1999 Hand Illustrated Pokemon Center Badges

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1

I recently received some items from a friend who knew someone who worked at the Tokyo Pokemon Center back in the 90’s. The group of items that caught my attention where these 151 badges. These badges have some of the best artwork I have ever seen. As someone who loves the hand drawn illustrations, these were better than I could imagine. Also, I have never seen these illustrations outside of these badges.

Here is a direct link where you can view every badge. I would suggest starting HERE and click “previous” until you reach Charizard. This way you will be able to see each illustration close up.

Some that caught my eye were the,

Pidgeotto"]

Magnemite"]

psyduck"]

golduck"]

Spearow"]

There are a couple sold examples of these at $30 each on ebay. There is a japanese seller who has the more popular ones up with higher prices. However, I am not sure what I will do with them at the moment since the sentimental value is greater than the monetary value.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these unique illustrations! They are such a great example of the early concepts of pokemon and echo the vending/early japanese promo illustration style.

2

Oh I love these badges! :grin: I’ve seen them before but it never hurts to see them again ^^

(also Scott, would you mind terribly if you put each image on a seperate line please? It’s stretching my screen pretty bad :x ;; )

3

Did you mean add an extra space? I added some space between each. Let me know if it is still doing it and I can re-size them. I am on my desktop which has a 27" but don’t know what it looks like on laptop dimensions.

4

oh man those badges are so cool looking

5

Nah you fixed it, thanks :wink:

6

Wow these are real gems thanks for sharing :blush:

7

These are a really nifty find. The art is really fun.

8

Absolutely beautiful!

Is it any wonder that the art of Pokemon, more than any other franchise, is what captured the attention of the world and helped make Japanese anime and manga an international phenomenon?

I just love the artwork on those badges!

9

I wish they would of made these illustrations into cards. A lot of them remind me of the japanese vending series. The Pidgeotto reminds me of the bilingual lucky stadium and exeggutor.

You are definitely correct about pokemon. I also love Hayao Miyazaki’s work. The imagination behind both can be appreciated by all ages.