In the OCG, Core Booster box has 30 packs, each pack has 5 cards:
- The first 3 cards are Common (aka Normal).
- The 4th card can be Common or Super Rare.
- The 5th card in each pack is guaranteed to be a Rare or higher rarity.
On average, you pull 25 Rare, 6 Super, 3 Ultra, 1 Secret, 1 Ultimate per box. Plus 1 Super or higher from the bonus pack (in the first print runs of boxes). There is a small chance that the box contains a luxury rarity card (the numbers are based on personal experience and YouTube openings).
Rare cards are already good, example in "Photon Hypernova":
- "Big Welcome Labrynth" is Rare.
- "Triple Tactics Thrust", "Pressured Planet Wraitsoth" are Rare too.
A pack cost 176 JPY (as of 2025-01-25), so a box cost 5280 JPY (about $38).
Regarding the card pool in a set:
- From "Rise of the Duelist" (2020-04) to "Cyberstorm Access" (2023-01), the pool has 80 cards total: 44 Common, 18 Rare, 10 Super, and 8 Ultra.
- From "Duelist Nexus" (2023-04) to "Alliance Insight" (2025-01), the pool has 80+1 cards total: 41 Common, 19 Rare, 11 Super, 9 Ultra and 1 Quarter Century Secret Rare.
- From "Duelist Advance" (2025-04-26, not released yet),
the pool still has 80 cards total, but the rarities are different:
40 Common, 18 Rare, 10 Super, 8 Ultra and 4 Ultimate Rare.
If a box still contains only 1 Ultimate Rare, then pulling a play set of a good Ultimate will be much harder than pulling a play set of a good Ultra Rare was before.
In the TCG, Core Booster box has 24 packs, each pack has 9 cards:
- The 5th card is Super Rare or higher rarity.
- The remaining cards are Common.
On average, you pull 18 Super, 4 Ultra, 2 Secret per box. There is a small chance that the box contains a luxury rarity card (the numbers come from Yugipedia).
Good cards are usually of high rarities. Example in "Photon Hypernova":
- "Big Welcome Labrynth" is Ultra Rare.
- "Triple Tactics Thrust", "Pressured Planet Wraitsoth" are Secret Rare.
Regarding the card pool in a set, from Eternity Code (2020-06), the pool has 100 cards total: 50 Common, 26 Super, 14 Ultra and 10 Secret.
A pack costs $4.49 (as of 2025-05-01), so a box has an MSRP of $107.76. The price is probably lower in stores, around $75.
The following numbers show the expected number of copies you will pull in a box, if you are looking for a specific card. The number depends on the card's rarity.
- Common: (150-(25+6+3+1+1)) / 44 = 2.59 copies per box.
- Rare: 25 / 18 = 1.39 copies per box.
- Super: (6 + 2*2/3) / 10 = 0.73 copies per box, assuming the bonus pack and the secret card have 2/3 chance to be a Super Rare type.
- Ultra: (3 + 1 + 2*1/3) / 8 = 0.58 copies per box,
the Ultimate Rare is always an Ultra Rare type,
assuming the bonus pack and the secret card have 1/3 chance to be an Ultra Rare type.
TODO: update info after "Duelist Advance" is released.
- Common: (216-(18+4+2)) / 50 = 3.84 copies per box.
- Super: 18 / 26 = 0.69 copies per box.
- Ultra: 4 / 14 = 0.29 copies per box.
- Secret: 2 / 10 = 0.20 copies per box.
From the above numbers, we can make some observations:
- In TCG, if you want to pull 3 copies of Secret Rares, you can expect to pull 15 boxes.
- In OCG, if you want to pull 3 copies of Ultra Rares, you can expect to pull 5 boxes.
- A TCG box costs about twice as much as an OCG box, so to pull complete play sets of all cards, spending on TCG is 6 times that of OCG.
OCG Deck-Building Set has card pool of 45 cards. Their TCG counterparts are the 60 Card Sets.
TODO: more information about Deck-Building Set.