If you’re a veteran of the Pokémon TCG, or even if you’re new to the hobby, it’s all but guaranteed that you know about many of the rarest cards. Those that are a far away dream for your collection. “Oh, PSA 10 first edition shadowless 1999 base set Charizard, one day you will be mine,” you say, delusional, “I’ve saved a space on my shelf just for you”. Unless you’ve got a cool $300,000 to drop on that 30 year old tiny piece of card, it’s never gonna happen. Let’s be a bit more realistic, shall we? I’ll tell you what you should really be expecting for you collection (a lot of Pikachus, but we’ll get to that). And I’m not talking about energy cards – that would make for a much shorter article.
Firstly, if you’re interested in collecting the master sets for every single Pokémon TCG set (in English, at least), then 1) you’re insane, and 2) you’re gonna be looking at purchasing over 17,000 cards, from 104 different expansions. But what are the easiest ones to find? What have you most likely already got in your binders? Reddit user u/keatsta did the maths for us, and I’ll be going through some of the data below. So strap in if, like me, you’re a fan of data and Pokémon (also, you’ve probably got a smidge of the ‘tism, just saying).
Let’s get right to it. Which Pokémon has the most cards? You know it already, don’t you? I don’t even need to ask. It’s Pikachu, obviously. We all saw that coming. It’s been the face of Pokémon since it began (unless you count Poliwhirl or Clefairy, but that’s a whole other article). Pikachu card collector u/Quuador claims to have collected every English Pikachu card, a staggering 315 (as of 9 months ago). That’s right; there are 315 different version of Pikachu in the TCG. That means, on average, there are just about 3 different Pikachu cards per expansion. Of course, this number does include some very rare cards that you can’t just stumble upon, like the Grey Hat variation or the Pokémon Futsal promo card but, still, chances are you open a few packs, you’ll get a Pikachu. You want to deep dive even further? Let’s deep dive even further. According to the official Pokémon TCG website, 46 of these Pikachu cards are of the common rarity (the commonest of the common, signified by the little black dot at the bottom of the cards), and he has a whopping 45 promo cards. That’s more than most Pokémon have of regular cards.
But who comes second? Third? And what is the rarest common card? Stay tuned! Firstly, after Pikachu, the second card you’d most expect to find is Unown, with 92 different cards. You might be able to guess why this is the case. In the Pokémon lore, there are 28 different Unown forms – one for each letter of the alphabet, and a question mark and exclamation mark for good measure. And, of course, the Pokémon company made good use of this quirky little creature. Unown has a whole set dedicated to its 28 variations (namely, the Ex Unseen Forces Unown Collection). Each Unown also got its own card throughout the Neo era, from 2000-2002. More recently, they are seen as grouped together on the cards, and not as individual letters. “But, what is the most common Unown variation in card form?” I definitely hear you ask. Well, with the introduction of V cards in the TCG back in 2020, the Pokémon Company just couldn’t resist the opportunity for a clever joke and made three separate Unown V V cards. While Unown hasn’t had a new card since Silver Tempest in 2022, it would be pretty easy to track a few down if you wanted.
Now, the third most common Pokémon in the TCG might be a bit more difficult to guess. Charizard, maybe? Or a legendary like Mewtwo? Well, they’re actually in 5th and 6th place with 48 and 47 cards respectively. In third place is Eevee with a surprising 69 individual cards. I suppose it makes sense if you think about it. Eevee has been a pretty popular Pokémon since Generation 1 and it has a lot of evolution opportunities. With eight possible evolutions, it would only be fair for players to have at least a few Eevee cards to evolve from. Out of the 69, 21 are promo cards which may be a bit trickier to find, but with 38 common rarity cards, you won’t have much trouble getting your hands on some. Interestingly, with Sylveon being introduced in X & Y, you might expect there to be a few different Eevee cards to celebrate its new evolution. However, throughout the whole X & Y TCG era, only 2 Eevee cards were released. To make up for this though, throughout Sun & Moon, a whopping 20 Eevee cards were released, presumably as a way to tie in to the Let’s Go Eevee video game which came out in 2018.
Now, let’s talk rare commons. And by that, I mean which common rarity cards are you most likely to never come across. Well, the release of the newest expansion, Destined Rivals, kind of ruins my point with this paragraph, but I’m gonna go ahead anyway. Before Destined Rivals, Chingling hadn’t seen a card since 2009. And by then it only had three cards to its name. Poor Chingling. Two of those three were of the common rarity, with the first, and one of the rarest common Pokémon cards, being Majestic Dawn’s Chingling from 2008. It’s going for an average of $5 at the moment, which might not seem like much but, when compared to other common cards in the same set, there’s a pretty stark difference. Let’s take Aipom (who’s had 18 individual cards over the years) as an example; on the same website which lists Chingling as $5, Aipom is listed on average as just under $2. This part of my deep dive may seem a bit rambly, but I just like Chingling, okay?! And I’m happy it finally gets some justice after 16 years of being shunned by the TCG.
Admittedly, Chingling was just an honorable mention in regards to the rarest common card. Conclusively, the rarest common Pokémon TCG card is (drumroll please) red cheeks Pikachu, from the original 1st edition and shadowless printings of the very first English TCG base set. Back when the TCG was first created in Japan, Pikachu had yellow cheeks on the illustration of its card. When Wizards of the Coast brought the TCG to English speaking countries, they decided to change Pikachu’s cheeks from yellow to red, in an attempt to make the character more recognisable (as if his red cheeks were his defining factor…). In any case, after these initial printings, the decision was reversed and yellow cheeks Pikachu reigned supreme. That means there are only a few red cheeks Pikachus out there, and the pricing of them reflects this. Ungraded, a red cheeks Pikachu is seen to be selling for around $30 with a PSA 10 going for a tidy $700 on average. That’s a lot for a common card, misprint or no.
So, what was the point of this article? I suppose there isn’t one really. I just thought it would be fun and interesting to go through some pretty obscure Pokémon TCG facts that are probably less known than those on the other side of the spectrum, ie. the exorbitant value of the super rare cards. And now you know that if you wanted to collect every card for a single Pokémon, Pikachu might be a bit of a stretch (u/Quuador claims to have spent $14k on his collection), but Chingling would be a great place to start instead. If you wanted to peruse the rest of the data (and why wouldn’t you?), I’ll leave the links below; it’s all pretty interesting. Which Pokémon is the fourth most common? Do each box legendary have an equal number of cards? Zacian and Zamezenta’s amounts might surprise you. Go and have a look, I know you want to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonTCG/comments/1ig3d95/analyzing_how_often_pokemon_get_cards/
