Raichu · Silver Tempest, what to know.
About the Raichu card
Raichu sits at #50 in Silver Tempest, released in November 2022. Silver Tempest is part of the modern English Pokémon TCG era and uses the standard contemporary card frame and rarity tiers. Illustration by Megumi Mizutani. In the games, Raichu evolves from Pikachu, which makes it a late-stage card in the line.
The flavor text on the card reads: "Its long tail serves as a ground to protect itself from its own high-voltage power." 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.
About Raichu in the Pokémon world
The fully evolved Pikachu. Larger, orange-yellow body, with a long tail. Rare in the wild; usually requires a Thunder Stone evolution. Base Set holo Raichu is one of the famous "where is mine" cards. Its print run had inconsistent centering, and a famously rare prerelease variant exists.
Print variants and how to spot them
Silver Tempest 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 Uncommons grade cleanly. The secondary market for graded modern Uncommons is mostly set-completionist driven; standalone demand is thin. Useful as a first grading submission to learn the process.
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.
