Pichu gained another PSA 10 entry on the pop report today.
Based on some other cards which appeared on the pop report as well today which were part of my submission that PSA hadn’t graded before I’m pretty certain this time it is my one!
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congrats
item.mercari.com/jp/m76572223228
item.mercari.com/jp/m47924386893
This seller has two charmander actively listed
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The seller mentions in the description that they obtained the cards at an event when they were little
Adding on to this, I went through the other listings the seller has sold in the past and they have also sold this unlimited Pichu. This backs up the theory that all of the cards share the same origin, though it’s still possible that there were also unlimited copies in the theme deck awarded from the Latios Latias coloring contest.
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I know we have a decent idea, but I just asked the seller to give a detailed explanation of how he got it. My Japanese probably wasn’t perfect here, but should get the point across I feel.
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Here is what he said in japanese :
このカードは2001年頃、近所のジャスコで行われたイベントで入手しました。
確か500円以上関連商品を購入するごとに1回くじ引きをし、当たりは「ポケモンカードGB2」がもらえて、ハズレはeカードが1枚もらえるといった内容だったかと記憶しています。
このカードはそのハズレと言うことになります。
今になればゲームよりもこのハズレカードの方がよっぽど価値があると考えると、なんだか感慨深いですね。
Here is what google translate says :
“I got this card around 2001 at an event held in my neighborhood Jusco.
I remember that every time I purchased a related product for 500 yen or more, I got a lottery once, and I got a “Pokemon Card GB2” for the win, and I got one e-card for the loss.
This card will be called the loss.
It’s kind of emotional to think that this lost card is much more valuable than the game now.”
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This information is fantastic, thank you. I’ve upped the Charmander and Pichu counts and have added a Pokémon Card GB2 Lottery Event section to my blog article: pichu.blog/unlimited-e1#pok%C3%A9mon-card-gb2-lottery-event.
The fact they have two of the same card is interesting and sort of falls in line with other things we’ve seen in the past - sellers with multiple Chikorita cards, for instance - despite the Pokémon-e Starter Deck only containing 1 copy of each. This to me further moves us away from the notion of these being from an unlimited deck box.
What is curious here is that the Pokémon Card GB2 game was released on 28th March 2001 whereas Japan’s E1 set was released on 1st December 2001 - over 9 months later. I’m unsure why a lottery would be getting held for a game which had already been out for almost a year (if not over a year by the time these unlimited cards were printed) - but that could certainly contribute to why the cards are as hard to find as they are, perhaps not many people were interested in the game at that point.
It would be great if anyone has any documentation surrounding the Pokémon Card GB2 game and any possible lottery events which may have occurred relating to it. I feel like we’re getting one step closer to finally solving this puzzle, though I feel like this does open up room for a lot more questions than answers.
Edit: This is all making me wonder whether the cards were regional. This seller’s local JUSCO gave out copies of the Charmander 010 card, but perhaps a less popular JUSCO gave out copies of the Charmander 009 card which we’ve seen fewer examples of. That would certainly explain why nobody appears to ever have a full set. Their Pichu sale is interesting, but they don’t appear to associate that as being anything special - it’s hard to say if they got this card from the same event or if they simply acquired this from some trade when they were much younger without knowing of its significance.
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Yeah that seems reasonable to me. Promote the game with these new cards. I can ask the seller more questions possibly. Not sure how far I can stretch the limits of asking non-buying related questions, but I can try.
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Thank you for the information!
There were two gym events at JUSCO stores pretty soon after the release of e1 which you can see here:
pokepoke31.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-193.html?sp
pokepoke31.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-216.html
I can’t find any mentions of a lottery or anything to do with e cards relating to JUSCO however, so I wonder if this was perhaps just a smaller part of the gym events. Earlier in the thread Tristan mentioned that he heard the cards were associated with a type of tournament.
Would it be possible to ask if they know which store location(s) they got the cards from? and if the Pichu they had was from the same release?
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@augustdifirenze I hadn’t considered that the JUSCO location could just be a generic Pokémon Gym store. This opens up a lot of possibility for finding information.
Being unlimited I’d assume that the cards were distributed a while after the launch of the set itself. As per the Pokémon Card Event Schedule from June 2002 there were 80 Gym locations at this time.
The January 2001 Chubu Event Schedule and February 2002 Hokkaido Event Schedule both mention that these Gym locations do have a “lottery corner” where “plenty of special goods” can be won, but unfortunately it doesn’t detail what those may have been. None of the other event dates appear to mention a lottery corner being present.
The website for the Pokémon Card GB2 game, www.GB2.co.jp closed between March and June 2002 - though that’s not to say that a lottery which awarded the game wouldn’t have been held after June 2002.
It would be really great if we can somehow find out what was up for grabs at the lottery corners held at Gym locations in January and February 2002.
Edit: The only working event report from the right time period I could find was the “Edison City Gym” sponsored event which only mentions the lottery as part of brief outro: “At the end of the event, there was an awards ceremony and a lottery for presents. Everyone was very happy and left the venue, and the event ended with great success!”
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具体的な店名は差し控えますが、当時住んでいた札幌にあるジャスコです。
また、ピチューも所有しておりましたが、その価値を知らずに安価で手放してしまいました。
GOOGLE SENSEI
I will refrain from giving a specific store name, but it is Jusco in Sapporo, where I lived at that time.
I also owned Pichu, but I gave it up at a low price without knowing its value.
I asked another question, following up more about pichu
My question : うんわかりました。自分でピチュもくじからゲットしました？
GOOGLE SENSEI
Yeah I understand. Did you get Picchu from the lottery yourself?
His answer was just a simple “yes”
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009/029 Charmander 1 → 2
029/128 Meowth 5 → 6
A 009 Charmander appeared from a seller who recently sold an unlimited Cyndaquil which was linked here a while ago:
www.mercari.com/jp/items/m49762448386 (I may have bought this one already. 
)
A 029 Meowth has appeared up from a seller who has had a Pichu listed for quite some time now which has also been linked here already:
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WHaaat!!! congrats that’s amazing and I am jealous!!!
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@mthursty thanks, my fiancée collects Charmander cards so I’ve been on the lookout for this one for quite a while now. 
I tried to also pick up one of the 010 Charmander cards @pigeonsyndicate linked to go alongside this one but apparently that seller’s account is now temporarily suspended for some reason. I’ll try again next week if they’re still available.
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Another mention of a lottery from yesterday. A Japanese Twitter user posted their collection of e1 unlimited cards and another user commented that their husband got four e1 unlimited cards from a lottery that took place at a Fuji Grand Natalie in 2001.
I have included screenshots of the tweets just in case they are deleted/taken down in the future.
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Woah it’s crazy that this info has laid dormant for so long and all of a sudden two different sources reference it. The old learning event theory only ever had one person claiming that was the card’s origin, so to have two people possibly independently revealing this is incredible.
Assuming these aren’t cards we’ve seen before I’ve updated my counts to include these:
002/029 Bulbasaur 3 → 4
005/029 Chikorita 12 → 13
013/029 Cyndaquil 9 → 10
029/128 Meowth 6 → 7
079/128 Charizard 17 → 18
082/128 Pichu 24 → 25
Edit: They reached out to me on Twitter to show me the listings these were in. The only one I hadn’t already seen was the Charizard listing which was included alongside a load of regular fire-type 1st edition E1 cards - they got very lucky with that one!
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I’ve been speaking with ブリてっか on Twitter and they’ve sent me some other Mercari listings which I’ve never seen before:
Firstly this Charizard which I was unable to find a link to:
Next is www.mercari.com/jp/items/m50078885623 which sold for a mere 1,000 JPY:
After this we have www.mercari.com/jp/items/m44255447776 which sold ~21 days ago:
Finally www.mercari.com/jp/items/m35360216339 which sold ~83 days ago ago:
This one is actually really weird because it also features the McDonald’s Charmander, VS Series Karen’s Rapidash and unlimited e-Series 2 Tyrogue we saw on an older listing:
I can elaborate on the quoted listing as being something @prochaos saved on 15th June last year including this screenshot of the full listing:
I have no idea if these are the same cards, but they were from different sellers and at least 8 months apart.
Assuming these are all new and previously unseen copies, the new totals with these are:
002/029 Bulbasaur 3 → 4
009/029 Charmander 2 → 4
011/029 Charmeleon 9 → 12
013/029 Cyndaquil 9 → 10
022/029 Totodile 5 → 6
023/029 Croconaw 4 → 5
024/029 Feraligatr 7 → 9
016/128 Pikachu 7 → 8
028/128 Clefairy 9 → 10
029/128 Meowth 6 → 7
079/128 Charizard 18 → 20
082/128 Pichu 24 → 25
This is getting very difficult to stay on top of now, but if the cards were from a lottery it’s probably somewhat safe to assume that the distribution of all of the 14 cards we’ve seen so far should be somewhat similar… maybe. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I have some more listings I can share as well which I don’t think were posted in here. Those two different lots which had almost the exact same cards in them likely contained the same exact copies as I’m not sure why anyone would group those exact promos. I included a listing with a Bulbasaur and I’ll look for the others I’ve saved.
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@augustdifirenze that Bulbasaur is one of the ones I’ve got counted already. Unfortunately my counts are based on whether I remember seeing a listing or not and there will be a lot I haven’t saved. I’m soon going to go through and make sure I can attribute images of each card I’ve counted.
The 555,555 JPY listing creates a problem whereby the seller is almost definitely flipping the cards from the earlier listing, but we don’t know if they’re also flipping the other cards they have from other listings or if those are ones we’ve not seen before. I think at some point I’m just going to freeze the counts I have as it’s getting difficult to maintain.
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