What Is a Chase Card in Trading Cards? Collector Guide

What Is a Chase Card?

A chase card is any trading card that collectors actively pursue beyond the base set - a card so rare, desirable, or visually striking that it drives purchasing behaviour across an entire product line. The name comes from the act of "chasing" the rare card through box after box, pack after pack.

Chase cards exist across every major trading card game and collectible card set. They differ by game and era in their names, rarity symbols, and pull rates, but they share the same fundamental characteristic: they are significantly harder to find than standard cards and significantly more valuable as a result.

The concept is deceptively simple - make most of a product easy to find, and a small fraction very difficult to find - but the execution determines whether a product becomes a cultural phenomenon or a footnote. When the chase card is desirable enough, collectors will open hundreds of packs to find it, spend significant secondary-market premiums to acquire it, or obsess over pack-opening streams hoping to see the pull live.

Track your trading card collection - including your chase hits - on CollectionPlnr's Pokemon section or the MTG section.

How Chase Cards Work

Trading card sets are designed in tiers of rarity. The base set includes common cards, uncommons, and rares - these appear in nearly every pack. Chase cards sit above these tiers, appearing at much lower rates that manufacturers sometimes publish as pull rates.

A pull rate tells you approximately how often a chase card appears. For example, a card with a 1-in-72-pack pull rate means you would need to open roughly 72 packs on average before finding one. Because a booster box typically contains 36 packs, that specific card might appear roughly once every two boxes on average.

Pull rates are averages governed by statistical distribution, not a guarantee of when a card will appear. You might pull two copies in one box or go six boxes without one. This unpredictability is a deliberate part of the product design and is central to why pack opening has such powerful entertainment appeal. Each pack carry the possibility of containing a card worth ten or a hundred times the pack price.

Publishers do not always disclose official pull rates. The community derives them through mass-opening data - collectors who open thousands of packs and publish their results, which can then be averaged to estimate pull frequencies. These community estimates are generally reliable though they carry their own statistical uncertainty.

Chase Cards in Pokemon

The Pokemon Trading Card Game organises rarity into one of the most clearly defined hierarchies in the industry:

Common, Uncommon, Rare: Found in nearly every pack. The foundation of any set.
Holo Rare: A foil card found roughly once per pack in many sets. The entry point for most collectors.
Ultra Rare: GX cards, EX cards, V cards, VMAX cards, and similar - found roughly once per two to three packs in most products. These are the most played premium cards in competitive decks.
Secret Rare: Cards numbered above the official set total (e.g., card 201/200). These are the beginning of the true chase tier - rarer than ultra rares and usually featuring alternate artwork or special treatments.
Illustration Rare (IR): Full-art borderless cards with art that extends to the card edges. Pull rates approximately 1 in 8-10 packs in modern sets. Popular subjects command premiums over less popular subjects at the same rarity.
Special Illustration Rare (SIR): Watercolour-style illustrated cards with unique scene-based artwork. The primary chase tier in modern Pokemon. Pull rates approximately 1 in 15-20 packs.
Hyper Rare / Gold Card: Entirely gold-textured card frames. The rarest tier, appearing approximately 1 in 35-60 packs. A booster box often yields zero Hyper Rares.

In modern Pokemon sets from the Scarlet and Violet era onward, the Special Illustration Rares featuring characters like Charizard, Pikachu, and popular trainers are the primary chase cards. A single Charizard SIR from a popular set can be worth $100-$400+ raw (ungraded), and graded copies in PSA 10 command multiples of that.

Chase Cards in Magic: The Gathering

Magic: The Gathering has developed one of the most complex rarity systems in trading cards, reflecting the game's deep design history and expanding product line:

Common, Uncommon, Rare, Mythic Rare: The base print-on-demand tiers found in all boosters. Mythic Rares appear approximately once per three packs on average.
Special Guest / Bonus Sheet cards: Found in some sets at approximately 1 in 5 packs - elevated rarity within the standard booster, often reprints of powerful older cards in new art treatments.
Serialised Cards: Limited print runs with serial numbers (e.g., /500 or /250) embedded in the card frame. Introduced in The Brothers' War, these are among the rarest chase cards in modern Magic and command extraordinary premiums.
Foil treatments: Showcase foil, borderless foil, extended art foil, and retro frame foil - multiple parallel versions of the same card at different rarity levels create a complex chase hierarchy within a single set.
The List / Retro Frame cards: Reprints of older cards appearing as bonus inserts in certain products. Occasionally include Reserved List cards or powerful old cards that collectors prize for nostalgia and play value.

Chase cards in Magic span from specific mythic rares in high demand for competitive play to showcase or alt-art variants of format staples. A borderless foil Thoughtseize or a showcase foil Liliana of the Veil can be worth ten to twenty times the value of the standard printing of the same card, purely for the premium treatment. The Reserved List also creates a category of permanent chase cards - see our MTG Reserved List guide for details.

Chase Cards in Yu-Gi-Oh

Yu-Gi-Oh uses a different rarity nomenclature but the fundamental chase dynamic is identical - layers of rarity that reward lucky pulls or deep pockets:

Ultra Rare, Ultimate Rare: High-gloss foil cards, found roughly one per pack in many sets. The expected premium pull for most products.
Secret Rare: Distinctive diagonal holographic foil pattern covering the card art, found approximately 1 in 23 packs. The classic Yu-Gi-Oh chase tier.
Prismatic Secret Rare: Secret Rare with additional prismatic foiling across the entire card. Premium treatment, lower pull rate.
Quarter Century Secret Rare: Introduced for the game's 25th anniversary celebrations, these ultra-premium cards feature distinctive gold borders and are among the most valuable modern Yu-Gi-Oh chase cards. Certain QCR copies have sold for hundreds of dollars.
Ghost Rare: Extremely limited printings with a 3D holographic effect that makes the card art appear to float. Pull rates are some of the lowest in the game, making genuine Ghost Rares genuinely scarce.

Chase cards in Yu-Gi-Oh depend heavily on whether the card is a meta staple - a card played heavily in competitive tournament decks. A Secret Rare of a format-defining card can be worth $50-$200+, while a Secret Rare of a card with no competitive applications might be worth under $5 despite identical rarity. This competitive utility factor makes Yu-Gi-Oh chase cards more volatile than in games where competitive and collector demand overlap less directly.

What Makes a Chase Card Valuable?

Pull rate alone does not determine value. The most expensive chase cards combine several factors, and understanding the interaction between them is key to evaluating whether a chase card is priced fairly on the secondary market:

Rarity: Lower pull rates mean fewer copies in circulation, creating real scarcity. But rarity without demand creates no value.
Demand: Popular characters (Charizard, Pikachu) or powerful competitive cards drive buying regardless of rarity. A common Charizard can outsell a rare card of an unpopular Pokemon.
Artwork: Beautiful, unique, or artist-specific illustrations command premiums. Pokemon SIRs with watercolour full-art aesthetics are the clearest recent example - the art treatment transformed what might have been modest premiums into the primary driver of set value.
Condition: Chase cards are graded by PSA, BGS, CGC, and other services. A PSA 10 copy of a low-pull-rate card can be worth 3-10x a PSA 9 copy, because PSA 10 populations are genuinely small even for modern cards.
Age and print run: Older sets with smaller print runs have fewer copies in existence. First edition Pokemon base set Charizard is the most famous example - a Holo Rare, not even a secret rare by modern standards, worth six figures in pristine condition purely due to age-driven scarcity.
Set reputation: Some sets are known for strong chase cards and maintain better secondary market values across their entire range. Collector confidence in a set's design quality affects how the market prices even mid-tier cards.

Chase Cards and the Pack-Opening Experience

Chase cards are the engine behind pack-opening culture. The possibility of pulling a high-value chase card transforms each pack into a lottery ticket. Streamers, YouTubers, and collectors share pack-opening videos specifically because the chase card moment - the reveal of a hit - generates genuine excitement that resonates with audiences whether or not they are collectors themselves.

Publishers carefully calibrate pull rates to maintain this tension. Too common and the cards lose value and excitement; too rare and buyers feel the product is not worth purchasing. The sweet spot - where the pull rate keeps individual cards valuable while still making hits feel achievable - creates consistent demand for sealed product across the entire market cycle.

For collectors who prefer not to gamble on pulls, the secondary market offers every chase card at market price. The trade-off is paying more per card but eliminating the variance. Many serious collectors buy specific chase cards they want directly rather than opening product, treating the cards as collectibles to acquire rather than prizes to win.

See how chase card values compare with our guide to valuing Pokemon cards, or track what you have already pulled on CollectionPlnr.