Distribution & Scarcity of 2007 JPN World Champions Pack

General
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Was perusing eBay for potentially interesting pickups the other day and ended up buying a PSA 10 Charizard from the 2007 Japanese World Champions Pack (English Power Keepers equivalent) on a whim. Not too expensive and seemed like a cool niche item.

Out of curiosity, I did some reading on the World Champions Pack “set” and couldn’t find a whole lot about it. According to Bulbapedia, packs from the set were only available for online order in Japan (like the Web set), and only for about a two-week window. I realize these are technically set cards with an easily obtainable English set equivalent, so nothing extraordinary… but the circumstances of distribution seem extraordinarily limited.

The Zard was around $250 IIRC and I don’t really care about plussing on it any time in the near future. However, I am wondering whether anybody has any thoughts about the scarcity of the set as a whole and its viability as a collector’s item given the weird release circumstances.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I couldn’t find a sealed pack of this for sale anywhere, or even a picture of one! What’s the deal with that?

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The packs are easily unsealed from this set afaik, so the best sealed item is actually a case of them which is even rarer.

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For sure a hard pack to come by; I believe there was one on Y!J, but it wasn’t cheap. Pkonno had another one up, but he’s taken all his listings down for now.

The pack itself isn’t foil, it’s a cardboard box — kind of like a theme deck, and I *think* it had a lot of cards in? (I want to say 30, but I could well have made that up)

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Bulbapedia says 15 cards per “pack.” Wonder what the pull rates were like, though. Can’t have been like VS (where your chances of pulling a given card were like 50/50), since according to Bulbapedia the total cardlist was 108 - same as Power Keepers. Valuable info regarding the pack, though, and makes sense why I can’t find one haha.

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I could swear I saw a pack opening some years ago, but it was so long ago I really can’t remember. Alternatively it could have just been a listing of an open pack. I do remember a Salamence ex, so it’s possible there was one ex per pack (or maybe one ex/gold star), or maybe that was just a lucky pack.

A few months ago a mandarake auction for a sealed box of 8 packs went for something like 2.2k USD. I thought I took a screenshot, but haven’t been able to find it yet. I realise this is a lot of waffle and probably not helpful.

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Ok! I found the listing for the box. It’s actually 12 packs.

I also found the youtube vid of the pack opening:

2502×1094 1.78 MB

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WCP is only available to be ordered online by players for 2 weeks. At the time, Power Keepers was released earlier than WCP and it was nearing the World Championships. To make things fair, Japan slap together the set and made it available only to players with a Player ID. However, the cards in the entire set was not very playable and I’ve read on a Japan blog before that it was quoted as a ‘sh*t set and the worst of all sets to date’. Not sure if that impacted the orders but I can see that being a reason why there are so few of them available.

What I was referring to is the 1st Edition version, which was released first before they decide to cut it off and print Unlimited. But due to the underwhelming response, only very little Unlimited versions were released, making it one of the scarcest UED sets next to e1. So if you think finding a 1st Edition is hard, try Unlimited.

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It is additionally very difficult to track down some of the ex-es from this set. I’m only missing 9 ex-es to reach all 157 original ex-es released (excluding alternate arts), and 2 out of 9 of them are from WCP (Salamence-ex & Absol-ex).

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I bought the mandarake one and it’s beautiful haha. My lighting is pretty shit right now though.

imgur.com/gallery/H0IrnMq

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Looks like you got it for a really good price!

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I would imagine it is one of the scarcest main set to be printed in Japanese due to the lack of orders the set saw. From my experience I have seen very little quantity in comparison to other cards from the PCG era and same goes for booster packs and booster boxes.

The booster packs do have a seal on the top, but not on the bottom so they can be tampered with with relative ease. I am actually going to open a pack next week, so I will record it and talk to some additional information. I will post the link in this feed when it is uploaded.

And nice pick up on the WCP box @subf, defiantly a good price !!

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Also I am currently trying to complete the unlimited WCP set, so if any one has any to trade or sell please contact me !

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Can confirm. I’ve only seen five unlimited edition WCP Pikachu cards thus far (one I own myself). And I’ve been looking for the unlimited edition WCP Seviper for 3.5 years, before finally finding it (and thereby completing my Seviper collection in all languages and variations) last month thanks to an Efour member (EDIT: who I now see has replied above, thanks again @jrugenious212 ). Before this purchase, I also had never even seen a picture of the unlimited edition WCP Seviper despite searching for it multiple times a week for 3.5 years straight.

Why is this card so rare and hard to find you might ask? Mostly already answered by @chok above, but to give a full summary:

  1. This set was only available for purchase online
  2. On top of that: it was only available for a two week period
  3. On top of that: it could only be bought by Japanese players
  4. On top of that: it was TCG-wise a pretty bad set, so not a lot of players bought it
  5. On top of that: 90%+ of the sets sold were in 1st edition, so unlimited edition was very scarce
  6. On top of that: the Seviper is a Rare in the set, so isn’t pulled as much as let’s say a Common
  7. On top of that: Seviper isn’t a very popular Pokémon to collect

So yeah, although it took me 3.5 years, I’m extremely happy and grateful that my Seviper collection in all Pokémon TCG languages and variations will now be 100% complete (as soon as those last two Indonesian Seviper cards have arrived in an incoming package). :grin:

Greetz,
Quuador

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I can confirm that this is an extremely rare series.
This is my favourite one because of its uncommon history.
What I can say is that 1st edition booster packs are not so hard to find if you want one even if they are rare (I would say that approximately 5-6 booster packs appear on Mercari + Yahoo Auction each year).

And regarding the unlimited one… they nearly never appear. I only saw one sale with several booster packs and some were unopened. Only few of these were in good conditions. So I only know one person who own an unopened unlimited booster pack (and this person also knows one which makes 2).

I personally own one unlimited booster pack. It is complete but has been opened to check for the holo/ex. This is still incredible to have this.

I had been looking for this for years and I still haven’t found any unopened unlimited booster pack. I have read that maybe 90% of the packs that were sold were in 1st edition but I really think that it is more since unlimited cards and packs are awfully rare.

This makes unlimited WCP maybe the rarest Japanese booster pack (unlimited L3 is near)

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As you’re well aware I can definitely echo this. In February I finally acquired an unlimited WCP Pichu card for my collection after searching for a very long time - it was the final Japanese Pichu card I needed. The last copy I’m aware to have sold prior to February 2021 was all the way back in October 2015!

In a very strange twist less than a month after I was able to pick up 2 more copies - one from Japan and another from the Netherlands.

2742×1768 1.33 MB

As far as I’m aware the unlimited sets were only available at the Spring Battle Road 2008 event. Last year whilst perusing old Pokémon Japan articles I found a featured article about the set being exclusively available at the event(s), though I’ve tried to dig out that article again since and have had no luck. Spring Battle Road 2008 was cancelled after only 2 of the 5 events had been held and I believe were only available for the competitors to purchase, which would certainly go hand-in-hand with the set’s rarity.

Unlike normal sets, the ex, gold star, holofoil rare and regular rare cards all appear to have roughly the same pull rate which is probavbly why it took me so long to find that Pichu. I had entertained the idea of going after a complete unlimited WCP set a couple of years ago but it’s just not worth the hassle.

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Are you really sure it was at Spring Battle Road 2008 ?

The set was released in July 2007. I really think it was Battle Summer Road 2007 that was held in July 2007. Do you have links for more information about Spring 2008 ? It would be extremely strange that it was at Spring 2008, like 8 months after the release in July 2007 that you could buy WCP

Thanks.

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I’m pretty confident on that, yep. But like I said I can’t find the article any more sadly.

The purpose of these decks was to introduce cards from various EX sets which had been released in other languages but not Japanese - it made sure Japanese players weren’t at a disadvantage.

I guess in Spring 2008 the cards must have still been tournament-legal which is why they allowed competitors to buy the set from the event. I recently spent quite a while trying to dig out the article I had read for @chrisbalestra but had no luck. I really need to start saving things like that. :sob:

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But the purpose of these booster packs (I cannot say decks since they really are booster packs since it is totally random, even if they are strange) was not what you said I think. This is a 100% translation of Ex Power Keepers which was released several months earlier in English. Japan decided to translate the complete series to avoid disadvantage during the international championships (hence the name World Champions Pack). So it does not introduce cards from various sets, only from Ex Power Keepers since this is the same series.

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If you like nostalgia :blush: web.archive.org/web/20071011020350/http://www.pokemon-card.com/products/wcp/campaign/

This is the official website archive where it also says :

« Friday 15 June, pre-order now! Pre-order by Sunday 1 July, delivery on the day of release, Thursday 5 July!
Special sales at the event
Special sales will be held at this summer’s biggest Pokémon card game event, “Battle Road Summer★2007”!
The event will be held at each venue of Pokémon Festa 2007 and Pokémon Pal City, as well as in Sendai and Hiroshima.
The products will not be sold at Pokémon Centers or other general distribution shops.
The number of products sold at the venues is limited. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
For more information about “Battle Road Summer 2007”, click here. »

I have eventually found the website I once found. It clearly says it was Battle Road Summer 2007 (Festa 2007, Pal City, Sendai and Hiroshima) : park3.wakwak.com/~pokepale/news/0/old/5/z5_011_01.htm

Translation :

« The Pokémon Card Game World Champions Pack, a limited edition product available online and at events, has been announced on the official Pokémon Card Game Trainer’s Website. This “World Champions Pack” will not be distributed to the general public (it will not be sold at Pokémon Centers or toy shops), but will be sold on the official Pokémon Card Game website on July 5. Pre-orders will be accepted on the official Pokémon Card website from 15:00 on June 15, and if you pre-order by July 1, you will receive your product on July 5, the release date. In addition to pre-orders, regular sales are also scheduled to begin at 3pm on July 5th. The packs will also be on sale at the Battle Road Summer 2007 (Pokémon Festa 2007, Pokémon Pal City, Sendai and Hiroshima), a Pokémon Card Game event held in the summer. »

It also says this : « Pre-orders for Pokémon Card Game World Champions Packs, which will go on sale on July 5, started at 3 p.m. today on the official Pokémon Card website, Trainer’s Website. There are two types of packs available for pre-order: 500 yen per pack (up to 11 packs) and 6,000 yen per box (up to 3 boxes). On the card introduction page, three new cards, “Absol ex”, “Sanders☆” and “Fuyou no Stadium”, have been released. By the way, the “World Champions Pack” consists of the same cards as the Pokémon TCG “EX POWER KEEPERS” released only overseas, and some promotional cards used in Japan are included (collection numbers are different from the promotional cards). »

Saying clearly this is purely Ex Power Keepers translated in Japanese as I said earlier.

It would have been extremely strange if this series had been sold the year after its release when we were in full DP series and after the championships for which Japan did not want his players to be at disadvantage (took place in August 2007 in Hawaii), I was pretty sure it was Battle Road Summer 2007 :blush:

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Yep, 1st edition was released for Battle Road Summer 2007. It was available for pre-order 1 month before the event started and it was also available to purchase at the event. It’s unlikely that they would have printed both 1st edition and unlimited for the same event, but I think it would make sense that they did another print run for the Battle Road Spring 2008 event.

It looks like you’re right that it is only EX Power Keepers, for some reason I thought the set consisted of a mix of cards from other sets. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

Despite being a new era, cards from the later EX sets were still tournament-legal. Steven’s Advice from the set featured in all 3 winning 2008 World Championship decks in August 2008 for example - which Japanese players didn’t do very well in - so there was still a need for cards from the set to be available to Japanese players long after their initial inception period.

The best I can find is the Hokkaido battle report from Spring Battle Road 2008 (web.archive.org/web/20080705160327/http://www.pokemon-card.com/event/battleroad2008/report_sp_hokkaido.html) which states:

  • “There was also a sale of the “World Champions Pack” limited to the Internet and event venues.”

It then links through to the WCP campaign page you linked but updated in 2008 (web.archive.org/web/20080516051301/http://www.pokemon-card.com/products/wcp/campaign/). This states:

  • “Don’t miss these cards that haven’t appeared in the “Pokemon Card Game DP” series!”; and
  • “* Limited sale has ended at 18:00 on May 16, 2008 (Friday).”

Unless the original 2007 campaign lasted all the way through until May 2008, I’m pretty sure that’s referring to a second distribution of these packs (which is where I believe the unlimited cards originated).

This wasn’t the page I saw, which was dedicated to the WCP packs being available at the Spring Battle Road 2008 event, but sadly after some more searching today I still can’t find that page.

^ @chrisbalestra you may find this useful?