The short version
- · Every box's complete contents are locked by a published SHA-256 fingerprint before its first pack is ripped.
- · The shuffle uses a public drand randomness beacon that didn't exist when the box was sealed.
- · When a box completes, everything is published and your browser can re-verify it.
- · Special finishes (Master Ball / Poké Ball overlays) and rare Demigod / God Packs are committed and verifiable too — and their God/Demigod odds are community estimates, clearly labeled as such.
- · Evolve uses the same drand model, publishes its per-multiplier odds, and returns 0.90 of stake value on average (a flat 10% house edge).
The summary is a courtesy; the full text below is what governs.
1. How boxes are built
Each product sells from a sequence of small, sell-to-finish boxes (36 packs for current sets, 12 for mid-era, 6 for vintage). Modern and mid-era boxes are built to a guaranteed structure shown on the product page: one headliner card ($20+, with per-band odds displayed), three hit cards ($5–$20), one code card per pack where the real product includes one, and standard pulls at the era's published rarity odds. Vintage boxes are built at the set's true collation. Certain sets also feature special finishes and premium packs — Master Ball / Poké Ball overlay patterns on the reverse-holo slot, and rare Demigod / God Packs where several or every slot is a hit (see §8). The exact odds used are displayed on each product page before you buy.
2. The commitment
Before a box's first pack is opened we publish: (a) a SHA-256 fingerprint of the box's complete, ordered card list; (b) a SHA-256 fingerprint of a secret shuffle seed; and (c) a reference to a future round of the drand public randomness beacon. Altering the card list or seed afterward would break the published fingerprints.
3. The shuffle
When the beacon round publishes, the final shuffle seed is derived as HMAC-SHA256(secret seed, beacon value) and a deterministic Fisher-Yates shuffle assigns every card to a draw position. The shuffle is fixed at that moment and kept secret while the box sells.
4. Draws
Packs are sold per set with no quantity limit and claim draw slots only when opened, strictly in open order. While a box is live, no one — including us — can see its remaining contents. The last rip completes the box.
4a. Boxes withdrawn before opening
A sealed box that has not yet gone live may be withdrawn (voided) and replaced with a freshly committed box — for example, when market prices move enough between sealing and opening that the box must be repriced. No pack is ever drawn from a withdrawn box, packs you already bought keep the price you paid, and a box that is live never changes price or contents. Withdrawn boxes' commitment records are retained. Because a box's realized contents stay secret until it completes, and repricing decisions use only set-level price movement applied to the box's expected value, withdrawal can never be used to filter out strong boxes — the same market move voids a rich box and a poor one alike.
5. The reveal and verification
The moment a box completes, we publish the secret seed, the beacon value, and the full ordered card list. The Verify page recomputes both fingerprints, re-derives the shuffle, and reproduces every pack in your own browser. The verifier is open TypeScript you can run yourself. Boxes with unopened packs remain sealed until their last pack is ripped.
6. Value disclosure
Card values shown are third-party market prices, refreshed continuously. A pack is priced at approximately the full market value of its contents (no house markup) — we make our margin on the sell-back spread (you sell cards back at 85%), float, and fees, not a pack markup — and the guaranteed structure and full odds let you compute a pack's value before buying. Card prices move, and selling back returns less than full value, so opening packs is entertainment plus product, not an investment strategy. Elite Trainer Bundles include a bonus card at its live market value: the real Black Star promo when the physical box ships one, otherwise our own labeled house pick from that set (clearly marked "our take, not the official ETB promo").
7. Evolve odds and house edge
Evolve (Terms §1d) is provably fair on the SAME drand model as boxes. When you stake a card, we commit a hashed server seed and pin the result to a future drand public-randomness round that has not yet been produced — so neither you nor we can predict or steer it. When that round publishes (a few seconds later), the roll is derived as HMAC-SHA256(server seed, drand randomness) and your browser can recompute it from the public beacon and the revealed seed. The published odds for each target multiplier are: 2× = 45%, 4× = 22.5%, 8× = 11.25%, 16× = 5.63%, 32× = 2.81%, 64× = 1.41%, and 128× = 0.70%. Every multiplier carries the same expected return: 0.90 of the staked card's value on average — a flat 10% house edge (RTP 0.90). A hit mints a target virtual card worth roughly the chosen multiple of your stake; a miss consumes the staked card and returns nothing. Because the house edge is flat across multipliers, no multiplier is a "better deal" than another — a higher multiplier simply trades a lower hit chance for a larger target, at the same 0.90 long-run return.
8. Overlays, Demigod Packs & God Packs
Some sets carry collectible extras, all committed in the box fingerprint (§2) and reproduced by the Verify page like any other pull. OVERLAYS are special foil patterns (Master Ball / Poké Ball) applied on top of a reverse-holo card — they restyle a slot, they do not add a card. Their per-pack odds are published on the product page (for example, Prismatic Evolutions: Poké Ball ~1 in 3, Master Ball ~1 in 20) and are sourced from public pull-rate research; a Master Ball copy is valued, sells back, and ships as its own distinct market print. DEMIGOD PACKS (several slots upgraded to hits) and GOD PACKS (every slot a hit) are extremely rare premium packs. IMPORTANT: no official odds exist for Demigod or God Packs — the figures we show are COMMUNITY ESTIMATES, labeled as such on every product page, and we apply them only to sets documented to contain them. A Demigod is always rarer than a normal pack and more common than a God Pack. The expected value of every one of these extras is folded into the pack price, so all boxes of a set are priced identically — a strong box is never revealed by its price; its realized value simply rides in the cards you pull.