A pull odds sheet is the document a manufacturer publishes to say how often each card was inserted. It is the only number in the hobby that comes straight from the people who made the product, and it is routinely misread. We hold 80,592 stated ratios across 313 published sets, and the same three misreadings come up every time.
What does 1:100 mean?
One of that card for every hundred packs of that configuration. Not one per hundred packs you open, and not one per box. It is a ratio describing the whole production run of a configuration, and your box is a handful of packs drawn from it.
The practical consequence is that odds do not accumulate in your favour. Opening ninety nine packs without the card does not make the hundredth more likely.
Why does the same card have different odds?
Because odds are stated per configuration. Hobby, retail, blaster and jumbo are different products with different pack counts and different insertion rates, and a sheet gives a separate line for each. A ratio quoted without its configuration is missing the half that makes it meaningful.
When we list a card at its shortest stated odds, that is the configuration worth buying if that card is the one you are after. The same card in another configuration can be several times longer.
What does a dash mean on an odds sheet?
It means the manufacturer published no ratio for that line. We record it as having no number rather than guessing one, which is why the count of odds lines we hold is smaller than the count of lines printed. A dash is not a long ratio; it is an absence.
Do odds tell you how many were made?
Not on their own. A ratio plus a pack count would, but manufacturers rarely publish production totals. A serial number does state a print run, which is why a card numbered to 25 tells you something an odds line cannot. 128,589 of the 426,765 cards we track carry a stated print run.
What odds cannot tell you
What is left. Odds describe insertion at the point of manufacture, and say nothing about what has been opened, graded or lost since. They are a fact about a print run, not about the market.
