Pokemon TCG: Card Rarities, Explained
Common. Uncommon. Rare. Rare Holographic. These four categories formed the pillars on which the Pokemon TCG was initially built, and anyone who has ever dabbled in it will recognize the terms. But the system goes deeper, far deeper than some would suspect.
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If you've ever wondered how two cards from the Rare category can have such drastically different pull rates, this guide should help you grasp the fundamentals. There are, in fact, several categories within the Rare designation, to the point that those old-school pillars we just mentioned feel like relics from a bygone era. Here's the full scoop, trainers.
Ah, the easy ones. How do we put this? Common cards are the most common cards in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. A redundant-sounding sentence, if ever there were one, but hardly inaccurate. Surely, you've seen more than your fair share of these. A Squirtle, a Sobble. A Charmander, a Scorbunny. A Potion, a Hop. Unless you're fresh off the proverbial boat, you've bumped into them.
Uncommon cards are, again, just that. Uncommon. Good examples include the first stage of a two-stage evolution, like — using the above representatives — Wartortle, Drizzile, Charmeleon, and Raboot cards are largely Uncommon-tier. For relatively recent Trainer cards, look to such examples as Great Ball and Hyper Potion.
And now for our first of several more complicated explanations. A Rare, with no extra words to the term, isn't really all that rare. It remains noteworthy, insofar as it's rarer than the above and a guaranteed pull in every pack. (If you snag a card of a higher rarity tier, it replaces that same slot.)
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