What Are the Odds? A Collector’s Guide to Ripping Packs

Ripping open a pack of cards is like scratching a lottery ticket you actually want to keep. The foil tears, the cards slide out, and for a few glorious seconds, the odds don’t matter—because this might be the one.

But with box prices constantly increasing and odds sheets reading like calculus homework, understanding what you’re chasing has never been more important.

But don’t worry—I’m not a mathematician and I promise there won’t be a quiz. Even someone who’s not a rocket scientist can do a little basic pack math.

Let’s use a recent release that will make the math a little more fun: 2025 Topps Chrome SpongeBob SquarePants 25th Anniversary. It’s silly, iconic, and surprisingly good for explaining probability—sort of like Squidward meets statistics class.

Pack Odds 101: What Do Those Numbers Mean?

Often, packs odds will be available on the wrapper, the box, or online. If it says “1:6,” that means you’ll find that insert once in every six packs, on average. Each pack is a fresh roll of the dice. There’s no such thing as a “hot hand,” no matter how many jellyfishes you’ve caught.

The 2025 Topps Chrome SpongeBob 25th Anniversary odds sheet lists comprehensive odds for 107 different cards or variations, covering everything from refractors, rarer inserts, and true 1/1 SuperFractors. And to make it a bit more confusing—but more detailed—the pack odds cover Hobby, Sapphire, and two Value Box variations.

Let’s crunch some numbers—SpongeBob style—by focusing only on the hobby box odds and five select inserts to “sea” what we can learn:

Base Refractors — 1:3 packs
SONG Songs — 1:6 packs
Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy — 1:12 packs
Bikini Bottom VIPs — 1:480 packs
SuperFractors — 1:4,255 packs

Remember—collecting should be fun. Don't be like Plankton. | Fanatics

Originally priced at $259.99 on Topps.com, hobby boxes have since climbed to roughly $400 on the secondary market as demand from collectors surged. With 12 packs in a hobby box and five cards per pack, that means:

You’ll almost certainly pull a refractor (99% chance)
You’ll probably pull a SONG insert (89%)
You’ve got a coin flip shot at a Mermaid Man & Barnacle Boy (65%)
And your odds of a random SuperFractor? About 0.28%, or roughly 1 in 350 boxes.

That would pay for a lifetime of Krabby Patties! And it also explains why rare cards command big bucks at auction.

How Hard Is It to Build a Complete Base Set?

With 60 total cards in a hobby box and a base set of 200 cards, you’d need roughly four boxes to complete the set if distribution were perfect and every card was unique.

But, of course, that’s not usually how collation works. Duplicates are common and inserts often replace base cards, so completing the full set usually takes quite a few more rips. Think more luck, less math.

2025 Topps Chrome SpongeBob SquarePants 25th Anniversary | Fanatics

Realistically? You’d probably need six to eight boxes to build a full 200-card base set. That’s why community trading groups and eBay exist, since not everyone wants to buy $1,000 worth of SpongeBob to complete their set.

Transparency Matters

Giving credit where credit is due, Topps deserves praise for its transparency, publicly listing pack odds for every major release on its official odds page, letting collectors understand rarity, value, and what they’re actually chasing. They are the exception, not the rule.

Across all brands, manufacturers do at least publish parallel numbering systems (think 1/1, 1/10, etc.) and checklists that let collectors gauge rarity once a card surfaces—a little detective work that’s part of the fun.

The Odds of Pulling One Specific SuperFractor

So let’s talk about the ultimate chase: one particular SuperFractor.

If every card in the 200-card base set has its own 1/1 SuperFractor, and the odds of any base card SuperFractor are 1:4,255 packs, your odds of pulling a specific card’s SuperFractor—say, Randy Cheeks—are roughly 1 in 851,000 packs. At 12 packs per box, that’s about 1 in 70,900 hobby boxes. You’d have better luck finding a real-life golden spatula.

2025 Topps Chrome SpongeBob The Chum Bucket Superfractor 1/1 (eBay sale: $6,990) | https://ebay.us/m/LMwwVf

Hitting a true 1/1 is lottery-level rare, and hitting the exact one you want? Priceless—or almost $7,000, the recent sale of a 1/1 “Chum Bucket” SuperFractor.

Hits and Misses

If you scroll through Instagram or TikTok, it looks like everyone’s pulling 1/1s and case hits every five minutes. But remember, people post hits, not misses. It’s like Yelp: mostly five stars and one star, with most of the average experiences left out.

Ripping packs can produce big hits—and lots of misses. Celebrate the big wins! | https://www.facebook.com/groups/nonsportscardsnonsense/

If you pull something huge, amazing. If not? You still get the joy of opening, sorting, and maybe building a set, which is still a better ROI than most lottery tickets.