How Many Packs to Pull Reshiram & Zekrom-GX from Cosmic Eclipse
| Card | Reshiram & Zekrom-GX — Cosmic Eclipse #222 |
|---|---|
| Rarity tier | Full Art |
| Per-pack odds | 1 in 327 |
| Expected packs to pull | 328 |
| 50% confidence band | 227 packs |
| 95% confidence band | 979 packs |
| TCGplayer market | $402.58 |
| Pack-rip break-even | 81 packs @ $5 |
Reshiram & Zekrom-GX chase methodology
| Formula | Specific-card odds = Full Art tier rate (8.56%) ÷ 28 cards; confidence bands solve 1 - (1 - p)^N. |
|---|---|
| Assumptions | Independent pack rolls, uniform selection within the rarity tier, no pity timers, no box mapping, no first-edition/condition split, no duplicate protection. |
| Data source | Card identity and rarity from the bundled Pokemon TCG API catalog; pull-rate constants from the live simulator; market price from the bundled TCGplayer snapshot. |
| Update cadence | Regenerated by prerender; price values update when the TCGplayer snapshot is refreshed through the data pipeline. |
| Limitations | The page estimates probability and raw market cost only; it does not model grading premiums, counterfeit risk, sealed-product appreciation, or individual print-run collation. |
This page answers exactly one question: how many Cosmic Eclipse booster packs does it take to pull Reshiram & Zekrom-GX #222? The numbers below come from the same per-rarity pull-rate model the PackRip Cosmic Eclipse simulator runs on, mirrored from packGenerator.ts. TCGplayer pricing refreshes every build, so the buy-vs-rip verdict at the bottom reflects current market.
The math: ~1 in 327 per pack
Reshiram & Zekrom-GX sits in the Full Art rare-slot pool for Cosmic Eclipse. There are 28 Full Art cards in the Cosmic Eclipse pool, and the Full Art slot fires with probability 8.56% per pack. Since the slot is split evenly across the 28 cards in that tier, the per-pack chance of pulling this specific card is 1 in 327 — approximately 1 in 327.
Pulls are independent and identically distributed, so the number of packs until you hit Reshiram & Zekrom-GX follows a geometric distribution with parameter p = 0.003057. The expected number of packs is 1/p — that's ~328 packs on average. But "average" hides huge variance: the median pull lands faster than the mean (~227 packs at 50% confidence), and a long unlucky tail can stretch the wait dramatically. The 95% confidence band — 979 packs — is where 95% of pull-runs finish; the remaining 5% take even longer.
Concretely: if 100 collectors each opened Cosmic Eclipse packs until they pulled Reshiram & Zekrom-GX, roughly 50 of them would have it by pack 227, 95 of them would have it by pack 979, and a handful would still be chasing past that. Expected ≠ guaranteed; the geometric distribution is famously long-tailed on the right side.
Confidence bands — packs vs cumulative probability
| P(pulled by N packs) | Packs needed | Sealed cost at $5/pack |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | 35 packs | ~$175 sealed cost |
| 25% | 94 packs | ~$470 sealed cost |
| 50% | 227 packs | ~$1,135 sealed cost |
| 75% | 453 packs | ~$2,265 sealed cost |
| 90% | 753 packs | ~$3,765 sealed cost |
| 95% | 979 packs | ~$4,895 sealed cost |
| 99% | 1,505 packs | ~$7,525 sealed cost |
Read this table as "what fraction of openers have pulled Reshiram & Zekrom-GX by pack N?". A 25% band of 94 packs means a quarter of openers hit it inside that window; 99% means almost everyone has hit it by pack 1,505. The dollar column anchors the variance to real-world sealed-pack cost at $5/pack.
Cheaper to buy Reshiram & Zekrom-GX as a single?
Buying Reshiram & Zekrom-GX as a single on TCGplayer (~$402.58) is dramatically cheaper than chasing it through packs — the expected pack-rip cost is roughly $1636, well above the market price.
Pack-rip expected dollar cost for this specific card: ~$1,636 at $5 per Cosmic Eclipse pack. Compare to $402.58 for the single on TCGplayer (Unlimited / non-graded copy at current market). The single buy obviously delivers exactly this card; the pack-rip approach delivers Reshiram & Zekrom-GX plus the remaining 10 cards in every pack along the way — which is why the EV calculator at /ev/sm12 spreads the cost across the whole pack contents instead of pinning it to one card.
About Reshiram & Zekrom-GX (Cosmic Eclipse)
Reshiram & Zekrom-GX is a Full Art card from Cosmic Eclipse, the 2019 Pokémon TCG expansion. Cosmic Eclipse (2019) closes the Sun & Moon era at 272 cards with 85 credited illustrators. Forty cards carry the TAG TEAM subtype. Its 21 Secret Rares are the deepest Secret run in PackRip's catalog and split between 12 Pokemon and nine Trainers. Psychic and Water lead the types at 37 and 34, and 16 cards sit at rarity Rare Holo GX.
This specific card ranks as one of the top-3 most valuable pulls in Cosmic Eclipse by TCGplayer market value, which is part of why the chase math is what it is — high market value tends to track with rarity-tier depth, since lower pool sizes concentrate value into fewer cards. The complete top-25 Cosmic Eclipse ranking shows where Reshiram & Zekrom-GX sits relative to the rest of the chase pool.
Pull odds in context
For reference, a "1 in 327" pull is roughly comparable to a deep chase — multi-box territory, often case-level commitment. The variance is the killer: any one pack could be the one. The simulation on PackRip's Cosmic Eclipse opener uses the same exact RNG model, so you can stress-test the wait curve without spending real money.
Related chases
- Arceus & Dialga & Palkia-GX — Full Art, $505.37 market
- Blastoise & Piplup-GX — Full Art, $432.48 market
- All Reshiram & Zekrom-GX printings across 2 sets
- All top-25 Cosmic Eclipse chases
- Complete the Cosmic Eclipse binder — full calculator
Open Cosmic Eclipse free
Rip Cosmic Eclipse packs free on PackRip's simulator with the same per-rarity pull rates this page is built from. The Hunt Pack mode boosts the Full Art slot if you specifically want to optimise for Reshiram & Zekrom-GX-tier pulls. Coin economy is virtual — no real money on the line.
Strategy: optimising the Reshiram & Zekrom-GX chase
Every experienced Cosmic Eclipse hunter eventually picks one of three approaches for a specific chase card. The cheapest is the snipe: skip pack-ripping entirely, set a TCGplayer alert at or below the current $402.58 market, and wait for a motivated seller. This is the route most efficient-frontier collectors take when the chase is locked behind a deep rarity tier — and the math above shows why. The expected pack-rip cost ($1,636) is typically multiples of the single price, and the variance on that expectation is wide enough that a single bad streak can blow past the 95% confidence bound. The single buy is dollar-for-dollar cheaper and emotionally cheaper too — no more refreshing pack-pull videos at 3am.
The middle path is the box-rip-then-snipe: open a sealed booster box of Cosmic Eclipse (typically 36 packs for vintage sets), enjoy the experience, then if you didn't hit Reshiram & Zekrom-GX in the box, buy the single for $402.58. A 36-pack box delivers a probability of 1 − (1 − p)36 ≈ 10.4% of pulling Reshiram & Zekrom-GX at least once, where p is the per-pack hit rate of 0.003057. So a sealed box gives you roughly a 10% chance of hitting this card "for free" alongside the rest of the box contents, plus the rip experience. If you miss, you backstop by buying the single — total worst-case cost is the box price plus the single. Most rational hobbyists end here.
The expensive path is pure-rip-to-pull: keep opening packs until Reshiram & Zekrom-GX appears. The expected total cost is ~$1,636, but the 95th percentile pushes that to ~$4,895. Almost nobody who does this comes out ahead financially — but it produces the binder story, the YouTube content, and the cumulative pulls of the entire pack contents along the way. If your real goal is collecting all of Cosmic Eclipse, not just acquiring Reshiram & Zekrom-GX, the pure-rip path has an internal logic the singles path doesn't.
Variance is the entire story
Here's a concrete illustration of how wild the geometric distribution gets at low p. Consider 10 hypothetical openers all chasing Reshiram & Zekrom-GX from Cosmic Eclipse. Mathematically, you'd expect their results to cluster near the 328-pack expectation — but they won't. Roughly 5 will pull Reshiram & Zekrom-GX within the first 227 packs and feel lucky. Roughly 3 will pull between 227 and 328 packs and feel "about average". And roughly 2 will be still pulling past pack 328, with one of them potentially stretching past the 95% bound of 979. The unlucky ones will swear the simulator is rigged, the rates are wrong, or that they have terrible RNG — but the math says exactly this distribution should happen every time. The geometric distribution has no memory: each pack is an independent draw, and a 100-pack dry streak does not increase the odds of the next pack hitting.
How Reshiram & Zekrom-GX compares to the broader Cosmic Eclipse chase pool
Reshiram & Zekrom-GX sits in the Full Art tier of Cosmic Eclipse's rare-slot pool. 28 cards share this tier, and the tier itself fires roughly 8.56% of the time per pack. That means the per-pack chance of pulling any Full Art card (not just Reshiram & Zekrom-GX) is 8.56%, which makes the expected wait for any Full Art card much shorter than the wait for this specific one. Pull-rate intuition: a single chase from a 6-card tier is 6× rarer than the tier itself. The deeper the pool, the longer the chase. This is also why "wide" sets with many chase cards in a single tier feel grindier per individual card despite the tier hit rate being identical — a thicker tier dilutes each card's specific share.
If your real goal is "any chase card from Cosmic Eclipse" rather than "Reshiram & Zekrom-GX specifically", the math gets dramatically friendlier — the wait drops to ~12 packs on average for the tier as a whole. Most binder collectors approach it this way: chase the tier broadly across multiple sets, accept whatever pulls, and snipe the specific holes via TCGplayer later. Targeting one card from a thick tier is the most expensive way to play the chase, and Reshiram & Zekrom-GX is no exception.