Finding archival information from the keepers.

General
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So, I had tried to dig up as much information as possible on “Topps Pokemon” cards. Let me tell yah, if you want to know anything about Pokemon’s history and don’t want to go to “Bulbapedia” or some kind of other wiki, you’re in for a headache.

Contacted Pokemon: Not allowed to identify any cards or give you any information. (Horrible)

Contacted Topp’s: Fantastic customer service, best of the bunch, said…
"Hello,

Thank you for contacting the Topps Consumer Relations.

Unfortunately, Topps does not archive information of any kind on older released products. Once a product has reached its one year anniversary it is considered memorabilia, in which case all information regarding that product is maintained by memorabilia companies, such as Beckett."
Contacted Beckett…Still waiting on a follow up response.

This to me is INSANE. Why oh why would you not have access to this data for everyone. It requires probably less than 10 GB of memory to archive all of Pokemon TCG history including photographs. Yet you throw away this information or don’t allow people to it at all?
It’s just so disconcerting. I feel like we should all be privy to that information. Information such as pull rates, general rarity, holo differences, print runs, print counts etc. Topps actually puts the pull odds ON THE PHYSICAL PACK. Imagine Pokemon did that. It would change the game imo in a small but nice way.

Lastly, I feel there is no Pokemon on the scale it is today without the collectors. I truly have no clue of the market appeal of TCG without any collectors and JUST players. So I could be completely wrong here, but think about it like this. Do we really believe out of all the sales that Pokemon has for its TCG that the majority is from the players of the actual card game? I would find that hard to believe. If its not true, and the majority of their income is coming from collectors then I feel they should accommodate us more. I don’t see how that could hurt them or the collectors in any way. If anything I think it would make a sharper market overall. On top of that you could argue ALL Pokemon players are collectors, making the point for more transparency more obvious.

WHOMP! Thanks for reading.

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@ape,

All manufacturing company’s would react the same. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself where’s the money in storing then providing information from 20 years ago? Topps wouldn’t do it because then they could be held liable for any misinformation. Later we found out about the Topps Vault Lol.

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I can see that logic. But at the same time, you could make this information available through a wiki type or 3rd party with all information dumped and then provide a link on the website or something to that effect with a disclaimer. Making them not liable. Instead its 3rd party finding the information crowd sourced. Its not difficult to take information you already have and make it public. So whether it is lucrative shouldn’t have to be their drive. You should just want to be a good company to your customers, to your fans. That’s how I see it. The amount of effort to provide this is truly minimal. A one man operation. :blush: