Pokémon Card Rarity and Set Symbols, English and Japanese

Everything a collector needs to place a Pokémon card is printed along its bottom edge, and almost none of it is in the card’s art. English cards marked rarity with three symbols from Base Set in January 1999, a circle for Common, a diamond for Uncommon and a star for Rare, and kept that scale until Scarlet & Violet on March 31, 2023 re-cut it to Japan’s tiers, drawn as counts and colors of stars: two silver for Ultra Rare, one gold for Illustration Rare, three gold for Hyper Rare.¹² Japanese cards have spelled rarity in bold letters since December 2010, and every code in the Japanese secret tier (AR, SR, SAR, UR and the others listed in Section 2) is numbered past the printed set size, so a Japanese number like 096/073 tells you the card carries one of those codes before you read it.¹³ Whether a card is legal in Standard play is decided by a single letter, the regulation mark, not by its set: G left Japanese Standard on January 23, 2026 and English play on April 10, 2026, 77 days later.⁴⁵ Our app, Kiradex, indexes 21,256 English and 12,781 Japanese cards, and its index carries no rarity, no regulation mark and no printed set code for any of them.⁶ This is the guide to reading the bottom line in both languages, the measured state of the catalog behind our app, and the brief that fixes it.

TL;DR

• Three symbols for twenty-four years, then stars. Circle, diamond and star from Base Set (1999) were the English scale, with each new mechanic adding its own mark: ex in 2003, LV.X in 2007, GX in 2017, V in 2020. Scarlet & Violet (2023) changed the scale “to correspond to the one used in Japan, however maintaining being marked by symbols”: two stars for Double Rare, two silver for Ultra Rare, three gold for Hyper Rare, hollow gold for Shiny, a pink star for ACE SPEC.¹²
• Japanese cards print the tier as letters. C, U, R, SR and UR since Black Collection and White Collection (December 2010), RR since Collection X and Collection Y (December 2013); AR and SAR were announced as new rarities with VSTAR Universe on December 2, 2022, four months before English got Illustration Rare and Special Illustration Rare; BWR arrived in June 2025 and MA in November 2025. In the Japanese tables of Bulbapedia’s parsed lists, 2,955 rows sit past the set size, and none of them is a C, U, R, RR, RRR, PR, A, K or ACE.^78910113
• The number tells you if a card is secret. A secret card is one “whose collection number is greater than the listed number of cards in the set”; the first was Dark Raichu, numbered 83/82 in Team Rocket (2000). Since Scarlet & Violet, every English rarity above Common, Uncommon, Rare, Double Rare and ACE SPEC Rare is numbered that way. In Kiradex’s index, counting only sets with a printed size above zero and leaving out promo sets, 97 of 201 English sets and 89 of 116 Japanese sets hold such cards: 1,966 and 2,449 of them.¹²¹³
• The regulation mark decides Standard, not the set. pokemon.com: “A card’s legality status is not based on which expansion it’s from.” One letter leaves a year: D, E, F and G left English play on April 14, 2023, April 5, 2024, April 11, 2025 and April 10, 2026; Japan dropped each of them 70 to 84 days earlier.^514151617
• Set symbol, set code and expansion mark are three things. English cards carried a pictorial set symbol until 2023, then a printed code with a language code. Japanese cards print an expansion mark in letters (“SA”, “SVAM”, “svHK”, “MC”), and each Japanese rotation notice for the 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026 rotations warns that this mark does not show the regulation.^181920214
• The catalog’s words are not the printed symbols. TCGdex, the catalog Kiradex is built from, has no rarity for 2,775 of the 12,781 Japanese cards in our index (21.7%), writes Japanese tiers as English words, files Base Set’s holos as plain “Rare”, and marks every one of the 317 indexed sets as not Standard-legal.²²²³²⁴
• What this gives Kiradex. A brief, not a shipped feature: a bottom-line strip on every card page that explains the symbol, the number and the mark; a rotation table the app owns, built from the official dates; rarity, regulation mark and set code added to the index; a scanner that reads the mark and the code instead of only tolerating them; and a tiering fix for the seven rarities and every promo the app ranks too low today.²⁵²⁶

1. English rarity symbols, era by era

Circle, diamond, star

The English scale began with Base Set on January 9, 1999.² Bulbapedia’s Rarity page puts it plainly: “Common cards are marked with a circle,” “Uncommon cards are marked with a diamond,” and “Rare cards are marked with a star.”¹² Basic Energy cards have no rarity at all.¹ Those three shapes were the whole printed scale for most of the game’s English history, and they still sit at the bottom of the Scarlet & Violet and Mega Evolution sets, whose cards in our index are mostly Common, Uncommon and Rare.²²

A star did not always mean the same card, though. Before Scarlet & Violet, a Rare could be a plain card with the black star and no foil, or a holofoil with the same star and a shining art window; Bulbapedia describes the old guaranteed Rare as one that “could be a ‘non-holo Rare’” featuring “the black star rarity symbol.”¹ From Scarlet & Violet on, “all Rare cards included in booster packs are guaranteed to be Holofoil Rares.”¹ So a black star on a 2015 card and a black star on a 2024 card promise different things: the first may be flat, the second is foil.

Every mechanic brought its own mark

Between 2001 and 2022 the English scale grew sideways. Each new card mechanic arrived with a rarity of its own, printed as its own symbol or named on the card, rather than as a rung on one ladder. The table gives the first set for each mark as Bulbapedia records it, with the release date from Bulbapedia’s English expansion list, and, in the last column, the first set in Kiradex’s index where TCGdex (the catalog our index is built from) uses a string for it.¹²²³

Two things in that table matter to anyone reading a card. The first is that the mechanic era did not replace the three base symbols; it added marks above them. A 2012 set still had circles, diamonds and stars for its ordinary cards, and an EX card’s rarity sat above them.¹ Bulbapedia’s own description of the era is that ultra rare cards “are typically marked as Rare Holofoil cards, but sometimes have unique symbols denoting their rarity,” and that most “are associated with a unique mechanic.”¹ The second is the release dates’ source: Bulbapedia and TCGdex disagree by a day or more on several sets (Black Bolt is July 18, 2025 on one and July 17 on the other; Diamond & Pearl is May 23, 2007 on one and May 1 on the other). The first-set years in this guide use Bulbapedia; the measurements of our index use TCGdex.²²⁸

Scarlet & Violet re-cut the scale

On March 31, 2023, with the Scarlet & Violet set, the English scale stopped being a base ladder plus mechanic marks. Bulbapedia: “the rarity scale was changed to correspond to the one used in Japan, however maintaining being marked by symbols.”¹² What changed was the meaning of the stars. The circle, diamond and black star kept their places; above them, the tiers are now told apart by how many stars there are and what color they are printed in. Read from Bulbapedia’s descriptions of each tier:¹

• Double Rare: “marked with two stars”; the ordinary Pokémon ex of a set.
• Ultra Rare: “denoted with two silver stars”; only full-art Pokémon ex and Supporter cards.
• Illustration Rare: “marked with a gold star”; full-art Pokémon other than ex.
• Special Illustration Rare: “marked with two gold stars”; full-art Pokémon ex and Supporters.
• Hyper Rare: “marked with three gold stars.”

Five more marks joined the same system after 2023. Paldean Fates (January 26, 2024) added Shiny Rare, “a single hollow gold star,” and Shiny Ultra Rare, “two hollow gold stars.”¹ pokemon.com’s own page for that set tells collectors where to look: “You can identify Shiny rare cards by finding the sparkling star at the bottom-left corner of the card.”²⁹ Temporal Forces (March 22, 2024) brought what pokemon.com calls “the newly defined ACE SPEC rarity,” “marked with a pink star” in Bulbapedia’s words, though ACE SPEC cards themselves were first printed in Boundaries Crossed in 2012.³⁰¹ Bulbapedia’s Rarity page says it both ways: its ACE SPEC Rare section says the rarity “was introduced in the Boundaries Crossed expansion,” while its Ultra Rare section, in the entry on ACE SPEC cards, says that when ACE SPEC cards were reintroduced in Temporal Forces, “Their rarity became ACE SPEC Rare,” after the “rare ACE” of the first run.¹ The table follows pokemon.com and dates ACE SPEC Rare, the pink star, to Temporal Forces.³⁰ Mega Evolution (September 26, 2025) added Mega Hyper Rare, “marked with a gold star with black border,” and Mega Attack Rare is “marked with pastel pink and green stars”; until Ascended Heroes (January 30, 2026) every English Mega Attack Rare was a MEP Black Star Promo.¹

That leaves a small reading rule, which the figure below draws as plain shapes: on a card from 2023 on, count the stars, then read their color. One black star is Rare, two stars are Double Rare, two silver are Ultra Rare, one gold is Illustration Rare, two gold are Special Illustration Rare, three gold are Hyper Rare; hollow gold stars are Shiny; a pink star is ACE SPEC.¹

Every rarity mark by the year it first appeared, English and Japanese; shapes are plain diagrams, colors are named in words.³¹

Shiny Rare: three sources, three answers

Beyond ACE SPEC, where the table’s note separates 2012’s Rare ACE from 2024’s newly defined rarity, the one first-set claim the sources do not agree on is Shiny Rare, and the disagreement is worth stating whole because a card page has to pick one. Bulbapedia says the rarity “was introduced in Shining Fates” (February 19, 2021), where it was “used for all cards in the Shiny Vault subset,” shown, in its words, as “a full star” with SH printed beside it.¹ pokemon.com says the opposite about that set: Shiny Pokémon in Shining Fates “were included as part of the Shiny Vault without a unique rarity,” and Paldean Fates in 2024 brought “a set of brand-new rarity designations all their own”: Shiny rare and Shiny ultra rare.²⁹ TCGdex, the catalog, uses its “Shiny rare” string first on the Hidden Fates Shiny Vault, released August 23, 2019, two years before either.²³ Bulbapedia itself records that pokemon.com’s card database files the Shining Fates Shiny Vault’s V and VMAX cards under other rarities: most as Ultra Rare, the VMAX as Rainbow Rare.¹ On my reading, the honest card page says what is printed (a star with “SH” beside it on Shining Fates; hollow gold stars on Paldean Fates) and names Paldean Fates as the first set with Shiny Rare as an official rarity, because that is the publisher’s statement.

Cards with no rarity symbol

Two kinds of English card carry something else where the rarity would be. Promos “have a Black Star Promo symbol” instead of a rarity symbol, and some Trainer Kit and half-deck cards “do not have a rarity listed on the bottom right corner of the card, and instead have the silhouette of the main Pokémon within the kit.”¹ Neither is a rarity, and a catalog that files them under one is filling a gap, not reading a card. Section 6 shows what Kiradex does with them today.

Measured from Bulbapedia’s English set lists

Bulbapedia’s set pages are the closest thing to a printed checklist for every set, so I parsed them. The script, measure_bulba_rarity.py, read 182 English list rows and counted card rows on 50 of the linked pages. It reads one row template, Setlist/entry, which carries a regulation-mark column; pages for sets before Sword & Shield list their English cards with a second template, Setlist/nmentry, which has no mark column and which the script does not read. The counts below therefore cover Sword & Shield (2020) onward, plus the classic subset in 30th Celebration.³² The script reads Setlist/entry in any letter case, because Bulbapedia’s editors write the template name both ways, and it counts only English tables: a page Bulbapedia shares between an English set and its Japanese counterpart puts the English tables in its first column and the Japanese ones in the second, and the 30th Celebration page heads its English, Japanese, Thai and Indonesian, and Simplified Chinese tables by name.³² Of the English cards Bulbapedia numbers above the printed set size, there are 1,607 rows: Illustration Rare 518, Ultra Rare 356, Special Illustration Rare 233, Rare Rainbow 180, Shiny Rare 120, Rare Secret 91, Hyper Rare 74, Shiny Ultra Rare 12, Mega Hyper Rare 8, Mega Attack Rare 7, Black White Rare 4, and a handful of others.³² Those are rows in a wiki’s tables, not printed cards counted by hand; Bulbapedia’s Rarity page carries its own warning that it is incomplete for historical rarities.¹

2. Japanese rarity codes and what each one means

Letters instead of symbols

Japanese cards stopped printing rarity symbols with the Black & White era. Bulbapedia dates the change to Black Collection and White Collection, released December 17, 2010: from then, “Japanese releases, rather than using symbols, use bolded letters to denote rarity.”¹ Its page for that set names the first letters: “Instead of utilizing shapes to symbolize rarity, it was replaced by letters.” C, U and R took the place of the circle, diamond and star, SR marked the full-art cards and UR the secret cards.⁷ RR came three years later: Bulbapedia’s page for Collection X and Collection Y (December 13, 2013) says Pokémon-EX were given RR there as a new rarity symbol.⁸ Japan’s official how-to-play page still calls the printed code a rarity mark, part 12 of its 16-part card diagram: “このカードのめずらしさを表すマークです。拡張パックのカードに入っています。” In my translation: the mark that shows how rare this card is; it is on expansion-pack cards.³³

The same page of Bulbapedia adds the sentence every cross-language collector eventually learns the hard way: “The rarity of a card may vary between Japanese and other-language releases.” Its example is a Sword & Shield card printed C in Japanese and Uncommon in English.¹

The codes, with their first sets

The official pages name a new rarity only sometimes, so the first-set column below is measured. measure_bulba_rarity.py parsed 187 rows of Bulbapedia’s Japanese expansion list; 84 set pages carry Japanese card tables in raw wikitext, all from Sun & Moon (December 2016) on.³ The script counts only the Japanese tables: on a page shared with the English set it takes the second column, and on 30th Celebration the table headed Japanese, not the Thai and Indonesian or Simplified Chinese ones.³ A code that existed before 2016 therefore shows its first Sun & Moon set here, not its true debut: C, U, R, SR and UR go back to 2010 and RR to 2013 by Bulbapedia’s set pages.⁷⁸ The counts are rows in Bulbapedia’s lists, not printed cards. A name carries its source in the table; the names marked “my reading” are mine where no page I read names the code, and the one marked common usage, not sourced is a name in common use that no page I saved spells out.³³⁴

An earlier version of the parse decided a table’s language from the shape of its rarity values, and so counted Thai and Indonesian and Simplified Chinese rows of 30th Celebration as Japanese (68 rows past the set size among them), counted ten English Amazing Rare rows marked A, and reported TGH, TGV, TGU, TGS, GGH, GGU and GGS as Japanese codes; those seven are Bulbapedia’s values in the English Trainer Gallery and Galarian Gallery tables on pages shared with Star Birth and VSTAR Universe. The parse now chooses tables by region, and also keeps the ten VMAX Climax CHR rows (185/184 to 194/184) and two other rows that close their template with an extra brace. Across the Japanese tables, 974 rows have no rarity (“None”) and 2,955 sit past the printed set size.³

What the official pages say

Thirteen of those codes have a sentence from The Pokémon Company’s Japanese site behind them. VSTAR Universe’s product page introduces AR and SAR as “新登場のレアリティ” (newly introduced rarities), and calls them by their full names, Art Rare and Special Art Rare.⁹ The Wild Force and Cyber Judge page announces “「ACE SPEC」のカードが登場” (ACE SPEC cards appear) for January 26, 2024.³⁹ For Black Bolt and White Flare, the card-list announcement says Zekrom ex and Reshiram ex appear “BWR（ビーダブリューレア）として” (as BWR, read “B-W rare”), the first in Black Bolt and the second in White Flare, designed around black and white respectively.⁴⁰ MEGA Dream ex’s page headlines “新たなレアリティMA(メガアタックレア)が登場” (a new rarity, MA, Mega Attack Rare, appears), released November 28, 2025.¹¹ Mega Brave and Mega Symphonia, on August 1, 2025, carry AR and SAR cards that, in the page’s own description, connect when laid side by side, and the same page announces Item cards at “SR（スーパーレア）” (Super Rare).³⁵ VMAX Climax, released December 3, 2021, announces “ポケモンとトレーナーが一緒に描かれたCSR・CHRが登場！” (CSR and CHR, drawn with Pokémon and Trainers together, appear) and heads its card panels “CSR（キャラクタースーパーレア）” and “CHR（キャラクターレア）”, Character Super Rare and Character Rare.³⁸ An older page, for the XY expansion Bandit Ring (June 20, 2015), spells out the ladder that SR and UR belong to, rarest first: “URはウルトラレア（キラ）、SRはスーパーレア（キラ）、RRはダブルレア（キラ）、Rはレア（キラ）、Uはアンコモン、Cはコモン” (in my translation: UR is Ultra Rare, holo; SR Super Rare, holo; RR Double Rare, holo; R Rare, holo; U Uncommon; C Common).³⁶ HR’s name comes from Bulbapedia, whose page for the Sun & Moon set and its Japanese equivalents says the Secret Rainbow Rare prints of Pokémon-GX are “called Hyper Rare card in Japan” and lists four such Pokémon-GX in each of Collection Sun and Collection Moon (067/060 to 070/060) as HR.³⁷ For RRR I found no saved page that spells the name; I looked on the official pages for Sword/Shield, Shiny Star V, TAG TEAM GX All Stars, Collection Sun/Moon and Scarlet ex/Violet ex, and “Triple Rare” appears in my saved sources only as a TCGdex string, so the table’s name for it is common usage, not sourced.⁴¹²²

How the codes line up with English

Bulbapedia gives the English equivalent for six Japanese codes, and they are the ones a collector buying both languages meets most: Double Rare corresponds to RR, Illustration Rare to AR, Special Illustration Rare to SAR, Hyper Rare to UR, Mega Hyper Rare to MUR, and Mega Attack Rare to MA.¹ The order of the names is not the order of the letters: a Japanese UR is an English Hyper Rare, and English’s Ultra Rare is the two-silver-star full art. A collector reading a Japanese card through English eyes, or the reverse, should translate by the table, not by the words.

The timing runs one way: Japan first, English a few months later. AR and SAR were new on December 2, 2022; Illustration Rare and Special Illustration Rare reached English four months later, on March 31, 2023.⁹² BWR was printed in Japan on June 6, 2025 and in English on July 18.³² Mega Attack Rare reached Japanese packs on November 28, 2025 and English packs on January 30, 2026, after a run as English promos.¹¹¹

Every Japanese secret-tier code is numbered past the set

The measured pattern in the table’s last column is the most useful single rule for Japanese cards. In the parsed lists, every SR, HR, UR, S, SSR, CHR, CSR, AR, SAR, BWR, MUR, MA and FUR row is numbered past the set size, and no C, U, R, RR, RRR, PR, A, K or ACE row is.³ Bulbapedia’s secret-card page states the history behind it, in my paraphrase: every Japanese full-art card has been a secret card, while English full arts sat inside the normal numbering until Scarlet & Violet.¹² So on a Japanese card, a number above the set size and a secret-tier code (AR, SR, SAR, UR and the others in that list) tell you the same thing twice. The tier is not one ladder from SR: AR is numbered past the set too, below SR. In Triplet Beat (SV1a), for example, Bulbapedia’s list runs AR from 074/073 to 085/073 and SR from 086/073.³

3. Set symbols, set codes and collector numbers

A set symbol, a set code and an expansion mark are three different things

Three printed marks tell you which product a card came from, and they are easy to confuse because they sit next to each other.

The English set symbol. Until Scarlet & Violet, English cards carried a small picture for their expansion. pokemon.com’s announcement of the 2023 changes, as Bulbapedia quotes it, retired it: “expansion symbols will be replaced by expansion codes and language codes across all cards.” The same announcement turned the yellow border gray “to match the cards released in Japan.”¹⁸ (pokemon.com refused the page to my saver that day, so the sentence is Bulbapedia’s quotation of it, not a copy I hold.)⁴²

The English set code. Since 2023 the code is printed in letters, with a language code beside it. TCGdex records an official abbreviation (abbreviation.official) for 190 of the 201 English sets in Kiradex’s index, from “BS” for Base Set through “SVI” for Scarlet & Violet to “PBL” for Pitch Black and “30C” for 30th Celebration, and a separate Pokémon TCG Online code for 118 of them.²⁴ Only the abbreviations of sets from 2023 on are printed on cards; English cards before Scarlet & Violet carried a pictorial symbol instead.¹⁸ Base Set never printed “BS” and printed no set symbol either: Bulbapedia’s page for it records setsymbol=no, and Kiradex’s index has no symbol URL for it.⁴³⁶ The English rulebook in the 151 box (a PDF created June 13, 2023) labels two items on the bottom line of its card diagram, and this is one of them: “EXPANSION CODE” sits above “COLLECTOR CARD NUMBER.”⁴⁴

The Japanese expansion mark. Japanese cards print the product in letters too, and the official rotation notices show an example in each: “SA” in notice 003185 (for the January 2022 rotation), “SVAM” in notice 003745 (January 2023), “svHK” in notice 004248 (January 2024) and “MC” in notice 005262 (January 2026).^1920214 Every one of those four notices adds the same warning: “同マークはレギュレーションを示すものではありません” (this mark does not indicate the regulation).^1920214 Japan’s how-to-play page defines it as the mark that shows “どの商品に入っているカードか” (which product the card is in).³³

Two caveats on the Japanese mark. First, the official notices disagree about which side of the regulation mark it sits on: notices 003185 and 003745 (the January 2022 and January 2023 rotations) put it to the left (“レギュレーションマークの左にあるのは”), notices 004248 and 005262 (January 2024 and January 2026) to the right (“レギュレーションマークの右にあるのは”).^1920214 Either the layout changed between those rotations or one pair of notices is loose; I did not inspect cards to settle it. Second, TCGdex carries no printed code for any Japanese set, but its Japanese set ids (SV1a, S10P, M2a) look like the printed marks, and Kiradex’s scanner already matches on them: its test reads “SIOP F 037/067C” and finds S10P-037.²⁴⁴⁵ Whether every TCGdex id equals the printed mark letter for letter is my reading, not checked.

Japan also moved the mark once. When the Sun & Moon series began in December 2016, its layout news said the first-edition mark was gone and “その位置にエキスパンションマークとコレクションナンバーが移動している” (the expansion mark and collection number have moved to that position).⁴⁶ The regulation page gives the reading rule that follows: on cards from the XY BREAK series and earlier, “カードの右下に表示されています” (the expansion mark is shown at the bottom right).⁴⁷

The yellow A

From May 2017 to November 2020, a fourth mark sat beside some English set symbols. Bulbapedia’s page on Yellow A Alternate cards describes alternate-art reprints carrying a yellow A “next to their expansion symbol,” first in the Mega Powers Collection: XY-era cards reprinted with new art during the Sun & Moon era. In the page’s account, which I paraphrase, reprints like these had been Black Star Promos, and that had kept some cards legal in Standard longer than intended; the yellow A kept the original’s number with a letter added, so the reprint was legal exactly where the original was.⁴⁸ Bulbapedia’s Standard format page says the yellow A system “was also eliminated in favor of regulation marks.”⁴⁹

The collector number

The number at the bottom is two numbers. Japan’s diagram calls it the collection number and says it gives “この商品のカードの総数と、何番目のカードか” (the product’s card total, and which number this card is).³³ TCGdex models the same pair: cardCount.official is “The amount of cards in this set (displayed on the bottom left/right of the card),” and a separate total counts every card, secrets included.⁵⁰

A secret card is the gap between those two. Bulbapedia: “a card whose collection number is greater than the listed number of cards in the set, for example, numbered 101/100.”¹² The first was Dark Raichu, 83/82 in Team Rocket (April 24, 2000), and it “was not included even in the Japanese version of the set, as it was made by Wizards itself.”¹²² So “245/198” means the 47th card past a printed 198.

How many cards sit past the line has changed by era and by language. Before Black & White, Bulbapedia records, “Secret cards were almost exclusively found in English versions of the sets,” because cards that were secret in English were numbered normally or released as promos in Japan.¹² Japanese full arts were always secret; English full arts were numbered inside the set until Scarlet & Violet, from which, in Bulbapedia’s words, all cards with any rarity “other than Common, Uncommon, Rare, Double Rare, and ACE SPEC Rare are secret cards.”¹²

Our index shows the result. Measured over Kiradex’s bundled files, counting only sets whose printed size (official) is above zero and leaving out promo sets, 97 of 201 English sets and 89 of 116 Japanese sets hold numeric cards above the printed set size: 1,966 English and 2,449 Japanese cards.¹³ Both conditions matter. Four sets have an official of 0 (MEP Black Star Promos and 30th Classic Collection in English, the SV-P and M-P promos in Japanese), and the bare comparison would call all 538 of their numbered cards secret; and the one English promo set that clears the test, SVP, does so only through svp-500, a card TCGdex files as a Promo, not a secret.¹³²² Recent sets run deep: Destined Rivals (sv10) prints 182 and lists 244, 62 past the line; Mega Evolution (me01) prints 132 and lists 188; Japan’s MEGA Dream ex (M2a) prints 193 and lists 250; White Flare (SV11W) prints 86 and lists 174, 88 past.¹³

Numbers with letters in them

Not every collector number is a number. In the English index, 1,608 cards have a localId with letters, and the letters are a map of the subsets English sets have carried:⁵¹

The Unseen Forces Unown Collection adds 28 cards numbered A to Z, “!” and “?”, which brings the table to all 1,608.⁵¹ Japanese numbers are digits for 12,773 of the 12,781 Japanese cards; the other 8 are the Energy cards of Start Deck 100 Battle Collection (MC), numbered by type (DAR, FIG, FIR, GRA, LIG, MET, PSY, WAT).⁵¹ The SV prefix is the one most likely to confuse a reader: on a Shining Fates or Hidden Fates card it means Shiny Vault, years before the Scarlet & Violet code existed.

Promo numbers

Promos print where they came from instead of a rarity. English Black Star Promos are numbered per series: Wizards (1 to 53), Nintendo, then DP01, HGSS01, BW01, XY01, SM01 and SWSH001; with Scarlet & Violet, in Bulbapedia’s words, “the prefix used in the card numbering was removed,” and the set code SVP is printed instead.⁵²⁵³ The index holds 11 English sets named as promos: a one-card Miscellaneous Promos set (miscp) and ten Black Star series with these shapes (two Trainer Kits whose ids also end in “p”, tk-ex-p and tk-xy-p, are not promos): basep 1 to 53, np 1 to 40, dpp DP01 to DP56, hgssp HGSS01 to HGSS25, bwp BW01 to BW101 (101 cards), xyp XY01 to XY211 (216), smp SM01 to SM248 (248), swshp SWSH001 to SWSH307, svp 001 to 225 plus a 500, and mep 001 to 088 plus one card numbered “Museum.”⁵⁴ Japanese promos carry the set mark inside the number; the scanner’s test reads a Japanese promo as “001/SV-P” and an English one as “H SVPEN 197”, mark, code, language and number in a row.⁴⁵

4. Regulation marks and the rotation dates

One letter decides Standard

The regulation mark is a single capital letter printed beside the set code or expansion mark, and in both languages it, not the set, decides whether a card can be played in the Standard format; Bulbapedia describes it as a letter “found right next to the expansion mark of each card.”⁴⁹ pokemon.com’s 2026 announcement: “A card’s legality status is not based on which expansion it’s from. Even if a card is from a recently released expansion, players will need to refer to the regulation mark on the bottom of the card to see whether that card is legal for play.”⁵ Japan’s regulation page says the same from the other side: legality is checked by the regulation mark and expansion mark “カードの左下に表示された” (shown at the bottom left of the card), and the regulation mark is printed on cards “「サン&ムーン」シリーズ以降” (from the Sun & Moon series on).⁴⁷ Japan’s how-to-play page describes the mark as “公式イベントなどで使用されるマークです” (a mark used at official events and the like).³³

The 2025 English announcement adds the rule that makes the system predictable: “Moving forward, players should expect cards with the oldest legal regulation mark to rotate out of the Standard format when a new one is introduced.” New cards still wait “typically two weeks after their release” before they are tournament legal.¹⁶

Japan: from A in 2016

Japan started the letters. Bulbapedia’s Standard format page says Asian expansions introduced regulation marks “from the beginning of the Sun & Moon Series,” and that “The letter starts with” A in Collection Sun and Collection Moon (December 2016).⁴⁹ Before marks ran rotation, Japan rotated by series: from September 1, 2018, Japanese Standard was the Sun & Moon series only.⁵⁵ The notices since then read as a ledger:^56192021574

• November 29, 2019: Standard became B, C and D; “Aと書かれたカードは、スタンダードレギュレーションから外れます” (cards marked A leave Standard). The notice dates the letters by their first products: B from the Solgaleo-GX and Lunala-GX starter set (November 2017), C from the Flareon, Vaporeon and Jolteon GX starter sets (November 2018), D from the Sword & Shield V starter sets (November 2019).
• December 17, 2021: F cards joined Standard with Start Deck 100. January 14, 2022: Standard became D, E and F, and C left.
• January 20, 2023: G arrived with Scarlet ex and Violet ex the same day; Standard became E, F and G, and D left.
• January 26, 2024: H arrived with Wild Force and Cyber Judge; Standard became F, G and H, and E left.
• January 24, 2025: “レギュレーションマークに「F」と書かれたカードは、使用することができません” (cards marked F cannot be used).
• December 19, 2025: J cards joined with Start Deck 100 Battle Collection. January 23, 2026: Standard became H, I and J, and G left.

One date is missing from that ledger. B was legal on November 29, 2019, and notice 003185, for the January 2022 rotation, lists Standard through December 16, 2021 as C, D and E, so B left somewhere in those two years; the notice that says when was not fetched.⁵⁶¹⁹

Measured from Bulbapedia’s Japanese set tables, each letter’s first main set is: A Collection Sun/Moon (December 9, 2016), B Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon (December 8, 2017), C Tag Bolt (December 7, 2018), D Sword/Shield (December 6, 2019), E Single Strike and Rapid Strike Master (January 22, 2021), F Star Birth (January 14, 2022), G Scarlet ex/Violet ex (January 20, 2023), H Wild Force/Cyber Judge (January 26, 2024), I Battle Partners (January 24, 2025), J Nihil Zero (January 23, 2026).³ These agree with the official notices: B, C and D appeared first in starter decks a month before those sets, and from F to J each new letter’s first main set came out on the same day the oldest letter left.⁵⁶³

English: from D in 2020

English cards started at D. Bulbapedia names Sword & Shield (2020) as the first English set with regulation marks, and gives the reason its mark is D: “in order to match Asian releases.”⁴⁹ For two years the English Standard format still rotated by expansion. The 2021-23 Standard format ran from September 10, 2021 to April 13, 2023 and was the last one “to rotate out cards based on what expansion they belonged to”; during it, because Sun & Moon cards were never printed with marks in English, the legal pool was in effect “every card with any regulation mark.”⁵⁸ From 2023 the English dates follow the letters:

The 2025 and 2026 announcements are saved in the evidence folder; the 2023 and 2024 pages were read through a fetch tool after pokemon.com began refusing the saver, so their dates are from that reading, not from a copy I hold. The 2022 rotation announcement was not reachable at all.^421415165

Measured from Bulbapedia’s English set tables, the first main set to carry each letter is: D Sword & Shield (February 7, 2020), E Shining Fates (February 19, 2021), F Brilliant Stars (February 25, 2022), G Scarlet & Violet (March 31, 2023), H Temporal Forces (March 22, 2024), I Journey Together (March 28, 2025), J Ascended Heroes (January 30, 2026).³² TCGdex agrees on I, listing 131 Journey Together (sv09) cards under it.⁵⁹ Promos ran ahead of the main sets: TCGdex puts E and F on cards in the SWSH promo set, H and I on cards in the SVP promo set, and J on cards in the MEP promo set. The dates TCGdex gives for those are the promo sets’ start dates (November 15, 2019, March 31, 2023 and September 26, 2025), not each card’s release, so they bound the first appearance rather than fix it.⁵⁹

Japan rotates in January, English play in April

Put the two ledgers side by side for the four letters that have left both, D to G, and the pattern holds in each of those years, 2023 to 2026: Japan rotated in late January (January 20 to 26), English in-person play in April. Japan’s earlier C rotation fell on January 14, 2022, so “late” is a description of those four years, not a rule.¹⁹ The G rotation came on January 23, 2026 in Japan and April 10, 2026 in English play, 77 days apart.⁴⁵ Computed the same way from the dates above, D left English play 84 days after Japan, E 70 days after, and F 77 days after.¹⁷

Each regulation mark from its first set, or its admission date where a Japanese notice gives one, to the day it left Standard; Japan above, English play below. English cards also waited about two weeks after release before tournament play.¹⁷⁵

Reprints: when an old card is still legal

The mark on the card in your hand is not always the last word. pokemon.com: “Older versions of cards that don’t have a regulation mark can still be used if the card is currently legal for play.” Its 2026 examples are both Trainer cards: a Sun & Moon Rare Candy with no mark is legal because the Mega Evolution printing carries I, and a Rebel Clash Boss’s Orders marked D is legal because the Mega Evolution printing carries I. The page sends players to the Play! Pokémon Tournament Rules Handbook “for further clarification on which reprints are OK to use.”⁵ I could not reach the handbook, so the rule here is the announcement’s. Bulbapedia draws the line between kinds of card, which I paraphrase: a Trainer card with any legal printing may be played in any printing, but a Pokémon card with a rotated mark cannot stand in for a functionally identical Pokémon card with a legal one.⁴⁹ Japan’s regulation page keeps an explicit list for the same purpose: named cards from past series, basic Energy among them, that may go in a Standard deck whatever their print, with the newest card’s text applying.⁴⁷

What the catalogs record

TCGdex lists regulation marks per card, and its English data matches the printed history: no English card before Sword & Shield has a mark. Sword & Shield cards in our index carry D (1,256), E (1,181) and F (1,156), with 82 unmarked; Scarlet & Violet cards carry G (1,647), H (1,248) and I (736), with 65 unmarked, plus 2 marked “None”; Mega Evolution cards carry H (55), I (542) and J (470), with 197 unmarked. Every J card is listed twice, once under “J” and once under “j”.⁵⁹

The Japanese data is thinner. 2,024 of the 3,139 Sun & Moon cards in the index have no mark, and the first A, B and C appear at SM9 (Tag Bolt, December 2018), two years after Japan’s A began. Stray marks include a J on one SM12a card from 2019, a G on one S6K card from 2021, an I and two more Js on other Sword & Shield cards, six Scarlet & Violet cards marked A, B, D, E or F, and two A cards, a C card and a G card on MEGA promos from 2025.⁵⁹ Those describe the catalog, not the printed cards.

An earlier version of the English parse returned two oddities: an A on a Shining Legends row (2017) and a B on a Hidden Fates row (2019). English cards printed no marks before Sword & Shield, by Bulbapedia’s own Standard format page and by TCGdex. Both rows sit in the Japanese counterpart tables those English pages also carry (Shining Legends’ Japanese table and Hidden Fates’ GX Ultra Shiny table), and the parse, which now counts only English tables, no longer returns them; the English first-mark list above starts at D.³²⁴⁹

5. Reading the bottom line, in English and in Japanese

What is printed there

Japan’s official how-to-play page numbers 16 parts of a Pokémon card, and five of them live on the bottom edge: part 10, the regulation mark; 11, the expansion mark; 12, the rarity mark; 13, the collection number; and 16, the illustrator’s name (“イラストレーター名”).³³ That is the bottom line this guide is about, and Japan’s diagram is the only official one I found that names all five.

The English rulebook is sparer. The “Parts of a Pokémon Card” diagram in the rulebook packed with the 151 set labels two bottom-line items, “EXPANSION CODE” and “COLLECTOR CARD NUMBER,” and leaves rarity, the regulation mark and the illustrator unlabeled; in the text extracted from that PDF, the word “regulation” does not appear at all.⁴⁴ The English reading of those parts in this guide comes from pokemon.com’s rotation and expansion pages and from Bulbapedia.

Where the parts sit has moved more than once:

• Japan, since Sun & Moon (2016): the regulation mark and expansion mark at the bottom left, read together; on cards from the XY BREAK series and earlier, the expansion mark is at the bottom right.⁴⁷⁴⁶
• English, before Scarlet & Violet: rarity at the bottom right, which is where Bulbapedia puts the Black Star Promo symbol that replaces it on promos, and where a kit card’s silhouette replaces it.¹
• English, from Scarlet & Violet (2023): the rarity stars at the bottom left, as pokemon.com describes them for Paldean Fates, where it tells collectors to find Shiny rares by “the sparkling star at the bottom-left corner of the card.”²⁹

Kiradex’s scanner tests hold two of these lines as a camera reads them. An English promo from the Scarlet & Violet era comes through as “H SVPEN 197”: regulation mark H, set code SVP, language code EN, number 197. A 2022 Japanese card comes through as “SIOP F 037/067C”: the expansion mark S10P misread as SIOP, regulation mark F, number 37 of 67, and the rarity code C run onto the number.⁴⁵

The same card in two languages

A collector who buys both languages meets the differences card by card. These are the ones the sources state.

The rarity can differ. Bulbapedia: “The rarity of a card may vary between Japanese and other-language releases.”¹ The codes also map across names that do not match: Japanese UR is English Hyper Rare, AR is Illustration Rare, SAR is Special Illustration Rare (Section 2).¹

The numbering can differ. Before Black & White, cards that were secret in English were usually numbered normally in Japan or released there as promos; Japanese full arts were always secret, English full arts were numbered inside the set until 2023.¹²

The sets are cut differently. The English Scarlet & Violet set was built from more than one Japanese product; Bulbapedia’s set page says Japan’s ex Starter Sets “and the Scarlet ex • Violet ex expansion were combined to create the English release.”¹⁸ Scarlet ex and Violet ex came out in Japan on January 20, 2023; the English set followed on March 31.¹⁸² So a Japanese card’s set and an English card’s set can be different products with different sizes, and the collector numbers will not match.

The letters are shared, the dates are not. A card carries the same regulation letter in both languages; English began at D “in order to match Asian releases.”⁴⁹ But in each rotation from 2023 to 2026 the letter left Japanese Standard in late January and English play in April, 77 days later in 2026 (Section 4).⁴⁵

The set mark is a different system. English cards print a set code with a language code; Japanese cards print an expansion mark whose letters belong to the Japanese product (SV1a, S10P, M2a in TCGdex’s ids, which look like the marks on my reading).¹⁸²⁴

The foil can differ. Bulbapedia’s holofoil notes record differences by language in several eras: in the Black & White sets, “In Japanese holofoil cards of these sets, the border of the card also has a tinsel holofoil effect”; from Sun & Moon to Cosmic Eclipse, “only the Japanese releases cover the border with the pattern.”¹

Some rarities cross the language line on purpose. Of Mega Attack Rare, Bulbapedia notes that “The English card art features Japanese text for the card’s attack and the Japanese cards feature English text instead.”¹

The illustrator line is official in Japan. Japan’s diagram names it (part 16). In English, the bundled data is where Kiradex gets it: Illustrators-en.json holds 410 names and 20,537 card credits across 195 sets; there is no Japanese counterpart in the app.³³⁶

The rules, with numbers

These are the reading rules the sections above support, each with where it comes from.

6. What Kiradex’s index carries and lacks, measured

Kiradex is our collector’s app for trading cards, in TestFlight: every set, the cards you have and the ones you want, and each card as an object you can turn over.⁶⁰ It recognizes a card from the camera by matching what it reads against a card index bundled in the app, built from TCGdex, a free online catalog of trading cards, by scripts/build_card_index.py.⁶¹ Everything in this section was measured read-only from the two bundled files, CardIndex-en.json and CardIndex-ja.json (both dated October 2, 2026 on disk), and from TCGdex’s rarity and regulation-mark listings cached on October 4, 2026, by measure_index.py.⁶²²

What the index holds

Each set in the index carries an id, a name, a release date and year, a logo and symbol URL, its series, the printed set size (official) and the full count (total), and a list of cards. Each card is three items: its number, its name, and whether the catalog has an image. English: 201 sets and 21,256 cards. Japanese: 116 sets and 12,781 cards.⁶ The catalog has an image for 19,666 of the English cards and 3,882 of the Japanese ones.⁶

Cards in Kiradex’s index by era and language; the light part of each bar is cards the catalog gives no rarity.⁶²

What it does not hold

No rarity. Neither file has a rarity field. All 21,256 English and 12,781 Japanese cards are in the index with no rarity at all.⁶ The app reads a rarity only when it fetches a card’s detail from the live catalog (CardDetail.rarity), so, on my reading of the code, a card the camera has matched has no rarity until that fetch returns.⁶³

No regulation mark, no set code, no variants. Neither file records the printed mark, the printed set code, or which finishes a card was printed in. There is no illustrator in the index either; English illustrators live in a separate bundle, Illustrators-en.json (410 names, 20,537 card credits across 195 sets), and there is no Japanese counterpart.⁶

Set symbols and logos, partly. 39 of the 201 English sets and 112 of the 116 Japanese sets have no symbol URL; 55 English sets and all 116 Japanese sets have no logo.⁶

Whole Japanese eras. Against Bulbapedia’s Japanese expansion list, the Japanese index has no ADV, DP, DPt, LEGEND or BW set, only two XY-era sets (CP1 and CP2), and its Sword & Shield run starts at S5I (January 2021), so S1 to S4a, December 2019 to late 2020, are missing.²⁸³⁴ Whether TCGdex has those sets and the builder drops them, or TCGdex lacks them, was not checked; the builder’s only deliberate drop is TCG Pocket, whose cards “exist only on a screen.”⁶¹

By era, the two files look like this:²⁸

The English file also holds one card in a “Miscellaneous” series dated 1996.²⁸

What the catalog behind it knows about rarity

Because the index carries no rarity, I joined every index card to TCGdex’s per-rarity listings by set id and number to see what the app could add.²²

Vocabulary. TCGdex uses 42 English rarity strings and 22 Japanese ones. The Japanese strings are English words (“Double rare”, “Triple Rare”, “Character Super Rare”), not the codes printed on the cards (RR, CSR and, on my reading, RRR), and the capitalization is inconsistent (“Double rare” beside “Ultra Rare”).²² Ten of the English strings (One to Four Diamond, One to Three Star, One and Two Shiny, Crown) are TCG Pocket rarities; 2,480 English rarity rows belong to cards outside the index because the builder drops the Pocket series.²²⁶¹

English coverage is complete; Japanese is not. Every English index card has a TCGdex rarity string, and 529 of them (2.5%) are “None”: trainer kits, McDonald’s sets, the Kalos Starter Set, My First Battle, the 30th Classic Collection. Of the 12,781 Japanese cards, 665 have no rarity listing and 2,110 are “None”: 2,775 unknown, 21.7%.²²⁶⁴ The worst Japanese sets are MC (774 of 774 unknown), SV4a (301 of 320), SV8a (202 of 237), M2a (166 of 250) and S8b (140 of 285).⁶⁴

Totals. Across the English index: Common 5,873; Uncommon 4,917; Rare 3,889; Ultra Rare 1,513; Promo 1,110; Holo Rare 633; Secret Rare 604; None 529; Illustration rare 511; Double rare 329; Shiny rare 310; Holo Rare V 237; Special illustration rare 232; the remaining 19 strings 569 between them.²² Scarlet & Violet alone (19 sets, 3,698 cards): Common 1,116; Uncommon 775; Illustration rare 392; Rare 267; Ultra Rare 249; Double rare 229; Promo 226; Special illustration rare 167; Shiny rare 120; Hyper rare 74; None 34; ACE SPEC Rare 33; Shiny Ultra Rare 12; Black White Rare 4.²² Across the Japanese index: Common 3,175; Uncommon 2,326; None 2,110; Rare 947; Ultra Rare 727; no listing 665; Double rare 629; Holo Rare 519; Promo 420; Illustration rare 375; Hyper rare 192; Secret Rare 171; Special illustration rare 146; the other ten strings 379.²²

The strings are not the printed symbols. Ten of the printed English marks in Section 1’s table have no TCGdex string of their own (Shining Holo, Rare Holo ex, Pokémon Star, EX, the first ACE SPEC, BREAK, GX, Prism Star, Mega Attack Rare, RGB Rare), and Base Set’s holofoils are filed under “Rare”, so a card page cannot draw the right symbol from the string alone for older cards.²³¹ One set shows how far apart they sit: TCGdex lists BREAKthrough’s Chesnaught BREAK (xy8-12) and both Houndoom-EX prints (xy8-21 and xy8-153) under the one string “Ultra Rare”, while Bulbapedia’s row values for the same three cards are Rare BREAK, Rare Holo ex and Rare Ultra (row labels, not printed names: Houndoom-EX is a Pokémon-EX, Section 1’s Rare Holo EX, not a Rare Holo ex).²²⁶⁵ Two Japanese first dates are shaped by the catalog rather than the cards: TCGdex’s first Japanese “Triple Rare” is S5I (January 2021) because S1 to S4a are not in the index, while Bulbapedia’s first RRR is Sword/Shield (December 2019); and TCGdex’s first Japanese “Mega Hyper Rare” is S10P (April 2022), three years before Bulbapedia’s first MUR in Mega Brave (August 1, 2025). On my reading, the catalog is using that string for an older gold tier.²³³

Set codes. 190 of the 201 English index sets have an official abbreviation in TCGdex (abbreviation.official) and 118 a Pokémon TCG Online code; no Japanese set has either.²⁴ Only the abbreviations of English sets from 2023 on match a code printed on the card; older English cards carried a symbol instead.¹⁸

Legality. TCGdex marks every one of the 317 index sets legal.standard: false, including me05 (Pitch Black, July 2026), while the card me01-001, marked I, is standard: true.²⁴⁶⁶ Set-level legality is unusable; the official pages say legality comes from the card’s regulation mark, with an exception for reprints, and a flag on the set can express neither.⁵

How the app ranks a rarity today

Kiradex turns a rarity string into a tier for its collection progress, and into a foil style for the 3D card, by reading the string’s words. Progression.Rarity.init(catalog:) checks for “secret”, “hyper”, “rainbow”, “special illustration” and “gold” first, then a list of ultra words (“illustration”, “ultra”, “full art”, “shiny”, ” ex”, ” v”, “double”, “legend”, “prime” and others), then “holo”, “rare”, “uncommon” and “common”; an empty string or “None” falls back to uncommon.²⁶ FoilStyle keeps two exact lists, one for smooth full-face foil and one for etched foil.⁶⁷ I transcribed both into Python and applied them to every string the index’s cards carry. This is what the code does today:²⁵

The first eight rows are where the words mislead. “Triple”, “Character” and “Super” are not in the word lists, so three Japanese full-art and VMAX tiers fall through to “rare”. “Black White Rare” contains none of the secret words, so the top tier of Black Bolt and White Flare ranks with an ordinary rare, even though FoilStyle already gives it the etched foil of the top tiers. “Pikachu” and “Futuristic” are in neither list, so 30th Celebration’s two new tiers rank as plain rares, though its Futuristic Rares are numbered past the set’s 128.²⁷ “Promo” is not a rarity and the fallback calls it uncommon. And “LV.X” matches only “holo”, while LEGEND and Prime are named in the ultra list.²⁶⁶⁷²⁵ None of this changes which card the scanner finds; it changes how much a card counts toward a collector’s progress, and it is visible to them.

7. The brief: what Kiradex builds and the checks it must pass

This is what the app should do with the facts above. None of it has shipped; each item ends with a check a capture, a log line or a script can verify. Symbols are drawn by Kiradex as its own vector diagrams, a circle, a diamond, stars in counts and colors, and letter codes set in type; no card scans and no publisher artwork.

1. A bottom-line strip on every card page

Under the card, one chip per printed item, each opening a one-line explanation in plain words.

Acceptance checks:

• A capture of the English card sv01-245 shows Number 245/198 Secret, Rarity Special Illustration Rare with two gold stars drawn, Set SVI, and Mark G with Mark rotated April 10, 2026. (Bulbapedia and TCGdex both list that card as Special Illustration Rare with mark G.)⁶⁸²²⁵⁹
• A capture of a Japanese SV1a card numbered above 073 shows its rarity as letters (for example SAR), not as a star. It shows /073 Secret only once SV1a’s official of 73 is stored as verified, and until then the number with no Secret label. What unlocks it is a Japanese check like the English one: a saved mapping from the index’s Japanese set ids to Bulbapedia’s English-titled pages (SV1a to Triplet Beat, whose rows read /073), or the denominator in the official card list.⁶³
• A capture of a Japanese card from before the letters, PCG1-001 (2004, which TCGdex lists as Common), shows a circle and the word Common, not the letter C.²⁸²²⁷
• A capture of a card from the Japanese Expansion Pack (PMCG1, October 20, 1996 in the index) draws the symbol of the print that has one, and its explanation adds Also printed with no rarity symbol. The set was printed both ways, and the index holds one entry for both prints, so the chip shows the print it can describe and names the one it cannot tell apart.²⁸⁴³
• The Secret rule, written out: the card’s number is all digits; its set is not a promo set, by name (the 11 English sets named as promos and Japan’s SV-P and M-P; an id ending in “p” is not the test); the set’s official is above zero; that official has been checked against the denominator printed on the set’s cards in a second source and stored as verified; and the number is above it. A set with an official of 0, or one not yet verified, shows the number and no Secret label.¹³⁵⁴
• A script over both index files asserts that rule. Against the October 2, 2026 index, before any verification, the rule’s ceiling is 1,966 English cards in 97 sets and 2,449 Japanese cards in 89 sets. A first check against Bulbapedia’s saved English set tables, matched by page name and then by table title, confirms official for 85 of the 97 English sets (1,945 cards), disagrees for Ancient Origins (TCGdex 98, Bulbapedia’s rows /95), and leaves 11 sets not matched by page name or table title (the EX-era sets from Dragon to Holon Phantoms, whose pages and tables carry an “EX” prefix the index’s names lack; 19 cards); the Japanese sets are not yet checked. The test fixtures: svp-500 shows no Secret label (a promo); a MEP promo and a 30th Classic Collection card show none (official 0); sv01-245 shows Secret.¹³⁶⁹
• The same script asserts the rarity’s form by language and era: no English card renders a letter code; no Japanese card released on or after December 17, 2010 renders a symbol; no Japanese card released before it renders a letter code. The October 2 index holds 2,184 Japanese cards in 26 sets from before that date, and only two sets (CP1 and CP2, 2015) between that date and Sun & Moon in December 2016.²⁸

2. Symbol to meaning, by language and era

The Rarity chip’s explanation comes from a table the app owns, keyed by language, era and rarity, written from Sections 1 and 2: the three base symbols from 1999; the mechanic marks by their first sets; the Scarlet & Violet star counts and colors from March 31, 2023; the Japanese codes with their English equivalents where Bulbapedia gives one (RR Double Rare, AR Illustration Rare, SAR Special Illustration Rare, UR Hyper Rare, MUR Mega Hyper Rare, MA Mega Attack Rare, and FUR Futuristic Rare from the 30th Celebration set page). Where this guide marks a name as my reading (PR, S, SSR, A, K, TR, which has no name in what I read, and RRR, whose name is common usage, not sourced), the app says less: the code, and Name not verified in our sources. For Shiny Rare it names Paldean Fates as the first official Shiny Rare and shows Shining Fates’ printed “SH” star without calling it the same rarity.¹²⁷²⁹

A catalog string does not always fix the printed rarity, even within one language, era and set. TCGdex files BREAKthrough’s xy8-12, xy8-21 and xy8-153 under “Ultra Rare”; Bulbapedia’s row values for them are Rare BREAK, Rare Holo ex and Rare Ultra.²²⁶⁵ A row value is Bulbapedia’s label, not necessarily the printed name: xy8-21 is Houndoom-EX, and Section 1’s table separates Rare Holo ex (the Pokémon-ex of 2003) from Rare Holo EX (the Pokémon-EX of 2012), whose rarity Bulbapedia’s Rarity page gives as “Their rarity is rare Holo EX.”¹ So each table entry is keyed by language, era and string, and holds either one printed rarity or unresolved. An entry gets one printed rarity only when a per-card source (the new rarity field read from the printed card, or a vetted set list whose row values are normalized to printed names first) agrees for every card carrying that string in that era; otherwise the chip shows the catalog’s word, draws no symbol, and says Printed rarity not resolved.

Acceptance: a unit test renders the explanation for every TCGdex rarity string the index’s cards carry (32 English and 22 Japanese strings, TCG Pocket’s excluded) and fails on any string with no entry.²² A second test is the collision: xy8-12 renders Rare BREAK or Printed rarity not resolved; xy8-21 renders Rare Holo EX or Printed rarity not resolved, and fails on Rare Holo ex, the row value taken unnormalized; xy8-153 renders Rare Ultra or Printed rarity not resolved; and the test fails if any of them shows a symbol or name taken from the shared string alone.

3. A rotation table the app owns

TCGdex’s set-level legal.standard is false for all 317 index sets, so Kiradex carries its own small table from the official dates, and computes the mark’s rotation status from the card’s mark and language.²⁴ That status is not the card’s legality. pokemon.com’s 2026 announcement keeps a Rebel Clash Boss’s Orders marked D legal because the Mega Evolution printing carries I, and points to a Tournament Rules Handbook for which reprints count; I could not reach the handbook, so the app does not compute legality. It shows Mark rotated and the date, never Not legal, and adds the one-line reprint caveat.⁵⁴²

Sources: pokemon.com’s rotation announcements for the English column, pokemon-card.com’s notices for the Japanese.^{141516556192021574} A B card reads Mark rotated with no date until the notice is found. The chip says in-person play for the English date, because Pokémon TCG Live rotates about two weeks earlier.⁵ Next year’s row is added when the announcements are published, not predicted.

Acceptance: a unit test asserts each date in the table against the date strings in the saved announcements and notices (the 2025 and 2026 English pages and the Japanese notices are in the evidence folder; the 2023 and 2024 English dates need a saved copy first), and that a G card reads Mark rotated in both languages as of October 4, 2026, with April 10, 2026 for an English card and January 23, 2026 for a Japanese one. The official reprint example is a fixture: the Rebel Clash Boss’s Orders swsh2-154, marked D in TCGdex and in Bulbapedia’s Rebel Clash list, reads Mark rotated April 14, 2023 with the reprint caveat, and the test fails if its chip says Not legal or Legal; the Mega Evolution printing me01-114, marked I, reads Mark in Standard.⁵⁵⁹⁷⁰

4. A scanner that reads the bottom line

The scanner already survives the mark and the rarity code run into the number: its tests read “74/144G”, “64/9507” and “SIOP F 037/067C” and still find the card.⁴⁵ It should parse them instead.

• The regulation mark. A single capital A to J standing beside the set code or expansion mark. Use it as a tie-breaker when two printings share a number: a reprint with a different mark is a different printing.
• The Japanese rarity code. A trailing code from Section 2’s table (C, U, R, RR, RRR, AR, SR, SAR, HR, UR, ACE, S, SSR, CHR, CSR, A, K, PR, TR, MA, MUR, BWR, FUR) on a Japanese line, read only on cards from December 17, 2010 on. A is both a rarity code (Amazing Rare, on my reading) and a regulation letter, so position decides: the mark stands beside the expansion mark, the rarity code after the number.
• The English set code. From 2023, a line such as SVI EN 245/198 names the set outright; match the code against the new code field before falling back to the name and year.
• Say what it saw. After a scan, show the parsed bottom line (G · SVI · 245/198 · two gold stars) so a collector can see which parts were read and correct a misread.

Acceptance: a fixture scan of an English Scarlet & Violet card reading G SVI EN 245/198 resolves to sv01-245 by code and number without the card’s name; a fixture of a Japanese card reading SV1a G 096/073 SAR yields mark G and rarity SAR in the match result; a fixture reading A 092/095 TR, from a Tag Bolt row Bulbapedia lists as 092/095 with mark A and rarity TR, yields mark A and rarity TR, with the code’s name left unresolved; all run in ScannerTests.³

5. Index fields to add

scripts/build_card_index.py already fetches each set’s card list, one request per set, but that listing returns brief cards with no rarity or mark.⁶¹ TCGdex’s rarity and mark listings carry both; fetch_tcgdex.py shows that route costs 66 requests per build for rarity and 21 for marks, both languages and the listings themselves included, far fewer than one request per card.⁷¹

Acceptance: after a rebuild, a script reports 0 English cards without a rarity other than TCGdex’s “None” (529 today) and lists the Japanese cards still without one (2,775 today), so the gap shrinks visibly with each catalog update.²²

6. The missing Japanese sets

ADV, DP, DPt, LEGEND, BW and the XY main sets are not in the Japanese index, nor S1 to S4a.²⁸ Before changing the builder, check whether TCGdex has them.

Acceptance: a script lists every Japanese set in Bulbapedia’s expansion list that is absent from CardIndex-ja.json, and for each says whether TCGdex’s Japanese set listing has it. The result decides whether this is a builder fix or a catalog gap.

7. Fix the tiering

In Progression.Rarity.init(catalog:), map Triple Rare, Character Rare and Character Super Rare to ultra; map Black White Rare to secret, the top of its set, as its etched foil already says; map Futuristic Rare to secret, because Bulbapedia’s 30th Celebration list numbers both of its English cards past the printed set size (157/128 and 158/128), and every FUR row in Section 2 sits past the set size too; map Pikachu Rare to holo, because every card in 30th Celebration is holofoil and its 30 Pikachu rares are numbered inside the set (023/128 to 052/128), one to a pack; map Promo to .rare; and move Rare Holo LV.X to ultra beside LEGEND and Prime.^2625273 Only the “None” row of Section 6’s table is left as it is: it waits for item 5’s rarity field. The Pikachu Rare and promo choices are policies, not readings of the card. Pikachu Rare’s gives each of those cards the holo tier (35 experience, and credit toward First Holo) and nothing above it. The promo choice: a promo has no printed rarity, so it should count above an unknown card’s uncommon fallback (15 experience) without claiming a foil the catalog does not record. .rare gives it 25 experience, and, because only holo, ultra and secret cards add to the holo tally and only secret cards to the secret tally, a promo earns neither First Holo nor Kira.²⁶

Acceptance: a Swift unit test in ProgressionTests, beside the existing rarityIsReadFromTheWordsTheCatalogUses, expects Progression.Rarity(catalog:) to return .ultra for Triple Rare, Character Rare, Character Super Rare and Rare Holo LV.X, .secret for Black White Rare and Futuristic Rare, .holo for Pikachu Rare, and exactly .rare for Promo, with Progression.Rarity.rare.rawValue == 25. A second test builds a Progression from one promo card and asserts tally.holos == 0, tally.secrets == 0, and no .firstHolo or .kira pin. Every one of the rarity expectations fails on today’s code and must pass after the fix, with the existing progression tests still passing.²⁶⁷² The card counts the fix moves come from measure_index.py section C1, which is a Python copy of today’s Swift, not the app, and so cannot show the fix itself: 65, 52 and 46 Japanese cards to ultra, 6 Black White Rare cards and 2 Futuristic Rare cards to secret, 30 Pikachu Rare cards to holo, 59 LV.X cards to ultra, and 1,530 promos out of uncommon.²⁵

Not in this brief

• Card images as figures, in the post or the app’s explanations. Symbols are drawn as diagrams.
• Value from rarity. The page explains a symbol; it does not price or rank a card by it.
• The publisher’s symbol artwork and set logos. Kiradex draws its own glyphs; the set symbols the index links to (TCGdex assets) stay catalog data, shown small, as the Dex already shows them.
• TCG Pocket. Its rarities are in TCGdex’s vocabulary, but its cards cannot be scanned, and the builder already leaves them out.⁶¹
• Predicting rotations. The table holds published dates only.
• A legality verdict. Until the reprint rules are saved from the Tournament Rules Handbook, the app reports the mark’s rotation status and the reprint caveat, not whether a card may be played.

Key Takeaways

If you collect

• Read the bottom edge, not the art. Rarity, set, number, regulation mark and illustrator are all there; Japan’s own card diagram puts five of its 16 parts on that line.³³
• On an English card from before 2023, a circle is Common, a diamond Uncommon, a star Rare, and any other mark belongs to a mechanic. From March 31, 2023, count the stars and read their color: two silver Ultra Rare, one gold Illustration Rare, two gold Special Illustration Rare, three gold Hyper Rare, hollow gold Shiny, pink ACE SPEC.¹
• On a Japanese card, the letters are the rarity, and every secret-tier code (AR, SR, SAR, UR and the others in Section 2) is a secret card. Translate across languages by the table, not the words: Japanese UR is English Hyper Rare, AR is Illustration Rare, SAR is Special Illustration Rare.¹³
• A number above the set size is a secret, and since 2023 every English rarity above Double Rare except ACE SPEC Rare is one.¹²
• Standard legality is the regulation letter, not the set, and a reprint with a legal letter can keep an older printing playable. From 2023 to 2026 Japan dropped the oldest letter in late January and English play in April; G left on January 23 and April 10, 2026.⁴⁵
• A Japanese expansion mark is not a regulation mark; pokemon-card.com says so in each of its notices for the January 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026 rotations. On an English card since 2023, the set code names the set, and the regulation letter beside it is a separate mark.^49192021418
• A catalog’s rarity word is a reading of the card, not the card. TCGdex has none for one Japanese card in five in our index.²²

If you build the app

• Do not compute legality from a set. TCGdex’s set-level flag is false for all 317 sets in our index; compute the mark’s rotation status from the card’s mark, the card’s language and a table of official dates you own, and call it that, because a reprint can keep a rotated card legal (pokemon.com’s example is a D-marked Boss’s Orders).²⁴⁵
• Store what is printed, separately from what the catalog calls it: the rarity code or symbol, the regulation mark and the printed set code, per card.⁶
• Join rarity and marks from the catalog’s listings, not card by card: 87 requests per build cover both languages.⁷¹
• Treat a number above a verified, nonzero official as a secret everywhere (in the label, the progress count and the scan), but never in a promo set: SVP’s 500 is a promo number, not a secret.¹³
• Read a rarity string by an explicit table, not by its words; word matching ranks seven rarities (Triple Rare, two Japanese full-art tiers, Black White Rare, LV.X, Pikachu Rare and Futuristic Rare) and every promo too low today.²⁵
• Let the scanner say what it read. The bottom line is short, structured and already in the OCR output; parse it and show it.⁴⁵
• Mark what you cannot source. A code no page names, a rotation date not fetched, a disputed first set: say so on the page instead of filling the gap.

FAQ

What do the symbols at the bottom of a Pokémon card mean?

They are the rarity. On English cards a circle is Common, a diamond Uncommon and a star Rare, as they have been since Base Set in 1999. From Scarlet & Violet (March 31, 2023), higher tiers are counts and colors of stars: two stars Double Rare, two silver Ultra Rare, one gold Illustration Rare, two gold Special Illustration Rare, three gold Hyper Rare, hollow gold for Shiny Rare and Shiny Ultra Rare, and a pink star for ACE SPEC Rare. Promos carry a Black Star Promo symbol instead of a rarity.¹²⁹

What does a number like 245/198 mean on a Pokémon card?

The second number is the printed set size and the first is the card’s number. When the first is larger, the card is a secret card, numbered past the set: 245/198 is the 47th card past 198. The first was Dark Raichu, 83/82, in Team Rocket (2000). Since Scarlet & Violet, every English rarity other than Common, Uncommon, Rare, Double Rare and ACE SPEC Rare is numbered this way, and in Bulbapedia’s Japanese lists from 2016 on, every secret-tier code (AR, SR, SAR, UR and the others listed in Section 2) is too.¹²³

What do SR, SAR, AR and UR mean on Japanese Pokémon cards?

They are Japanese rarity codes, printed as letters since December 2010.¹ SR is Super Rare and UR is Ultra Rare, in The Pokémon Company’s own words.³⁵³⁶ AR (Art Rare) and SAR (Special Art Rare) were introduced as new rarities in VSTAR Universe on December 2, 2022.⁹ By Bulbapedia’s table they correspond to English Illustration Rare and Special Illustration Rare, and UR corresponds to English Hyper Rare.¹ Others include RR (Double Rare), RRR (Triple Rare: common usage, not sourced), CHR and CSR (Character Rare and Character Super Rare, named on VMAX Climax’s page), ACE, BWR (read “B-W rare” on its official page; Black White Rare in Bulbapedia’s English lists), MUR (English Mega Hyper Rare) and MA (Mega Attack Rare).^14138401211

What is the regulation mark on a Pokémon card?

A single letter at the bottom of the card that decides whether it is legal in the Standard format, unless a reprint with a legal letter keeps an older printing playable. Japan began with A in December 2016; English cards began at D with Sword & Shield in 2020 to match. Each year the oldest legal letter rotates out: in English play D left on April 14, 2023, E on April 5, 2024, F on April 11, 2025 and G on April 10, 2026. As of October 4, 2026, H, I and J are legal.^491415165

Do Japanese and English Pokémon cards rotate on the same date?

No. In each rotation from 2023 to 2026, Japan rotated in late January and English in-person play in April, with Pokémon TCG Live about two weeks before that. The G mark left Japanese Standard on January 23, 2026 and English play on April 10, 2026, 77 days apart; D, E and F left English play 84, 70 and 77 days after Japan.⁴⁵¹⁷

Can a Japanese card and the English version of it have different rarities?

Yes. Bulbapedia: “The rarity of a card may vary between Japanese and other-language releases.” The numbering can differ too: before Black & White, cards that were secret in English were usually numbered normally or released as promos in Japan, and Japanese full arts were always secret while English ones sat inside the set until 2023.¹¹²

What is the code like SVI or SV1a printed on a card?

On English cards since Scarlet & Violet, it is the set code, printed with a language code where the set symbol used to be; SVI is Scarlet & Violet. On Japanese cards it is the expansion mark, which names the product; the official rotation notices for the January 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2026 rotations warn that it does not indicate the regulation.^18241920214

Related on this site: Prepare Your App for iPhone Duo is the walk-through that introduced Kiradex, the collector’s app this brief is for; Pixel-Art Worlds on iPhone covers Kiradex World, where the collector’s favorite card rises out of the plaza as the one shaded object in a pixel town; Pixel-Art People: Characters and a Creator on iPhone, Pixel-Art Structures: Houses, Halls and Interiors on iPhone and Pixel-Art Motion: Walks, Cameras and Doors on iPhone are the rest of that series, the same measured method applied to the town the cards live in.

Sources