Paradox Rift Special Illustration Rare Pull Rate — 2.80% per pack (1 in 36)
2.80% of Paradox Rift booster packs contain a Special Illustration Rare card — roughly 1 in 36 packs. Paradox Rift 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.
Paradox Rift 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 Paradox Rift
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Altaria ex #253 | $60.64 | 1 in 536 |
| 2 | Roaring Moon ex #251 | $42.55 | 1 in 536 |
| 3 | Gholdengo ex #252 | $39.12 | 1 in 536 |
| 4 | Garchomp ex #245 | $38.86 | 1 in 536 |
| 5 | Golisopod ex #246 | $27.65 | 1 in 536 |
| 6 | Iron Valiant ex #249 | $23.71 | 1 in 536 |
| 7 | Tapu Koko ex #247 | $21.69 | 1 in 536 |
| 8 | Parasol Lady #255 | $18.22 | 1 in 536 |
| 9 | Iron Hands ex #248 | $11.11 | 1 in 536 |
| 10 | Sandy Shocks ex #250 | $8.85 | 1 in 536 |
| 11 | Rika #258 | $8.70 | 1 in 536 |
| 12 | Mela #254 | $8.57 | 1 in 536 |
| 13 | Professor Sada's Vitality #256 | $8.43 | 1 in 536 |
| 14 | Tulip #259 | $8.40 | 1 in 536 |
| 15 | Professor Turo's Scenario #257 | $5.47 | 1 in 536 |
How the 2.80% rate is computed
Every Paradox Rift 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 Paradox Rift 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 Paradox Rift packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Paradox Rift binder completion calculator
- Paradox Rift per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Paradox Rift cards
- Every Special Illustration Rare card across all 140 booster sets