In Japan Event Organizers are people who have passed two Pokémon TCG-focussed exams and are allowed to officially host Pokémon events. There’s a main webpage about organized events in Japan which can be found here: www.pokemon-card.com/event/organized-events.
I’m trying to determine distribution figures for Event Organizer-stamped cards.
Starting in 2015, Pokémon Japan occasionally holds an examination in a physical location with a limited capacity to allow members of the public to qualify as Event Organizers. This year was a bit different due to covid as they instead held the exam online and upped the capacity to a record high of 500. To my knowledge Event Organizer status doesn’t ever expire, so if you’re already an Event Organizer you wouldn’t need to take the exam a second time.
From what I can gather, the following examinations have been held:
| Date | Capacity |
| October 2020 | 500 |
| May 2019 | 150 |
| April-May 2016 | 320 |
| September 2015 (Web Archive) | 280 |
| March 2015 (Web Archive) | 400 |
In June after the 2016 examination, Pokémon Japan published the list of Event Organizers here: www.pokemon-card.com/event/organized-events/member.html. Despite having a cumulative capacity of 1,000 by this point, only 292 Event Organizers had qualified (29.2%).
To my knowledge there are no other member lists published from before or after that point, but if we apply the same 29.2% to the cumulative totals, we can make the following assumptions (these are rounded up to the nearest whole number):
| Date | Cumulative Total Event Organizers |
| October 2020 | 482 |
| May 2019 | 336 |
| April-May 2016 | [official figure] 292 |
| September 2015 | 199 |
| March 2015 | 117 |
Cards Awarded directly to Event Organizers
To my knowledge only one card falls into this category so far:
- The Event Organizer-stamped 175/XY-P Pikachu which was given directly to event organizers in November 2015 likely had a distribution of around 199 (29.2% of 680). For what it’s worth, there is a more common version of this card which does not feature the Event Organizer stamp.
Cards distributed in Event Organizer Trainer Packs
Event Organizer Trainer Packs were distributed to Event Organizers for them to distribute at officially-sanctioned Event Organizer events. Each pack contains 1 card at random out of a small selection of possible cards. There have so far been 4 of these:
- A quantity of ?? packs were distributed in July 2016 containing 1 of 9 unnumbered XY-P promo cards at random;
- A quantity of ?? packs were distributed in August 2017 containing 1 of 9 SM-P promo cards numbered between 090/SM-P and 098/SM-P at random;
- A quantity of ?? packs were distributed in April 2019 containing 1 of 9 SM-P promo cards numbered between 328/SM-P and 336/SM-P at random;
- A quantity of ?? packs were distributed in April 2020 containing 1 of 9 S-P promo cards numbered between 050/S-P and 058/S-P at random.
The presense of ?? indicates that I do not know how many of these packs were distributed to each Event Organizer. I’d assume that Event Organizers received a different number of packs depending on where they were located (i.e. how many people would be likely to show up to a given event they were at).
I would imagine that each Event Organizer would likely receive at most 100 of these packs bearing in mind that at larger events multiple Event Organizers would be present. Seeing as there are 9 different cards available, I’ll use the number 90 instead as that puts each card at a nice 10 per Event Organizer. Using 10 as an educated guess for how many of each individual card was distributed to each Event Organizer we can then assume the following:
| Cards | Event Organizers | Total of Each Card |
| Unnumbered XY-P | 292 | >= 2,920 |
| 090-098/SM-P | 292 | >= 2,920 |
| 328-336/SM-P | 336 | >= 3,360 |
| 050-058/S-P | 336 | >= 3,360 |
This may be a gross underestimation, however, and the total number of of each card distributed could well be tenfold higher.
If anyone has any additional information on these I’d love to know.
Are there any cards I’ve missed off the list?