Every 30th Celebration Pikachu card: illustrators and prices

The short version

Every ordinary 30th Celebration pack carries one Pikachu rare, and there are exactly 30 of them, numbered 23 through 52 with no gaps, every one by a different illustrator. As of September 23, 2026 the dearest is Pikachu #40 by Shinji Kanda at about $6.44, and the cheapest is Pikachu #45 by Naoyo Kimura at about $1.11. One of each of the 30 comes to about $64.12 at raw Near Mint market, an average of about $2.14 and a median of about $1.61. Twelve sit above that average and 18 below it.

The dearest is about 5.8 times the cheapest, a difference of about $5.33 in absolute terms, and half the run, 15 cards, sits inside a 44 cent band from $1.11 to $1.55. The table below lists all 30 with illustrator and price, ordered by price. One thing to settle first: the 30th Celebration release has six more Pikachu cards that are not part of this run, four in the main set and two in the Classic Collection that this site files separately, and each of the two dearest of those six costs more than all 30 of these combined. They are covered further down, and none of them is a Pikachu Rare.

Where the set stands

The set-wide numbers below cover the whole main set, these 30 included.

All 30, by price

Each rarity line in the data reads "Pikachu Rare", the label this site's database gives the 30. Prices are raw, ungraded, Near Mint TCGplayer market prices as of September 23, 2026, and they move daily.

The card number is the fastest way to identify what came out of a pack. Every one of these is a plain Pikachu with no suffix, so the name will not separate them, and the number runs 23, 24, 25 and so on to 52 in one unbroken block.

How flat the run is

Pikachu #40 at about $6.44 is about 10 percent of the $64.12 total on its own, which means the other 29 carry the remaining 90 percent between them. The ten dearest add up to about $33.78, roughly 53 percent of the total. The ten cheapest add up to about $13.22, roughly 21 percent. That is a ratio of about 2.6 to 1 between the top third and the bottom third of the run.

The bottom is where it flattens hardest. Eighteen of the 30 sit under $2, and 13 of them sit under $1.50. From #44 at about $1.55 down to #45 at about $1.11, 15 cards are separated by 44 cents in total, with several ties: #38 and #52 are both about $1.47, and #30, #33 and #31 are all about $1.35. At that density, a few cents of movement reorders half the table, so the ranking inside that band says less than the band itself does.

#40 at about $6.44 and #32 by Tomokazu Komiya at about $4.03 are the only two above $4, and the $2.41 between them is the largest step in the table. Below #40 no step between neighbouring cards is larger than 45 cents: from #32 to the third card, #36 by OKACHEKE at about $3.71, it is 32 cents, and the decline is gradual all the way down from there.

One per pack, and the duplicate arithmetic

The guaranteed slot is what sets this tier apart from the others in the set. A Pikachu rare is not something a pack might contain, it is something every ordinary pack contains, so the interesting quantity is not whether one turns up but how many distinct ones a given number of packs produces.

One published rate covers the Pikachu slot, and there is none for any individual card, so the arithmetic below gives each of the 30 an equal share. That equal share comes from the shape of the rate, not from anything known about the print sheets. On that basis, one named card, say #40, averages 30 packs. Thirty packs produce 30 Pikachu rares but only about 19 different ones on average, because duplicates start early: roughly 11 of those 30 cards repeat something already in the pile. Sixty packs bring the modelled count to about 26 distinct. Finishing all 30 takes about 120 packs on average, and the shape of that is lopsided. The first 15 distinct cards arrive in about 20 packs. The last 15 take about 100 more.

Value-wise the duplicates sit close to the singles, because the whole run spans about $5.33 from top to bottom. The tier averages about $2.14 a pack at raw market on these prices, and that is the Pikachu slot alone, not the rest of the pack. Sorting a pile of them by price changes very little: the duplicate of a $1.35 card and the duplicate of a $2.24 card are 89 cents apart. Whole-pack figures are in Is 30th Celebration worth opening?.

Thirty cards, thirty illustrators

All 30 carry a different credit, and no name repeats anywhere in the run. Ken Sugimori, Atsuko Nishida, James Turner, Shinji Kanda, Tomokazu Komiya and 25 others each appear exactly once.

Where those names land in the table: Shinji Kanda has the dearest card, #40 at about $6.44, and Tomokazu Komiya the second dearest, #32 at about $4.03. James Turner's #29 is about $2.65. #23 by Ken Sugimori is about $1.66 and #47 by Atsuko Nishida about $1.73, both in the middle of the table. The two cheapest are #49 by Nurikabe at about $1.28 and #45 by Naoyo Kimura at about $1.11.

The six other Pikachu cards, which are not part of the 30

None of the six carries the Pikachu Rare label, and none comes out of the guaranteed slot.

The two Special Illustration Rares, both by kantaro, come to about $195.51 between them, about three times the $64.12 that all 30 Pikachu rares add up to. Pikachu ex #150 at about $111.96 is about 17 times the dearest card in the run.

Two of the six sit in the Classic Collection rather than the main set, and one of them shares a number with the run of 30. Pikachu & Zekrom-GX, at about $50.99, carries the number 33, and so does Pikachu #33 by Narumi Sato, at about $1.35. The Classic Collection Pikachu #58 by Mitsuhiro Arita, at about $30.41, is filed as a Common. How that subset reaches packs is covered in 30th Celebration Classic Collection cards: odds and prices.

One more point on the artist question: not one of the six is by any of the 30 illustrators in the guaranteed run. kantaro, Mitsuhiro Arita, takuyoa and 5ban Graphics appear nowhere in the table further up, so the 30 credits and the other Pikachu credits in the release do not overlap.

Bottom line

Thirty Pikachu rares, numbers 23 to 52, 30 credits, one per ordinary pack. As of September 23, 2026 they run from about $6.44 for Shinji Kanda's #40 down to about $1.11 for Naoyo Kimura's #45, with an average of about $2.14, a median of about $1.61, and about $64.12 for one of each. Fifteen of the 30 sit within 44 cents of one another. The six other Pikachu cards in the release are a different matter: the two kantaro Special Illustration Rares alone are about $195.51, and the Classic Collection Pikachu & Zekrom-GX shares the number 33 with one of the 30. Everything else about the expansion, the sealed figures and the rest of the pull-rate table, is in Is 30th Celebration worth opening? and on the set page.