Paldea Evolved Special Illustration Rare Pull Rate — 2.80% per pack (1 in 36)
2.80% of Paldea Evolved booster packs contain a Special Illustration Rare card — roughly 1 in 36 packs. Paldea Evolved ships 15 Special Illustration Rare cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific Special Illustration Rare is 0.0019 (≈1 in 536). These percentages come from PackRip's own rate table (the same constants the simulator runs on) — they are a model of the product, not a measurement of it. The Pokemon Company has never published pull rates.
Paldea Evolved Special Illustration Rare pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 2.80% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 15 Special Illustration Rare cards = 1 in 536. |
|---|---|
| Assumptions | One independent rare-slot roll per pack; uniform selection within the tier; no pity timers, box mapping, short-print correction, or edition/condition split. |
| Data source | Set checklist and rarity labels from the bundled Pokemon TCG API catalog; tier rates from rareSlotRates(), mirrored from the live pack opener. |
| Update cadence | Regenerated by prerender whenever set metadata, catalog data, or pull-rate constants change. |
| Limitations | This is a theoretical per-pack rate. Real sealed product can show print-run variance, collation quirks, and market-specific edition differences. |
Special Illustration Rare cards in Paldea Evolved
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Iono #269 | $66.95 | 1 in 536 |
| 2 | Tinkaton ex #262 | $62.31 | 1 in 536 |
| 3 | Chi-Yu ex #259 | $52.76 | 1 in 536 |
| 4 | Skeledirge ex #258 | $38.01 | 1 in 536 |
| 5 | Meowscarada ex #256 | $34.96 | 1 in 536 |
| 6 | Chien-Pao ex #261 | $29.07 | 1 in 536 |
| 7 | Grusha #268 | $20.15 | 1 in 536 |
| 8 | Boss's Orders (Ghetsis) #265 | $19.45 | 1 in 536 |
| 9 | Wo-Chien ex #257 | $16.30 | 1 in 536 |
| 10 | Saguaro #270 | $16.16 | 1 in 536 |
| 11 | Quaquaval ex #260 | $14.38 | 1 in 536 |
| 12 | Ting-Lu ex #263 | $11.52 | 1 in 536 |
| 13 | Squawkabilly ex #264 | $10.96 | 1 in 536 |
| 14 | Dendra #266 | $10.31 | 1 in 536 |
| 15 | Giacomo #267 | $5.04 | 1 in 536 |
How the 2.80% rate is computed
Every Paldea Evolved booster pack rolls one rare-slot card (plus uncommons, commons, and energy in fixed slots). The rare slot is itself a weighted random draw across 6 tiers — Rare, Holo Rare, Special Illustration Rare, and the era's other chase rarities. The Special Illustration Rare tier captures 2.80% of those rare-slot draws (= 2.80 packs out of every 100). Within the Special Illustration Rare tier, all 15 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 2.80% ÷ 15 = 0.0019 = 1 in 536.
This is the same math PackRip's live Paldea Evolved simulator uses to roll packs — open as many as you want for free, watch the empirical hit rate converge to the theoretical 2.80% over a large enough sample. Source code lives in src/utils/packGenerator.ts and the per-rarity drift is build-time-asserted against the published rates so the simulator and this landing page can never disagree.
Cumulative probability — how many packs to hit Special Illustration Rare
Special Illustration Rare pulls follow a geometric distribution with per-pack rate 0.028000. The expected number of packs until your first Special Illustration Rare hit is 36; at 95% confidence you'll have one within 106 packs. Most experienced openers crack a sealed booster box (36 packs) and hit Special Illustration Rare with probability 64.0% — so the average box yields just over 1.0 Special Illustration Rare pulls.
Related on PackRip
- Open Paldea Evolved packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Paldea Evolved binder completion calculator
- Paldea Evolved per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Paldea Evolved cards
- Every Special Illustration Rare card across all 140 booster sets