Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
How much does it cost to "BUY" a complete card in Pokemon TCG Pocket? How does that compare to other major gacha games?
Help keep the channel alive!
Patreon ➤ patreon.com/Gnoggin
MERCH! ➤ gnoggin.net
Socials:
Bluesky ➤ https://bsky.app/profile/lockstin.bsky.social
Threads ➤ threads.net/@lockstin_gnoggin
Instagram ➤ instagram.com/lockstin_gnoggin/?hl=en
Chapters:
00:00 an Introduction
02:18 Gacha Games
05:52 Free to Play Friendliness
08:19 Cost of Pity
17:49 "True Collection"
19:30 Conclusion
#pokemontcgpocket #pokemon #pokemontcg
Additional Credits:
Lockstin Austin Lockwood
Fineapple Ryan Porter
Bisa!
Thumbnail art by Dees_Nook:
https://x.com/dees_nook
The glossed over details:
Starting out with Genshin Impact, purchasing the smallest pack of Genesis Crystals to convert into Primogems for pulls will run you 27$, and leave you with 20 surplus currency. The pack nearest to the 1600 needed is the 30$ one, leaving you with a really unwieldy amount of leftovers, 380. Finally, the cheapest and biggest pack nets you 4 sets of 10 pulls priced at 25$ each, with a surplus of 80 gems. Notice here, I’m specifically not talking about the commonly talked about dollar-per-currency value. Including the surplus currency in the calculation for the cost of each pull would skew the point, as it makes worse deals that leave you with more potentially useless currency, look better.
Then, taking the cheapest price of those three, to guarantee getting a 5-star character currently featured on a banner in Genshin Impact to their full collection status “Constellation 6”, would run you a whopping sum of 3,200$, and this rises by another 2,000$ if you were to include getting their signature weapon to Refinement Level 5.
Fate/Grand Order is notoriously expensive and ungenerous, but it actually scored the best out of the three when looking at in this comparison, coming in at 30$ with no leftovers at its most expensive, or 24$ with 11 Saint Quartz remaining, which would be around 540 of Genshin’s Primogems, making its closest offering stand out with just how bad it is. Extra important to mention here is that in a lot of Japanese gachage you actually get an extra pull for free if you got for a 10-pull, so it’s actually an 11-pull for the price of 10 singles, so with the most expensive, the 80$ pack in FGO you get 55 pulls at 16$ for each 11, and then a leftover of 17. Thus, guaranteeing a 5-star servant at Noble Phantasm level 5 requires you put in a total of 2,640$ for them, with the humongous asterisk that each banner in FGO only has one single guarantee so once you hit the 330 pull guarantee for the banner’s rate-up unit, you have to wait until they come around again for your next guarantee.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links is the wildcard here.
Appropriately there are only three tiers you can purchase packs in. The lowest tier is actually the closest in price here, as 12 pulls + two from gems with 20 leftovers for 10.50$ will run you 7.5$ per 10 pull. 10 + 2 pulls without any leftovers will actually run you more with 8.33$ per 10, and the best deal are 30 + 6 pulls with no leftovers for 7.22$ per 10, better, but not my much.
This makes guaranteeing a UR card at full collection, which is three copies, relatively really cheap though! A total of “only” 390$. Again though, this comes with the caveat that this is Yu-Gi-Oh!. A card game with an unlimited format, so you’re gonna want to fully collect as many cards as you possibly can. While basically every card in a set is included in that 390$, due to the nature of the pool system, you will be spending them MANY times over across a ridiculous amount pools if you want a decent stable of cards.
Finally, Pokémon Masters EX. It has the same 10-pull/11-pull quirk as FGO, but the prices! Arceus almighty, the prices! It shares FGO’s 30$ with no leftovers price at the high end, but the closest price only drops to 29$, which leaves you with 200 gems, not even enough for a single pull! Even at the highest end, for, again, the same 80$ pack price as FGO, you only get 33 total pulls costing you 26$ per 11, and are left with 800 gems. The pull prices in this game are ludicrous, however they are helped by a relatively generous guarantee to keep the whales happy, pricing a 5-star Sync Pair at Sync Move level 5 at “only” 1600$, 1000 less than FGO, and half that of Genshin.
How much does it cost to "BUY" a complete card in Pokemon TCG Pocket? How does that compare to other major gacha games?
Help keep the channel alive!
Patreon ➤ patreon.com/Gnoggin
MERCH! ➤ gnoggin.net
Socials:
Bluesky ➤ https://bsky.app/profile/lockstin.bsky.social
Threads ➤ threads.net/@lockstin_gnoggin
Instagram ➤ instagram.com/lockstin_gnoggin/?hl=en
Chapters:
00:00 an Introduction
02:18 Gacha Games
05:52 Free to Play Friendliness
08:19 Cost of Pity
17:49 "True Collection"
19:30 Conclusion
#pokemontcgpocket #pokemon #pokemontcg
Additional Credits:
Lockstin Austin Lockwood
Fineapple Ryan Porter
Bisa!
Thumbnail art by Dees_Nook:
https://x.com/dees_nook
The glossed over details:
Starting out with Genshin Impact, purchasing the smallest pack of Genesis Crystals to convert into Primogems for pulls will run you 27$, and leave you with 20 surplus currency. The pack nearest to the 1600 needed is the 30$ one, leaving you with a really unwieldy amount of leftovers, 380. Finally, the cheapest and biggest pack nets you 4 sets of 10 pulls priced at 25$ each, with a surplus of 80 gems. Notice here, I’m specifically not talking about the commonly talked about dollar-per-currency value. Including the surplus currency in the calculation for the cost of each pull would skew the point, as it makes worse deals that leave you with more potentially useless currency, look better.
Then, taking the cheapest price of those three, to guarantee getting a 5-star character currently featured on a banner in Genshin Impact to their full collection status “Constellation 6”, would run you a whopping sum of 3,200$, and this rises by another 2,000$ if you were to include getting their signature weapon to Refinement Level 5.
Fate/Grand Order is notoriously expensive and ungenerous, but it actually scored the best out of the three when looking at in this comparison, coming in at 30$ with no leftovers at its most expensive, or 24$ with 11 Saint Quartz remaining, which would be around 540 of Genshin’s Primogems, making its closest offering stand out with just how bad it is. Extra important to mention here is that in a lot of Japanese gachage you actually get an extra pull for free if you got for a 10-pull, so it’s actually an 11-pull for the price of 10 singles, so with the most expensive, the 80$ pack in FGO you get 55 pulls at 16$ for each 11, and then a leftover of 17. Thus, guaranteeing a 5-star servant at Noble Phantasm level 5 requires you put in a total of 2,640$ for them, with the humongous asterisk that each banner in FGO only has one single guarantee so once you hit the 330 pull guarantee for the banner’s rate-up unit, you have to wait until they come around again for your next guarantee.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links is the wildcard here.
Appropriately there are only three tiers you can purchase packs in. The lowest tier is actually the closest in price here, as 12 pulls + two from gems with 20 leftovers for 10.50$ will run you 7.5$ per 10 pull. 10 + 2 pulls without any leftovers will actually run you more with 8.33$ per 10, and the best deal are 30 + 6 pulls with no leftovers for 7.22$ per 10, better, but not my much.
This makes guaranteeing a UR card at full collection, which is three copies, relatively really cheap though! A total of “only” 390$. Again though, this comes with the caveat that this is Yu-Gi-Oh!. A card game with an unlimited format, so you’re gonna want to fully collect as many cards as you possibly can. While basically every card in a set is included in that 390$, due to the nature of the pool system, you will be spending them MANY times over across a ridiculous amount pools if you want a decent stable of cards.
Finally, Pokémon Masters EX. It has the same 10-pull/11-pull quirk as FGO, but the prices! Arceus almighty, the prices! It shares FGO’s 30$ with no leftovers price at the high end, but the closest price only drops to 29$, which leaves you with 200 gems, not even enough for a single pull! Even at the highest end, for, again, the same 80$ pack price as FGO, you only get 33 total pulls costing you 26$ per 11, and are left with 800 gems. The pull prices in this game are ludicrous, however they are helped by a relatively generous guarantee to keep the whales happy, pricing a 5-star Sync Pair at Sync Move level 5 at “only” 1600$, 1000 less than FGO, and half that of Genshin.
