Rare Pokémon cards: every rarity explained

Whether a Pokémon card is rare is printed on the card itself: a small symbol along the bottom edge, on current cards a circle, a diamond or one to three stars. Read the symbols and you can sort a stack in minutes. Watch the card number as well and you will find the rarest cards of a set without looking at a single symbol.

For this article we counted all 21,291 cards in the English sets of our card database by rarity tier.

Pokémon card rarity chart: every symbol in the current sets

Since the Scarlet & Violet series, and in today's Mega Evolution, these are the tiers. The first five sit inside the set number, the rest above it, in the order in which they are numbered in the set. The tiers have no name on the card, only the symbol is printed. Japanese cards print letters instead, and those letters are what listings and sellers use. Ascended Heroes added one more tier on top of these, Mega Attack Rare, and it has a section of its own further down.

The count runs across every series since 1999. Common, Uncommon, Rare and Ultra Rare therefore carry older cards in their figure as well, because those tiers already went by the same names back then. Illustration Rare, Special Illustration Rare and Hyper Rare only exist since Scarlet & Violet, Mega Hyper Rare only since Mega Evolution. How Japanese cards print the same tiers as letters is in our article on Japanese Pokémon cards, and how we arrived at the total is in how many Pokémon cards there are.

How many rare cards one set holds

The spread across the main sets of Mega Evolution, by our database. Abbreviated are Common (C), Uncommon (U), Rare (R), Double Rare (RR), Illustration Rare (IR), Ultra Rare (Ultra), Special Illustration Rare (SIR), Mega Attack Rare (MA) and Mega Hyper Rare (MHR):

Common and Uncommon make up 52 to 59 percent of the cards in every one of these sets. The tiers above the set number come to 26 to 30 percent together. Of the highest tier, Mega Hyper Rare, each set holds 1 to 2 cards.

Spotting rare Pokémon cards by the card number

The same rule holds in every one of these sets: every card up to the set number is Common, Uncommon, Rare or Double Rare, and every card with a higher number carries one of the rare tiers. Across these sets those are Illustration Rare, Ultra Rare, Special Illustration Rare, Mega Attack Rare and Mega Hyper Rare. The card number is therefore the fastest test there is, faster than the symbol.

An example from Pitch Black: the set has 84 cards in its set number, and the numbers 85 to 120 sit above it. The highest of them, number 120, is Mega Darkrai ex as Mega Hyper Rare. Cards like that are what collectors call a secret rare, and every one of them is in the card list for Pitch Black.

Above the set number the tiers come in a fixed order: Illustration Rare 85 to 95, Ultra Rare 96 to 113, Special Illustration Rare 114 to 119, Mega Hyper Rare 120. Pull a card out of a pack and its number alone tells you what you are holding.

Mega Attack Rare, the newest tier

With Mega Evolution Ascended Heroes the publisher introduced a tier of its own, Mega Attack Rare, and the attack name stays in large Japanese katakana on the artwork, on the English cards too. Japanese listings mark the tier MA. In our database the tier stands on 7 cards:

Ascended Heroes, numbers 265 to 271: Mega Froslass ex, Mega Eelektross ex, Mega Diancie ex, Mega Hawlucha ex, Mega Gengar ex, Mega Scrafty ex, Mega Dragonite ex. All of them are Mega Evolution Pokémon ex, and all of them sit above the set number.

Older rarity tiers

Before Scarlet & Violet the tiers looked different, and many of them exist in a single series only. This is how they sit in our database, with the series they come from:

Two quirks of the holdings belong with that table. The same tier is written Holo Rare in one set and Rare Holo in the next, and 529 cards carry no tier at all, most of them from the McDonald's sets and the trainer kits. Promo cards are kept as a tier of their own (1,134 cards), although they never sat in a booster pack.

Rare does not mean valuable

A rarity tier says how many cards of that kind a set holds. It does not say what a card brings. What a card is worth comes out of the artwork, the condition and the demand. An Illustration Rare of a popular Pokémon can beat a Hyper Rare of an unpopular one, and it often does.

Which cards of a set actually carry the money is in our price lists, for instance the chase cards of Pitch Black, and the top of the market is in our round-up of the most expensive Charizard cards.

New in 30th Celebration: a futuristic tier

The anniversary expansion Pokémon Trading Card Game: 30th Celebration of 16 September 2026 came with a new rarity in a futuristic design, drawn by YOSHIROTTEN. Every card in its packs is holographic as well, down to the Basic Energy. Our holdings keep the new tier as Futuristic Rare, so far on 2 cards: Mewtwo ex (no. 157) and Mew ex (no. 158).

Two further tiers exist in this one set only: Pikachu Rare on 30 Pikachu cards, each with an illustration of its own and RGB Rare on 3 cards of Mew, again by YOSHIROTTEN. Every card of the set is in our card list for 30th Celebration.