Start with the pack guarantee
Pokémon specifies five foil cards and one foil Basic Energy in a regular international pack. One of the 30 Pikachu cards occupies a guaranteed slot. This does not establish equal odds for each illustration, a particular rarity rate, or a duplicate-free run of packs. Source: www.pokemon.com
Japanese box evidence stays Japanese
PokeBeach’s 9 September report attributes a 20-pack opening to an official source: 20 distinct Pikachu, two Classic cards, four Illustration Rares, one Special Illustration Rare and one Futuristic Rare. We have not independently replayed the underlying full opening. This is a reported Japanese collation observation, not a guaranteed English box configuration and not a probability estimate from a broad retail sample. Source: www.pokebeach.com
The 267-pack claim
The largest clearly identified prerelease sample found in this bounded research was a claimed 267 packs, repeated through TCGTalk summaries and a Reddit discussion. The underlying pack ledger and exact integer hit counts were not independently verified. Rounded packs-per-hit values cannot reconstruct an authoritative count. The sample remains HOLD; its size is visible, while hits, probability and packs-per-hit stay blank. Source: www.reddit.com
No rumoured GOD-card rate enters this table. A handful of rare hits cannot establish the tail of a distribution, and multiple summaries of the same opening do not create independent evidence.
How the next update will work
Each admitted sample must carry language, product configuration, opening date, counted packs, exact hits and a traceable source. We will separate retail samples from prerelease samples and avoid double-counting reused videos. An estimated probability is hits divided by packs; uncertainty and sampling limitations must travel with the number. The data model below refuses incomplete or impossible counts.
Buying a card versus buying a chance
If your goal is a particular card, compare an evidenced single-card price with the budget you are willing to spend opening packs for enjoyment. A guaranteed Pikachu is not a guarantee of the one missing from your binder. No expected return or future value is asserted here.