What is the rarest Pokémon card?

The Pokemon Trading Card Game is one of the world’s most popular TCGs, with billions of cards printed and millions of fans across the world cracking packs, finding ultra rare Pokemon cards, and sometimes selling them on for big money.

Though there are various different definitions of what is the rarest Pokemon card in the world, the rarest of the rare can fetch hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars at auction. Here’s everything you need to know about the rarest Pokemon cards, and how to know if you have any in your collection.

Pokemon cards can be rare for a number of reasons.

The first, and simplest to understand, is that they’re just great cards. You’ll often find decks in the game use multiple copies of particularly rare cards, and those who play competitively may need to buy numerous copies just to kit out their deck. These would be cards like Palkia VSTAR or Mew VMAX – rare, but not among the rarest Pokemon cards in the world.

The second category are rare because there really were only a few copies of them ever printed. Like any other collectible, having a one-of-a-kind piece is valuable for collectors, which means they’ll pay big money to be able to say they own them. In this category, you’ll often have promo or reward cards – such as those given to the winners of tournaments, or those given to collaborators like the one-off Post Malone, Katy Perry, and J Balvin.

The final category are cards that have become more status symbols for the Pokemon TCG. These are cards that are known for being valuable, and grab the attention of the community whenever one is sold, but aren’t necessarily among the rarest cards ever sold. A particularly notable example of this is the famous Shadowless Base Set Charizard – the card that reignited the recent boom of the TCG sells for hundreds of thousands at auction, but there are plenty of cards out there that are rarer.

As mentioned, players may want the rarest Pokemon cards to ensure they have a top-tier deck for competitions, while collectors may want them to stand out as being the proud owner of a certain card. However, there is a third reason why people would want to collect rare cards: to sell them on.

The secondary market is a massive part of the Trading Card Game scene, and Pokemon is no exception. Buying and selling rare cards is a big part of the community, and lots of sites and auction houses have popped up to facilitate selling these ultra rare Pokemon cards.

The market for cards has become so big that there are those who buy and sell them as a full-time job, and speculate on the value of each card. For people like this, having the rarest Pokemon cards in the world would be an insurance policy for them – no matter what happens to the rest of their collection, it’s unlikely the value of a Charizard I or Illustrator Pikachu is going to drop any time soon.

Pokemon TCG trading has come along way since the time of trading in school playgrounds (and inevitably scamming your friend and getting them banned). It’s become big business, with everyone from major store chains to individuals hoping to get a hold of the biggest, best, and rarest cards.

There are two factors behind the current boom in Pokemon TCG trading. The first was in 2016, when the launch of Pokemon Go rocketing Pokemon back into the public consciousness. We all remember that summer where we were obsessed with running around, armed with our smartphones hunting Pokemon, and the result was a popularity the Pokemon series hasn’t had since the early 2000s.

The second big boom for Pokemon came a couple of years later, when the rapper Logic bought a first edition holo Shadowless Charizard card for $220,000. While this record has been completely eclipsed multiple times since then, the scale of this sale – and to someone already famous – brought attention on the TCG in a way we’d never seen before. Pokemon became a status symbol for celebrities, and names like Logan Paul and Post Malone have since been attached to the game in some way or another in the years since, mostly for buying or selling high-value cards.

You may be surprised to find that the first edition Shadowless Charizard that has commanded headlines over the years isn’t really all that rare. While it’s certainly valuable and has become the icon of the Pokemon TCG, there are others that either fetch higher prices at auction, or are much, much more exclusive.

For a card that’s more valuable, you only need to look at Pokemon Illustrator. Awarded to winners of a Japanese ullustration contest in 1998, copies of this card can sell for literal millions of dollars. This was one of the biggest purchases by Logan Paul, who paid over five million dollars for a copy he wore around his neck.

Competition prizes regularly command big numbers at auction, thanks to ther limited release and the skill needed to originally earn one. Cards like the 2002 Spring Battle Road promo, the Tropical Wind promo, the 2006 No. 2 Trainer World Championships promo, and the 1998 golden Trophy Pikachu all have incredibly limited print runs, and are seen as must-haves for big-time collectors.

There’s one other, incredibly curious card. Back when Wizards of the Coast was first working on launching the Pokemon TCG outside of Japan, one of the very first cards they printed was a test of Blastoise. What makes this card so fascinating is that it isn’t printed in Pokemon TCG card stock, but instead card for its other game, Magic: The Gathering. The front looks like a regular Blastoise, while the back has that iconic MTG backing. This card was only discovered a few years ago, but has since sold for over $350,000 at auction.

How To Acquire Rare Pokemon Cards

Unfortunately, there’s a very low chance you already own any of these rarest cards. There is a chance, of course – I used to own a Southern Islands Mew and traded it away, decades before it shot up to almost $6,000… – but if you want to get your hands on them today, you’ll need to go through a few avenues.

For the ‘cheaper’ rare cards, you might find them for sale on auction sites like Ebay. The problem with these is that, unless it’s an auction hosted by a verified auction house, you’re never entirely sure what you’re getting is a leigitimate card. Keep an eye out for ‘graded’ cards that have been assessed by an independent firm to ensure you don’t get scammed.

Those auction houses are where you’ll find the bigger names. Many auction houses will sometimes sell Pokemon TCG cards. Pokemon cards pop up in all kinds of auctions, but perhaps the most well-known for the big, big sales are PWCC and Goldin Auctions. Sometimes they even run auctions through sites like Ebay, making it easier to get those fancy, exclusive cards.

If you’re hoping to acquire a rare Pokemon card through a booster pack, you’re probably out of luck. Other than some of the lower-tier ‘big money cards’ that are valuable because of their role in the game, like Palkia VMAX, rare cards are either out of print, exclusive promos, or even ‘misprints’ – unique due to ta flaw in the printing process. Getting these from boosters is night-on impossible, so if you’re wanting that Charizard, be prepared to splash some cash.

How To Know If You Own A Rare Card

In terms of general ‘Rare’ cards, the way to identify them is by looking in the bottom left corner of the card. There should be a little black mark: a circle means it is common, diamond is uncommon, and a star is rare. Every booster pack has at least one rare in it.

In terms of rare rare cards, you’ll need to do some research. Look around on marketplaces to see what is selling, check sites like Magic Madhouse to see which cards are selling for the most at the moment, and even comb through the PSA grading directory to see how many of a card have been verified as genuine.

If you discover you do own a holy grail card, like a Southern Islands Mew or a shadowless Charizard, your first job is to get it graded straight away. Grading determines the quality of the card, and, while even a few points off perfect can be significantly less valuable, a graded card is always easier to sell and more likely to get higher prices than an ungraded one. Send it off to a verified grading firm like PSA, wait a few weeks, and you’ll have the card back in a labelled grading block, complete with the score out of ten.

Or, alternatively, be like 10-year-old me and throw away two full binders of Southern Islands only to see how much they’re worth 20 years later.