Hi, I saw this today and thought I’d join you on the find. I like finding items like these and have done so many many times, especially in Korea. Feel free to correct me on any of the points below.
Some info I gathered (likely known by you but just to confirm).
Re the packaging, some bookstores packed the book like this. This specific one is from a 책발전소광교, and shows that bookstores will have some discretion on how to pack this. In order to get Pokemon to print a specific promo card for you, this would to be a bigger chain I believe, like Kyobo.
Also, you mentioned this possibly being released pre-Covid but Naver finds no mentions of this book prior to 2021 as it was released in March 2021.
I then found a couple packaged in cellophane with a sticker on it.
The sticker is only found on Vol 1 and Vol 2. I did not find it on any Vol.3 book.
. This leads to the Adventure Event. Collect points using the code inside and redeem in-game items for SWSH.
However, the official Pokemon video for the event does NOT list these colouring books as the source of the code. Why? Maybe they were added later and were originally supposed to come with the promo.
In April, photos of the event showing the colouring book started appearing
This event started in April 2021, with the Pokemon videos about the event being released in late March. The books were published on 1 March 2021 at which point some blog posts start showing the books (with the publisher making a post earlier in Feb that year — I saw your comment on that post)
As such,the card may have been limited to this brief period of the book being released with the promo in it, before being scraped and replaced with the point code card.
The problem with this is that the 2nd volume came in June, so why would the Pokemon website list it as the source of the card, if it had been limited to just March 2021?
I also found the Pixel Sticker Book, which also has Vol. 1 and 2 and has had a promo inside, but the promo would be stamped differently. This was released earlier (I believe in 2020).
The same promo in Japan was distributed during the Friendly Shop purchase campaign. The Morpeko promo from the Friendly Shop later made it into the Pixel book Vol. 1, with a different sticker. So here we know that these two promos were all under one event in Japan, but made it in Korea as different promos under different events.
One person’s WTB with this Slowpoke. The person has posted many posts looking specifically for an Unopened one for over 2 years. I think it would be worth asking them where they found this photo, as I could not find the original picture. I will ask the person tomorrow.
Also, besides this person, there aren’t that many people discussing this or looking for the card on Korean internet and forums, and keep in mind that those are Korean collectors with Korean tools at hand.
Random hypothesis:
I was in Korea in that year in September and the covid restrictions were still fairly heavy. This could mean that the card was planned, printed and possibly given to a chain at a certain location, tied to the book and possibly to specifically buying the book (or a set of 2 of them later on). Because it was covid, and especially earlier in the year, the sales could have been were really low in that branch (where they could have tested this promotion event). It not working out with the Adventure Event already planned, they could have tossed the rest away. This could have been either in March 2021, or after summer, when Vol. 2 has been released and the Adventure event ended. The second option is slighly more likely given that the page lists Vol.2 as the source, but the first option would explain the brief timeline and then scraping it for the point card.
I think it would be good to ask a few of the bigger book stores if this were the case and if they have ever distributed this. People always responded really nicely whenever I looked for particular items in Korea (not Pokemon related).
I will continue looking for this tomorrow and will message a few places.
but stoked for you for encouraging news!
and with “Non-Findable cards”
