Guide

Illustration Rare vs Special Illustration Rare vs Full Art

Short version: Illustration Rare and Special Illustration Rare are printed rarities, marked on the card with gold stars. Full Art is not a single rarity but a look: art that fills the whole card. Many Illustration Rares are full art, and many full-art cards are neither.

See the art for yourself

The differences side by side

Symbols apply to English cards since the Scarlet & Violet series. Older cards use other symbols, so a star on a card from before then does not mean the same thing.

Name	Symbol	What it shows	In the catalogue
Illustration Rare	One gold star	Usually a regular Pokémon, often in a scene	511
Special Illustration Rare	Two gold stars	Usually a Pokémon ex or Supporter, elaborate art	232
Ultra Rare	Two silver stars	Often a textured full-art Pokémon ex or Supporter	1,506
Full Art	None: it is a look, not a rarity	Art across the whole card	Not countable

Illustration Rare

An Illustration Rare (one gold star) gives a regular Pokémon, usually one without a special rule, a full-card illustration, often showing it in a scene instead of posed on a plain background. They appear in English sets in the catalogue from 2023, and it holds 511 of them.

Special Illustration Rare

A Special Illustration Rare (two gold stars) is the higher tier: full-card, usually elaborate artwork, typically of a Pokémon ex or a Supporter. The catalogue holds 232 of them.

Full Art

Full Art describes what you see: the illustration runs over the whole card, without the usual frame. Several rarities share that look. The one most often mixed up with a Special Illustration Rare is the Ultra Rare, which since Scarlet & Violet has two silver stars instead of two gold ones, and is often a textured full-art Pokémon ex or Supporter.

Because Full Art is not a printed rarity across all eras, no honest count of “all Full Art cards” can be read from rarity data alone. For the same reason, the catalogue’s labels are the data source’s, and a few sets use labels of their own.

How to tell them apart in your hand

Find the rarity symbol, at the bottom of the card.
One gold star: Illustration Rare. Two gold stars: Special Illustration Rare.
Two silver stars: Ultra Rare, even when the art fills the card.
Three gold stars: Hyper Rare, the gold cards, which is another tier again.

Which one is better?

Rarity tells you how a card was printed, not whether you will like it. Plenty of collectors prefer a quiet Illustration Rare to a loud Special Illustration Rare from the same set. The only way to find out is to look at a lot of them.

A few from the catalogue

See the art for yourself

Sources

Last updated 2026-11-04. Published by IllusCards.