Pokemon Cards
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50 free Pokemon Cards trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Pokémon Trading Card Game launched in Japan in October 1996, crossed to the United States through Wizards of the Coast in 1999, and has since printed more than 85 billion cards. It is both a competitive game with a World Championships and a collecting hobby where a single Pikachu Illustrator can sell for eight figures. These 50 questions cover the whole hobby: 60-card decks, six prize cards, Supporter limits and Special Conditions; the Wizards era from Base Set to Skyridge and Hasbro's $325 million buyout; rarity symbols, booster boxes, PSA grading and "Moonbreon"; the Pikachu Illustrator, Logan Paul and the $336,000 Charizard; Uri Geller's lawsuit over Kadabra; the Game Boy Color adaptation; and the mobile era of TCG Online, TCG Live and TCG Pocket. Easy questions stick to deck basics and famous cards; the hard tier asks about set symbols, dual types and the first tournament at Makuhari Messe. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation that adds one more fact. Play it solo or print it for a pack-opening night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Game Freak makes the Pokémon video games, but which company develops the Pokémon Trading Card Game?
Creatures Inc.
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.
Q 02Which games preceded Pokémon's first cards?
Red and Green
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.
Q 03For Pokémon's 20th anniversary in 2016, a special reissue of the first Pikachu card was made of what?
Solid gold
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.
Q 04Which US company first published the Pokémon Trading Card Game in English?
Wizards of the Coast
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.
Q 05How many cards are in a Pokémon Trading Card Game deck?
60
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.
Q 06What does a Pokémon TCG player take for each knockout?
A Prize card
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.
Q 07Where do up to five Pokémon wait behind a player's Active Pokémon?
The Bench
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.
Q 08What is redrawing an opening hand with no Basic Pokémon called?
Mulligan
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.
Q 09In the Pokémon Trading Card Game, which Special Condition is shown by turning the Pokémon's card upside down?
Confused
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.
Q 10Before 2011, what were the Abilities printed on Pokémon cards called?
Poké-Powers and Poké-Bodies
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.
Q 11Which kind of Pokémon card represents the giant, supersized forms from the Sword and Shield video games?
Pokémon VMAX
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.
Q 12Professor's Research and Boss's Orders are which kind of Pokémon Trainer card, limited to one a turn?
Supporter
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.
Q 13The video games' Electric type goes by what name on Pokémon cards?
Lightning
Q 21Which toy giant bought the Pokémon card game's US publisher in 1999 for about $325 million?
Hasbro
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.
Q 22Which museum stopped handing out its Pikachu promo card in 2023 after crowds mobbed the gift shop?
The Van Gogh Museum
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.
Q 23Roughly how many Pikachu Illustrator cards are known to exist?
About 40
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.
Q 14Which Pokémon TCG type has no Basic Energy card of its own?
Dragon
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.
Q 15Since Sword & Shield, Poison-type Pokémon are classed under which TCG type?
Darkness
Darkness is their third home: Poison types began as Grass, then spent more than a decade as Psychic before Sword & Shield moved them again.
Q 16What do collectors call a Pokémon card numbered beyond its set's official total, such as 242/220?
A Secret Rare
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.
Q 17The Fairy type arrived in the Pokémon card game with which series?
XY
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.
Q 18What name do collectors give the short 1999 print run of Pokémon cards made after 1st Edition?
Shadowless
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.
Q 19Which Pokémon card release is the only one printed with no expansion symbol?
Base Set
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.
Q 20Pokémon cards printed in 2002 and 2003 carried dot-code strips that could be scanned with which Nintendo accessory?
The e-Reader
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.
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.
Q 24Which celebrity bought a Pikachu Illustrator for $5,275,000 in July 2021?
Logan Paul
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.
Q 25The Pikachu Illustrator was a prize in contests organized by which Japanese magazine?
CoroCoro Comic
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.
Q 26For how much did a Pikachu Illustrator sell in February 2026?
$16.5 million
$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.
Q 27Which shape marks a Rare Pokémon card in the bottom corner?
Star
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.
Q 28Which Pokémon card is foil everywhere but the artwork?
Reverse holo
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.
Q 29What holds 36 Pokémon booster packs?
Booster box
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.
Q 30In Pokémon card grading, what does PSA stand for?
Professional Sports Authenticator
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.