The Ruby Basketball pack hit a +9.0% EV peak on Aug 24, 2026, driven largely by a wave of mid-tier Lineup cards cycling out and fresher, higher-value ones entering the pool between the open and peak readings.
Before the window opened, our tracking showed the pack sitting at -0.2% EV. By 3:49 AM PT it had crossed into positive territory at +0.5%, and it kept climbing to a peak of +9.0% at 5:52 AM PT before settling back to -0.7% at close around 6:13 AM PT. The whole thing ran about 2½ hours.
What moved the pool
Pool size stayed fixed at 61 cards across all four snapshots, so the EV story isn't about cards being pulled out. It's almost entirely about which cards were in the pool at each moment and how their values changed between readings.
The single biggest swap happened at the open: the Kobe Bryant 1997-98 Skybox Z-Force entered at $414 (ev contribution: $8.10), replacing the before-window version of the same card that had been listed at $319 (ev contribution: $6.25). That's a meaningful jump on its own. By the peak snapshot, the slot had rotated to a Michael Jordan 1996-97 Skybox Z-Force at $460 (ev contribution: $9.02), which held through the close.
A Jayson Tatum 2017-18 Panini NBA Hoops appeared in the close snapshot at $516 (ev contribution: $10.11) but was absent at the peak, so it entered late and didn't contribute to the high-water mark.
On the negative side, several cards that were present at open were gone by peak. The Kobe Bryant 2019-20 Panini Prizm that had been carrying a $332 value at open ($6.51 contribution) shrank across readings and a lower-value duplicate remained. The Shaquille O'Neal 1992-93 Topps ($258, $5.06 contribution at open) had vanished by peak, and so had the LaMelo Ball 2020-21 Panini Mosaic ($235, $4.61), the DeMar DeRozan 2009-10 Topps Chrome ($207, $4.05), and the Lebron James 2008-09 Fleer ($122, $2.39). Those five cards together accounted for roughly $21 in EV contribution at open that wasn't there at peak.
What replaced them at peak were several cards carrying stronger individual values: the Kobe Bryant 2003-04 Topps Bazooka ($236, $4.63), the Michael Jordan 1988-89 Fleer ($204, $3.99), the Anthony Edwards 2020-21 Panini Revolution ($227, $4.45), a Steph Curry 2024 Topps Now Olympics ($252, $4.95), and the Amen Thompson 2023-24 Panini Prizm ($217, $4.25). Net, the incoming cards more than covered the outgoing ones.
The three Grail-tier anchors, the LeBron James 2024-25 Panini Prizm Black ($10,584, 0.03% odds, $3.18 contribution), the Victor Wembanyama 2023-24 Panini One and One ($9,456, $2.84), and the Cooper Flagg 2025-26 Bowman ($8,000, $2.40), held steady in odds and value across all four snapshots and provided a consistent floor throughout.
The Chase tier was largely stable. The VJ Edgecombe 2025-26 Topps Chrome ($650, $1.56 contribution) was present at open but gone by peak and close, a small drag that didn't change the overall picture much.
In short: the window was built on a fairly busy rotation of Lineup cards, with incoming cards outvaluing departing ones for about two hours before the pool shifted back toward its baseline.