If you see this card posted anywere please hit me up. I will pay a premium for some infos. Thanks in advance
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This is really interesting. I wonder how frequently these cards appear on the market?
The same person wrote two additional quick blog posts after this about obtaining the Pichu/Pikachu and Chikorita/Clefairy cards with slightly higher resolution images than what’s already been shared here:
The second image is actually much bigger.
Piecing together information from this thread and from this person’s blog post, I’ve made a list below of the known cards.
These cards definitely exist (as in, there are pictures of them):
- 007/128 ポニータ (Ponyta)
- 016/128 ピカチュウ (Pikachu)
- 028/128 ピッピ (Clefairy)
- 029/128 ニャース (Meowth)
- 071/128 リザードン (Charizard)
- 082/128 ピチュー (Pichu)
- 002/029 フシギダネ (Bulbasaur)
- 005/029 チコリータ (Chikorita)
- 010/029 ヒトカゲ (Charmander)
- 011/029 リザード (Charmeleon)
- 022/029 ワニノコ (Totodile)
- 023/029 アリゲイツ (Croconaw)
- 024/029 オーダイル (Feraligatr)
These cards are mentioned either in the blog or in this thread but with no pictures:
- 078/128 パルシェン (Cloyster)*
- 086/128 ミュウツー (Mewtwo)
- 106/128 バクフーン (Typhlosion)**
- 009/029 ヒトカゲ (Charmander)
* This is mentioned in the original post in this thread, but the blog entry it links to lists “リザードン（パック版）078/128” - リザードン being Charizard. I think the 078 instead of 071 here is a mistake by the author of the blog; interestingly they make the same mistake in an earlier blog post of theirs.
** PSA can be inaccurate, but they’ve supposedly graded 2 holographic Typhlosion cards, a PSA 9 and a PSA 10 (https://www.psacard.com/pop/tcg-cards/2001/pokemon-japanese-expedition/99974). This hasn’t been mentioned in this thread or on that blog yet. Typhlosion is the card displayed in the picture attached to the tweet from the post I quoted above, so I can only assume this to be real.
If Typhlosion exists, and we consider that Chikorita, Totodile, Croconaw and Feraligatr exist, it’s might be safe to assume that they didn’t release this deck without including Cyndaquil, Quilava, Bayleef and Meganium. That said, the mix of the e-Starter Deck and Base Expansion Pack sets is very bizarre.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to get my hands on a Pichu at some point in the near future. I’ve been quoted $2,500 for a “mint but not PSA 10” copy, but that’s way out of my budget and seems way overpriced. 
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The mix is speculated to be due to these cards being distributed in Prize deck boxes. If we follow the cards in the regular e1 deck boxes, there are 4 starter pokemons (a random between 1 of 6 starters from gen 1 and gen 2 with 2 different copies of basic starters), 5 trainer cards, 13 energy cards and 8 random Base Expansion Pack Common Pokemon cards.
I tried to find why some base expansion rares were included like the Charizard and the Pichu and I could only speculate on these rares being included in every 50 Prize Deck Boxes as I have personally seen 7 Pichus and 5 Charizards.
If 50 boxes were distributed, there should be only an average of 7 of each starter Pokemon which is stupid rare. The fact that I have seen 5 charizards led me to believe that either this Charizard was included in every Prize Deck Box instead of the other e1 Charizard OR 5 out of 7 have surfaced OR what I just said made no sense and they were distributed in another way.
No matter how they were distributed, they are really rare and with any rare card, the price is up to a collector on how much he is willing to pay. $2500 might be expensive for me and you and most collectors, but you never know when that one collector might pop up and buy it now.
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You ever find your card?
No
After checking Mercari almost every day for the past 4 months, I’m happy to now join the club! Picked this up on a listing along with 24 other Pichu cards from various different sets. The seller appeared to be a small-time collector of Pichu cards and had various 1st edition and unlimited copies of cards from the same sets. Despite that, they didn’t appear to know that this was anything special, so I’m guessing they stumbled upon this card entirely by chance and thought nothing of it whenever they first picked it up.
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Turns out I have a few copies of Cyndaquil 013/029 and Chikorita 005/029.
I’ve been trying to figure why they are unlimited for a quite some time. Some light has sort have been shed thanks to this thread. Any more updates?
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Very nice! We have a strong idea that most of these were from a colouring contest held in 2002 which awarded an unlimited version of the E Starter Deck (which is likely where your cards came from). Of course, Ponyta was distributed in Information Pack Volume 4 as I’m sure you’re already aware.
I feel like unless someone gets their hands on an unopened unlimited E Starter Deck or finds some promotional material relating to the other cards we’ll likely never have a clear picture of how these were all obtained or how many of each card exist. If the unlimited E Starter Deck matched the regular E Starter Deck’s set list, we can assume that only 50 of each Cyndaquil and Chikorita exist in unlimited, but the fact you have multiple copies makes this seem a bit unlikely.
How did you acquire those?
That’s really interesting, these actually all were acquired about a year ago in a large collection off Yahoo Japan from one collector. Unfortuantely, there wasn’t any kind of indication of that contest as I remember these being in the binder just next to the regular e-Starter 1st ED cards and at the time I pressumed they were errors, maybe not that uncommon. Turns out I could be dead wrong so I’ll hold onto them but hopefully more info arises. Sorry I’m of no help!
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Question about the Ponyta - just found one in my collection, and I can’t find anything about the Info Pack Vol. 4 online. How many are thought to exist, and what’s the value on one?
bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Ponyta_(Expedition_126)
Does say here on Bulbapedia, the problem is, it doesn’t show the promo in and of itself just the regular 1st ED from Expedition.
What is the composition of the regular 1st ed starter decks? If they are like normal starters then it makes sense that the basic pokemon in each evo line are the most common cards to find as multiples of each are contained in each starter. The last unl e1 card I saw auctioned off was a chikorita on Yahoo so now including these ones it is the card I have most commonly seen from the unl e1 set.
Edit: does the 1st ed starter have it’s own set numbers separate from e1?
The e1 deck was 29 cards in total. So their ID was */29.
Other E1 unlimited cards have the same ID of the regular E1 set: */128, no connections with the starter decks IDs.
Also,
This video shows E1 unlimited cards in the booklet at the beginning. Pretty cool
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I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I think the distribution methods for the unlimited starter deck were different to that of the unlimited e1 set cards being as it just doesn’t make any sense that the two were distributed together with mixed set numbering between the starters and e1 set.
Although your conclusion is correct for most decks in general, there are some decks, like this Pokémon-e Starter Deck, which are a bit odd in that regard. If you take a look at its Bulbapedia page, you will see the following:
So the Deck contained 9 cards from the ‘deck’-set of 29. And 8 cards from (the first 32 cards of) the Base Expansion Pack set.
This information on Bulbapedia also explains why we see the starter Pokémon probably more often.
Assuming only 50 unlimited edition versions of this Deck have indeed been released, dividing everything equal there should be the following amounts of each card:
- 8⅓ Decks will contain one of the six possible Starter Evolution lines from the ‘deck’-set of 29
- All 50 Decks will contain the five Trainer cards from the ‘deck’-set of 29
- 4 Decks will contain 8 of the 32 other cards of the regular set, divided among the 50 decks
Considering @thecardcenter already owns four Cyndaquil and three Chikorita from the 8⅓ available, and I’ve seen the Chikorita at least three times before in unlimited edition from other sources (one can be seen in a picture on page 2), I think there might be more than fifty Decks out there, OR (perhaps more likely) the random Decks had more of one evolution line than another in their randomly generated decks.
All and all I see my chances of getting an unlimited edition E1 Pikachu pretty slim if there are indeed just 4 out there, considering I’ve already seen two pictures from different sources online, and I know a fellow Pikachu collector who has one as well. 
So for my sake, I hope there are a lot more. Regardless of how many there really are, they are definitely the rarest unlimited edition Japanese cards and very hard to find (especially for a specific card like the Pikachu I’m looking for), although the WCP and L2/L3 sets, and some of the BW/XY-era sets perhaps, are pretty hard to track down in unlimited edition as well.
Greetz,
Quuador
In terms of the Pichu card, I’m aware of 9 or 10 which are in the hands of people who understand their scarcity:
- 2 graded PSA 10 (of which I’ve seen pictures of both).
- 3 owned by KEI.
- 1 owned by me (which is with PSA at the moment, and I notice PSA has added a new PSA 8 version, so I’m hoping that’s mine as I thought it’d only be a 6
). - 1 owned by your Pikachu collector friend.
- 2 or 3 owned by choco7maron.
choco7maron’s blog (https://choco7maron.blog.fc2.com) is down at the moment but Web Archive has some (but not all) thumbnail images cached:
I know they also have at least 1 Pikachu based on an older post of mine in this thread (which features a higher res copy of the first image).
Unless the Pichu card was distributed in a different way to the Pikachu, I think it’s probably safe to assume there are more than 4 of them.
As per [www.psacard.com/pop/tcg-cards/2001/pokemon-japanese-expedition/99974 for](https://www.psacard.com/pop/tcg-cards/2001/pokemon-japanese-expedition/99974 for) future reference - and it’s hard to judge PSA’s accuracy without pictures - PSA currently has the following graded (ignoring Ponyta):
- 028 Clefairy - 1x PSA 5
- 071 Charizard - 1x PSA 4, 1x PSA 9, 1x PSA 10*
- 082 Pichu - 1x PSA 8, 2x PSA 10
- 106 Typhlosion - 1x PSA 9, 1x PSA 10
* The PSA 10 Charizard with cert #28479148 has been reported stolen, see: www.elitefourum.com/t/japanese-unlimited-e-series-1-cards-base-expansion-pack/16426/21.
I have a handful of these packs up for sale on eBay. I’d say they’re not rare but they’re certainly not common any more (as can be said about any sealed product from that long ago). For reference, they look like this:
You’ll notice that it features some unlimited cards printed on the back, but it’s worth noting that almost all promotional material relating to this set also feature similar scans - including the regular 1st Edition E Starter Deck insert.
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I had a reply from saidad273 on Instagram stating the following:
saidad273 “I asked a friend about an old story, and an unlimited e-series card was given to a lottery called JUSCO, We distributed Game Boys with GB2 cards and distributed them.”
Me “That’s interesting, was it a selection of the unlimited e1 and e-starter deck cards?”
saidad273 “I confirmed, but not just the cards on the starter.”
Be nice to know which card or cards in general but maybe that helps too.
Also with a bit of digging, if anyone can kindly translate the text on the bottom of the guide front and reverse it may tie into what I mentioned above.
“Media Factory - Pokemon card game Official Guide 2002”
An interesting thing to note is that the 071 Charizard and the Pichu do not come in regular deck box for the 1st edition counterpart.
As mentioned above, if 50 sets were to be awarded, there should be 7-9 copies of each starter, a random mix of the commons from the e1 booster set but a total of 400 copies and 50 of each trainer. There is no inclusion of the Charizard or the pichu in the boxes.
The speculation is that the 071 Charizard and the pichu cards have nothing to do with the deck boxes. They were demo cards intended to be used for the demonstration for the newly released e-series cards that work together with the game boy. It is no surprised that there are a lot more of the pichus and 071 Charizards compared to the other regular cards that could be found in deck boxes.
This recent find of cyndaquils and chikoritas is really amazing as it could determine if the 8-9 copies have been exceeded and if it has, the 50 deck boxes awarded theory breaks down.
*shameless plug, if anyone has the 012 Charizard in unlimited, it is on my WTB thread 
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Are we aware of how many Chikorita’s are now around roughly, including mine? I’m yet to see another Cyndaquil too. The thing that still latches me to the 50 Deck Box theory (obvious bias of wanting it to be true) but I actually acquired them in a single high end collection. They weren’t just acquired randomly over time so may not be worth ruling out just yet.