Some parts of Pokemon history survive because they became famous. Others survive almost by accident - on an old family hard drive, in a one-page magazine report, or in an object that a child simply kept for twenty years.
This is one of those stories.
On November 4, 2006, at Lucca Games in Italy, Pokemon’s then-new Trading Figure Game held an event advertised as Il Primo Torneo. Literally, that means “The First Tournament”; in English, “The Inaugural Tournament” is probably the best historical rendering. The wording matters because this was not a later championship looking back on an established game. It was the beginning.
A contemporary report in Card Player’s Magazine #22 described Lucca as the worldwide debut of Organized Play for Pokemon miniatures. More than 30 players entered. They played four Swiss rounds, followed by a Top 8 elimination bracket and a best-of-three final. The surviving photographs show the yellow tournament tables, the TFG boards, the competitors, staff, standings sheets and the huge “Il Primo Torneo” banner hanging behind them.
The three giant prize figures at Lucca: Charizard, Groudon and Feraligatr.
The people who came from Japan
The event also had something that makes it feel much larger than a local launch tournament: Kouichi Ooyama and Masayuki Miura had travelled from Japan for the occasion. The contemporary report names them as creators of the game, says they watched the event, and describes an autograph session in which players brought them game boards, Trainer cards, figures and even rulebooks to sign.
That detail becomes extremely important when looking at the Groudon today. Its underside still carries the event inscriptions, including OOYAMA, a second Japanese signature attributed to Miura, and the handwritten date and location: 2006.11/4 - LUCCA. One of the surviving photographs even captures the trophy being signed on the day. This is not a signature added years later to improve an old collectible; the signing itself belongs to the event’s history.
Andrea with the Groudon and the Japanese guests at Lucca Games 2006.
The seven-year-old who reached the final
The most human part of the story is Andrea Verardo, the boy who eventually took Groudon home.
Andrea was seven years old. He remembers arriving at Lucca with his parents without even knowing the TFG tournament was taking place. He saw the game, was immediately pulled into the atmosphere and begged his parents to let him enter. His father agreed because he expected it to be quick - Andrea would probably lose early and they could continue with their day.
Instead, Andrea kept advancing.
Hours later, the seven-year-old was in the final. The contemporary report describes the match almost affectionately: Alessandro Pedrazzoli, the “gentle giant,” against Andrea, the “little champion,” whose game was built around defence. After three tense games, missed attacks, stubborn defence and plenty of laughter, Alessandro won.
The report closes by presenting Alessandro - in its own slightly playful but historically revealing words - as the first “Campione del Mondo” of Pokemon GMC, the Italian name used for the collectible miniatures game. Whether one wants to translate that literally as “World Champion” or simply read it as the excitement of a brand-new Organized Play program, it shows how the people there understood the moment: something new had just begun.
Seven-year-old Andrea during the tournament.
Three giant trophies
The prizes are where this story stops looking like an ordinary tournament report.
Card Player’s Magazine records that Alessandro received eight individual packs, an introductory set and, most importantly, first choice among three giant Pokemon figures - described as the true special prize of the event. Andrea, as runner-up, received second choice. Emanuele Cremascoli, after the third-place playoff, received the remaining giant figure.
The photographs preserve exactly what those three trophies were: Charizard, Groudon and Feraligatr.
Alessandro chose Charizard. Andrea chose Groudon. Emanuele received Feraligatr.
There are photographs of all three finalists holding the giant figures, photographs of Andrea being handed Groudon, photographs of him standing with the Japanese guests, and perhaps the most memorable image of all: a seven-year-old lifting the enormous Groudon over his head while the people around him applaud.
For provenance, it is difficult to ask for much more. The recipient, the event, the result, the prize-selection order, the trophy presentation, the signatures, the date and the contemporary written report all connect to the same afternoon.
Andrea lifting Groudon after receiving the trophy.
How rare is the Groudon?
The rarity of the Groudon adds another layer, although this is the part that deserves careful wording because the factory paperwork has not surfaced yet.
According to the provenance that has followed the piece and the testimony surrounding these TFG trophies, three Groudon trophy versions were produced in total. Two are said to have been made in this large format. One is the Lucca example awarded to Andrea. The other full-size example is understood to remain in the Kaiyodo museum collection in Japan, connected to a Japanese or Australia+Oceania tournament that ultimately never took place. A third Groudon was reportedly intended for the US market, but in a noticeably smaller format.
If that production history is correct, the Lucca trophy is one of only two full-size Groudon examples in the world. Andrea’s account further holds that the Lucca example is the signed one; at minimum, this particular trophy is unquestionably event-dated and signed on its base, with photographs and the contemporary report providing the context for why those signatures are there.
I have deliberately kept the “two full-size plus one smaller” census labelled as provenance rather than presenting it as a factory-confirmed population report. The missing piece is the original Kaiyodo or production documentation. But the documented part is already exceptional: the Lucca Groudon is the actual second-place trophy from the event that a contemporary source described as the worldwide debut of Pokemon TFG Organized Play.
A surviving event photograph showing the underside of the Groudon being signed.
The underside today: signatures, Ooyama drawing, 2006.11/4 and LUCCA.
Why so much of this history disappeared
That is also why this story feels worth putting back together now.
TFG had a very short life compared with the Trading Card Game. It never built the enormous competitive archive that the TCG later accumulated. Websites disappeared. Event pages went offline. Forum posts were lost. Photographs stayed on old hard drives. A printed magazine that once seemed disposable became one of the strongest surviving primary sources for the event.
Twenty years later, the history exists in fragments: Andrea’s memory, his father’s photographs, a surviving tournament report, old collector references, the physical trophy itself and a handful of museum leads. None of those things alone tells the whole story. Together, they reconstruct a surprisingly complete afternoon from a branch of Pokemon Organized Play that almost vanished from the record.
That is what makes the Groudon historically interesting to me. It is not merely rare because few examples may exist. It is rare because it is attached to a precise moment - the launch of an Organized Play format, the people who created the game, a documented final, a child finalist, three extraordinary prizes and an autograph session that left the date and place physically written onto the trophy.
Card Player’s Magazine #22 (December 2006), page 37: ‘Il Primo Torneo’.
Twenty years later
There is one personal footnote to the story.
After a long period of back-and-forth, Andrea eventually agreed to sell the Groudon. With an object carrying this much personal history, having it disappear into a shipping box never felt like the right ending to the story. So I decided to collect it in person.
That meant roughly seven hours of driving from Maribor (Slovenia) to Milan (Italy). In truth, that was part of the attraction: combining something enjoyable with something useful, turning the handover into a small trip rather than a courier tracking number. More importantly, it meant meeting the person who had won the trophy as a seven-year-old, hearing the story directly from him and receiving the same Groudon that appears in his family’s photographs from 2006.
The handover did not make the object historically important - Lucca did that twenty years earlier. But it preserved one more link in the chain.
The handover in Milan, almost twenty years after Lucca. Me on the left and Andrea on the right.
Why document it now?
This is not really a “look what I bought” post. I wanted to put the surviving pieces in one place because the history around Pokemon TFG is unusually easy to lose, and because objects like this become far more meaningful when the names, dates, photographs and memories stay attached to them.
A giant resin Groudon is impressive on its own. A giant Groudon that can be traced to a seven-year-old finalist at the inaugural Pokemon TFG Organized Play tournament, photographed during the competition and prize ceremony, signed and dated at the event, preserved by its original recipient for almost twenty years, and believed to be one of only two full-size examples ever produced is something else entirely.
If anyone on E4 has old Japanese or US TFG material - especially Kaiyodo documentation, tournament paperwork, photos of the museum Groudon, or information about the smaller US version - I would genuinely love to see it. There is still one part of this story waiting to be documented properly.
Armin (slocollector_ ; previously known as pokemonslovenia/collectorfromslovenia)
