Sandstorm Pokémon-ex Pull Rate — 24.70% per pack (1 in 4)
24.70% of Sandstorm booster packs contain a Pokémon-ex card — roughly 1 in 4 packs. Sandstorm ships 7 Pokémon-ex cards in the pool, so the chance of pulling any specific Pokémon-ex is 0.0353 (≈1 in 28). 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.
Sandstorm Pokémon-ex pull-rate methodology
| Formula | Tier odds = 24.70% per pack; per-card odds = tier odds ÷ 7 Pokémon-ex cards = 1 in 28. |
|---|---|
| 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. |
Pokémon-ex cards in Sandstorm
| # | Card | TCGplayer market | Per-card odds |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Raichu ex #98 | $219.31 | 1 in 28 |
| 2 | Gardevoir ex #96 | $191.22 | 1 in 28 |
| 3 | Typhlosion ex #99 | $148.33 | 1 in 28 |
| 4 | Aerodactyl ex #94 | $138.32 | 1 in 28 |
| 5 | Aggron ex #95 | $118.49 | 1 in 28 |
| 6 | Wailord ex #100 | $118.17 | 1 in 28 |
| 7 | Kabutops ex #97 | $91.52 | 1 in 28 |
How the 24.70% rate is computed
Every Sandstorm 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 3 tiers — Rare, Holo Rare, Pokémon-ex, and the era's other chase rarities. The Pokémon-ex tier captures 24.70% of those rare-slot draws (= 24.70 packs out of every 100). Within the Pokémon-ex tier, all 7 cards share the slot uniformly, so per-card odds are 24.70% ÷ 7 = 0.0353 = 1 in 28.
This is the same math PackRip's live Sandstorm simulator uses to roll packs — open as many as you want for free, watch the empirical hit rate converge to the theoretical 24.70% 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 Pokémon-ex
Pokémon-ex pulls follow a geometric distribution with per-pack rate 0.247000. The expected number of packs until your first Pokémon-ex hit is 5; at 95% confidence you'll have one within 11 packs. Most experienced openers crack a sealed booster box (36 packs) and hit Pokémon-ex with probability 100.0% — so the average box yields just over 8.9 Pokémon-ex pulls.
Related on PackRip
- Open Sandstorm packs free — same pull rates, live RNG
- Sandstorm binder completion calculator
- Sandstorm per-pack expected value
- Top 25 most valuable Sandstorm cards
- Every Pokémon-ex card across all 140 booster sets