72 Psychedelic & Trippy Pokémon Cards

Every so often the TCG hands an illustrator a card and something goes sideways in the best way. The colors stop behaving, the background starts moving, and you end up holding something that looks nothing like the rest of the binder.

We’ve gathered the trippiest Pokémon cards in the hobby, from modern illustration rares to the Japanese vending machine era, with sections for the three artists who do this better than anyone.

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Trippy Background Cards

In these, the Pokémon is relatively normal, the world behind it is not. Warped space, impossible geometry, backgrounds that don’t sit still. These are the easiest ones to spot in a binder because the eye goes straight past the subject and into whatever is happening behind it.

Our Picks:

Trippy Background Pokémon Cards

Vibrant Trippy Cards

Here it’s the color doing the work. Clashing palettes, neon where nothing should be neon, and a few cards that abandon naturalistic color entirely.

Our Picks:

Vibrant Trippy Pokémon Cards

Tomokazu Komiya Trippy Cards

Komiya’s cards don’t look like anyone else’s, and they barely look like Pokémon cards. Proportions are wrong on purpose, the colors argue with each other, and the whole thing has an unhinged energy to it. Put one next to a regular card and the regular card starts to feel a bit too polished.

We’d put every card he’s done in this post if we could because trippy is his default setting.

If you want more on him and the other illustrators worth collecting by name, we went through them in our best Pokémon card artists post!

Our Picks:

Browse all Tomokazu Komiya cards on eBay

Komiya Trippy Pokémon Cards

Shinji Kanda Trippy Cards

Kanda’s are the loud ones. The background swirls, the colors clash on purpose, and there’s nowhere for your eye to settle, so the card looks like it’s moving when it isn’t.

The Giratina V and the Magikarp are the two people know him for, and both live up to it. But the Seismitoad might be the trippiest card in this entire post.

Our Picks:

Browse all Shinji Kanda cards on eBay

Kanda Trippy Pokémon Cards

sowsow Trippy Cards

sowsow is the quiet kind of trippy. Nothing shouts, the colors are soft, and then you notice the room is the wrong shape and you can’t work out where you’re meant to be standing. More dream than hallucination, which is why these hold up on a page you look at every day. The Gengar VMAX alt art is the one everybody knows and it earns it.

Our Picks:

Browse all sowsow cards on eBay

sowsow Trippy Pokémon Cards

The Munch Promos

5 promos made for a Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum exhibition, released between October 2018 and January 2019, all of them built on Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Same wavy brushwork, same bleeding red and orange sky.

The reason they’re worth collecting as a set is the joke running through them. Gengar and Haunter frighten Psyduck, Psyduck frightens Eevee, Eevee frightens Pikachu, Pikachu frightens Mimikyu, and Mimikyu frightens Rowlet. It’s a chain reaction of panic across all 5 cards.

We’ve got a full round-up with more cards inspired by real life art!

The Munch Promo Cards

Japanese Vending Series

The Japanese Vending Series came out of actual vending machines, printed on sheets you tore apart yourself, and the art is unlike anything the main sets were doing at the time. Crayon looking drawings, claymation, rough sketches, Pokémon sitting in ordinary human places for no reason.

A lot of these are Komiya, but the series is strange enough across the board that it warranted its own section. We think vending has some of the most underrated cards in the whole TCG.

Our Picks:

Japanese Vending Series Pokémon Cards

Vintage Trippy Cards

An extension of the section above, because vending wasn’t the only place this was happening. There are a few more Komiya bangers in here too.

We also love the e-Card ones. Expedition and Skyridge let illustrators get odd in a way the sets on either side of them didn’t.

Our Picks:

Vintage Trippy Cards

Imakuni? Cards

Imakuni? is Tomoaki Imakuni, a Japanese musician and Creatures Inc. staffer who somehow ended up as a recurring character in the TCG itself. His cards are jokes: Trainers that do almost nothing, a Doduo with his face on it, and one card that is simply him.

They feel like a fever dream in the best way, and they’re a whole category of their own. We put them alongside the rest of the oddities in our unique Pokémon cards post.

Our Picks:

Imakuni? Trippy Cards

Trippy Abra Cards

Abra gets its own section because it keeps getting the trippy treatment. It’s a Pokémon that sleeps 20 hours a day and teleports in its sleep, and illustrators have taken that as license across basically every era.

Our Picks:

Trippy Abra Cards

Affordable & Common Trippy Cards

Weird art has never been tied to rarity, which makes this one of the easier themes to collect on a budget.

Our Picks:

Affordable & Common Trippy Cards

That’s our roundup of the trippiest Pokémon cards in the TCG! Komiya, Kanda or sowsow?

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72 Psychedelic & Trippy Pokémon Cards

Trippy Background Cards

Vibrant Trippy Cards

Tomokazu Komiya Trippy Cards

Shinji Kanda Trippy Cards

sowsow Trippy Cards

The Munch Promos

Japanese Vending Series

Vintage Trippy Cards

Imakuni? Cards

Trippy Abra Cards

Affordable & Common Trippy Cards

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