Hey guys, I decided to start a CotW thread because I’m bored, but I’ll try to do one every week! ;D
Today we have the Masaki Promos. These little guys were given out when you mailed Pokemon the previous evolutionary form of the desired Pokemon along with Bill’s Pass Card. They would then mail the Stage 2 card back to you. All of these cards are holographic and look phenomenal! There are 5 in the set: Alakazam, Machamp, Gengar, Golem and Omastar. They (except for Omastar) are the Pokemon who evolve through Trading in the original R/B/Y/G games. Discuss!
These are definitely on my list of favorites! The whole concept of trading to evolve (just like the pokemon games) was pretty neat. In the late 1990’s - early 2000’s, japan had a whole bunch of neat promotions/contests going (maskai, snap promos, illustration contests, train promotions, the grand party etc.) All of those have some type of meaning and history behind them. Is it me or does the TCG seem to be lacking that these days?
I see exactly what you mean. It’s only natural when a product like Pokemon grows to how huge it is today, but in the early days the buyer-seller connection and unique history about the origin of promos seemed much more interesting than the ‘only available in this store’ or ‘Daisuki Club Reward’ promos we see today.
I would have to agree. Like you said there was much more of a personal connection. I think one of my main complaints about the promos (and cards in general) is that they all seem “CGI’d” now. I miss the hand-drawn look of the cards…they had a more “Japanese” style of art work to them. But, I guess like anything else it has to progress.
The Masaki promos are some of the first Japanese cards I added to my collection long ago. Love the artwork.
For the newer collectors, the back of the Series 3 Vending sheets that included the Bill’s PC card, sent in to get the Masaki’s, had a light green area to fill out(name and address where to mail the cards). When the promotion ended the Series 3 Vending sheets changed to an all dark green back…most of the vending sheets for sale today are the later version and won’t have any Bill’s PC cards. Here’s a link to the earlier version with the Bill’s PC card.
These cards are what made me decide that Japanese card collecting would be my thing a couple years ago. I stumbled upon a video of someones rare card collection on Youtube maybe 3 years ago and it was panning across the collection and the second I saw these cards I knew they must have been rare and that they were at that time the most beautiful cards I had ever seen. They were my first Japanese card buys ever and I’ve never looked back. Some of my favourite cards ever.
