Trading card games

Rainbow Rare

Also written: Rainbow · Hyper rare

A Pokémon card printed in a pastel rainbow wash over the whole face, with the subject rendered in colours it does not actually have.

CoatingThe card reflects light differently

A rainbow rare is a Pokémon card printed in a pastel spectrum wash across the entire face. The subject is re-coloured — a red Pokémon comes out lilac and mint, a blue one comes out peach — and the whole card is iridescent rather than just the artwork window.

How to spot one

• The colours are wrong on purpose. That is the single reliable tell. Every other Pokémon premium tier keeps the subject's real colours; this one replaces them.
• The iridescence covers everything — art, frame, text box — and usually sits under a worked surface texture you can feel.
• The card number runs past the set's stated total, placing it in the block of secret-numbered cards at the end of the checklist.

Do not confuse it with a rainbow run

In sports collecting, a rainbow is a goal: owning every colour parallel of one card. A rainbow rare is a single card whose finish happens to be multicoloured. The words look identical in a listing and mean nothing like each other, so read which hobby the seller is in before you assume what is being offered.

Waffles.cards sells packs of real singles we physically hold, with the odds published on every pack. Rip a pack or browse the card shop.