Hippopotas · Astral Radiance, what to know.
About the Hippopotas card
Hippopotas sits at #79 in Astral Radiance, released in May 2022. Astral Radiance is part of the modern English Pokémon TCG era and uses the standard contemporary card frame and rarity tiers. Illustration by nagimiso.
The flavor text on the card reads: "Though large and languid, Hippopotas is difficult to detect due to its tendency to burrow into and lurk beneath the soil. When agitated or excited, it expels sand from its nostrils." Pokédex entries from this era are short and often quirky, written by the original Japanese localization team for a specific stat-block layout that no longer exists in modern cards.
Print variants and how to spot them
Astral Radiance shipped in Holofoil, Reverse Holo, V, VSTAR, Radiant, and Trainer Gallery prints. Radiant cards are a shiny-treatment rarity tier introduced in Astral Radiance. Trainer Gallery cards are numbered TG01 onwards as a parallel subset.
Grading and condition
Modern Commons grade easily and trade thinly in graded condition. Raw pack-fresh copies are the practical buy for set completion. PSA 10 submissions on a Common from a modern set rarely return enough premium over raw to justify the service fee.
If you are buying this card
Raw copies of this card are inexpensive enough that the grading math rarely justifies submission unless you have a clearly pack-fresh example. For set completionists, picking up a clean raw copy and sleeving it is the practical move.
