Relics of Kanto Through Time was an exhibition held the Parco Museum, Tokyo, between 1st and 16th August this year. Four of the items you could buy from the exhibition’s gift shop were crystal-embossed posters featuring Ash and Pikachu, Pikachu, the 1st Edition English Base Set Charizard and the Pokémon logo.
After moving into my new house I decided I wanted some subtle Pokémon art and these posters fit the bill perfectly. I picked up the set of 4 for around 24,000 JPY 6 weeks ago. Here are two of them which I framed to hang on my wall - they’re pretty difficult to get a good picture of during the day time:
Here is the crystal effect if anyone’s curious; I had to use my phone’s torch to show it off:
Anyway… The reason I’m posting here is because it’s come to my attention today that the Charizard poster alone has recently sold for as high as 74,800 JPY and there’s currently one up on YJA with 27 bids at 57,000 with 4 days remaining.
I don’t care what you spend your money on, however the reason I’m posting here is because the 74,800 JPY copy which sold was advertised as being part of a lottery: “This is a rare item that is produced only for those who have passed the lottery, and the number of production is extremely small.”. This is not true. These were purchasable by anyone who attended the Relics of Kanto Through Time exhibition in any quantity for 6,600 JPY each. These are not in any way rare or hard to find at the moment, just 2 months after the exhibition finished, and certainly shouldn’t be commanding a 10x higher price tag.
To put it into some perspective, on Mercari the sale before the “lottery” 74,800 JPY sale was for only 12,000 JPY - and even that is double what they were selling for at the exhibition.
I doubt it’s anyone here bidding on this auction or who bought the Mercari copy, but the message I’m wanting to get across is: do yourself a favour and do some research before buying things. The sheer value certain items are reaching right now is mind boggling and there will be people who take advantage of others by listing items like these with fake descriptions.
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Edit: For further info, here are the boxes they come in and the price tag on the back of them:
They are not a “limited winning prize” as some eBay listings would have you believe. They’re just gift shop merchandise.
Note as well that only these 4 posters are crystal embossed, there are 3 others which can be picked up directly from Parco’s website for around 1,500 JPY each.