@pichufan Nice post and nice profile pic! 
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Thanks! My avatar uses the artwork from the PokĆ©mon Fan winning Illusionās Zorua card (bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:IllusionZoruaPokeFanLPromo.jpg). 
With your PSA knowledge, do you think the information Iāve provided above would be enough to convince PSA to grade these cards, or do you think theyād never grade them as they werenāt an intentional release?
Following on from my post above, I figured Iād also share a third variant of the Manhole card which @aetsen stumbled upon a few months ago. I was lucky enough to also find one for myself:
Whilst this one doesnāt appear to be specifically tied to any PokĆ©mon release, itās interesting that the back of the card uses the same yellow which is used on the e-Reader PokĆ©mon cards. Whatās more interesting is that this card doesnāt use the same serial number format as the other e-Reader cards (NNNNA NN-ANNN (e.g. 48539A 02-A001)), it simply has ID:0. Despite this card being copyrighted at 2001, Pixelboyās 2004 website doesnāt appear to acknowledge that this card exists.
When doing research into this card a few months ago I stumbled upon this sold Fril.jp listing which features this (rehosted) photo:
From this, I believe this to be a Toys R Us exclusive promotion which, back in 2001, was celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the Game & Watch Gold Series.
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Iām shamelessly promoting my Instagram account here, but Iāve uploaded what I think is a really nice picture of the Pichu card on my new account there:
https://instagram.com/p/BvFXXsOHo9b
Iām sending off a submission to PSA in the next month or two and Iām hoping to get this stuck in custom encapsulation at the very least. It would be nice if PSA could start grading these.
You better go edit bulbapedia to make sure itās mentioned thereā¦
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And while youāre add it, you can also add the Glossy promo with Japanese back (and without hole).
Greetz,
Quuador
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Bit late but Iāve finally sent my Pichu off to PSA through Ludkins. Iāve attached a printout of my earlier posts here as evidence for why these cards exist. I donāt have my hopes up, but I feel like if theyāre happy to grade the SAMPLE set cards they should have no objection to grading these ones.
I edited the article a while ago to include:
Prior to the launch of both the Expedition Base Set and the Game Boy Advance e-Reader itself, slightly thicker-than-usual, glossy versions of the non-holo Pichu, Hoppip, and āManholeā card were used to demonstrate the e-Readerās functionality. Unlike the prints given out at E3, these prints have an English back. These three cards were hole-punched so that they could be attached to promotional kiosks by having a cable looped through them; this was done to prevent loss or theft while allowing enough flexibility for the card to be swiped through the device.
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Curious to see what happens here!
Keep seeing mention of the glossy variant but there was also a matte finish variant. To my knowledge there were also used at the Official Nintendo Store in NY to demo units there.
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yeah i saw those too, but i feel like those would be easy to fake? or is there some difference other than the hole to a normal one from a pack
If you were going to fake a card then I think itād make a lot more sense to pick one that is worth money. Or just punch holes in the Expedition cards. Regardless I have no doubts to the authenticity of them, but thatās my own opinion. Even though I havenāt seen other cards printed in the same manner. The matte finish has a different card stock than regular PokĆ©mon cards of the era.
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No luck.
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Hi @pichufan, sorry to revive an old post, but just bought the Japanese manhole card today and was wondering whether the āNot Gradedā line on this post was you attempting to submit it for grading. Would love to get mine graded and/or encased.
Also, did you find any further information about it in the meantime? Mine was for sale at a Pokemon card shop, but based on your findings it seems like it would be totally unrelated to Pokemon.
Thanks in advance for your help.
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The N9: NOT GRADED entry was for a Bandai 2000 Carddass card. I posted about it here: www.elitefourum.com/t/does-psa-grade-this-card/24970/9.
As for information, all the information I have about it was shared here: www.elitefourum.com/t/any-information-on-these-cards/12600/39.
Iād love to add that information to Bulbapedia, but Bulbapedia makes it really difficult to add useful information. You need moderator approval to share images and when I asked in their Discord server about it they told me Iād need to be more active before they could do that, whatever that means, so I pretty much gave up on that idea.
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. Iāll probably just custom case it. 
Turns out thereās actually 2 different variants, one where both the back and front are glossy and another where only the front is glossy. I donāt think anyone has bought this up in this thread yet. Thank you @scratchdesk for alerting me to the existence of the set with the non-glossy back. Iāve managed to pick one of these up from the same seller as before, who was differentiating between them as āGLOSSYā (both front and back) and āREGULARā (only the front), so Iāve picked myself up a regular set.
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@kaldoverde @scratchdesk I messaged the seller about the difference between the two and he got back to me with some very useful information:
I imagine the āregular cardsā were the ones that were attached to lanyards that people theorised much earlier in this thread. The glossy ones are the ones which were attached to the kiosks, which totally makes sense as being glossy (and presumably thicker) theyād be more resistant to damage.
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I know that he was not the original owner of these and purchased them from an ex Nintendo store manager/ employee. I donāt know that I believe the story but itās probably the best one weāll get. Even his description of the cards is off. Youāll see once you receive them.
If itās the kiosk part you donāt believe I managed to find this image from a website (which went down last year) which has had the same data since it was launched in 2011 (according to Web Archive (see the kiosk image)):
I shared a post about it back in 2018 in this thread here: www.elitefourum.com/t/any-information-on-these-cards/12600/39.
Oh, I believe the kiosk part, I worked at a game store when those GBA Kiosks showed up. And when they retired it I got it, so I owned one, it had the same cable, though I donāt recall any Pokemon cards with it, I do believe there was a Manhole card along with a box of Air Hockey cards (no hole) which I still have somewhere. Just like in your photo.
My comments were directed at the seller of the cards and his assumptions to distribution.
I believe that the glossy cards were used in conjunction with the eReader and early promotions like E3 (lanyards). The matte finish cards I donāt believe were ever in the marketplace until he uncovered them. They may have been used at the Nintendo store in NY. But I believe them to be isolated to either that single location or unreleased (until now). Just my opinion.
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The regular version arrived today:
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