50 Fun Facts About Pokemon Cards

Game Freak makes the Pokémon video games, but which company develops the Pokémon Trading Card Game?

Creatures Inc. was founded by Tsunekazu Ishihara, a designer of the card game who went on to run The Pokémon Company, which his studio owns jointly with Nintendo and Game Freak.

Which games preceded Pokémon's first cards?

Red and Green came out in Japan in February 1996, nearly eight months before the cards. North America met the pair as Red and Blue in 1998, and waited until 1999 for the cards in English.

For Pokémon's 20th anniversary in 2016, a special reissue of the first Pikachu card was made of what?

Solid gold, 24 karat: Guinness lists it as the most expensive Pokémon card ever sold at retail, though plain cardboard originals have since fetched far more at auction.

Which US company first published the Pokémon Trading Card Game in English?

Wizards of the Coast, the makers of Magic: The Gathering, lost the licence in 2003 and sued Nintendo the day after its last agreement expired; the two sides settled within months.

How many cards are in a Pokémon Trading Card Game deck?

60 cards exactly, and running out of them is fatal: a player who has no card left to draw at the start of their turn loses the game on the spot.

What does a Pokémon TCG player take for each knockout?

A Prize card, from six that each player sets aside face down before the first turn; take the last of yours and you win, which is how most games end.

Where do up to five Pokémon wait behind a player's Active Pokémon?

The Bench supplies the next fighter whenever the Active Pokémon is knocked out, and a player with nothing left there to send up loses the game at once.

What is redrawing an opening hand with no Basic Pokémon called?

Mulligan, and it comes at a price: the seven cards are shuffled back and drawn again, and the opponent may draw an extra card for each one taken.

In the Pokémon Trading Card Game, which Special Condition is shown by turning the Pokémon's card upside down?

Confused Pokémon turn attacking into a gamble: the player flips a coin first, and on tails the attack fails and the Pokémon damages itself instead.

Before 2011, what were the Abilities printed on Pokémon cards called?

Poké-Powers and Poké-Bodies split the job in two, a Power being switched on by the player and a Body working all the time, until the 2011 sets merged them under the video games' own term.

Which kind of Pokémon card represents the giant, supersized forms from the Sword and Shield video games?

Pokémon VMAX stand for the games' Dynamax and Gigantamax forms and hit accordingly hard, but the risk matches the size: losing one puts the opponent halfway to winning the game.

Professor's Research and Boss's Orders are which kind of Pokémon Trainer card, limited to one a turn?

Supporter cards carry the strongest Trainer effects, which is why they are rationed, and the player who goes first may not play one at all on the opening turn.

The video games' Electric type goes by what name on Pokémon cards?

Lightning is one of several renamings: the cards squeeze the video games' many types into far fewer, so Steel becomes Metal, and Rock and Ground both count as Fighting.

Which Pokémon TCG type has no Basic Energy card of its own?

Dragon attacks are paid for with other types' Energy, often two different kinds at once, which makes some of the game's hardest hitters awkward to fuel.

Since Sword & Shield, Poison-type Pokémon are classed under which TCG type?

Darkness is their third home: Poison types began as Grass, then spent more than a decade as Psychic before Sword & Shield moved them again.

What do collectors call a Pokémon card numbered beyond its set's official total, such as 242/220?

A Secret Rare: the first, Dark Raichu, numbered 83/82 in the Team Rocket set, was made specially for the English release, and Japan, home of the game, got the card only later.

The Fairy type arrived in the Pokémon card game with which series?

XY brought Fairy to the cards in step with the X and Y video games, but the type lasted only two generations of sets before Sword & Shield folded its Pokémon into Psychic.

What name do collectors give the short 1999 print run of Pokémon cards made after 1st Edition?

Shadowless cards have no drop shadow beside the picture frame, a detail added for the mass printing that followed; they carry no 1st Edition stamp, so the missing shadow is how collectors tell them apart.

Which Pokémon card release is the only one printed with no expansion symbol?

Base Set was the very first release, and every expansion since has carried its own symbol; Jungle, the next one, briefly matched it by accident when a printing error left some holofoil cards without theirs.

Pokémon cards printed in 2002 and 2003 carried dot-code strips that could be scanned with which Nintendo accessory?

The e-Reader plugged into a Game Boy Advance, and swiping a card through it called up a Pokédex entry or, on some cards, a mini-game, though none of it was needed to play.

Which toy giant bought the Pokémon card game's US publisher in 1999 for about $325 million?

Hasbro paid up largely on the strength of the Pokémon licence, only for its new subsidiary to lose that licence to Nintendo four years later.

Which museum stopped handing out its Pikachu promo card in 2023 after crowds mobbed the gift shop?

The Van Gogh Museum's card showed Pikachu in the painter's grey felt hat; after opening-day chaos it ended the giveaway over safety fears, and The Pokémon Company later announced a restock to undercut resellers.

Roughly how many Pikachu Illustrator cards are known to exist?

About 40: only 39 were awarded, to winners of illustration contests in the late 1990s, which is why a top-grade copy has sold for millions.

Which celebrity bought a Pikachu Illustrator for $5,275,000 in July 2021?

Logan Paul swapped a lower-grade copy plus $4 million for it in Dubai, then wore it on a chain round his neck for his WWE debut at WrestleMania 38.

The Pikachu Illustrator was a prize in contests organized by which Japanese magazine?

CoroCoro Comic's award is also a certificate: its Japanese text tells the winner their entry was excellent and that they are now an officially authorised Pokémon card illustrator, hence the card's name.

For how much did a Pikachu Illustrator sell in February 2026?

$16.5 million, over triple what the seller had paid for the same card in 2021, and Guinness declared it the most expensive trading card ever sold at auction.

Which shape marks a Rare Pokémon card in the bottom corner?

Star for Rare, diamond for Uncommon, circle for Common: that is the English system, while Japanese sets dropped the shapes and print letters such as C, U and R instead.

Which Pokémon card is foil everywhere but the artwork?

Reverse holo cards flip the usual pattern of a shiny picture in a plain frame, and English booster packs each include at least one, so every pack holds something that glitters.

What holds 36 Pokémon booster packs?

Booster box: it holds six times as many packs as a booster bundle, yet even a whole box promises no particular card, because every pack inside is still random.

In Pokémon card grading, what does PSA stand for?

Professional Sports Authenticator was set up in 1991 to grade sports cards, which is why 'Sports' sits in the name of a firm whose grades now set the price of Pokémon cards.

The fan-named "Moonbreon", an alternate-art Umbreon card, comes from which Sword & Shield set?

Evolving Skies showcases Eevee's evolutions, every one of which appears in it; the dark one, Umbreon, got the alternate-art card that fans nicknamed after the moon.

In 2022 the Pokémon World Championships were held in Europe for the first time, in which city?

London had been due to host in 2020, but the pandemic wiped out two years of championships, so the city got its turn only when play resumed in 2022.

Which Florida city hosted the 2004 Pokémon TCG World Championships?

Orlando's 2004 event relaunched the World Championships under Pokémon's own organisers, two years after the game's former US publisher had staged the first one in Seattle.

Seniors are young teenagers at Pokémon tournaments; what is the older players' division called?

Masters sits above Juniors and Seniors, and the divisions go by birth year, not birthdays, so everyone born in the same year moves up together when a new season starts.

What is PSA's name for its top grade of 10, the usual yardstick for a Pokémon card's value?

Gem Mint is the ceiling collectors quote for a card's worth, though rival graders CGC and Beckett call their own top tier Pristine, and those copies can sell for even more.

Uri Geller sued Nintendo over which spoon-bending Pokémon?

Kadabra then vanished from the cards for 20 years: a new Kadabra card appeared only in 2023, after Geller apologised and gave his blessing.

Which official Pokémon TCG tournament format retires its oldest sets in a regular rotation?

Standard rotation means that even the strongest cards eventually age out of top-level play, while the Expanded format keeps a much deeper pool of older sets legal.

Which handheld ran the 1998 Pokémon TCG video game?

Game Boy Color owners could send each other cards by infrared, and the cartridge even included cards that were never printed on paper.

In the tabletop Pokémon TCG today, what happens to an attack's damage when it hits the target's Weakness?

It doubles, so type can beat size: a cheap attack of the right type will knock out a Pokémon that would survive a far stronger one.

Which country's top cleric banned Pokémon games and cards in 2001, saying they promoted Zionism and gambling?

Saudi Arabia's mufti said the cards carried Israel's national emblem along with crosses and triangles, and that trading them for money amounted to gambling.

What does Pokémon TCG Pocket call its rare cards with artwork a player can explore?

Immersive cards work by touch: press and hold one and the view travels into the illustration, a trick no paper card can manage.

Which app replaced Pokémon TCG Online when its servers shut down in June 2023?

Pokémon TCG Live took over after a delay of more than a year, and players could carry their accounts and card collections across from the old game.

Which Japanese mobile company, Nintendo's partner on Super Mario Run, co-developed Pokémon TCG Pocket?

DeNA had been Nintendo's partner on phone games since 2015, and the studio that built the app was renamed Pokémon Card D Studio before its launch.

What was the launch set of Pokémon TCG Pocket?

Genetic Apex came in three booster packs themed on stars of the first games, and it launched a hit: the app passed 60 million downloads within six weeks.

Which Pokémon TCG Pocket feature copies a card from someone's pack?

Wonder Pick lays out all five cards of someone else's pack face down and lets you choose blind, so a friend's lucky pull gives you a one-in-five shot at a copy without costing them theirs.

A Pokémon TCG Pocket battle is won by being first to score three what?

Points are earned by knocking out the opponent's Pokémon, and needing only three, half the tabletop game's target, is a large part of why a Pocket battle is over so quickly.

Which Pokémon's first-edition holofoil card from 1999 fetched $336,000 at a Heritage auction in 2022?

Charizard's copy came from the very first English print run and carried a perfect grade of 10, the combination that makes it the most coveted card of the original set.

Which Fighting-type Pokémon's holofoil card came in every 1999 two-player Starter Set, always stamped 1st Edition?

Machamp went into every Starter Set with the stamp, and that printing was never sold without it, so a mark that lifts the price of other launch-era holofoils adds little to this one.

When a Pokémon TCG game ends with both players winning at once, what is the quick rematch that settles it called?

Sudden Death restarts the game in miniature: both players set up again from scratch, but this time the first knockout is usually enough to decide it.

A YouTuber walked out wearing a rare Pokémon card on a chain for his 2021 bout with which boxer?

Floyd Mayweather could not put the YouTuber down in eight rounds of an exhibition with no official winner, and his opponent afterwards called the first-edition card round his neck his good luck charm.