Collector's Guide to Pokémon Asia Championship Series Promos (Part 1: Past System)

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What is This Guide for

This guide is for collectors who are interested in promo cards printed with the following stamps:

ACS_Stamp_1

Promo cards printed with these stamps are from the past seasons of Pokémon Asia Championship Series, which we will introduce in this guide.

Note: this guide doesn’t cover the new stamps shown below. They will be covered in the upcoming Part 2 guide.

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What is the Pokémon Asia Championship Series (PACS)

The Pokémon Asia Championship Series a.k.a. PACS is the series of competitive play tournaments organized by TPC as the Southeast Asian equivalent of TPCi’s Pokémon TCG Championship Series. The series consists of organized tournaments of various scales which allow competitive players in the Southeast Asia regions to play through and earn their chances to play in Worlds.

Prior to the 2024-25 season, PACS was run in a system similar to the Championship Series held in Japan:

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The systems consisted of 3 tournament levels:

  • Town League tournaments
  • Regional League tournaments
  • Pokémon Championships

ACS_Leagues

Promo Distributions

PACS tournaments offer various prizes including promo cards printed with PACS stamps. Promo card prizes are only available in Regional League tournaments and Pokémon Championships (Town League tournaments offer no card prizes).

Stamp Types

As mentioned at the start of this guide, promo cards originated from the past system of PACS had 3 different stamps.

Event Stamps

The first 2 stamps are logos of Regional League tournaments and Pokémon Championships. These stamps are called Event Stamps when mentioned in official tournament rules.

ACS_Stamp_2

As we can see in the images, the logos are printed with regions where the events were held, which means that promo cards with Event Stamps will have different stamp variants based on the regions where the cards were originally from. This unfortunately means that completionists such as species collectors will have to list all the regions the cards they are looking for were released in, and figure out ways to collect all of them.

Hisuian Typhlosion V promo in Traditional Chinese is a good example for us to examine the stamp variants in details:

TyV_RL_CP
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  1. The card was distributed in Regional League tournaments held in both Taiwan and Hong Kong, and thus have 2 different Regional League stamps, one specifying Taiwan (top left) and the other Hong Kong (bottom left).
  2. The card was distributed in both Regional League tournaments and Pokémon Championships. Since the tournaments have different logos, the card was also printed with both the Regional League stamp (left) and the Pokémon Championships stamp (right).
  3. Taiwan and Hong Kong each had 3 Regional League tournaments held during the 2022-23 season, and the card was distributed in all of them. However as the stamps only specify region and not venue, players would receive the same card in all Regional League tournaments if they played in the same region.

Season Stamps

The third stamp collectors will find on the cards is called the Season Stamp in official tournament rules, which is the PACS logo with season timeline specified.

ACS_logo_temp_2

For promo cards printed with this stamp, the stamp will stay the same throughout the season regardless of which tournament the cards were given out. In addition, no promo cards with this stamp were distributed across multiple seasons, so promo cards with Season Stamps don’t have any variant.

Distribution Format

All promo cards from PACS are given out through either of the following methods:

  • Participating in tournaments
  • Winning a certain number of games
  • Win all the way to top 4
  • Earning enough Points throughout a season
  • Playing side events

Participation Prizes

All players who played at least 3 games in a tournament will receive a promo card. Participation prizes are usually printed with Event Stamps.

PTCP

Winning Prizes

Players who met the winning criteria (X or more wins) specified in the tournament rules will receive a promo card. Winning prizes are usually printed with Season Stamps.

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Trophies

Players reaching the top 4 will receive exclusive promo cards encased in trophies. Promo cards inside trophies are printed with Event Stamps.

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Championship Point Rewards

In addition to promo cards, players also earn Championship Points across tournaments based on their records in each tournament. At the end of each season, players who met the points criteria specified in season rules will receive a promo card printed with Season Stamps. These are the only promo cards whose distribution rules involve multiple tournaments.

SVP058_300

Side Event Prizes

Tournaments may also have side events which players can enjoy outside the main tournaments and earn extra promo cards. However, as TPC can also include distribution campaigns not related to PACS as side events of the tournaments, promo cards obtained through side events may come with all kinds of stamps - Event Stamps, stamps from the cards’ original campaigns or even without any stamp.

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Regions

As mentioned above, promo cards printed with Event Stamps have variants if distributed in different regions, so it is important for species collectors to know which possible region variants can promo cards from PACS have. Note that each region holds its own tournaments including Pokémon Championships, so there are no inter-region tournaments or promo cards in PACS.

Regions Played with Localized Cards

In the following 4 regions, PACS is held individually in each region and requires players to play with cards printed in each region’s respective local language:

RL_LOC

Country / Region Language
Taiwan Traditional Chinese (F)
Hong Kong (TC) Traditional Chinese (F)
Thailand Thai (T)
Indonesia Indonesian (I)

Each region also offers promo cards in local language. Since cards in these languages are released by TPC, all promo cards share the following specifications:

  • Cards are assigned promo indices (xxx/SM-P, S-P, etc.) of their respective language.
  • Cards are printed in the same quality as Japanese cards.

As tournaments in Taiwan and Hong Kong (TC) are both played in Traditional Chinese, promo cards released in these regions share the same language and promo indices but with different Event Stamps. However, there is no guarantee that all promo cards printed with Event Stamps have both variants, as tournaments can be cancelled individually.

Regions Played with English Cards

There are also 4 PACS regions which require players to play with English cards and also offers English cards as prizes:

RL_ENG

Country / Region Language
Singapore English
Malaysia English
Philippines English
Hong Kong (EN) English

Although PACS is organized by TPC, all cards played in these regions are from TPCi products as all English card releases are managed by TPCi and not TPC. This also affects the promo cards offered in these regions:

  • All promo cards are sourced from existing TPCi sets and retain their original set indices. This is similar to promo cards distributed in TPCi’s own Pokémon TCG Championship Series.
  • Cards are printed in the same quality as TPCi cards.

However, promo cards given out in these regions do get PACS Event and Season Stamps, which makes them attractive to TPCi collectors. Note that cards printed with Event Stamps get different variants depending on the regions where they were distributed, and there is no guarantee that all promo cards printed with Event Stamps have all 4 regional variants, as tournaments can be cancelled individually.

Special Case: Hong Kong

Hong Kong is listed in both regions played with localized and English cards, and collectors may notice that there are 3 different Event Stamp variants printed on promo cards distributed in Hong Kong:

CP_HK_ALL

This is because Hong Kong originally had only one running series which was held in Traditional Chinese, and therefore offered cards printed with the leftmost variant shown above. However, in 2023-24 season the English series was also established in Hong Kong, which made Hong Kong the only region holding 2 separate series of different languages. As the two series offered different sets of promo cards, TPC decided to add language identifiers to the Event Stamps, with Traditional Chinese cards specified as “TC” and English cards as “EN”. The identifiers were applied for only 1 season as the new League system removed region names from all the stamps, making the identifiers obsolete.

Although there were 3 different Event Stamp variants in Hong Kong, no card (besides trophies) was printed in multiple variants among the 3, so collectors don’t have to worry about collecting multiple Hong Kong variants of the same card.

Card Lists

In the remaining sections of this guide, we will list all cards printed with the Asia Championship Series stamps as of this writing (2023-24 season).

Localized Regions

Cards with clickable indices in the tables indicate that the cards can be viewed in the official Trainers Website https://asia.pokemon-card.com/ . Cards distributed before the Trainers Website’s launch unfortunately are not listed, however collectors may find some images in the following 3rd-party sources:

2019-20 Season

Although the name “Asia Championship Series” wasn’t formally used until the 2020-21 season, tournaments including Regional Leagues and National Championships were established soon after TPC started to release localized card products in 2019. However, in the early ages of the tournaments promo cards were only distributed as participation prizes.

Card Distribution Stamp TW HK TH ID
Jirachi (Team Up) Participation Regional 042/SM-P 042/SM-P :x: :x:
Jirachi (SM Promo) Participation Regional :x: :x: :x: 078/SM-P
Jirachi (SM Promo) Participation Championships :x: :x: 053/SM-P :x:
Marshadow Participation Regional :x: :x: :x: 031/SM-P
Eevee GX Participation Regional :x: :x: 093/SM-P 132/SM-P*
Dedenne GX Participation Regional 092/SM-P :x:* 123/SM-P 158/SM-P
  • Indonesian 132/SM-P Eevee GX: there are two variants of Eevee GX assigned to the same index, one with the Regional League’s event stamp and the other with the Pokémon TCG Gym stamp.
  • Traditional Chinese 092/SM-P Dedenne GX: the Hong Kong Regional League variant had its image revealed in an official event announcement, however participants of the advertised event (which was in Hong Kong) received the Taiwan Regional League variant instead. The Hong Kong variant eventually became unobtainable as there were no other events distributing it.

2020-22 Seasons

Starting from the 2020-21 season, the tournaments are now collectively introduced as the Asia Championship Series.

Trophy cards were introduced to localized regions since the 2021-22 season, which are localized copies of the trophy cards awarded in Champions League tournaments in Japan. In localized regions however these cards are also awarded to top players of National Championships, while JPCS winners don’t receive cards with their trophies.

Each trophy card is printed with the Event Stamp along with the tournament name, season, venue and the winner’s rank (Champion, Finalist or Top 4), making the cards exclusive to their respective tournaments. Most of the trophy cards are not unique though as the same set of cards is awarded to winners of all age groups in the same tournament.

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Card Distribution Stamp TW HK TH ID
Quick Ball Participation Regional 040/S-P :x: :x: 101/S-P
Sonia Participation Regional 084/S-P :x: :x: :x:
Bea Participation Regional 100/S-P 100/S-P :x: :x:
Elesa’s Sparkle Participation Regional 127/S-P 127/S-P :x: :x:
Piplup Participation Regional 157/S-P :x: :x: 274/S-P
Regigigas Participation Regional 173/S-P :x:* :x: :x:
Manaphy Participation Regional :x: :x: 128/S-P 350/S-P
Professor’s Research (Juniper) Participation Championships 101/S-P 101/S-P 075/S-P 198/S-P
Rowlet Side Event Championships :x: :x: 097/S-P :x:
Cyndaquil Side Event Championships :x: :x: 098/S-P :x:
Oshawott Side Event Championships :x: :x: 099/S-P :x:
Arceus V Side Event Championships :x: :x: 102/S-P :x:
Victory Proof (Gold) Trophy Trophy S-P S-P S-P S-P
Victory Proof (Silver) Trophy Trophy S-P S-P S-P S-P
Victory Proof (Bronze) Trophy Trophy S-P S-P S-P S-P
  • Regions not getting a card as a promo card in the Asia Championship Series are marked with :x:, however the card may still be distributed in the marked regions through other events (albeit not printed with the Asia Championship Series stamps).
  • Traditional Chinese 173/S-P Regigigas: the Hong Kong Regional League variant is listed in the card database of Trainers Website, however it was never distributed in any tournament.
  • 25th Anniversary promo cards including Lance’s Charizard V and Dark Sylveon V had their Thai copies distributed in side events, however they are not listed as they come with 25th Anniversary stamps.
  • Although Celebration Fanfare was first localized in 2022, it wasn’t given out as a promo card of the Asia Championship Series until the next season. The 2022 copy was distributed in each region through separate events.

2022-23 Season and Beyond

With the series format matured over time, distributions in all localized regions tended to follow the same set of rules since the 2022-23 season:

  • Promo cards given as participation prizes are always sourced from either CoroCoro Ichiban! magazine promos from Japan or exclusives from TPCi’s Build & Battle Boxes.
  • TPC now tries to align the participation prizes so that the same promo card is given out across all regions at roughly the same time. However, there are occurrences of specific promo cards distributed in some regions in other events (such as Cetitan released in Traditional Chinese as Elite Four tournament promo) in which TPC will add new promo cards into those regions (Xatu in Cetitan’s case).
  • Winning prizes are now being offered in tournaments, which are localized copies of the winning prize offered in the same season of the Championship Series in Japan.
  • Championship Point reward promo cards in Japan are also localized and offered in each region as Championship Point rewards.
Card Distribution Stamp TW HK TH ID
Absol Participation Regional 214/S-P 214/S-P :x: 373/S-P
Hisuian Braviary Participation Regional 229/S-P 229/S-P :x: :x:
Pawmi Participation Regional 027/SV-P 027/SV-P 020/SV-P 024/SV-P
Eevee Participation Championships 037/SV-P 037/SV-P 028/SV-P 038/SV-P
Hisuian Typhlosion V Winning Regional* 215/S-P 215/S-P :x: :x:
Hisuian Typhlosion V Winning Championships* 039/SV-P 039/SV-P :x: :x:
Toedscruel ex Side Event Championships :x: :x: 030/SV-P :x:
Pawmot ex Side Event Championships :x: :x: 031/SV-P :x:
Houndstone ex Side Event Championships :x: :x: 032/SV-P :x:
Celebration Fanfare Point Reward 2022-23 Season 058/SV-P 058/SV-P 063/SV-P 079/SV-P
Cyclizar Participation Regional 056/SV-P 056/SV-P 062/SV-P 076/SV-P
Cetitan Participation Regional :x: :x: 106/SV-P 097/SV-P
Xatu Participation Regional 066/SV-P 066/SV-P :x: :x:
Latias Participation Regional 098/SV-P 098/SV-P 114/SV-P 126/SV-P
Mawile Participation Championships 107/SV-P 107/SV-P 122/SV-P 153/SV-P
Zapdos ex Winning 2023-24 Season 055/SV-P 055/SV-P 061/SV-P 075/SV-P
Victory Proof (Gold) Trophy Trophy S-P S-P S-P S-P
Victory Proof (Silver) Trophy Trophy S-P S-P S-P S-P
Victory Proof (Bronze) Trophy Trophy S-P S-P S-P S-P
Victory Symbol (Gold) Trophy Trophy SV-P SV-P SV-P SV-P
Victory Symbol (Silver) Trophy Trophy SV-P SV-P SV-P SV-P
Victory Symbol (Bronze) Trophy Trophy SV-P SV-P SV-P SV-P
  • Traditional Chinese 215/S-P and 039/SV-P Hisuian Typhlosion V: the card is a winning prize and should print with Season Stamps, however as the Asia Championship Series’ logo wasn’t revealed until the start of 2023-24 season, the card was printed with Event Stamps instead. This resulted in the card having 2 tournaments x 2 regions = 4 variants with copies from Hong Kong Championships becoming scarce due to difficult distribution criteria.

English Regions

Due to how the Trainers Website is structured, English promos are not listed in the site. However, there are past threads on the forum in which other E4 members shared photos of the cards they found:

National Champions 2022-23

The Asia Championship Series wasn’t established in English regions until the 2023-24 season, and while Regional League tournaments and National Championships were held in earlier seasons, none of them offered promo cards as prizes until the 2022-23 National Champions, which offered prizes similar to TPCi’s Pokémon TCG Championship Series tournaments. This was also the only tournament offering staff-exclusive promo cards.

Card Index Distribution Stamp SG MY PH HK-EN
Ultra Ball SWSH9 150/172 Participation Championships :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Ultra Ball SWSH9 150/172 Trophy* Championships + “TOP 8” :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Ultra Ball SWSH9 150/172 Trophy Championships + “CHAMPION” :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Ultra Ball SWSH9 150/172 Staff Championships + “STAFF” :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
  • Top 8 Ultra Ball: although players only needed to reach top 8 to receive this card, they must further reach top 4 to receive trophy frames with their promo cards.

2023-24 Season and Beyond

Promo card distributions in English regions became similar to localized regions after Asia Championship Series was fully established in the 2023-24 season, however as the promo cards are sourced from existing TPCi cards, there’s a large difference between promo cards given in English and localized regions:

  • Participation and winning prizes are Trainer cards.
  • Trophy cards are also sourced from existing TPCi cards, and are printed with the Event Stamps but no information regarding season, venue or player’s rank (although season and player’s rank can be found written on the trophy frame).
  • As this article was written during the 2023-24 season, we currently do not know if English regions will also distribute Championship Point rewards.
Card Index Distribution Stamp SG MY PH HK-EN
Iono PAL 185/193 Participation Regional :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Arven SVI 166/198 Participation Championships :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Boss’s Orders (Ghetsis) PAL 172/193 Winning 2023-24 Season :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Chien-Pao ex PAL 061/193 Trophy Regional :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Chien-Pao ex PAL 061/193 Trophy Championships :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Pikachu SVP 101 Others 2023-24 Season :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
22 Likes
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Awesome article! Very well done compiling all this information. I’ve seen a lot of these different promos with different stamps (e.g. all the different Chien-Pao ex trophy cards), but never knew which stamp variations were actually released.

I’m also glad there is (thus far) just a single English Pikachu with a repeated Season stamp, although if the Asian championship continues with English promo hand-outs, I’m a bit worried about the future. :sweat_smile: The reason I don’t collect Pikachu cameos, is so I don’t have to deal with Trophy cards (or the Pokémon Illustrator for that matter), since they’re not actual Pikachu cards. But all the cards mentioned above, apart from the Trainers, are actual Pokémon cards of their respective species, so hopefully I won’t have to deal with any Pikachu with all kind of stamps in the near future. :crossed_fingers:
If I do, I now know where to find the information, though. Again, well done!

I realize even finding pictures/scans is very difficult for most of these cards, but perhaps you could add picture links to each of the mentioned cards + variation? So people could click on the link and see the respective card + stamp? Just a thought.

PS: Not sure if intentional or not, but I saw you’ve added * to your tables, and there are lists below them. If you want those bullet-lists to be flat * as well, you could add a slash before the asterisks: \*. :slight_smile: Although they’re also perfectly find as actual bullet-lists tbh.

Greetz,
Quuador

6 Likes
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Thanks for the appreciation. I’m always interested in writing articles regarding Asian promos, and since the ACS (and Gym) promos are now affecting both TPC and TPCi collectors, I’ve decided to prioritize ACS so here it is.

TBH Pikachu is an rare exception (cards stamped with CS logo but not actually from CS) which I nearly missed as its TPC equivalent (including Japan and localized regions) was stamped with Worlds logo, but for some reason the English card got the ACS logo.

As ACS is still in its first season in English regions and me majoring in TPC cards, we can’t say we fully understand the distribution rules yet. I hope this article can share what we know about localized regions so that TPCi collectors can explore the events based on that.

Thanks for the feedback, I’ve added some links to sources such as official card database and other site which may have images. Unfortunately not all cards mentioned have sources to clear images so I can only provide as much as I have.

Those are originally intended to be side notes like the ones found in wikis, but I’m not sure what’s the markup for that so I got lazy and just made them bullet lists, which I preferred over plain asterisks.

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Great article! I’m glad there’s now a place that can compile everything about this, especially the English promos - I’m glad I was able to help out ahahah

Well done!

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Amazing work @rabby250! Worth noting that I’ve finally got off my bum and completed adding all promos from these events to the Pokumon database up to S-P. SV-P will follow later this summer. Soon I’ll also add all the special non-promo prints like the stamped Chien-paos.

The one exception is simplified chinese. That one just had SM-P promos added (check out those rare candies!) Language: Simplified Chinese - Pokumon. As SC is still on its S-P era I’m not prioritizing those just yet.

The goal is to eventually get caught up to everything but Pokemon is just printing a lot of promos & variants nowadays (example the play pack promos) so it’s been difficult to keep up to date :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
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What are the play pack promos?

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Thank you for such a informative and well presented article. Your knowledge base for promos, specially Asian cards is really excellent and very inspiring. This was a great read to understand all the different variants and the distribution. Thanks for writing the article.

Cheers!

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Well, as some of you might have already heard, Asia Championship Series had been through an overhaul and will be presented in a brand new format starting from 2024-25 season, which unfortunately (to me) means I will also have to revise this article.

Due to the large difference between formats (and cards!), I will be wrapping up this document as part 1 and write a new article for the new format as part 2. At the meantime, anyone interested in the new format can check out TPC’s video introduction:

6 Likes