Hey everyone! I had the opportunity a couple months ago to add this card to my collection directly from a winner and it really has everything going for it.
Best artist, first American/English Trophy card, first Bilingual card and a great backstory with players from the US and Japan meeting in Hawaii
While there were 36 copies of the trophy card released, many more were printed in the Trainerâs Magazine Volume 3 later that year and itâs traditionally been accepted that the only difference is the coloring & gloss however this isnât the case. There is actually a surefire way to tell from an image if its a TMB or Trainer Magazine Exeggutor.
I noticed the first day I had the card in hand and Iâve confirmed it with a scan and looking through as many images as I could find that the Dr. Ooyama in the bottom right corner is different on each version.
Hope this was as interesting for you to learn as it was exciting for me to discover! If anyone else has more information/knows more people with a copy, Iâd love to hear from them.
Trophy implies they won something to get it. This was given to all the competitors of the TMB, win or lose. The TMB No.1/2/3 were the trophy card of the event.
First English trophy wouldnât be until 2002/03 with the NO.1/2/3
Edit: A group photo of all the competitors what was posted here many years ago shows there were about 50ish players. So the number would probably be closer to that amount.
This thread isnât about whether its a trophy or just a prize card, its about finally knowing how to differentiate the rare and common print.
Fwiw, the top players from Japan and the US competed in this, so you had to âwinâ top events in your region to even get in. In a sense the TMB Japan event was the qualification to even get to the Hawaii TMB
I donât disagree with your strict definition but it also feels wrong to call it a participation card. The TMB final tournament in Hawaii was invite-only and was only a tiny pool (50ish like you said) of the best players in the world. I can see the perspective that only numbered trainers should be trophies, but in a way attending the event was trophy-worthy in itself if that makes sense.
I already said it on discord yesterday man but I just wanted to reiterate how awesome of a collection piece this is. The personalized story is just incredible.
@swolepoke in the truest sense of the word trophy then only no. 1âs are trophies because everyone else actually lost to get theirs. Well I guess 3rd place lost then won.
Awesome write-up and observation about the tie. Lovely letter from the winner.
As for the definition of âtrophyâ card, this category has always been loosely applied and basically come to mean ârare prize cardâ in the hobby, and to advocate for a new term like âparticipationâ card for this doesnât really make sense.
By that standard, cards like Family Event Kangaskan and Unikarp are primarily âsuccessful participationâ cards, as they only required winning a few games and not actually reaching 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place.
Attending this tournament required winning entrance first, as the winner described. âPrize cardâ has always been confusing in Pokemon due to the use of âprize cardsâ in the TCG gameplay.
Thanks! Itâs really tough to tell within a graded case and on online auctions. I expected to find nothing as I compared my cards, so I was pretty surprised there actually was a difference.
@nine especially shares so many interesting finds, felt I had to contribute to E4âs knowledgebase
Awesome!
Nice discovery concerning the tie, I knew that the text was a little bit blurry on the TMB version, but I didnât notice that the tie appears to be longer due to this blurry effect.
I also got some nice words from the original player when I purchased the card from her (+ I asked her to sign me a card)
By the way I aggree on the fact this is not a trophy card, this is a participation/prize card instead, like the badly named âtrophyâ Kangashkan or the Unikarp.
Yeah I do think the TMB has the correct drawing actually because if you look at the Evolutions/CP6 it has the full tie! Seems that for whatever reason it was sliced so the bottom of Dr.Ooyama is completely flat in Mag version.
Glad to see you dropping more knowledge here! From the American side it looks like top 12 players in the US were invited ages 11-14. So 35 total players invited to 1999 TMB Hawaii Finals makes sense.
Hey,
maybe this is a stupid question, but Unique Username is usually good informed. Would someone tell me, what version is on the left side of this post?
ThanksCracker
Hey all I was lucky enough to attend the 1999 Tropical Mega Battle as a lottery winner, they told my parents that they picked one from the winners and one from the losers bracket of the tournament I went to in San Francisco. I was about a month away from my ninth birthday when the event happened so my memory is pretty fuzzy apart from it being crazy exciting.
There were two competitions, one were the US / Japanese children competed amongst themselves and another where the two countries faced off against each other. I remember getting a few wins against the other US kids but I got absolutely trounced by the ones from Japan. I distinctly remember getting picked apart by a hitmonlee and thinking it was super unfair that they got to use cards I hadnât seen before and couldnât read. I kept doing local competitions for a while but I was really too young to enjoy the competitive side of the game, my decks were usually built with cool factor top of mind.
I drifted away from Pokemon once I hit middle school and Yugioh was the game to play and hadnât really thought of the card in ages until I was regretting selling the bulk of my collection as a teenager with this most recent round of social media hype.
Iâve uploaded an album with my card pics and what memorabilia I have left over from the tournament here (Iâm on the left in the pic): imgur.com/gallery/MezL5Ho
