This is regarding the Hidden Fates set and was wondering if anyone here knows what the pull rates are in these boxes. So, here’s the story. I pre ordered 4x Hidden Fates ETB’s and 4x Hidden Fates pokeball sets through gamestop. Thats 80 booster packs, which is 2 booster boxes + 6 packs. Now I get that not every pack is going to have good pulls but I didn’t get 1 single full art shiny from all 80 packs!!! Not sure if you guys had a chance to check out Breakingnate on youtube, but he did a video where he bought 2 cases of the mew/mewtwo pin boxes from Target and they were all repacks. He did a inspection on the pin box itself and there was literally no tampering from the outside. The cardboard seals on the boxes looked legit and not glued back together, but once you open it up and get to the packs, you can tell the packs were resealed. I have opened quite a few of these pin boxes my self and I just don’t see how you can get the packaging out without damaging the box let alone putting everything back in and still have the box look like its new straight from the factory. There was recently another story of a guy that bought 2 ETB’s from Target and his packs were tampered with.
So after seeing and hearing about this issue, I just get the feeling that that this might have happened to me. Like I said, I understand each pack is a gamble and its honestly no different than buying $5.00 scratch off tickets lol. I mean, if you bought 80x $5 scratch off tickets, you’re bound to win at least $5 or $10 on one or two of them. I will admit I’m pretty unlucky when it comes to opening booster packs but even the sun shines on a dogs ass once in a while. I’m not a youtuber or a social influencer where I record all my pack openings so I have already accepted the fact that I paid $400+ for a bunch of bulk thats not even enough to get me a no bulk/no code booster box purchase. It’s just that I feel that I got ripped off and it doesn’t sit well with me. I know you guys have been in the pokemon game for a long time and might know more about this than me and can tell me if I got ripped off or not. What are your thoughts on this?
Wait wait wait, they’re legit selling repackages in-store at major retailers like Target? Is that for real? And how is that possible?
I bought a Hidden Fates Ultra Ball Collection at Target on Saturday. In 10 packs, I got 3 hits: two non-FA shinies and a Charizard GX. Thought it was kinda light based on what others were getting (a hit in about every other pack) but didn’t even consider any possible foul play.
Ok so the odds of not pulling a shiny gx is about .9. the odds of you not pulling a shiny gx in 80 packs is .9^80 = .000218 or .0218%. this means that you had a 1 in 4,587 chance of you not pulling any full art shiny from the 80 packs you opened, which is still within the realm of possibility, so it is possible that you just got really really unlucky.
Yes, even the major guys like Target. Breakingnate got his stuff at Target, and the other story with the ETB’s was also at Target. I’m not sure if you guys ever catch the Vendors stocking the shelves but product isn’t even in sealed cases. The boxes have the distributors name on it but once you open the boxes, theres no order to anything in any of the boxes. Baseball cards, magic cards, pokemon cards, tins, those mystery eggs, barbie cards are all just thrown in together. They don’t even take the time to stack the product inside neatly. Its almost like each location gets a certain amount of boxes and guys at the warehouse are just throwing random stuff just to fill the box and ship them off. No professionalism at all and it wouldn’t surprise me if this is happening. Those crappy blister packs that we all see at Target/Walmart are repackaged by the same distributors stocking the shelves. That kind of leads me to believe that the guys at the warehouse have access to repackaging equipment to reseal certain products to make them look OEM after they opened them and raided what they could. That really is the only way to explain it. You can call it bad luck all you want but theres no quantifiable way to measure luck.
Haven’t dipped too much into HF, but had a similar issue with Shining Legends. Opened 4 ETBs (x40 packs) and came up with one regular Zoroark GX. Don’t think anything was tampered, but it was a bad enough experience to put me off buying new product for quite a while.
You might not be the only one.
But honestly stuff like this is why I never open english modern any more, the pull rates feel so hit or miss. I literally can’t think of a single time I have opened a modern english product in the last several years were I didn’t feel like I just threw my money away. If I really get an itch to open something, japanese and korean are where it’s at.
It’s also possible, and I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned yet, that they just messed up when seeding the packs at the manufacturing step. There are weird pack things that happen occasionally. It would especially make sense since 1) they are trying to pump out product as fast as possible 2) the sheer number of packs being opened means you will see/hear about odd things like this more often
Since you got all your packs from the same store at the same time means they are much more likely to be part of the same printing batch.
its funny this, because i see this come up occasionally and of course its from someone that feels scammed or whatever you want to call it. But the understanding of random goes by the wayside. I do think your situation sucks but there is a reasoning to what has happened here. You can do the math for best and worst case scenarios but that doesnt even equate to real world figures. Unless you buy something like a booster box (and its still not a guarantee) you could expect to get more than expected all the way to none. Example: if there was 100 booster boxes lined up and it was guaranteed that you got an expensive rare card every 20 packs but rather than take 20 packs from the 5 boxes you took 1 from each. Even if the card was randomly inserted into one of the first 20 packs, there is still the chance none of those single packs from each box would have an expensive rare card. So when you come to the realization of what random is you’re always going to be disappointed…
We opened 80 packs straight from our distributor and got a total amount of 19 Ultra Shiny GX cards (While no charizard we got plenty of good pulls like Cynthia; eevelutions; mewtwo, etc).
Ive opened roughly 50 packs and have got a ton of the regular holo shinies, but only 1 shiny gx. I don’t believe any of mine were tampered with, just bad luck most likely. That being said there might be some hiccups in manufacturing because in one of the great ball collection boxes I opened half of the packs had no reverse holo/ shiny vault card. In its place was a regular common card. There was no evidence of tampering and the rare slot in 2 of them had a full art and gx. I would think those would’ve been taken as well if they were searched. Regardless I think some of us are just unlucky on the pull rates. Thats just the way it is sometimes.
If anyone is actually looking for a legit seller, there’s a woman that sells on virbank that sells at pretty much distributor prices; and has made a good rep. over the past few years (Angelique Coburn); we always pre-order from her and get free priority shipping on big orders plus some nice discounts and freebies.
No matter how limited is the product we always get to get allocated. If you think whoever is selling your cards might be either tampering or weighing packs feel free to message her through facebook.
