Hey guys. I’ve been collecting/researching for a long time now and I figured I would just ask the most important curiosity I have in hopes that someone vastly more knowledgeable than me would answer. I need a direct, (speculative yet informed is fine) accurate answer to this: Can I get a list please of the rarest/scarcest (whatever you want to call it) sets of Japanese wotc era cards? Including (but not limited to): Carddass, Topsun, Base Set No Rarity, Unlimited, Jungle, Rocket, Gym Heroes, All Neos, All E Cards, McDonalds Holos, Jr Rally Cards. Feel free to leave out trophy cards as I can get all the reports.
I would really, really just like a concise list of around how much of what was produced/thrown out.
My opinion (In order of descending rarity)
No Rarity Base Set
Carddass
Topsun
Jr Rally
Skyridge
VS Series
Vending
Squirtle Deck
E Starter Deck
CD Promo
Aquapolis
Expedition
All Neos
All Gym Leaders
Rocket
Jungle
Fossil
Unlimited Base Set
Please correct me as much as possible.
Thank you Kind Pokemon Masters
If we are thinking solely about rarity of holos/valuable cards I would put regular base set higher up because it was the only set before e series where pulling a holo wasn’t guaranteed unlike rest of the sets from jungle to neo, they are harder to find especially in good condition
I’m not sure how to answer your question but I think it’s worth pointing out that in japanese there are 5 eseries sets and not 3 as aquapolis and skyridge are split between town on no map/wind by the sea and split earth/mysterious mountains.
5 corrections were made to Japan’s Neo Genesis set at some point after it was launched (it’s unknown when). These aren’t impossible to find but don’t appear anywhere near as often as the regular “error” versions.
I see a lot more no rarity Base Set cards appear for sale than I do unlimited e-Series 2 through 5 cards - that may be because people have less reason to list those however.
No rarity Base Set was printed for only 3 months I believe, but it’s worth noting that at the time Pokémon as a video game had been out for 7 months and was featured the front-cover of Japan’s CoroCoro Comic magazine for each of the 3 months it was in print - at the time CoroCoro had an average monthly readership of around 1.7 million, so it is something a lot of people would have at least had some knowledge of (and I’m sure enough product was printed to cater for this) - I like the history of the set but I don’t think it’s as rare as some people make it out to be;
Cards like those awarded from JR Rallies are just promotions and are hard to compare with the main sets - I imagine there are fewer of those than any of the main set cards though (excluding unlimited e-Series 1 and the Neo Genesis corrections), but that’s just a guess - you could look at train travel statistics to get an idea of how many of those were likely distributed (I’d guess anywhere from 10-50,000);
The original sets were all continuously printed between their launch and at least 2001 - whilst the cards are in no way different, in ~March 2001 Base Set through Neo Discovery were reprinted with different barcodes. I believe this only had a single print-run. These versions are a lot rarer than the regular releases, but I’ll stress that the cards contained inside are no different (the 2001 Neo Genesis packs do not contain corrected Neo Genesis cards, either);
Decks in general will have a lower distribution, but again it’s hard to compare these to main sets.
I hope that’s of some use.
I know you only want Japanese ‘WotC-era’ cards, but you may be interested in knowing that Japan’s rarest non-promo full-set is probably the unlimited version of World Champions Pack which I believe may have only available to purchase over 2 weekends at 2 separate events in Japan in 2008.