I’ve been trying to find information on older Pokémon cards printed in Portuguese, and whether there were any differences between cards printed for distribution in Portugal versus Brazil.
What I know so far is that, in both countries, they were distributed by Devir, and the Internet Archive has been helpful for confirming that. However, I can’t find any information on where they were printed, or whether the two countries had different translations for the cards.
I also found that Base Set packs printed by WotC were apparently distributed in both countries, but the text is in Brazilian Portuguese. After 2011, cards started being printed in Portuguese by Copag only, in Brazil.
Does anyone have information on promos that were printed only in Portugal, or on any Portuguese-language cards that have different text or a different printed year? Also, does anyone know who was printing them for each country after 2003 and before 2011?
Distributed to: both Portugal and Brazil by WotC themselves
Language on the cards: Portuguese from Portugal Brazilian Portuguese
Available sets: Base Set; Jungle; Fossil
2003-2011:
Printed: by Devir Livraria, located in Brazil
Distributed to: both Portugal and Brazil, also by Devir Livraria
Language on the cards: Brazilian Portuguese
Available sets: EX Ruby & Sapphire; EX Team Rocket Returns; EX Deoxys; EX Emerald; POP2; EX Unseen Forces; EX Legend Maker; POP4; Diamond & Pearl; Mysterious Treasures; Secret Wonders
2011-today:
Printed: by Copag, located in Brazil
Distributed to:
Brazil, by Copag themselves
Portugal, by Devir Livraria
Language on the cards: still Brazilian Portuguese
Available sets: too many to name.
A.f.a.i.k., no Portuguese cards were ever printed in Portugal, as mentioned above. The three printing locations were Belgium, Brazil, and Brazil for the three respective time periods mentioned earlier.
There are however some Portuguese (Pikachu) cards only distributed to select countries:
The Portuguese Pikachu ivy promo with tail stamp from the Pikachu World Collection 2000 nonet was released in Australia (fun fact, this is apart from the original October 1996 Japanese ivy Pikachu the only other version with incorrect Ken Sugimori illustrator, instead of intended Keiji Kinebuchi).
The Portuguese Pikachu from the Pikachu World Collection 2010 nonet was released with (new) Japanese back in Japan and international back in the USA.
The XY95 Pikachu promo was exclusively released in Brazil, after Copag hosted some events at select stores in Brazil, and later they were also available for customers of stores in Brazil on the 20th Pokémon Day (Feb. 27th + 28th) 2016.
There might be some non-Pikachu cards exclusively released in one country, but since Portuguese cards are printed in Brazil, I doubt any exclusive to just Portugal would be released, especially since most collectors in Portugal preferred English cards.
Good point actually. Are you aware of any Portuguese cards from post-WotC sets with the Belgium back error?
In my post I mentioned cards after the WotC era (2003+) were only printed in Brazil, so I’m expecting no Belgium back errors on any later Portuguese cards. If there are any, I’m very curious about their origins.
There is a Made in USA version of Base Portuguese. EUA = USA, they are different than the Made in Belgium cards. It is pretty rare, a few packs came up for sale recently. Pack copyright doesn’t match the cards, they have the richer colored artwork, and different card corners.
I actually got in touch with Devir, and they gave me the email of someone who worked there back when Pokémon cards first started being printed!
Here’s what I found out:
Pokémon cards in Portuguese were initially printed by Cartamundi in Belgium during the WotC era, and they were printed in Brazilian Portuguese, even the ones distributed in Portugal. You can confirm this by looking at the back of a Base Set pack, where it uses “você” instead of “tu”.
Even after the license moved from WotC to The Pokémon Company, the cards have continued to be printed in Brazilian Portuguese, and they still are to this day.
There were also some exclusive Portuguese products made only in Brazil (I actually didn’t know this), called “Livros Ilustrados,” which functioned as ready-made decks.
The guy was super helpful and kind. I’ll see if I can get more information and will update you all again (he didn’t mention the “Made in USA” packs, so maybe there were some early prints that weren’t widely distributed, I’ll ask and see if I can find out more.
Thanks so much for your help! Hope this is useful for any master sets you’re putting together in the future.
P.S. The Base Set pack labeled “Made in USA” actually contains some mistakes—the correct phrasing in Portuguese would be “Fabricado nos EUA,” not “na EUA.” Not really sure how that slipped through.
Notable fun fact about the translation: The 2010 World Collection Pikachu is the only card where the text is actually in European Portuguese, you can see that by the different translation of the Thunderbolt attack from HGSS base set:
This is really neat that you got in contact with a person who worked there when they were being printed. Super rich information there. So was Devir the one that printed them or was it Cartamundi? Or are they the same thing?
They’re actually different companies. Devir was the official (and exclusive) distributor for both Brazil and Portugal, this is confirmed by the Base Set booster box shared by @packyman . I also came across a print of a Nintendo World magazine (check it out here), and there’s note mentioning Devir “launching” Pokémon in Brazil, but according to my conversation with the Devir representative, Devir never printed the cards themselves.
Cartamundi was the company that printed the portuguese cards during the WotC era in Belgium. And since they acquired Copag in 2005, technically… they still do hahaha.
For what its worth, theres a chance the USA stuff was not actually printed in the USA. I wish i could make a good ex wotc contact but depending what they look like, research has shown UK producing cards in packs that say “made in usa”. I would love to see an explanation for this but i dont have one
@ItemfinderCo probably has a bunch and could confirm better
Very cool! So those Pikachu World Collection 2010 Portuguese Pikachu are the only ones printed in Portuguese from Portugal rather than Brazilian Portuguese. That’s a nice fun-fact.
I do know about the twelve Portuguese/Spanish exclusive half decks, but iirc some of them were released in Portugal, according to Bulbapedia at least, so not sure how accurate it is.
Another fun fact: the Spanish Ho-Oh and Lugia decks came in a (Brazilian) Portuguese box and contained (Brazilian) Portuguese rulebooks and such. Only the cards were Spanish, and there was a (Portuguese) sentence on the box stating the cards inside would be in Spanish rather than Portuguese. More info about those two Spanish versions of the decks in this E4 article by @dromanyte.
I have lots of portuguese EX and DP cards I just saw in my unsorted bulk yesterday, but my current sort is not for languages. And its over 50,000 bulk from 2003-2011, so it might be a while before i got a nice portuguese stack to look at.
“Livro Ilustrados” are Half Decks that were exclusively released in Portuguese & Spanish. The only Livros Ilustrados available in Spanish were the Ruby & Sapphire and Unseen Forces ones. All these Half Decks were released in Portuguese.
These Livros Ilustrados appeared in a late point of the expansion lifetime. Ruby & Sapphire ones were distributed in 2 waves being the first released by Devir by late 2005 (Torchic & Mudkip) and the second one released in 2006 (Treecko & Ralts) … I have to highlight that this expansion was released in 2004.
In order to talk about Livro Ilustrados, it’s important to know:
Btw, as fun fact … the Unseen Forces Livros Ilustrados were simplified versions of the Golden Sky Deck & Silvery Ocean Deck. I’ve written an article about that some years ago.
Release Date:
Luckily for us, you can access Devir’s website via Wayback Machine and it’s literally a gold mine. I’ve written an article of a page I’ve found there … I should recover more stuff from their page …
Literally this could be an extensive article …
Also … these Half Decks were distributed even much after ex era ended in West.
This poster is dated 2009 and is related to the Legend Maker Livro Ilustrados … It also introduces the Official Order for the Half Decks from this expansion.
How I found this poster??? it was stored in Devir’s website as a pdf file …
The Ruby & Sapphire were released in Spanish as well … and about release day, the information has not been well-preserved, but we can have an idea of when approximately they were released … I’ve written an article of the first wave of Ruby & Sapphire (Spanish)
Yes. It’s unknown why Devir decided to distribute Spanish cards in that way. The information about the release of these Half Decks in Spanish (I mean, something in Devir’s website mentioning the existence of these Livros Ilustrados) is actually Lost Media.
The Livros Ilustrados from Unseen Forces in Spanish were found relatively recently. Almost nobody knew the existence of these product in Spanish and it wasn’t documented on Internet. In fact, as the day I’m writing this, the articles of these products on Bulbapedia affirm wrongly that they’re Portuguese exclusive (when they’re not)
Thanks for mentioning my article …
In that article I only wrote about Ho-Oh Livro Ilustrado in Spanish (and mentioned Lugia one briefly). Reason why title says (Part I).
Btw, Lugia Livro Ilustrado in Spanish (Sealed and with the warning from Devir telling that cards are in Portuguese) has not been found to this day, but this deck definitely exists in Spanish.
I’ve thought in developing a remake of the Unseen Forces Spanish Livros Ilustrados article. I don’t know when I’ll publish it tbh …
If there are any, I’m very curious about their origins.
