How Rare Is My Pokémon Card? Every Rarity on the Card, Counted

38 distinct rarities appear across 20,444 English cards, and three of them cover most of the game.

Rarity names and symbols quoted from official Pokémon documents. Counted on 3 August 2026.

How can you tell how rare a Pokémon card is?

Every Pokémon card states its own rarity with a small symbol printed near the card number. The Pokémon Company puts the three basic ones plainly: common, uncommon, and rare cards are indicated by a black circle, diamond, or star.

Counting the English cards ourselves, those three symbols alone account for 12,784 of 20,444 cards — 62.5% of everything ever printed in English. The other 37.5% is spread across 35 further rarities, and the thinnest of them holds just 2 cards.

Rarity names quoted from the official Pokémon TCG Product Guide; counts taken from our own copy of the English card files on 3 August 2026.

Pokémon card rarity at a glance

Basic rarity symbols3The three the game has used since the beginning.circle · diamond · star
Rarities we counted38Every distinct rarity recorded on an English card.across 174 expansions
Cards in those three12,784Most of the game sits in the plainest tiers.62.5% of all cards
Illustration Rares492The rarity that changed what collectors chase.one shiny gold star
Thinnest rarity2A rarity can exist and still be almost empty.Black White Rare
Sets with secret cards105Cards numbered past the printed total of their set.of 174 expansions

Pokémon card rarity in short

The card tells you itself. A small symbol near the card number carries the rarity — a black circle, diamond or star for the three basic tiers.
Most cards are ordinary, by design. 12,784 of 20,444 English cards (62.5%) are Common, Uncommon or Rare.
38 distinct rarities exist in total. Many of them belong to a single era and were never used again.
Rarity names are not a ladder. A tier with a grand name can hold hundreds of cards while an old, plainly named one holds a dozen.
Scarce does not mean valuable, and common does not mean worthless. Rarity is a print decision; price is what people will pay for a particular card in a particular condition.
Rarity has nothing to do with legality. A Common card and a Hyper Rare are equally playable — that is settled by the regulation mark, not the rarity.
295 cards carry no recorded rarity at all, mostly early promotional printings that predate the modern symbol system.

What the rarity symbol on a Pokémon card means

You do not need a price guide to read a card’s rarity, because the card states it. The difficulty is that the vocabulary has grown, and a symbol invented in 2023 sits next to one that has been in use since 1999.

The three original symbols

The official product guide states it in one line: “Common, uncommon, and rare cards are indicated by a black circle, diamond, or star.” Those three have never been retired, and they still carry the great majority of every print run.

The Pokémon Company — Pokémon Trading Card Game Product Guide

The symbols added with Scarlet & Violet

The design announcement for the Scarlet & Violet series names the newer tiers by their symbols: “Double rare cards are represented with two solid black stars.” · “Ultra rare cards are represented by two shiny foil stars and are used for the more exclusive full-art foil versions of Pokémon ex and even some Supporter cards.” · “The brand-new rarity known as illustration rare will be represented by one shiny gold star.” · “Hyper rare cards will be represented with three shiny gold stars.”

The Pokémon Company — Pokémon TCG: Scarlet & Violet Revamps Pokémon TCG Card Aesthetic

Star count is the pattern, once you know to look for it

Read the newer symbols as a count rather than a picture. One black star is Rare, two black stars is Double Rare, two foil stars is Ultra Rare, one gold star is Illustration Rare and three gold stars is Hyper Rare. The number and the finish carry the meaning together.

The symbol sits alongside the card number and the set symbol, which are the other marks printed along the bottom of the card. Reading all three at once is faster than reading any one of them alone.

Back to the summary

Three symbols cover most of the Pokémon card game

Before looking at the long list, it is worth seeing how uneven the distribution is. The pull rates people argue about are visible in the print run itself.

Common — black circle 5,334 cards · 26.1% · pictured: Charmander

5,334
Uncommon — black diamond 4,888 cards · 23.9% · pictured: Magikarp

4,888
Rare — black star 2,562 cards · 12.5% · pictured: Chimecho δ

2,562
Everything rarer than those three 7,365 cards · 36.0% · one example: Magikarp (Illustration Rare)

7,365

The three basic rarities against everything rarer, counted across 20,444 English cards on 3 August 2026. Cards with no recorded rarity are left out of these four bars and counted separately below. The card beside each bar is one we hold at that rarity, named in the line beside it; the fourth bar covers many rarities at once, so its card is one example rather than the whole group.

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Why the plain tiers are so much larger

A booster pack is mostly Commons and Uncommons because the game needs them: they are the Trainer cards that search your deck and the small Pokémon that evolve into bigger ones. A pack of nothing but Hyper Rares would be unplayable.

That is also why the plainest cards are often the ones a deck cannot do without. Playability and rarity are separate axes, and building a deck makes the difference obvious very quickly.

Back to the summary

Every Pokémon card rarity we hold, counted

This is the whole list, largest first. It is the part of this page that exists nowhere else: the rarity names are published, but the size of each one is not.

Every rarity recorded on an English Pokémon card, with how many cards carry it
Rarity	Cards	Share of all cards	Expansions	Printed across
Common	5,334	26.1%	137	9 January 1999 – 17 July 2026
Uncommon	4,888	23.9%	135	9 January 1999 – 17 July 2026
Rare	2,562	12.5%	131	9 January 1999 – 17 July 2026
Rare Holo	1,617	7.9%	105	9 January 1999 – 20 January 2023
Promo	1,220	6.0%	10	1 July 1999 – 1 January 2023
Rare Ultra	798	3.9%	64	25 April 2011 – 20 January 2023
Illustration Rare	492	2.4%	21	31 March 2023 – 17 July 2026
Ultra Rare	356	1.7%	22	31 March 2023 – 17 July 2026
Rare Secret	325	1.6%	80	24 April 2000 – 20 January 2023
Rare Rainbow	324	1.6%	30	3 February 2017 – 11 November 2022
Rare Holo EX	318	1.6%	37	1 July 2003 – 2 November 2016
Double Rare	317	1.6%	22	31 March 2023 – 17 July 2026
No rarity recorded	295	1.4%	25	9 January 1999 – 3 August 2022
Rare Holo V	281	1.4%	23	7 February 2020 – 20 January 2023
Special Illustration Rare	222	1.1%	22	31 March 2023 – 17 July 2026
Rare Holo GX	165	0.8%	15	3 February 2017 – 1 November 2019
Rare Shiny	149	0.7%	2	23 August 2019 – 19 February 2021
Shiny Rare	120	0.6%	1	26 January 2024 – 26 January 2024
Rare Holo VMAX	110	0.5%	23	7 February 2020 – 20 January 2023
Trainer Gallery Rare Holo	80	0.4%	5	25 February 2022 – 20 January 2023
Hyper Rare	74	0.4%	14	31 March 2023 – 30 May 2025
Rare Holo LV.X	56	0.3%	11	1 May 2007 – 4 November 2009
Rare Holo VSTAR	43	0.2%	7	25 February 2022 – 20 January 2023
Rare Shiny GX	35	0.2%	1	23 August 2019 – 23 August 2019
ACE SPEC Rare	33	0.2%	6	22 March 2024 – 17 January 2025
Rare Prism Star	27	0.1%	6	2 February 2018 – 1 February 2019
Rare BREAK	27	0.1%	5	4 November 2015 – 2 November 2016
Rare Prime	26	0.1%	4	10 February 2010 – 3 November 2010
Classic Collection	25	0.1%	1	8 October 2021 – 8 October 2021
Rare Holo Star	25	0.1%	9	1 November 2004 – 2 February 2007
LEGEND	18	0.1%	4	10 February 2010 – 3 November 2010
Rare Shining	16	0.1%	3	21 September 2001 – 6 October 2017
Radiant Rare	15	0.1%	5	27 May 2022 – 20 January 2023
Rare ACE	13	0.1%	4	7 November 2012 – 14 August 2013
Shiny Ultra Rare	12	0.1%	1	26 January 2024 – 26 January 2024
Amazing Rare	9	0.0%	2	13 November 2020 – 19 February 2021
Mega Hyper Rare	8	0.0%	6	26 September 2025 – 17 July 2026
MEGA_ATTACK_RARE	7	0.0%	1	30 January 2026 – 30 January 2026
Black White Rare	2	0.0%	2	18 July 2025 – 18 July 2025

Counted on 3 August 2026. Rarity names are reproduced exactly as the card data records them, including one entry written in an unusual machine-readable form; we do not rewrite source values, because a tidied name could no longer be checked against the source. Bar shading in each column is sized against the largest value in that column.

How to read this table without being misled

Two numbers in a row can disagree. A rarity spread over many expansions is common in every sense; a rarity confined to one or two expansions is scarce whatever its name suggests. The Expansions column is often the more honest of the two.

The printed span matters as well. A rarity that ran for twelve years accumulated cards slowly; one that ran for a single year and stopped is a closed set that will never grow.

None of these rows says anything about whether a card may be played. A Common from this year and a Hyper Rare from three years ago can easily be on opposite sides of the legality line.

Back to the summary

The rarities introduced with the Scarlet & Violet series

The newest rarity vocabulary arrived in 2023 and changed what collectors look for. Three years on, the counts show how much of the modern game each one occupies.

The Scarlet & Violet rarity set, with its symbols and how many cards carry each
Rarity	Printed symbol	Cards	Share of all cards	In print since
Double Rare	Two solid black stars	317	1.6%	31 March 2023 onward
Ultra Rare	Two shiny foil stars	356	1.7%	31 March 2023 onward
Illustration Rare	One shiny gold star	492	2.4%	31 March 2023 onward
Special Illustration Rare	Alternate art for Pokémon ex and Supporter cards	222	1.1%	31 March 2023 onward
Hyper Rare	Three shiny gold stars	74	0.4%	31 March 2023 onward

Symbol descriptions are quoted from the official design announcement. Counts taken on 3 August 2026. Bar shading in each column is sized against the largest value in that column.

Illustration Rare is the one that changed collecting

It is the largest of the new tiers at 492 cards, and it applies to ordinary Pokémon rather than the powerful ones. That combination is unusual: it made a Common Pokémon worth chasing for its artwork rather than its printed strength.

Special Illustration Rare is the scarcer relative at 222 cards, and Hyper Rare is thinner still at 74. If a shop tells you a modern card is “the rare one”, the star count on the card settles which of these it actually is.

Back to the summary

Rarities that belong to one era and never came back

A card can carry a rarity that has not been printed for over a decade. Those entries are the reason the full list is so long, and they are useful for dating a card you cannot otherwise place.

Rarities that appear in only one series of the Pokémon TCG
Rarity	Only series	Cards	Printed across
Rare Holo V	Sword & Shield	281	7 February 2020 – 20 January 2023
Rare Holo GX	Sun & Moon	165	3 February 2017 – 1 November 2019
Shiny Rare	Scarlet & Violet	120	26 January 2024 – 26 January 2024
Rare Holo VMAX	Sword & Shield	110	7 February 2020 – 20 January 2023
Trainer Gallery Rare Holo	Sword & Shield	80	25 February 2022 – 20 January 2023
Hyper Rare	Scarlet & Violet	74	31 March 2023 – 30 May 2025
Rare Holo VSTAR	Sword & Shield	43	25 February 2022 – 20 January 2023
Rare Shiny GX	Sun & Moon	35	23 August 2019 – 23 August 2019
ACE SPEC Rare	Scarlet & Violet	33	22 March 2024 – 17 January 2025
Rare Prism Star	Sun & Moon	27	2 February 2018 – 1 February 2019
Rare BREAK	XY	27	4 November 2015 – 2 November 2016
Rare Prime	HeartGold & SoulSilver	26	10 February 2010 – 3 November 2010
Classic Collection	Sword & Shield	25	8 October 2021 – 8 October 2021
Rare Holo Star	EX	25	1 November 2004 – 2 February 2007
LEGEND	HeartGold & SoulSilver	18	10 February 2010 – 3 November 2010
Radiant Rare	Sword & Shield	15	27 May 2022 – 20 January 2023
Rare ACE	Black & White	13	7 November 2012 – 14 August 2013
Shiny Ultra Rare	Scarlet & Violet	12	26 January 2024 – 26 January 2024
Amazing Rare	Sword & Shield	9	13 November 2020 – 19 February 2021
Mega Hyper Rare	Mega Evolution	8	26 September 2025 – 17 July 2026
MEGA_ATTACK_RARE	Mega Evolution	7	30 January 2026 – 30 January 2026
Black White Rare	Scarlet & Violet	2	18 July 2025 – 18 July 2025

A rarity confined to one series can date a card to a few years without any other information. Counted on 3 August 2026. Bar shading in each column is sized against the largest value in that column.

Rarity as a dating tool

If a card shows a rarity from this table, the years in the last column are the whole window it can have come from. That is often faster than reading a copyright line, and it is one of the checks that makes a mismatched card obvious.

A card whose rarity and expansion belong to different eras is a card worth looking at more closely.

Back to the summary

The thinnest Pokémon card rarities we hold

These are the rarities with 25 cards or fewer. Some are famous; several are ones most collectors have never heard named, because there was never enough of them to talk about.

Rarities represented by 25 cards or fewer
Rarity	Cards	Expansions	Printed across	Series
Classic Collection	25	1	8 October 2021 – 8 October 2021	Sword & Shield
Rare Holo Star	25	9	1 November 2004 – 2 February 2007	EX
LEGEND	18	4	10 February 2010 – 3 November 2010	HeartGold & SoulSilver
Rare Shining	16	3	21 September 2001 – 6 October 2017	Neo, Sun & Moon
Radiant Rare	15	5	27 May 2022 – 20 January 2023	Sword & Shield
Rare ACE	13	4	7 November 2012 – 14 August 2013	Black & White
Shiny Ultra Rare	12	1	26 January 2024 – 26 January 2024	Scarlet & Violet
Amazing Rare	9	2	13 November 2020 – 19 February 2021	Sword & Shield
Mega Hyper Rare	8	6	26 September 2025 – 17 July 2026	Mega Evolution
MEGA_ATTACK_RARE	7	1	30 January 2026 – 30 January 2026	Mega Evolution
Black White Rare	2	2	18 July 2025 – 18 July 2025	Scarlet & Violet

Counted on 3 August 2026. A small number here means few distinct cards were ever printed at that rarity — it says nothing about how many copies of each card exist. Bar shading in each column is sized against the largest value in that column.

Few cards is not the same as few copies

Everything in this table counts distinct cards, not print runs. A rarity with nine cards in it may have had millions of copies printed of each; a Common from 1999 may be far harder to find in good condition than either.

Nobody publishes print run figures for Pokémon cards, so any page claiming to know how many copies of a card exist is guessing. We do not publish that figure because we do not have it.

What we can say is how many distinct cards a rarity holds, which expansions it appeared in, and whether those cards are still usable in a sixty-card deck. Everything on this page stays inside that boundary.

Back to the summary

Secret cards — when the number is higher than the set total

A card numbered 199/197 is not a misprint. It is a card deliberately placed beyond the printed size of its own expansion, and it is one of the oldest tricks in the game.

How to recognise one without a checklist

Compare the two numbers printed together near the bottom of the card. The first is the card’s own number, the second is the official size of the expansion. When the first is larger than the second, you are holding a card the set officially does not contain.

We counted 105 of 174 expansions where the real card count exceeds the number printed on the cards — so this is normal practice rather than a curiosity.

The two numbers sit right beside the rarity symbol, which makes them easy to read together once you know where each mark lives on the card.

Back to the summary

Step 1 — Find the two numbers

They are printed as a pair near the bottom of the card, separated by a slash. The second number is the expansion’s official size.

Step 2 — Compare them

If the first number is the larger of the two, the card sits beyond the official set list. That is what people mean by a secret card.

Step 3 — Read the rarity symbol beside them

Secret cards are not one rarity. They appear under several of the names in the table above, so the symbol still decides what the card is.

Step 4 — Check the set symbol matches the expansion

A number beyond the set total is normal; a set symbol that does not belong to that expansion is not.

What a Pokémon card rarity does and does not tell you

Rarity is the most misread number on a card, because it looks like a score and is actually a category. Here is what it settles and what it leaves open.

Question about your card	Does the rarity symbol answer it?	What actually answers it
How was this card slotted into its booster packs?	Yes — that is exactly what it records	The symbol itself
How many copies of it exist?	No	Nothing published — print runs are not disclosed
What is it worth?	No	What people are currently paying for that card in that condition
Can I play it in a tournament?	No	The regulation mark and the format being played
Is it stronger in a game?	No	The card’s own printed HP, attacks and abilities
Roughly when was it printed?	Often yes	The rarity, when it belongs to a single era
Is the card genuine?	Partly	Whether the rarity, set symbol, number and era agree with each other

Rarity tells you how a card was distributed and, often, roughly when. It does not tell you what the card is worth, how strong it is, or whether you may play it — three questions people routinely expect it to answer.

The question underneath “is this rare?”

Most people asking whether a card is rare are really asking one of two things: whether it is worth money, or whether it is fake. Rarity is a poor proxy for the first and only a partial clue to the second.

For the second question there are better checks, and they start with what the official guidance actually recommends rather than with the symbol.

Back to the summary

Pokémon card rarity questions people actually ask

How do you tell if a Pokémon card is rare?

Read the small symbol printed near the card number. The Pokémon Company states that “common, uncommon, and rare cards are indicated by a black circle, diamond, or star”, so a star is the lowest rarity that counts as rare at all. In our count, 2,562 English cards carry that plain black star.

How many Pokémon card rarities are there?

We count 38 distinct rarities across 20,444 English cards, plus 295 cards with no rarity recorded at all. Many of those 38 belong to a single era of the game and have not been printed for years.

What is the rarest Pokémon card rarity?

By number of distinct cards, the thinnest tiers hold only a handful each — the smallest in our count has 2 cards. That is not the same as the rarest card: nobody publishes print run figures, so how many copies exist of any particular card is not a published fact.

What does an Illustration Rare Pokémon card mean?

It is a rarity introduced with the Scarlet & Violet series and, in the official wording, “will be represented by one shiny gold star”. It covers full-art versions of ordinary Pokémon rather than the powerful ones, which is why it became so widely collected. We count 492 of them.

Does a rare Pokémon card mean it is worth money?

No. Rarity describes how a card was slotted into booster packs, not what anyone will pay for it. Plenty of cards at high rarities are inexpensive, and some Commons from the earliest expansions are sought after because of their age and condition rather than their symbol.

What does it mean when a Pokémon card number is higher than the set total?

It is a secret card — one placed beyond the official size of its own expansion. It is deliberate and long-standing practice: we counted 105 of 174 expansions where the real card count exceeds the number printed on the cards.

Why do some Pokémon cards have no rarity symbol?

295 of the cards we count have no rarity recorded. Most are early promotional printings from before the modern symbol system settled, and some expansions were distributed in ways that made a pack rarity meaningless.

Is a holo Pokémon card the same as a rare one?

Not necessarily. A shiny finish and a rarity symbol are separate things: many cards are printed in both an ordinary and a foil version at the same rarity. Read the symbol rather than the shine, and check the set symbol beside it to confirm which printing you have.

Sources — where the rarity names and symbols come from

Primary official source

First-party official sources — the body that issues the data itself, such as a government agency, a statutory register or a rights holder publishing its own records.

The Pokémon Company / Play! Pokémon — publisher of the official rules, tournament regulations and card database www.pokemon.com

Industry source

Second-party sources — marketplaces, trade associations, research institutes and companies that compile data about the market.

Pokémon TCG API — the open card data behind the counts on this page, covering HP, attacks, types, evolution stage, rarity, regulation mark and set membership pokemontcg.io

Pokémon TCG Data repository — the raw card and expansion files published openly for that API, which is what our counting script reads github.com

How we count

Card counts on this page — this site keeps its own copy of the openly published English card and expansion files and counts them directly; the figures above were counted on 3 August 2026 across 174 expansions

Note: Rules quoted on this page are taken word for word from the official Pokémon Trading Card Game rulebook and the Play! Pokémon tournament handbook, and the wording of those documents is the authority. Card counts are our own: we read the openly published English card files ourselves and counted 20,444 cards across 174 expansions on 3 August 2026. A count can only describe the cards those files contain, so a very new expansion may not be included yet, and tournament legality can change on a date the rights holder announces. Before a tournament, check the card itself against the official rules rather than this page. We publish no print run or population figures for any card, because the rights holder does not release them and grading companies do not publish an open dataset. Any count on this page is a count of distinct cards, never of copies in existence.

Last updated: 3 August 2026

How Rare Is My Pokémon Card? Every Rarity on the Card, Counted

How can you tell how rare a Pokémon card is?

Pokémon card rarity at a glance

Pokémon card rarity in short

What the rarity symbol on a Pokémon card means

The three original symbols

The symbols added with Scarlet & Violet

Three symbols cover most of the Pokémon card game

Every Pokémon card rarity we hold, counted

The rarities introduced with the Scarlet & Violet series

Rarities that belong to one era and never came back

The thinnest Pokémon card rarities we hold

Secret cards — when the number is higher than the set total

What a Pokémon card rarity does and does not tell you

Other Pokémon card guides

Pokémon card rarity questions people actually ask

How do you tell if a Pokémon card is rare?

How many Pokémon card rarities are there?

What is the rarest Pokémon card rarity?

What does an Illustration Rare Pokémon card mean?

Does a rare Pokémon card mean it is worth money?

What does it mean when a Pokémon card number is higher than the set total?

Why do some Pokémon cards have no rarity symbol?

Is a holo Pokémon card the same as a rare one?

Sources — where the rarity names and symbols come from

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