Trading card games

Special Illustration Rare

Also written: SIR · Special IR

The top art-led Pokémon rarity — scene artwork, heavy surface texture, and a card number at the very end of the checklist.

ArtThe picture changes

A Special Illustration Rare is the top of the art-led range in a modern Pokémon set. It takes a card that already has a premium version, gives it edge-to-edge scene artwork, prints it with heavy surface texture, and places it at the very end of the checklist. It is, in most modern sets, the card the set is bought for.

Verifying one before you pay for it

The abbreviation "SIR" appears in listings constantly and gets attached to any attractive full-face card. Three checks settle it, and all three are visible in a good photograph:

1. The card number sits past the set total, further out than the Illustration Rares. Compare it against the total printed alongside it. If the number is inside the set's main run, it is not a secret-numbered tier at all.
2. The texture covers the whole face. Tilt it and the surface breaks light in a worked pattern rather than a flat sheen; run a fingertip over the art and you can feel it. This is the check a photograph often fails to show, so ask for an angled shot.
3. There is a plainer version of the same card in the same set. Special Illustration Rares are upgrades of cards that already exist; if nothing sits underneath it, look again at what you have.

Why it is the money card

It stacks mechanisms. Art has changed, physical form has changed through the texture, and the numbering position marks it as scarce. Stacking is the whole basis of rarity in every hobby — see the mega guide — and this tier stacks three of the six at once, on the subject the set was designed around.

If you are new to the modern ladder, read it from the bottom: holo rare, then full art, then Illustration Rare, then this.

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.