Promo Cards (P-A / P-B) in Pokémon TCG Pocket: Where They Come From and Why They're Different
Promo cards in Pokémon TCG Pocket don't come from packs and can't be traded. Here's the real card counts by set, the rarity breakdown, and how they're actually obtained.
Promo Series A holds 117 cards across 13 numbered volumes, and Promo Series B holds 78 cards across 7 volumes — but neither set is opened with Pack Points or pulled from a Regular Pack. They're handed out through research, missions, and events, and once you have one, it stays with you: Promo cards cannot be traded, at any rarity, under any circumstances.
Not a Pack, a Reward Track
Every other set in the game is opened with a currency — Poké Gold, a free pack timer, or Pack Points redeemed directly — but Promo Series A and B don't work that way. Their cards come from research tasks, missions, and time-limited events instead, arriving as standalone rewards rather than pulls from a 5-card pack. That structural difference is also why Promo cards get their own set codes, PROMO-A and PROMO-B, separate from the numbered A1/A2/B1/B2-style sets that follow the normal pack-opening economy.
The Real Numbers by Set
Counted directly from our own card database:
| Set | Total cards | Volumes |
|---|---|---|
| PROMO-A | 117 | 13 |
| PROMO-B | 78 | 7 |
Rarity-wise, both Promo sets lean heavily toward the lower end — PROMO-A is 48 Common and 39 Rare out of its 117 cards, with only a small handful reaching Art Rare (16), Double Rare (10), or higher; PROMO-B follows the same shape at 28 Common and 28 Rare out of 78. The occasional high-rarity Promo card exists, but it's the exception in both sets, not the norm.
The One Rule That Never Bends: No Trading
Regardless of rarity, Promo cards cannot be traded — this holds even for the tiers that are freely tradeable in every other set, like Common and Rare. Combined with the fact that they can't be redeemed with Pack Points either, a Promo card you're missing has exactly one path back: whatever research, mission, or event track originally offered it, if and when it comes back around. There's no Shinedust workaround and no pack-opening shortcut for this category, which is a sharper restriction than anything else in the game — even Immersive Rare and Crown Rare cards, untradeable as they are, can still theoretically drop from a fresh pack pull.
What This Means for Your Collection Goals
If you're chasing full completion, treat Promo cards as a separate checklist from your main set-by-set collection — one that's driven by staying active through missions and events rather than by how many packs you've opened or how much Shinedust you've saved. A player who opens twice as many packs as you but skips missions entirely will still be behind on Promo completion, and there's no amount of extra pack-opening that closes that specific gap.
willReading a Promo Card's Rarity the Same Way
Even though the acquisition path is different, a Promo card's printed rarity still follows the same C/U/R/RR/AR-and-up scale used everywhere else on this wiki — a Common Promo card looks and functions identically to a Common from a numbered set once it's in your collection, deck-legal and all. The only thing that changes is how it got to you and what you can do with it afterward: no trading, no Pack Point substitute, and no packs to reopen for a second copy if you need one for the 2-copy deck limit.