Pokemon 151 Illustration Rare Pull Rate — 5.56% per pack (1 in 18)
5.56% of Pokemon 151 booster packs contain a Illustration Rare card — roughly 1 in 18 packs. Pokemon 151 ships 16 Illustration Rare cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific Illustration Rare is 0.0035 (≈1 in 288). 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.
Pokemon 151 Illustration Rare pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 5.56% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 16 Illustration Rare cards = 1 in 288. |
|---|---|
| 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. |
Illustration Rare cards in Pokemon 151
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charmander #168 | $125.79 | 1 in 288 |
| 2 | Squirtle #170 | $114.78 | 1 in 288 |
| 3 | Pikachu #173 | $96.44 | 1 in 288 |
| 4 | Bulbasaur #166 | $89.13 | 1 in 288 |
| 5 | Charmeleon #169 | $80.93 | 1 in 288 |
| 6 | Psyduck #175 | $75.98 | 1 in 288 |
| 7 | Wartortle #171 | $70.69 | 1 in 288 |
| 8 | Poliwhirl #176 | $59.44 | 1 in 288 |
| 9 | Ivysaur #167 | $56.73 | 1 in 288 |
| 10 | Dragonair #181 | $50.57 | 1 in 288 |
| 11 | Machoke #177 | $25.35 | 1 in 288 |
| 12 | Tangela #178 | $21.18 | 1 in 288 |
| 13 | Caterpie #172 | $21.09 | 1 in 288 |
| 14 | Nidoking #174 | $19.67 | 1 in 288 |
| 15 | Omanyte #180 | $17.46 | 1 in 288 |
| 16 | Mr. Mime #179 | $16.80 | 1 in 288 |
How the 5.56% rate is computed
Every Pokemon 151 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, Illustration Rare, and the era's other chase rarities. The Illustration Rare tier captures 5.56% of those rare-slot draws (= 5.56 packs out of every 100). Within the Illustration Rare tier, all 16 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 5.56% ÷ 16 = 0.0035 = 1 in 288.
This is the same math PackRip's live Pokemon 151 simulator uses to roll packs — open as many as you want for free, watch the empirical hit rate converge to the theoretical 5.56% 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 Illustration Rare
Illustration Rare pulls follow a geometric distribution with per-pack rate 0.055600. The expected number of packs until your first Illustration Rare hit is 18; at 95% confidence you'll have one within 53 packs. Most experienced openers crack a sealed booster box (36 packs) and hit Illustration Rare with probability 87.2% — so the average box yields just over 2.0 Illustration Rare pulls.
Related on PackRip
- Open Pokemon 151 packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Pokemon 151 binder completion calculator
- Pokemon 151 per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Pokemon 151 cards
- Every Illustration Rare card across all 140 booster sets