Comparison
Card rips vs casino games
Card-rip apps are not gambling — you always receive a real, gradeable asset, and the good ones will buy it back. But some of them publish enough to compute an expected return, and once you can do that the comparison to a casino floor is arithmetic rather than rhetoric.
Courtyard's own stated average item value, across 28 packs
95.22% of the pack price
Not our estimate. This is the figure Courtyard prints on its own pack screens, averaged across every pack we captured. In casino terms that is a return to player of 95.22% — worse than a single-zero roulette wheel, better than a double-zero one, and better than a typical slot machine.
Where that sits: the house's cut
Casino figures below are published reference values, not our measurements. The two roulette lines are exact — they are properties of the wheel, not a policy. Only the highlighted lines are computed from captured data, and the two of them are not the same kind of number. Courtyard's is an average, taken from its own stated average item value. CrownCards' is a floor: its screens give bands rather than an average, so every band is taken at its minimum. Its real return is somewhere above where it is plotted, and its screens do not say how far — which is why it appears to sit worse than a slot machine and may well not.
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0.50%99.50% back
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1.10%98.90% back
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1.40%98.60% back
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2.70%97.30% back
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4.78%95.22% back
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5.26%94.74% back
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8%92% back
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23.55%76.45% back
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25%75% back
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50%50% back
Three reasons the analogy flatters the apps
That 95% is card value, not cash
A roulette wheel returns money. A pack returns a slab whose stated value you can only realise by selling it — back to the app at a rate most of them never publish, or on a marketplace with fees, shipping and time. The cash return is necessarily lower than the stated 95%.
The average hides the shape
A 95% average is compatible with almost any distribution. The published bands say the most likely single outcome on Pokémon Ultra Pack is $250–$400 at 75%, against a $500 price. Most pulls lose; a few rare ones carry the mean.
You cannot re-bet a card
Casino RTP assumes you recycle winnings, so a 97% game grinds a bankroll down slowly. A pack hands you an object. That is worse for compounding and better for keeping — which is the honest case for rips, and it is not a returns argument at all.
Where rips are plainly worse: your chance of breaking even
RTP is only half the picture. The other half is how often you finish at or above what you paid — and here the gap is not close. An even-money roulette bet pays out 48.6% of the time on a single-zero wheel. These are the published break-even chances from the apps' own odds tables.
| App | Packs | At or above cost |
|---|---|---|
| CrownCards | 30 | 40%–50.4% |
| Triumph | 24 | 40%–50.1% |
| Fanatics Collect | 15 | 11.3%–30% |
| Courtyard | 28 | 4.5%–28.9% |
| Roulette, single zero — even-money bet | — | 48.6% |
Read that carefully in both directions. One app's published odds give you a roughly even-money shot; another's give you a 71.1% to 95.5% chance of finishing below the price. Neither is hidden. Both apps are telling you, on the pack screen, before you spend.
The stated averages, pack by pack
Every pack we hold a stated average for. The flatness is the point: 28 packs across a 200× price range, and the ratio barely moves. That is a design parameter, not a measurement.
Swipe the table
| Pack | Sport | Price | Stated average | % of price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baseball Starter Pack | Baseball | $25 | $23.75 | 95% |
| Basketball Starter Pack | Basketball | $25 | $23.75 | 95% |
| Pokémon Starter Pack | Pokémon | $25 | $23.75 | 95% |
| Baseball Pro Pack | Baseball | $50 | $47.50 | 95% |
| Basketball Pro Pack | Basketball | $50 | $47.50 | 95% |
| Pokémon Pro Pack | Pokémon | $50 | $47.50 | 95% |
| Baseball Master Pack | Baseball | $100 | $95 | 95% |
| Basketball Master Pack | Basketball | $100 | $95 | 95% |
| Pokémon Master Pack | Pokémon | $100 | $95 | 95% |
| SLAM Pack | Basketball | $120 | $114 | 95% |
| Pokémon Ultra (Spicy) | Pokémon | $249 | $236.55 | 95% |
| Baseball Ultra Pack | Baseball | $250 | $237.50 | 95% |
| Basketball Ultra Pack | Basketball | $250 | $237.50 | 95% |
| Pokémon Ultra Pack | Pokémon | $250 | $237.50 | 95% |
| Pokémon Platinum (Spicy) | Pokémon | $499 | $474.05 | 95% |
| Baseball Platinum Pack | Baseball | $500 | $475 | 95% |
| Basketball Platinum Pack | Basketball | $500 | $475 | 95% |
| Pokémon Platinum Pack | Pokémon | $500 | $475 | 95% |
| Pokémon Diamond (Spicy) | Pokémon | $999 | $949.05 | 95% |
| Baseball Diamond Pack | Baseball | $1,000 | $950 | 95% |
| Basketball Diamond Pack | Basketball | $1,000 | $950 | 95% |
| Pokémon Diamond Pack | Pokémon | $1,000 | $950 | 95% |
| Pokémon Legend (Spicy) | Pokémon | $2,499 | $2,400 | 96.04% |
| Baseball Legend Pack | Baseball | $2,500 | $2,400 | 96% |
| Basketball Legend Pack | Basketball | $2,500 | $2,400 | 96% |
| Pokémon Legend Pack | Pokémon | $2,500 | $2,400 | 96% |
| Baseball Mythic Pack | Baseball | $5,000 | $4,800 | 96% |
| Basketball Mythic Pack | Basketball | $5,000 | $4,800 | 96% |
What this page is and is not
The rip figures are computed from odds tables and stated averages we captured from inside the apps, and every pack links its own screenshot. The casino figures are published reference values included for scale — we did not measure a casino. The comparison is offered because these apps disclose enough to make it possible, which is to their credit; the apps that publish nothing cannot appear here at all.