after years of not touching anything TCG related (I have enough expensive hobbies…) I decided to finally start collecting cards of my favorite Pokemon, Porygon-z. I’m focusing on english and japanese for now, though I’d love to collect every language in the far future.
I also like to collect general merch. Plushies, figures, anything really. But I wanted to find more “interesting” niche items, including bootlegs or non official merch in general. There’s some cool stuff like the bandai medal collection, battrio coins or the Ga-Olé disks, but I haven’t found much more. The MFC site for it also helped me find a few things I didn’t know existed.
I wanted to collect some non-TCG cards, but I don’t think any exist. Frustratingly enough it seems like every other card series stopped just before the DP era…
Only thing I found was this unlicensed eif baby card which is the exact level of weird I was looking for. If anybody knows about obscure merch, cards or bootlegs I’d absolutely love to hear about it! (especially when it comes to items exclusive to usa/certain countries since I mostly researched the japanese side of it)
I’ll keep an eye out for Porygon-Z stuff, but I don’t often run into (or look at) Diamond/Pearl/Gen IV things. I tried to see if Porygon-Z was included in some card sets I know went up to Diamond and Pearl, but no dice. The closest thing I could find doing a quick search was maybe these large Bromide stickers (not a card, per se, but big enough to look like one ). Note that these are pretty big and definitely larger than a standard TCG card.
Just looked up some stuff on Ebay. You can always rely on South America (Peru) and China to release unlicensed non-TCG stuff that’s actually decently interesting Some of these look card-like too.
Thank you for the info! Right after posting this I went down the Ebay rabbithole and indeed found a lot of cool cards and stickers! I think my future collection will consist of 90% stickers lol.
I was indeed very confused at the abundance of Peruvian merch. A lot of it very recent too! That’s what surprised me the most. I’m from Argentina myself and sticker albums were and still are very popular here and in the rest of South America, licensed or not, so I guess it makes sense. They’re still really interesting pieces of merch.
Those metal keychains I definitely haven’t seen! I was looking for other keychains/straps and I couldn’t find much so I really appreciate it! But dang, they seem hard to find…I can find almost no info online aside from a few listings on Mercari (that thankfully show all the packaging), but no Porygon-z!… Okay, one of them does include Porygon-z (the exact same one from your picture), but I’d love to find it complete. I’ll probably still get that one though lol.
They seem to be VS keychains that included two Pokemon, one with the rectangle shape and another with the rhombus shape. Porygon-Z seemed to come with Dialga, I’ll have to keep an eye on Mercari and other JP sites to see if I can find a complete/maybe unopened listing. At least I’m happy knowing they exist!
Thank you for the links- I really appreciate that some other people have researched and documented all these types of merch. It’s really interesting to read about. I didn’t know that sticker website existed, I’ll definitely take a look at it.
Those Nissui stickers are really cute, and so is that Kakumen holo card, I saw it listed on Ebay but I did not know about the rarity system in that series. I’ve seen two different Porygon-z (a normal one and that special holo), I wonder if more exist.
I also kinda got the Ga-Olé disks and the Mezastar tags confused. They’re supposed to be basically the same thing right? I’m not very informed about those games, but I think Mezastar is supposed to be the sequel or an improved version…?
This sticker from Marumiya is also lenticular, I particularly like this one. The pokemon design is revealed when you tilt the Pokeball. Although I wish all of these were cards instead of stickers lol.
And maybe the most curious thing I found, apparently the brand Suhjata released some coffee creamers in collaboration with Pokemon with collectable lids! And of course, there’s a Porygon-Z one
I think that’s right. Mezastar also got upgraded to Mezastar Frienda according to some random things I looked up online. I think the Ga-oles are kind of fun because the poke ball shown on the disc can actually be different types of balls depending on what was done in game. So there theoretically exists great ball, ultra ball, other ball, etc discs, I think (if anyone playing was so inclined to use that particular ball to capture or do whatever in game).
Thank you! Oooh I didn’t even notice the sticker was the same! How strange, I wonder how it works if it’s both lenticular and also has sticker layers? I’ll have to buy them and investigate lol.
The KeshiPoke figure looks beautiful, but it’s really hard to find any listings or info, especially about the individual figures. Hopefully I won’t have to resort to buying a whole case. Unless I find some people to split it up:p At least it’s not super expensive.
The Ensky Retsuden stamps also seem hard to find. I’m looking at listings but there’s not much and they’re mostly from the same series. Porygon-Z seems to be from the Diamond & Pearl series 5. At the very least there’s a few pictures from the collectors fandom wiki and one listing
@bbobrob I had no idea about the Pokeball, there were quite a lot of listings but I have to keep a close eye on them to see if I can spot any with different Pokeballs. I wonder how many Pokeball options existed in game, I’ll have to look into that
Aah, that makes much more sense lol. I supposed as much since other images on the cards online look sorta translucent. Nonetheless still very cool!
I agree hunting down items is both fun and frustrating, I just started so of course I’m not getting desperate yet, but we’ll see in a few years lol. I did see that pokemon kids one, I saw so many listings with the whole evolution line of figures that I figured they were sold together, but I guess not? Unless they were both sold as a set and separately.
Just a few days ago I bought the Banpresto plush:) I was gonna wait, but I saw a listing for 13$ and couldn’t help myself. He’s pretty funny looking, I love how round it is. I already had the Pokemon fit one as I bought it as soon as they released it, so now the only plushie I have left (that I know of…) is the XY My Pokémon Collection plushie, which doesn’t seem to pop up for sale very often, so I’m keeping an eye on it.
So, these seem to be from the soon-to-be-released chinese Travel Gift Collection boxes. I was very excited to see Porygon-Z amongst all the pokemon included~
If I’m not mistaken these are damage counter boxes and sleeves, however, the design you can get in each box seems to be random. I assume that you randomly get a pack of 64 sleeves and 1 damage counter box per gift box, which if you want to get a specific pokemon seems to be a little brutal…
These are all the “common” rarities, there’s other designs that apparently are harder to pull
If anybody has more info about these I’d really appreciate it. I really hope I can get the box and sleeves second hand, no way I’m trying to pull these out of sealed boxes lol.
). Note that these are pretty big and definitely larger than a standard TCG card.
