Free Mystery Boxes
Practice boxes bought with chips that are worth nothing, with every item, its resale value and its exact odds printed beside the box.
Play chips
1,000
No real money, no prizes, nothing to buy.
Tin box
No box opened yet
Pick a box and open it. The item inside is sold back for chips automatically.
| Item | Sells for | Tickets |
|---|---|---|
| Gold ThimbleLegendary | 5,000 | 4 |
| Silver ThimbleEpic | 500 | 96 |
| Copper ThimbleRare | 100 | 1,000 |
| Glass MarbleUncommon | 30 | 5,000 |
| Painted ButtonUncommon | 15 | 10,000 |
| Paper StarCommon | 8 | 26,500 |
| Chipped MarbleCommon | 5 | 28,400 |
| Plain ButtonCommon | 2 | 29,000 |
Session coach
Last round
Nothing played yet. After each of your boxes the coach says what the round cost and what decided it.
Decide the cost before you start
Gambling is entertainment with a price, like a concert ticket. The useful question is not how much you might win but how much the evening is allowed to cost. Pick that number first, and treat reaching it as the end of the session. You can set one below and the coach will hold you to it.
Next bet
10 chips at a 12% house edge: an expected cost of 1.2 chips.
- Boxes played
- 0
- Chips bet in total
- 0
- Bets raised after a loss
- 0
Where the result came from
- House edge, on average
- 0
- Luck
- 0
- Result
- 0
The report fills in as you play. Work out what any priced chance is worth
Set a session limit
This table is for practice and entertainment only. How to keep gambling safe
What this box is worth
- Box price
- 10
- Tin box
- Expected value of the contents
- 8.80
- −1.20 per box on average
- Return to player
- 88%
- The house edge is 12%
- Chance of getting back less than you paid
- 83.9%
- 83,900 of 100,000 tickets
- Chance of the top item
- 1 in 25,000
- Gold Thimble, 5,000 chips
- Median outcome
- 5
- Half of all boxes return this or less
The Gold Thimble is what sells this box, and it is in 1 in 25,000 of them. The typical box holds an item worth 5 chips against a price of 10. Work out what any priced chance is worth
This session
- Boxes opened
- 0
- Chips spent
- 0
- Net chips
- 0
- Expected at these prices
- 0
- Boxes worth less than their price
- 0 of 0
The expected figure is each opened box's price multiplied by the share that box keeps. A short session can land well above or below it, because a large part of the return sits in items that almost never come up.
Built by Alexander Korsager · last updated October 3, 2026 · corrections
- Of tin box opens return less than the 10-chip price
- 83.9%
- Chips the typical 10-chip tin box is worth
- 5
- Return of the tin box, on average
- 88%
- Tin boxes hold the Gold Thimble that tops the table
- 1 in 25,000
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A box priced before you open it
A mystery box is a purchase with a draw inside it. You pay a fixed price, an item is picked for you by chance, and the item is almost always worth less than you paid.
There is nothing to decide and nothing to get better at, so this is not a game to practice. It is one to understand, and this page exists for that reason: each box here prints its whole item table, and the panel under it works out what the box is worth before you open it.
- Hold an item worth less than the 10 chips paid
- 83.9%
- Hold an item worth more than the price
- 16.1%
Each item's resale value set against the price of the box, weighted by its tickets.
The boxes cost 10, 50 and 250 chips and return 88%, 90% and 86% of what is spent on them.
Those averages hide the shape. In the Tin box, 83.9% of opens return less than the 10-chip price, the typical box holds an item worth 5 chips, and the Gold Thimble that tops the table is in 1 in 25,000 boxes. The headline item is what sells a box. The typical box is worth a fraction of its price.
- The price10
- The average box8.80
A return of 88%, part of it in items that almost never come up.
- The typical box5
The median: the middle one if every open were lined up.
The Gold Thimble that tops the table sells for 5,000 chips and is in 1 in 25,000 boxes.
02 / 03
Rules at this table
Tin box
10 chips, tickets out of 100,000
Item Sells for Tickets Gold ThimbleLegendary 5,000 4 Silver ThimbleEpic 500 96 Copper ThimbleRare 100 1,000 Glass MarbleUncommon 30 5,000 Painted ButtonUncommon 15 10,000 Paper StarCommon 8 26,500 Chipped MarbleCommon 5 28,400 Plain ButtonCommon 2 29,000 The box keeps
12%
83.9% of opens return less than the price
Brass box
50 chips, tickets out of 100,000
Item Sells for Tickets Gilded OwlLegendary 25,000 2 Crystal OwlEpic 3,000 98 Jade OwlRare 500 1,400 Brass WhistleUncommon 180 4,500 Carved TopUncommon 80 9,000 Clay OwlCommon 40 29,300 Reed WhistleCommon 20 25,700 Wooden TopCommon 8 30,000 The box keeps
10%
85% of opens return less than the price
Gilt box
250 chips, tickets out of 100,000
Item Sells for Tickets Star SealLegendary 150,000 1 Pearl SealEpic 20,000 49 Bronze SealRare 3,000 1,150 Cedar BoatUncommon 1,000 4,800 Silk PennantUncommon 450 9,000 Wax SealCommon 170 27,000 Cork BoatCommon 90 29,000 Felt PennantCommon 30 29,000 The box keeps
14%
85% of opens return less than the price
Values are in chips. The gold ones are the items that sell for more than their box costs.
- A box costs 10, 50 and 250 chips. You start with 1,000 chips, and another stack is free when you run out.
- Opening a box draws one item from that box's table. The item is sold back automatically for its listed value in chips. Nothing is kept, collected or delivered.
- Every table is written as tickets out of 100,000. An item with more tickets comes up more often, in exact proportion.
- The row for the item you drew is marked in the table once the strip stops.
- Enter
- Open the selected box
FAQ
- Are these mystery boxes opened with real money?
- No. The table uses play chips that have no value, cannot be bought, and cannot be cashed out or exchanged for anything. If you run out, you are handed another stack for free. There is no account and nothing to download.
- What is a mystery box actually worth?
- Its expected value: every item's resale value multiplied by its chance, added up. For the Tin box that is 8.80 chips against a price of 10, a return of 88%, so each box costs 1.20 chips on average. The average is still kinder than the typical result, because part of it sits in items that almost never come up. The median box, the one in the middle if you lined them all up, is worth 5 chips.
- How likely is the top item?
- 1 in 25,000 for the Gold Thimble in the Tin box, 1 in 50,000 for the Gilded Owl in the Brass box and 1 in 100,000 for the Star Seal in the Gilt box. At 1 in 100,000, opening the Gilt box once a day would bring up its top item about once in 274 years on average. The picture on a box shows the item at the top of its table. The table shows how often that item is inside.
- Why did a rare item slide past just before the strip stopped?
- Because every cell on the strip is its own draw from the same table, a rare item will sometimes land next to the one you got. It means nothing: the item was drawn before the strip started moving, and the strip is filled in afterwards. Here the neighboring cells are never weighted. In the Tin box, any one cell shows a rare, epic or legendary item 1.1% of the time, the same as a box does. A reveal that shows rare items beside the stopping point more often than its odds allow is built to make a loss look close.
How this game works
This is a practice simulation for adults. Real mystery boxes are a form of gambling with real money: you pay a price for a chance at something worth more, and usually receive something worth less. Nothing here can be won, kept or shipped. The items are invented names with a chip figure attached, they are not real products, and the chips are worth nothing.
Each box is one published table of tickets out of 100,000. Opening a box draws a single ticket number in your browser, every number equally likely, and that number alone decides the item. The price is taken and the item's resale value is credited in the same step, before anything is shown.
The returns of 88%, 90% and 86% are each table's resale values multiplied by their tickets, added up and divided by the price paid for all 100,000 tickets, with no sampling and no rounding. In the Tin box, rare, epic and legendary items come up in 1.1% of boxes and carry 16.8% of every chip spent, while the common items that fill most boxes carry 41.2%. The expected value calculator does the same sum for a single priced chance.
The strip is drawn after the item. It shows 30 cells and stops on the item you already have. Each of the other 29 cells is an independent draw from the same published table, made without reference to your item or to where the cell sits. No near misses are engineered: a Gold Thimble appears in any one cell 1 in 25,000 times, beside the stopping point or anywhere else.
The expected figure in the session panel adds up, for each box you opened, its price multiplied by the share that box keeps. The median is the value of the middle ticket when all of a table's tickets are lined up from cheapest to dearest.
Limits
- These are invented tables, built to have the shape such boxes have: most of the tickets on cheap items and a very small number on expensive ones. They copy no real box, and real boxes differ from these and from each other.
- Here the resale value is fixed and paid at once. A real item has to be sold or shipped, with fees, delays and a price that can be lower than the one listed, so a real box is worth less than its table suggests.
- A real seller's odds are only as good as its disclosure. These are printed in full and tested. Many real boxes publish less, or nothing.
- Play chips do not feel like money. A run of boxes worth less than their price is harder to stop after with a real stake.
This is a practice game for adults. It has no real-money play and links to none. A mystery box bought with money is priced so that most buyers lose: of every 100,000 opens on this page, between 83,900 and 85,000 return less than the box cost, and the house edge runs from 10% to 14%.
Gambling can cause serious harm. The National Problem Gambling Helpline is free, confidential and open 24/7, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738), or chat at ncpgambling.org/chat.
03 / 03
Go deeper
- Expected Value Calculator The sum behind every box: what a priced chance is worth on average.
- House Edge Comparison What every common casino bet keeps, to set beside what these boxes keep.
- Slot Volatility Simulator How a return that sits in rare prizes plays out over a session.
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