The rip-and-ship glossary

New to ripping packs, or just want a straight answer on what “SIR” or “provably fair” actually means? Every term you'll see across Pokémon TCG rip-and-ship, defined in plain English — with a note on how it works at PackLab where it helps.

Hit: A card worth pulling — anything valuable or sought-after enough to make a pack exciting to open. On PackLab, every hit drops into your vault with its live market price shown the instant it's revealed.
Chase: The specific standout card (or short list of cards) a set is famous for — the one people rip packs hoping to land. Also called the “chase card.”
SIR (Special Illustration Rare): A premium, borderless full-art rarity from the Scarlet & Violet era that shows the Pokémon in a detailed scene with a textured finish; among the most valuable modern pulls.
Alt-art (Alternate Art): A card printed with entirely different, usually full-bleed artwork from its standard version. Alt-arts are typically low-pull-rate chase cards that command strong premiums.
Secret rare: A card numbered beyond the set's printed total (e.g., 201/198), so its number sits “outside” the set. The category covers gold cards, rainbow rares, and other top-tier finishes.
Slab: The sealed, tamper-evident plastic case a professionally graded card is encapsulated in, displaying its grade and unique certification number.
Graded: A card that a third-party service (PSA, CGC, BGS) has authenticated and scored for condition on a 1–10 scale. A higher grade can multiply a card's value.
Card condition (NM / LP / MP / HP): How worn a physical card is. Near Mint (NM) looks essentially unplayed; Lightly Played (LP), Moderately Played (MP), and Heavily Played (HP) show progressively more edge and surface wear. We source the highest grade available — usually Near Mint — but some older sets are hard to find in top condition, so when Near Mint isn't available we ship the best obtainable grade (sometimes Lightly, Moderately, or Heavily Played) rather than cancelling your shipment.
Pull rate: The statistical odds of finding a specific card or rarity in a pack or box — e.g., “1 in 12 packs.” PackLab publishes the exact rates for every product on the odds page.
EV (Expected Value): The average market value you'd statistically expect from a rip, found by weighting every possible card by its pull rate — a common way collectors size up what a product's contents are worth. PackLab publishes each set's full odds and pack price up front.
Pack / Booster: The base sealed unit of the hobby — usually around 10 cards with a guaranteed rare or better. “Pack” and “booster pack” mean the same thing.
ETB (Elite Trainer Box): A retail box that bundles several booster packs with accessories — sleeves, dice, damage counters, energy cards — inside a collectible storage box.
Box (Booster Box): A sealed case of booster packs from a single set, most often 36 packs. Ripping a whole box smooths out the variance you get from opening single packs.
Rip: To open a sealed product and reveal its cards — the core action of the hobby. On PackLab you rip virtually and see the result instantly; see how it works.
Provably fair: A cryptographic system that lets you verify a rip's outcome was locked in before you opened it and not altered afterward. PackLab's implementation is documented on the provably-fair page.
Commit / reveal: The two-step protocol behind a provably-fair rip: the server first commits to a hashed outcome, then reveals the underlying values afterward so you can confirm nothing changed. See provably fair.
Server seed: The secret random value the server uses to determine a rip's result. Its hash is shown before you rip and the full seed is revealed after, so you can independently reproduce and verify the outcome — details on the provably-fair page.
Buyback / Sell-back: The option to instantly sell a pulled card back to the shop for store credit instead of shipping it. PackLab pays buybacks in Sparks based on the card's live market price.
Vault: Your digital collection of pulled cards held in your PackLab account, where you can store hits, sell them back, or request physical shipment. See how it works.
Closed-loop credit: Store credit — “Sparks” on PackLab — that can only be earned and spent inside the platform and is never withdrawn as cash. Keeping credit closed-loop is the core of a virtual card shop: value moves in as a purchase or promotional credit and out only as real cards.
God Pack: A rare, extraordinary pack in which every card is a high rarity — effectively an all-hits pack. Some sets have a defined God Pack pull rate.
Era: A multi-year block of sets that share branding, card frame, and mechanics — such as Sword & Shield or Scarlet & Violet — used to group products by generation.
Market price: The current going rate for a card based on recent real-world sales. PackLab prices vault cards, buybacks, and packs from live TCGplayer market data.

Ready to put the words to work?

See the exact pull rates and pack prices for every set, read how the whole loop works, or check why every rip is provably fair.