Legendary Birds GB Art
Some new information surfaced about cards that have up to now been unknown. The artwork of the three Legendary Birds above is from the Pokémon Trading Card Game 2 Game Boy game. These artwork are best known for being featured on the Tropical Mega Battle phone cards as shown below:
Yesterday, Takumi Akabane (one of the original TCG developers) posted this to Instagram:
This Ken Sugimori art is used in Rocket’s Moltres, however this is the first time the art with this background has appeared on a regular card. Note the weird artifacts on it suggesting it may be a prototype.
This post was followed up by a set of Instagram stories from @linkdu83 that show a set of all three birds on glossy cardstock. Below is the stories that have been transcribed here to preserve the information and make it more accessible.
Hello! As some people are asking me pictures and information about the 3 mysterious cards I was talking about yesterday in a comment of a new Takumi Akabane’s instagram post, here we are! Please read the whole story, it is quite cool! But first some context…
Earlier this year there was a listing on YJA with a lot of random cards (Vending, Corocoro/WHF promo, holo and non holo cards) and 3 mysterious cards Articuno/Zapdos/Moltres which looked quite weird…
The seller was a random seller who sold a lot of random non pokemon stuff, like the seller in 2014 who sold the famous prototype/test e-cards. So I remembered this listing and I said to myself, even if the 3 legendary birds look 99% weird/fake cards, those are really nice and I already didn’t bid on the 2014 listing, so I will bid this time! Nobody was interested and I was the only one who made a bid…
When I received the cards, I was really surprised by the quality of the 3 legendary birds cards, I have never seen “fake” cards like that. They were glossy, showed the characteristics of a card which was peeled from a sheet and the printing quality was like a regular glossy card. But they still looked weird/fake because there was a bug/error on the Moltres illustration (including a “97” printed on his head) and the Zapdos illustration was off centered (only the Articuno looked normal), the back side of the cards was slightly unusual too, and last but not least, those 3 cards were completely unknown. I talked about them with some people, nobody never saw those cards or fake cards like that. So I put them in a portfolio, hoping that maybe one day I will know where they come from (and even if they were fake, they were really nice!)…
Yesterday, Takumi Akabane (one of the 4 creators of the Pokémon TCG) aka, banet1965, who already shared some early design Pokémon cards earlier this year, randomly posted a strange Moltres on his instagram page…
I was really surprised! First because I would have never thought that Akabane will show one of those cards, then because it could confirm that my 3 mysterious cards are not fake after all. I commented on his instagram post to gain some attention, so he could notice the message I sent to him. I asked if he could provide some information about this strange card. So maybe we ill have some interesting information in the future
So now you know the story, here are some close pictures of the 3 cards…
I compared the printing rosette pattern of the cards with regular cards on 1200 dpi scans, the front sides match. Moreover you can clearly see the black layer was printed above the rosettes, like on regular cards. For the back side, this is more difficult because the back is slightly different, but the printing process looks normal and there is also the black layer printed above the rosettes. So some collectors and I, concluded that the cards seem real, in the sense that the Moltres card can’t be a fake card of the Akabane’s Moltres. Moreover it would make no sense to perfectly fake some cards that are completely unknown…
Thanks for reading I hope you appreciated it and that you are as pleased as me to discover new cards even nowadays! Do not hesitate to contact me if you have more information. The cards are no for sale, thanks,
Update 01/22/24 - They have been graded at PSA
https://www.psacard.com/cert/84858924/psa
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