Victory Medals are some of the most popular “entry level” trophy cards, but their origins are actually shrouded in a good deal of mystery. I decided to explore the events that distributed these medals–here’s the results!
These were distributed starting in 2005 at Official Gym stores. These were similar to the Pokemon Leagues runs at local card / hobby shops in America.
Official Gym stores would host Gym Challenges every month, with winners receiving the Silver medals
The Gold medals were given out to the winners of the regional “Gym Final” events, but were also later distributed a bunch of other Official Events to winners, so they’re not exclusive with one exception
The 2005 Gold Medal was only given out during Gym Final events in 2005 & 2006. This means there are only 42 of this card officially distributed (21 each year–7 Gym Finals across 3 age groups). Super rare!
The Giratina medal was given out in 2008 Challenge Hiroba Events as a prize for winning 5 times in a row
Challenge Hiroba is actually an English mistranslation that somehow has persisted for over a decade. The Japanese even name is “ポケモンチャレンジひろば”, which translates to “Pokemon Challenge Plaza”. These events were held at hypermarkets / shopping centers across Japan instead of in card shops.
The Arceus metals were given out at the Pokemon Battle Tour 09. This summer event was held in 44 prefectures across Japan, and featured 2 “leagues”. In one league you played with a full 60-card deck, and another league you played with a 30-card half deck. Winners of the standard league got both gold & silver medals, while the “half” league only got the silver one.
The 3 silver medals were given out in an identical way to the silver Giratina medal: winning at Challenge Hiroba events.
The gold Typhlosion medal was a prize if you won 2 consecutive times at the Pokemon Battle Challenge. These event was held in the Fall - Winter of 2009 in department stores across Japan
In November 2009, Gym Challenges began distributing these medals for 1st-3rd place winners.
These were held monthly at each store, and stores would continue to given these to players throughout 2010 until the Gen 5 TCG expansions started coming out in Fall of 2010.
And there you have it! These are some of my favorite promo cards so I hope you also appreciate the extra details behind their origins
Great guide, I never understood how exactly this worked and why there were silver medals more expensive than others, the 2005 it really is some rarity!
Thank you, saw a bundle of them on yahoo auction recently and was curious as to if there are fakes and if there are fake trophy cards, how does one tell them apart? Cheers.
There could certainly be fakes of any card, but I haven’t seen many in particular for victory medals. Your best bet is to treat them like any other cards and closely inspect things like the holo pattern (should be on the medal part only for most of them) as well as the rosette patterns in the printing.
I was interested in getting one of the silver medal promos but I can’t really find anything about the writing in the top right corner on some of the cards. The only thing I can tell is that the 2006 promos have it and the 2005 promos don’t have it. When I use the Google Translate picture app the meaning translates to something different every time into English so that’s not much help
Is it just because of the two different years? Thanks for any help!
Just as a note, if you look at promos atleast in both Japanese and English, the Pokemon company started adding the word ‘トレーナー’ or ‘TRAINER’ on the top right of the cards from 2007 onwards. So this wording is present on all trainer promos released from 2007.
So in your example, the silver medal on the left is 2005 silver medal (no promo star) and the one on the right is 2007 silver medal.
