Recently, a ton of sets have been hyped all over the place -- possibly to a higher price than is reasonable for the value of cards inside each pack. So I compiled a bunch of data to calculate, as precisely as possible, the expected value/ROI of opening all 42 packs between Sun&Moon and Scarlet&Violet.

Does overall hype align with how profitable a set is? Kind of... But some extremely hyped sets are secretely some real stinkers...

Rankings (as of 1/9/24):

1. crown zenith- expected value: $3.59, price per pack: $5.19, ROI: 69.26%

2. 151- expected value: $5.08, price per pack: $9.48, ROI: 53.63%

3. shrouded fable- expected value: $1.99, price per pack: $3.87, ROI: 51.67%

4. paldea evolved- expected value: $1.99, price per pack: $4.05, ROI: 49.26%

5. pokemon go- expected value: $1.89, price per pack: $4.37, ROI: 43.3%

6. temporal forces- expected value: $1.64, price per pack: $3.98, ROI: 41.45%

7. stellar crown- expected value: $1.51, price per pack: $3.78, ROI: 40.15%

8. paradox rift- expected value: $1.42, price per pack: $3.55, ROI: 40.03%

9. twilight masquerade- expected value: $1.65, price per pack: $4.16, ROI: 39.75%

10. brilliant stars- expected value: $2.0, price per pack: $5.09, ROI: 39.3%

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And some very hyped sets that didn't make it into the top 10:

14. surging sparks- expected value: $2.44, price per pack: $7.52, ROI: 32.52%

20. fusion strike- expected value: $1.56, price per pack: $7.11, ROI: 21.96%

27. evolving skies- expected value: $3.37, price per pack: $20.35, ROI: 16.57%

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To calculate expected value, I programmatically multiplied drop rate of a certain rarity by average card price of that rarity, excluding rarities below a certain threshold where it would not be worth the effort for most people to sell those cards.

For drop rate data, I looked at individual pack-opening "studies" for each and every set, with each study involving at least 2000 packs.

For card price data, I used up-to-date market prices from TCGplayer.