Secret Rare

A secret rare is defined by its collector number: if a set officially contains 198 cards, anything numbered 199 or higher is a secret rare. These cards sit outside the base checklist and include the premium tiers of each era — today's Illustration Rares, Special Illustration Rares, and gold Hyper Rares.

Historically, secret rares were a single bonus card per set (like shining Pokémon in the Neo era); modern sets can have 60 or more. Because they hold most of a set's expensive cards, secret rares dominate lists of top pulls — see our most expensive cards ranking. When completing a "master set," collectors mean the base checklist plus every secret rare.