Hardest Pokémon to find a card for: the thinnest slots in a living dex

Every Pokémon in the National Pokédex has at least one English card, which is what makes a 1,025-slot binder possible. But "has a card" and "has plenty of cards" are very different things. Pikachu has 229 English cards in our catalogue. Kubfu has one.

We counted the English cards for all 1,025 Pokémon in the DexBindr catalogue in October 2026. This post lists the slots with the fewest options, shows what those cards cost, and explains how to plan around them.

How we counted#

A "card" here is one English card in one set. A reprint of the same artwork in a later set counts again, and so do promos and special subsets such as the Shiny Vault. Japanese cards are counted separately. Counts change every time a set is released, so treat these as a snapshot, not a permanent ranking.

The 17 thinnest slots#

These Pokémon have three English cards or fewer.

Prices are market prices at the time of writing and will move.

One step up, with four English cards each, are Azurill, Chingling, Happiny, Quilladin, Tyrunt, Poipole, Hattrem, Arctovish, Naclstack, Flutter Mane, Arctibax, Baxcalibur and Poltchageist.

Thin does not mean expensive#

Look at the last column. Kubfu is the hardest slot in the whole Pokédex by number of options, and its one English card costs about 25 cents. All 17 of these Pokémon have an English card under $2, and 15 of them have one under 50 cents.

The difficulty is choice, not price. With one to three cards, you take what exists. You will not find a full art Kubfu or an alternate-art Bonsly to match the rest of a themed page, and the card you need may sit in a single set that your local shop stopped stocking years ago.

It gets thinner with every generation#

The older a Pokémon is, the more sets have had a chance to include it.

In Kanto, the thinnest slot still has 11 English cards. In Paldea, 23 of the 120 Pokémon have five or fewer. That will change: Gen 9 slots that feel hard today will fill out as new sets arrive.

Across all 1,025, 60 Pokémon have five English cards or fewer.

Why these slots are thin#

A few patterns explain most of the list.

1. Pokémon from add-on content. Kubfu, Glastrier and Spectrier arrived in the Sword and Shield expansions, and Overqwil and Basculegion in Legends: Arceus. Sets are built around the main games, so these get fewer turns.
2. Babies. Bonsly, Mantyke, Azurill, Chingling and Happiny appear in only a handful of sets.
3. Fossils. Amaura, Tyrunt, Arctozolt, Dracovish and Arctovish are rarely a set's headline cards.
4. Middle evolutions. Brionne, Quilladin, Hattrem, Naclstack and Arctibax sit between a popular basic and a popular final form.
5. Recent Pokémon. The Paradox Pokémon (Brute Bonnet, Slither Wing, Iron Jugulis, Iron Moth) are simply new.

How to plan around them#

You do not need a special strategy, just a few habits.

• Look up the slot before you shop. A quick check tells you whether your target has two cards or twenty.
• Accept the card that exists. For a slot with a couple of options, picking the better of two is the whole decision. This is where the one-per-Pokémon approach helps: you are not trying to own every version. The one-per-dex versus master set post explains the tradeoff.
• Consider Japanese cards. For 10 of the 17 Pokémon above, there are more Japanese cards than English ones. See Japanese and English cards in one binder.
• Buy it when you see it. If a copy of a thin-slot Pokémon turns up in a bulk bin or a trade, take it. These cards are cheap, but they are not always in front of you.
• Do not pay a premium for scarcity. Few cards does not make a card valuable. Check current prices before assuming.

Using a checklist#

A numbered checklist lets you mark these slots early and keep them in mind on every shopping trip. The Pokédex checklist post walks through the numbering, and the full art guide helps if your standard involves a particular card style.

In DexBindr, every one of the 1,025 slots is free to browse, so you can see exactly which cards exist for a hard slot before you commit. The example binder shows how a tracked binder looks. A free account tracks your first 10 Pokémon with unlimited cards each, and the Sync plan ($5 a month or $49 a year) removes the limit and adds multi-device sync and collection value tracking.

Final thoughts#

The hardest slots in a Pokédex binder are rarely the expensive ones. They are the ones with one or two options, and the fix is patience and flexibility. Mark them early, take the card that exists, and upgrade later if a better one is printed.