I recently purchased a sealed Terastal Festival booster box (SV8a) after hearing that each box guarantees at least one Special Art Rare (SAR) card. However, after opening all the packs in the box, I didn’t find any SAR. Instead, I only pulled an SR full art trainer card. Additionally, there was no ACE Spec card in the box, which I also thought was guaranteed based on what I’ve read online.
I’m reaching out to see if anyone else has experienced a similar situation. Is it normal for a Terastal Festival booster box to lack both SAR and ACE Spec cards? Or could this be a rare error?
I could be wrong but I believe it’s because the SR trainer is in the same rarity class as an SAR so would have taken that slot in the box. Regarding the ACE spec card, I’ve not read any official statement about them being guaranteed in a box (unless anyone else has?), and I’d take online conjecture and a few video openings with a pinch of salt, the sample size just isn’t big enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. In the scheme of things, chances are you’ve not been scammed, this early on in initial release it’s more likely that you’ve received a genuine box than a resealed one, just simply because the market will contain many more genuine than fake boxes at this point in time.
This is the first Ive heard of this, i always thought it was at least 1 SR or higher rarity, not specifically guaranteed to be an SAR. Do you have a link to an official statement from Pokemon guaranteeing an SAR in every box?
How many ex cards did you get out of the box’s 10 packs? The guarantee stated on the box/pack front that you get 1 ex in each pack. The other pulls are what is most commonly experienced for the box so 1 SAR / 3 Pokéball reverse / 1 ACE Spec and Master Ball/SR/UR not guaranteed is the general consensus, but there may be lucky exceptions (god packs, double SAR) and unlucky exceptions (your box)
Conclusion is there are now 3 things guaranteed in life: death, taxes and 1 ex card per sv8a booster pack. Everything else is left to chance despite trends.
Getting 2 reverse instead of 3 is a red flag (either 3 Pokéball or 2 Pokéball / 1 Master Ball). They might have taken out the Master Ball and replaced with a pack not knowing whether it has a reverse
I’d say it’s very likely resealed. The pack containing the SAR is mappable based on which pack contains the ACE Spec. So it’s likely someone opened the ACE Spec pack, took out the SAR pack, and put in 2 dud packs as replacements
What kind of volumes does the seller do - can you link us to their store, or even better the listing, or was this a social media purchase? Depending on who/where you purchased this from might give more or less confidence.
Re-seals on tampered boxes can look almost indistinguishable from factory-sealed versions these days, but there might be subtle tells if there are adequate photos from the seller’s listing that can be compared directly to JP PC-purchased boxes.
Unfortunately it was purchased on social media and the seller told me she took the stocks directly from Japan. Bought two boxes, the other one is okay tho.
Im actually pretty sure they did officially announce that starting with [one of the Sun&Moon sets], there would be a minimum of one secret rare per box. Im not 100% sure tho couldnt find the page I was thinking of
