Pokemon McDonalds Collection 2021: Pull Rates, Scam & How to Avoid it

With the Pokemon 25th Anniversary now in full swing we've already seen all sorts of craziness going on in the U.S in terms of Target stores saying they aren't going to stock Pokemon TCG products instore because of fights breaking out over them, people buying hundreds of happy meals and throwing away the food to get the McDonalds Promo set and so on. Well it seems we aren't behaving any better over here - the McDonalds Promo set made it to the UK on May 18th and here's whats been going on with it so far.

For those of you who don't know about the Pokemon 25th Anniversary McDonalds 2021 Collection its a 25 card set, or a 50 card set depending on how you look at it consisting of all three starter Pokemon from all generations + Pikachu. There is a non holo version of each card and a holo version of each card and of course it goes without saying that Pikachu is the most sought after with his Kanto Pals Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur (in that order) not far behind, although admittedly not nearly as valuable. Following the madness in the U.S of people buying hundreds of happy meals and throwing out the food etc McDonalds UK announced limits on the amount of additional packs customers could buy with each happy meal, in official terms you are allowed to buy one extra pack per happy meal purchased.

These restrictions although a good idea to allow everyone to actually get some are not being well enforced at all of the UK's 1300 restaurants however with literally thousands of these packs being listed on eBay in bulk daily. In some respects its great that they are so available for people who can't get to a McDonalds branch, or simply don't want to eat 40 happy meals a day in order to collect a Pokemon set.

The Scam explained.

I myself have been buying job lots of these McDonalds Promo packs so that I can stock the singles here (as obviously these packs cannot be bought from distributors etc), each pack contains a holo and 3 non holo cards. After buying one such lot late last week the seller actually messaged me and said they had a trick so that you could find out what was in the pack and linked me to a YouTube video. I was in two minds whether to even show this video but the way I see it the people who are going to abuse it will already know about it, but basically this video shows a trick so that people can find out whats in the pack without opening it.

To my amazement on receiving the packs from the guy who told me about this, he clearly hadn't actually used this tactic himself and the pulls were about what they should've been (more on that later). However today I had 120 boosters delivered from someone who most blatantly had shamelessly tampered with the packs- oh right so they took the Pikachu's out fair enough, but every single Bulbasaur, Squirtle and Charmander too? Thats some seriously depraved stuff right there. Now don't get me wrong I don't expect to buy 4 packs and get one of these cards guaranteed, I'm not an idiot - but this was 120 packs and should've close-to-guaranteed a certain number of each of the aforementioned cards but we'll get to the pull rates and card distributions further on. 

For people buying in bulk as I am for obvious reasons its very easy to get concrete evidence of a scammer, the sad thing is it's much more difficult for normal people who are just buying a few packs at a time - as its much more difficult to prove things using the statistics we'll come to later. By the way I know this scam originally surfaced in the U.S back in February, I don't get on YouTube much because I'm usually busy trying to bail water out at Titan Cards HQ so many of you probably already know about this but if it helps a few people then I'm glad I took the time out to write about it.

Tips on avoiding it.

1. Sellers selling job lots of 30 and sending them loose (not in the card sleeve they come in) is usually a bad sign. If you are buying domestically ie. from a seller in the same country you live in and they claim this is to reduce the weight its usually rubbish. If buying internationally the weight makes more of a difference and it's harder to get round

2. Look at what else they are selling. If the seller is selling loose booster packs and 200 Pikachu's but none of the other cards, you know something is up. Something else I've seen this week.

3. They aren't selling anything else other than boosters? tick the completed/sold listings box on eBay and again if they've sold a disproportionate amount of Pikachu and perhaps the other Kanto starters but nothing else this should again point to something being wrong.

4. If you get a delivery and they turn up loose without the card sleeves they still 'might' be ok, but before you start opening packs there's something to check. Most of these McDonalds cards packs have the 4 cards not directly on top of each other, one might go right to the top of the inside of the pack, one might go right to the bottom and so on. In order to 'xray' these cards like in the video the seller needs to get those cards all to the bottom of the pack. Received a load where the cards are all neatly stacked at the bottom of the boosters? It's not a coincidence and its not generally how they come - "bewear" my friends...

5. Got any good tips yourself for avoiding this scam? Please mail in on support [at] titancards.co.uk and I'll get it added to this article.

Now generally with standard Pokemon TCG boosters buying loose boosters and expecting something specific is pretty absurd so you might be thinking "how does he know they've been tampered with, xrayed etc". We'll get to the stats in a moment but this is meant as a special promo set for kids to enjoy out of their happy meals, it's got no rainbow rares, secret rares etc or playable trainer cards that are designed to have extreme rarity or to be any more common than others - Pikachu is more valuable simply because he is Pikachu, he's actually not any rarer a pull rate than anything else... please read on.

Pull rates for the Pokemon McDonalds Collection 2021

Source: Cardzard USA. The following table is based on the openings of 3 sealed cases, 450 packs in the U.S. 

Pikachu is the card that every scammer will be scamming as its the most valuable by a distance - and for those who don't know  Pikachu is 25/25 in the table above. You'll see he has a pull rate of 3.54% - thats actually higher than Popplio 23/25 and a number of other cards which the scammers aren't targetting, the Chu is literally the more valuable card because its Pikachu - its no rarer than anything else.

Check out the pull rates on all the other cards - they literally vary from 3.09% to 4.64% that's a tiny range. So lets back up cardzards info a bit further - first argument could be "oh the cases in the U.S might be different" - nope - they are from the same place as the two cases I've opened personally and I can absolutely confirm that the info correlates - my two cases produced nearly exactly what his cases produced. The distribution appeals that it was intended to be as even as it could be, presumably to enable people to collect the full set in a time limited period.

Check out the infographic below for further info of the exact distribution of each card within a case.

The moral of the story, its a great little set and its not "that" difficult or expensive to collect compared to a mainstream Pokemon TCG expansion. Just be careful of the telltale signs I noted above and if you buy 100 packs off someone and don't get a Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle or Bulbasaur do not let them tell you they are super rare because they simply aren't.

Good luck with your collections and if you are currently going the route of living a month long diet of McDonalds to collect these then do please consider at least swapping the fries for a fruit bag from time to time ;-)