Brilliant Stars VSTAR Pull Rate — 8.33% per pack (1 in 12)
8.33% of Brilliant Stars booster packs contain a VSTAR card — roughly 1 in 12 packs. Brilliant Stars ships 4 VSTAR cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific VSTAR is 0.0208 (≈1 in 48). 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.
Brilliant Stars VSTAR pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 8.33% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 4 VSTAR cards = 1 in 48. |
|---|---|
| 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. |
VSTAR cards in Brilliant Stars
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charizard VSTAR #18 | $13.69 | 1 in 48 |
| 2 | Arceus VSTAR #123 | $6.67 | 1 in 48 |
| 3 | Shaymin VSTAR #14 | $1.47 | 1 in 48 |
| 4 | Whimsicott VSTAR #65 | $1.15 | 1 in 48 |
How the 8.33% rate is computed
Every Brilliant Stars 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 8 tiers — Rare, Holo Rare, VSTAR, and the era's other chase rarities. The VSTAR tier captures 8.33% of those rare-slot draws (= 8.33 packs out of every 100). Within the VSTAR tier, all 4 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 8.33% ÷ 4 = 0.0208 = 1 in 48.
This is the same math PackRip's live Brilliant Stars simulator uses to roll packs — open as many as you want for free, watch the empirical hit rate converge to the theoretical 8.33% 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 VSTAR
VSTAR pulls follow a geometric distribution with per-pack rate 0.083300. The expected number of packs until your first VSTAR hit is 13; at 95% confidence you'll have one within 35 packs. Most experienced openers crack a sealed booster box (36 packs) and hit VSTAR with probability 95.6% — so the average box yields just over 3.0 VSTAR pulls.
Related on PackRip
- Open Brilliant Stars packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Brilliant Stars binder completion calculator
- Brilliant Stars per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Brilliant Stars cards
- Every VSTAR card across all 140 booster sets