Burned Tower 052/L-P LP-Promotional Card

What else do we know about this card’s release that is not already stated on bulbapedia?

Here is what bulbapedia says about it’s release: " In Japan, a Cosmos Holofoil L-P Promotional print of this card was awarded as a prize to the top 3 winners of the Reviving Legends Release Commemoration events held in January 2010."

“Reviving Legends Release Commemoration Tournament winner prize”

Given that information, how many of these events were there in January of 2010 and how many winners were given these cards?

In short, how many of these are out there?

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This is pure speculation but on average 7 venues, 4 age groups, top 3 winners per age group is the norm. So that would make for an estimated 84 copies. Just depends if information can be found on exactly how many events took place and how many locations.

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Interested to know if an answer gets tracked down.

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I love this card. It’s the only one that makes the beautiful artwork pop.

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No, I am just going off of the information that I can find. Tournaments around that time were regularly held at Fukuoka, Nagoya, Chiba, Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo. Often times though there were as few as 4 locations. Modern tournaments can have up to 16 or more locations, but that was not the case during that time. Around L-P Pokemon was in a decline period and even more so into BW-P. As I said it’s just pure speculation and as always demand and availability will drive the market and prices.

This is so ridiculous I can‘t believe I even have to post in this thread… Okay so first off I understand a lot of collectors dream of a secret hidden gem that is extremely rare but nobody knew about it. But there is simply no way the Burned Tower had less than 100 total copies distributed. Obviously we don‘t know the numbers of any card with 100% certainty but I will list a few reasons that should make obvious that the burned tower is not anywhere near the trophy card tier in terms of rarity.

  1. Japan always had their main tournaments (Battle roads, battle festas etc) that led to the Worlds qualifers. But they also have many other tournaments with promo cards. The Burned tower wasn‘t given out at one of the main tournaments. Whenever a tournament did not yield any trophy cards such as Victory Orbs, Rings, cups etc. they would instead hand out promos at those venues. The important thing to say is that it‘s very unlikely that the burned tower was only given to 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners. Why? Because Pokemon Japan doesn‘t want kids to go home empty handed. If there is a certain card given to the best players there are additional lower tier promos for participants. Literally all high profile prizes (top 3 or 4) always had special cards which you can see were only given in small numbers. All the new back trophy cards have special attributes that show they are given only to the best players (holo borders, gold lettering of tournament, artwork with special signs). Long talk short, if the burned tower was intended to be given to the best players only it would surely look different and have trophy card attributes.
  2. Look how many completed listings there are on mercari, YJ etc. If there were under 100 copies given out we wouldn‘t see so many. How many copies of the Victory Rings or Victory Orbs have you seen selling? And they even had around 160 copies.
  3. If the burned tower was so rare, the people who won them would surely know its a rare card and not list it for sale for $3-20. The Japanese listed the card for so low as they knew it was widely distributed at the tournaments. Have you seen any new back trophies listed in japan for $20? No. Now when the masked royal and the FA zekrom were released they were all listed for high prices in japan because everybody knew it is extremely limited.
  4. Compare the burned tower to other cards such as the shiny LP lottery promos which had 1000 copies given out. They do appear less frequently than the burned tower.
  5. There is no way to do any math for the amount of cards as we don‘t know the number of tournaments and we don‘t know who was eligible to get the burned tower. One thing is clear, bulbapedia is wrong on many newer promo / trophy cards. Don‘t take it as a proof if bulbapedia says „given to the top 3 winners“. Apart from that, as the tournament wasn‘t a japanese competitive venue the tournament could have been structured into smaller groups hence yielding many top 3 players. Also, there might have been a few hundred smaller venues all over japan rather than a hand full big ones like the big qualifier tournaments have.

Believe what you want, but I have been collecting Japanese promos and trophies since 2004. Also I provided proof and information about distribution amounts for the rarest new back trophies. It‘s up to you who you want to believe :blush:

Honestly, common sense should be enough to know that there is no way the burned tower had less than 100 copies. So how many copies do exist? We will never know for sure but my guess is around the 1000 mark if not more.

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I don’t have any idea either way what the total is, but those lotto lugia and lotto ho-oh cards show up Sooooo much more frequently than burned towers do.
Almost all the sales of burned towers in the last 6 months have been from the last 2 weeks. I probably have seen 5+ lugias for every burned tower I have seen.
I just don’t think that was a very good comparison. Otherwise you are probably right, and also bulbapedia has a lot of bad information I have come to notice.
Good luck unraveling truth though.

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Just remember, if a cards sells for $3-20 in Japan there is not much incentive to sell… if cards sell for 3 figures there will be more fushed out.

Yeah that makes sense, but burned tower was selling for 500ish in a 10 early last year.
I would think they would have surfaced a bit sooner.
84 seems too low, 1000 seems super high. But no idea really.

the art on this card is amazing

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@pokeg Thank you for your input. I know next to nothing about many limited release Japanese cards so I appreciate you chiming in as one of the big collectors of such cards. I’d like to pick up one of these cards but the only available copies I’m aware of are ones that are being flipped rather quickly for prices that seem high. I don’t use the Japanese websites where it’s easier to find these raw so I was unaware of the sold history. There’s no way I’m going to blindly pay $1000 for a card I know little about. I’ve gotta be vigilant out here. Folks are on the take. There 's a difference between rarity and a lack of demand/interest and I feel like the latter can cause scarcity which can then be perceived as rarity. It’s a dope card but I don’t have to have it.

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Yea that’s a lot of disinformation plain and simple. Show me a Burned Tower for $3 to $20. You can’t even seem to realize that listings on Mercari can be years old. You built a list of opinionated information to bash on others for wanting to guestimate numbers. If you did any research past bulbapedia you would know that it is factual that it’s a tournament winners card. No one really cared about promos in the past or even cared to research them. These cards are limited whether people want to believe it or not. No amount of disinformation will change that.

Great input @Kampes_Cards and @pokeg

I agree with most everything you guys said.

The burned tower fetches a higher price for many reasons. The artwork and holo on the card is amazing. The fact that it was given out at a promotional event whether that be to 50 individuals at 10 different events in january 2010, or double / triple that number.

The card has some rarity to it, and that plus the artwork is the reason the card is so demanding.

I’ve kept a good eye on the 052/l-p burned tower since 2017 and for the first couple months of looking for the card I couldn’t find one for sale on YJP, ebay, or mercari. Eventually the card started popping up for prices anywhere from $50 and $500+ each.

I don’t think anyone at all is arguing that this card is extremely rare and has 15 copies or anything like that. But this promo winner prize card appeals to more collectors because of its price point and moderate rarity as well.

But the card does fetch a good consistent price. A couple have sold in the past month for $200-$400 each ( Mint ) on japanese websites, and I’ve personally seen them sell on ebay graded for $500-$800, and Yes i’ve seen them sell for much less as well.

I don’t really think its fair to throw around accusations like this for a card that you don’t have concrete evidence on, and don’t even own.

Nonetheless, thanks for your input and bringing more visibility to the card.

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Maybe Smpratte should do a video on these L-P promotional cards. I would be curious to learn about their release, since it appears that most were given as prizes (gold, super, special rank etc.) in Japan, but were released more commonly in expansions in English. I guess I better do some more reading on Bulbapedia, but I could only assume how many may have been released. Two things are true though, these interesting rank promo cards are not trophy cards, and the artwork on that burned tower is friggin awesome.

Just as reminder we are not discussing value or sales prices, we are discussing rarity.

@aetsen
Of course what I said is my opinion. It‘s not like you have any proof of any numbers. Pokemon-card.com writes „Winners prize“. This could literally mean anything. It could simply mean that it was given to players who won one battle at the tournament. This is simply how the Japanese define certain cards. There is absolutely no evidence that the card was only given to top 3 players. And even if, like I mentioned there could have been many small local tournaments.
Guessing about numbers is okay but if you simply make up some math and say there are only 84 copies that‘s just ridiculous.

Obviously the card is limited and increased in value due to several factors. But that‘s not the discussion.
What I tried to show with my reasonings is simply that it is incredibly unlikely (or rather impossible) that there are only less than 100 copies given out.

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I wouldn’t recommend anyone marrying themselves to release numbers, especially for new promo cards. Masters Key, one of the rarest LP promos, initially had an estimation of 9 copies released. Now we are at 36. Even these type of cards which are more quantifiable aren’t absolute.

Throwing numbers out there for burned tower is futile. Also, there are plenty of genuinely rarer items that fly under the radar that don’t have English reprints worth $0.35.

Ultimately people should collect what they enjoy. If you want to spend $500 on this, more power to you. However, conflating that passion as definitive release numbers is obviously wrong.

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Didn’t even knew the reprints were that cheap… Bought a NM copy for 4 cents (and a euro shipping) on Pokémon-CardMarket just yet after I saw your comment, so thanks Scott. :blush:

I’m not gonna mix myself into the discussion, because release numbers, trophy/semi-trophy cards, etc. aren’t really my expertise.

Greetz,
Quuador

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Yea I agree! I actually think its pretty cool that most of these DPT/L-P/Unnumbered prize cards have variants that were in a normal set inside packs. Although the HGSS Burned tower has no Holo version, I think it adds that factor of exclusivity.

I’m actually glad you brought this up. I mean check out the difference between these. Its awesome.

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The lore this artwork depicts gives me all the right warm and fuzzies inside.

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I’ve been dreaming of owning this card for months. Happy to say that I finally purchased a beautiful copy for a price I’m happy with. It would be awesome to know how many were distributed; but in the end, it’s just an amazing card IMO and the artwork strikes an nostalgic cord with me personally as a collector (which is all that really matters in my book). Cannot wait to ship it off to PSA! :blush:

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