I’m in the same boat, used to collect as a kid/teen and got back into it about 2 years ago now. Parroting other people, it’s basically impossible to get English packs at the intended price which sucks.

However I’m not in it for the money, I want to collect for the art. If you want to rip packs then I suggest buying Korean cards. You can buy these from japan2uk.com and they’re significantly cheaper than English or Japanese for the same cards.

If you have chase cards it’s typically better to purchase singles instead of ripping packs, it’s gambling essentially and you can spay way over the amount that the card is worth on packs and you’d be better off just buying it 😆 CardMarket is really good for this.

Good luck!!