Best Pikachu Artwork in 30th Celebration: Our Picks

30th Celebration puts one of thirty different Pikachu rare cards in every booster pack, each with its own illustration. (sources: expansion page, announcement) Thirty is a lot to judge at once, so these are the six we would most want in a binder, and why. If you want the full run rather than our opinion, the visual checklist of all thirty shows every card in number order.

How we picked

This is our editorial selection, not a measurement. We have no pull-rate data, no sold-price study and no popularity survey for this set, and we are not going to invent any of the three. What we can do is look carefully at thirty card faces and say which ones work hardest as pictures. Three things decided it:

• Does the illustration tell you something? A Pikachu doing something specific, in a place, beats a Pikachu posed against a background.
• Does it use the whole card? The strongest entries in the run treat the frame as a scene rather than a portrait window.
• Does it still read at a glance? Cards that stay legible in a binder page, rather than dissolving into detail at arm's length.

None of that is a claim about what any card is worth or how hard it is to find. Values move, and a card being beautiful is not the same as it being scarce.

Our six picks

The two that bookend the run, 023/128 and 052/128, are worth owning together for a reason that has nothing to do with rarity: they mark the start and end of the sequence, and a binder page that opens and closes on them reads as a set rather than a pile. 036/128 and 040/128 are the two we would hang on a wall — both commit to a full scene and give Pikachu something to do in it. 047/128 is the calmest card in the run and benefits from it; 049/128 is the one that survives being seen from across a room.

Your six will probably not be our six, and that is rather the point of thirty illustrations. The useful thing is having all thirty in front of you before you choose.

The Pikachu cards outside the thirty

If you are picking on artwork alone, do not stop at the rares. The set also holds two Pikachu ex and two special illustration rare Pikachu ex, and the special illustration rares are the painted, full-scene versions of the ex cards — a different kind of picture from anything in the thirty.

The Pikachu checklist sets out exactly which Pikachu cards do and do not count towards the run of thirty, including the two Classic Collection reprints that keep their original set numbers.

Buying a specific one

Because every one of the thirty is a separate card with its own page, you can go straight to the one you want rather than opening packs and hoping. Each card above links to its own page, and the ME: 30th Celebration set page lists everything we track from the expansion together. Market references there are recent-sold references, not guaranteed values, and a listing being on the page is not a claim that it is a good deal — check the photographs and the description before you buy. If the exact card is not showing a listing right now, that only means our latest scan did not find an eligible one.

One practical warning that applies to all thirty: every card in a booster pack in this set is foil, including the Basic Energy. (source: announcement) Foiling on its own tells you nothing about which rarity a listing is showing you, so read the collector number.