Trading card games
Secret Rare
Also written: ScR · Secret
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, a card with a silver holographic name and a diagonal sparkling foil laid across the artwork.
CoatingThe card reflects light differently
In Yu-Gi-Oh!, a Secret Rare is a precisely defined printing, not a vague superlative. The card name is printed in silver holographic foil, and the artwork carries a diagonal, sparkling foil that runs across the picture in fine lines. Both signals appear together, and both are checkable in the hand in about two seconds.
How to identify one
- Read the name's foil colour first. Yu-Gi-Oh! encodes most of its rarity in the card name: plain text, silver foil, gold foil and holographic silver all mean different tiers. Secret Rare is the holographic silver.
- Tilt the artwork under a single light. The diagonal lines catch in a sweep across the picture. A Super Rare or Ultra Rare has holofoil artwork too, but without that diagonal patterning.
- Check the set code on the card. The same card is printed at different rarities in different sets, and the code plus the rarity is what identifies the printing you are actually holding. Two copies of one card can be worth wildly different amounts on rarity alone.
The phrase means something else in Pokémon
⚠ This is the disambiguation that costs people money. In Pokémon, "secret rare" describes a checklist position — a card numbered past the end of the set, like a gold secret rare. In Yu-Gi-Oh!, it describes a finish, and a Secret Rare sits at an ordinary number in its set. The two usages share nothing but the words, and listings mix them freely. Establish which game you are looking at before you read anything into the phrase.
Where it sits in the Yu-Gi-Oh! order
Secret Rare sits above Ultra Rare in the ordinary run of rarities, and below the specialty tiers that get their own treatments — Ultimate, Ghost, Collector's, Starlight and the anniversary-stamped Quarter Century printings.
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