the tracker itself flagged the pull as "well above expectation," and the Mega Evolution block's larger-sample baseline puts true Hyper Rare odds closer to 1 in 1,260 packs, or about 1 in 35 boxes.

Should I buy a booster box or single packs? A full 36-pack box gives the best per-pack price and the highest single-purchase odds at a Special Illustration Rare, but it does not meaningfully change your odds at the one Mega Hyper Rare — at roughly 1-in-35-box odds, most boxes opened this weekend won't contain it regardless of format.