Surging Sparks Illustration Rare Pull Rate — 5.56% per pack (1 in 18)
5.56% of Surging Sparks booster packs contain a Illustration Rare card — roughly 1 in 18 packs. Surging Sparks ships 23 Illustration Rare cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific Illustration Rare is 0.0024 (≈1 in 414). 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.
Surging Sparks Illustration Rare pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 5.56% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 23 Illustration Rare cards = 1 in 414. |
|---|---|
| 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 Surging Sparks
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Latios #203 | $30.87 | 1 in 414 |
| 2 | Ceruledge #197 | $24.00 | 1 in 414 |
| 3 | Mesprit #204 | $13.28 | 1 in 414 |
| 4 | Slakoth #212 | $12.61 | 1 in 414 |
| 5 | Spheal #199 | $9.35 | 1 in 414 |
| 6 | Skarmory #209 | $8.85 | 1 in 414 |
| 7 | Feebas #198 | $8.80 | 1 in 414 |
| 8 | Phanpy #205 | $8.67 | 1 in 414 |
| 9 | Kecleon #213 | $8.64 | 1 in 414 |
| 10 | Alolan Dugtrio #208 | $8.44 | 1 in 414 |
| 11 | Appletun #211 | $7.96 | 1 in 414 |
| 12 | Exeggcute #192 | $7.63 | 1 in 414 |
| 13 | Castform Sunny Form #195 | $7.54 | 1 in 414 |
| 14 | Clobbopus #207 | $5.62 | 1 in 414 |
| 15 | Flapple #210 | $4.50 | 1 in 414 |
| 16 | Vivillon #193 | $4.43 | 1 in 414 |
| 17 | Braviary #214 | $4.06 | 1 in 414 |
| 18 | Vibrava #206 | $3.70 | 1 in 414 |
| 19 | Shiinotic #194 | $3.66 | 1 in 414 |
| 20 | Cetitan #201 | $2.73 | 1 in 414 |
| 21 | Larvesta #196 | $2.53 | 1 in 414 |
| 22 | Bruxish #200 | $2.40 | 1 in 414 |
| 23 | Stunfisk #202 | $1.91 | 1 in 414 |
How the 5.56% rate is computed
Every Surging Sparks 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 7 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 23 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 5.56% ÷ 23 = 0.0024 = 1 in 414.
This is the same math PackRip's live Surging Sparks 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 Surging Sparks packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Surging Sparks binder completion calculator
- Surging Sparks per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Surging Sparks cards
- Every Illustration Rare card across all 140 booster sets