The only thing that makes me question it is this log here. It begins Jan 28 2011. They haven’t disclosed if these are ENG or PT, and are here before the Facebook post mentioined it releasing. I don’t see how they would be importing 3 year old packs. Maybe it’s left over from when Devir and Copag swapped hands? I think getting an accurate release would take someone with a PHD in Devir, as mine is in Copag.
SM era set releases are gonna take a bit more work, I’ll ponder the orb. I think the easy way to find them is lost to the Great Copag Pokemon Facebook purge. RIP
I’ll pick up where I left off with Copag articles for modern releases. Later on I’ll comb over decks, cans (tins), boxes, etc. Maybe today, or later, or never idk. You have to be in a specific mood to torture yourself with Copag research hehe
Pokemon Brazil’s website had these to offer but it dosen’t go back and more. Copag stopped their own coverage due to lots of backlash from multiple things over multiple years. Copag’s Pokemon Twitter mentions Surging Sparks, and retweeted English Journey Together, but has no release dates
Perfect! Exactly what I hoped to see when I tagged you. Thanks a lot for the effort of going through Copag’s old posts.
And I love that Copag mentions the actual release dates on their news pages, unlike Devir.
I’ve also added all the newer sets.
Although sources for Surging Sparks to Black Bolt & White Flare are missing for now, I think they’re likely released on the same day as the English sets as well, since that also seems to be the case for the few sets before it (Stellar Crown and Shrouded Fable I checked) with source from Copag.
PS: They’re likely correct for these latest few sets, but not sure how accurate the Pokémon.com/br dates are in general. In my experience, they often just use the English release dates of sets for the other languages on the Pokémon website..
It’s coming together nicely though, thanks to you and Vert!
I’ve also given your first post a .
Only a few gaps here and there (e.g. XY Kalos Starter Set; most of the SM era; McDonald’s Collection 2019; Rebel Clash; and Shining Fates), and mostly just the probably hardest early dates (2000-2008) to figure out.
No problem at all friend! I’ll chip away at decks, boxes, cans (tins), blisters etc when I’m in a research mood. I truly do enjoy it!
Ah thank you. I totally missed that haha I thought I looked hard enough, but I guess not, thanks! I wonder if the 11th of November one is more accurate, hard to say though. Might be able to be found buried with Devir, which I have no experience with sadly
I’ll try to find sources for the ones missing; it might take some extra roundabout steps, though! I’ll see what I can figure out tomorrow. I agree the modern SV sets should be the same as English. I can’t remember when exactly Copag caught up properly, but since then, they’ve joined our release schedule. It’s a safe assumption, but I agree, let’s try to find out for sure!
http://Pokémon.com/br in my experience, is pretty solid. I don’t think any official Pokemon website has ever been wrong in all my research across the languages. The best they do is when things aren’t confirmed for whatever reason is they leave the release date blank or give a month or quarter of the year, etc. I’d say they’re a proper resource backed by TPCi.
That’s awesome, thank you so so much @Quuador! It means a lot to have this work be recognised, thank you!
UK prints for Portuguese cards? That’s new to me. I can’t remember reading about that in your Discord group, where I’m mostly lurking tbh. I might have missed it, though.
Thanks. I’ll add your estimations to the post above.
When you say “late 1999 or 2000”, I assume you mean “late 1999 or early 2000” and not “late 1999 or late 2000”?
Out of curiosity though: the dates you’re mentioning are printing dates, not release dates, right? For the languages/sets for which you know printing month+year and set release dates exactly, are there known to be large gaps? I could imagine there might sometimes be a few weeks or even months between printing a set and the actual release, especially in the early days of WotC. But maybe I’m mistaken in this hypothesis.
Either way, thanks for the better estimations!
Let’s hope we can find some release dates through maybe old news articles or something (that’s how I know the Dutch Base Set was released on February 24th, 2000 - although since I am Dutch myself and can read it fluently, that was easier to find than other languages; and I also wasn’t able to find the Dutch Jungle/Fossil release dates..).
Thanks! I still think printing dates and release dates could be quite far apart, as shown in your own post when comparing Tavis’ estimated Portuguese Base Set release date of roughly Fall 1999 vs the estimated release date in that document page of March 2000. Although it’s still cool to hear about the printing dates as well, so thanks for sharing to both your and John. I’m in this particular case primarily interested in the release dates, though.
In that regard, that page is very cool! I wasn’t even aware the Pokémon TCG was released in some of those Latin American countries, so that’s already a TIL.
Out of curiosity: where does this document page originate from?
Also, is that 2/23/00 a date at the bottom-left? If this page was printed on February 2nd, 2000, I think it’s safe to say those ‘Local Set’ release estimations are after that date, and therefore fairly accurate I’d imagine. That page would then also confirm all three sets were released in 2000 (after late February).
Or is it actually 2/23/99? The perforator hole is at an annoying position, haha. But I assume it’s more clearly on the other pages of the document you own? I guess it’s 99 after all, due to the mentioned 8/99 English Base Set ‘estimation’ for Australia and New Zealand.
2 years ago I purchased two large lots of material from someone who worked for WOTC in some capacity. It contains a lot of information but little about release dates/schedules besides this document. The second lot contained multiple GodBooks which show they printed from Nitz’ files. I haven’t figured out what to do with it all yet.
There were separate lots at the time I failed to get which had some other documents. I never figured out who got them, and I haven’t seen them mentioned anywhere.
I believe this is the other lot, it also says it contains GodBooks. I would love to know who purchased it and chat with them.
Jungle/fossil i would estimate within first half of 2000 timeframe.
if it helps, put it in perspective, the Dutch jungle set is -/- like the Portuguese base and jungle. Dutch first edition fossil is +/- like Belgiums neo discovery. You can probably estimate that the release date would be relatively similar timeframe give or take a few months. By estimate, I would say 2 to 3 months between print and release. By that timeframe, they had a process. I can say for certain, though that Portuguese fossil came before Dutch fossil in printing. I’m sure it was released first as well
I received two of these Portugese ex half decks (Ho-oh & Gardevoir) for Secret Santa this year from @Kob. You can check out my photos below and I’ve linked an opening video in there too if people are curious about the contents. Cool to learn more about their history here!
I’m not confident on if this was printed tbh! This article also says it wasnt printed. No Copag articles mention it either! Searching Youtube for videos of the set also brings up no openings, which usually never happens with PT, espcially something this new-ish. Ligapokemon does have some cards from Kalos Starter Set in PT, but Im not sure if thats accurate. We need to do more digging to be sure!
Bulbapedia has conflicting answers. Yveltal I think is very wrong if we go off the official article. I think Late 2014 is as good as it will get for now.
Gonna take a short break here after I tie up some more loose ends from DP-XY! Been working on that for 4 hours straight lmao
I did just wanna say I have a growing concern for Bulbapedia’s accuracy and the source provided by @Vertemes. I use it occasionally for my own things, but I worry using a secondary source like a wiki is not very accurate. Especially when doing a project like this. It was completely wrong for the following, and I believe many more. But Copag didnt do a good job at all of officially publishing release dates on their blog. These ones just happened to have a proper day published
EX Power Trio Tins
Xerneas/Yveltal Figure Collection
Sylveon Collection
Baralhos Arena de Batalha: Xerneas vs. Yveltal
I believe whoever has gone back and filled these in has used the date the article was published, which you can see on some articles if the article has been archived. The older format of the Copag blog included the days date. It sucks because some of these articles actually write the release date, and whoever filled in Bulbapedia completely neglected to read anything.
I worry more things are wrong based off Bulbapedia, but some articles do not even mention a release date, and the article’s date is used instead. We are only blessed for very modern sets where TPCi has stepped in to provide information due to Copag backlash. We could find more accurate dates if the Copag Pokemon Facebook wasn’t deleted due to backlash over all the years! I miss it so much, I used to use it all the time for research (RIP )
I’m still gonna link to Bulbapedia when there is nothing, but please take all Bulbapedia links with a fat grain of salt! Use a primary source when possible, or we can come back later and try to find better resources.
BW-XY things Copag blog missed but Bulbapedia picked up
It is possible the articles were deleted. Sometimes you can find old links to other articles in other articles, or from their social media. Sometimes they’re archived on the way back machine, and sometimes they’re not. We will have to trust Bulbapedia on these ones for now. I think some of these XY ones may show up later so I’ll provide a better resource later as I cross into Sun and Moon!
No worries, any time! Let me know if Im doing too much and its overwhelming you hehe I can slow down if you’d like time to process instead of having me dump more on your desk!
Oh no, not at all. If you enjoy doing this and have time to do so, feel free to dump as much as you’d want. Make sure to not overwork yourself, though!
I’ll (try to) process everything tonight, and will let you know if anything else from the Copag period is still missing after that.
Thanks a lot for the effort of going through Copag’s old posts.
.
That’s new to me. I can’t remember reading about that in your Discord group, where I’m mostly lurking tbh. I might have missed it, though.
But I assume it’s more clearly on the other pages of the document you own? I guess it’s 99 after all, due to the mentioned 8/99 English Base Set ‘estimation’ for Australia and New Zealand.
I miss it so much, I used to use it all the time for research (RIP