Trading card games

Illustration Rare

Also written: IR · Illustration rares

A modern Pokémon rarity where the card carries scene artwork running to the edges, numbered past the end of the set.

ArtThe picture changes

An Illustration Rare is a modern Pokémon rarity built around the artwork. The picture fills the card face and the game text is compressed into a reduced box, and the subject is placed in a scene — a habitat, a street, a moment with people or other Pokémon — rather than posed against a plain background.

How to spot one

• The art tells a story. That is the design brief for the tier, and it is the fastest read: an ordinary rare shows you the Pokémon; an Illustration Rare shows you the Pokémon somewhere.
• The card number runs past the set's stated total. Pokémon prints the total beside the number; an Illustration Rare sits in the block above it.
• The frame is minimal. Text is pushed down and shrunk so the illustration keeps as much of the face as possible.

Against the tiers either side of it

vs Full Art

A full art is a layout — text over edge-to-edge artwork. An Illustration Rare is a layout plus a brief for the artwork itself. In practice the tell is the scene: full arts are frequently dramatic portraits, Illustration Rares are situations.

vs Special Illustration Rare

The special version is the step above: heavier surface texture, a card that already had a premium version underneath it, and a position even further past the set total. Hold the two together and the special one is obviously the more worked object.

As a tier, Illustration Rares are the accessible end of the art-led range — plentiful enough that most of them trade for ordinary money, with the exceptions driven entirely by which subject and which artwork people fell in love with. See Pokémon card rarities for how the whole modern ladder fits together.

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