Master List of the Rarest Pokémon Cards

@pieterpie @hyruleguardian
I’d be also willing to learn more about Champion Road 2000 starter/fruits numbers. Difference between them and regular set cards is minimal but in one twisted way Johto trio were first gold star cards of this hobby. :grin:

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cc @pieterpie

I’m in the middle of writing a blog entry about the 2009 Design Contest and currently have 7 of the 13 magazines en route to the UK from Japan. I’m hoping they give more information.

You’re right that the official announcement on the Pokémon Japan website claimed that each winner would receive 100 copies of their design as a card, but they also claimed that the contest spanned 12 magazines and that each runner-up would receive their design as a jumbo card - not only was there a 13th magazine (Shōnen Sunday), but none of these jumbo cards are known to have ever surfaced and I’d speculate that they were not awarded. Furthermore when these cards appeared for sale they almost always appeared as full sets, not as individual cards.

I’ve made some charts for my blog post comparing the PSA population of the 2009 and 2010 contests and the 2015 Art Academy release, which in my mind paint a pretty compelling picture that each winner did not receive 100 of their own design and very likely also did not receive double figures of the full set like the 2010 contest:

  • 2015 Art Academy - each winner received 100 of their winning designs

  • 2010 Pokémon Card Design Contest - each winner received 100 of their winning designs

  • 2009 Pokémon Card Design Contest - each winner supposedly received 100 of their winning designs

The 2015 Art Academy has staggered and non-uniform distribution of graded cards as would be expected from each winner only receiving their own design and nothing more. The 2009 and 2010 contests however have a uniform distribution (albeit a very small sample size for 2009) which is not in line with what would likely happen if each winner received only their own design.

I’m hoping the magazines I have coming from Japan paint a much better picture.

I’ve pre-emptively concluded my upcoming blog post with the following:

Watch this space, I guess.

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Yeah I think the forum actually automatically switches it to JP because I remember one time typing (it) just as an abbreviation without realizing that it’s also kinda a slur lol. I assume that happened to you in that comment.

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Yep great work all thanks!

I dont know a lot about these, but a while back I was checking where the tropical wind 2001 card came from. I came across the tyranitar half deck which distributed some vs cards in english and other languages. These should be incredibly rare and would be a nica add-on for this list.
bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Tyranitar_Half_Deck_(TCG)
this card comes to mind

I think this is the pop report for these cards

www.psacard.com/pop/tcg-cards/2001/pokemon-tropical-mega-battle/129173

On a side note, does David Persin know these cards exist?

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Amazing list, well done everyone involved and @hyruleguardian for sharing!

Some missing ones that come to mind out of the top of my head:

Non-TCG:

I can name a few others I highly assume have less than 1k copies, like the German and Spanish Flying and Surfing Pikachu cards which I’m both still missing and have only seen once each, but I can’t say for sure how many copies were printed, and 1k seems a bit low for a regular promo.

I’ll see if I can find some more missing later on. :blush:
Greetz,
Quuador

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Thank you all for doing this!

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Great work! I feel grateful to own a handful of cards on the list.

I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure these Comic Con staff variants are well under 1000 copies.

External Media

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Three more that came to mind after seeing the stamped cards above:

[* Diamond & Pearl Piplup with San Diego 07 stamp (2007 Pokémon USA annual distributor meeting)

Also, I do see the Champion stamped XY Double Colorless Energy in the list, but what about the TOP 8 stamped ones? According to this thread made by @thundermoo only 48 of each TOP 8 were printed.

And another stamped card that comes to mind is the COLLECTOR stamped Dragon Majesty Charizard. Roughly 400 copies were made. Although this isn’t an official release by TPCi, so I’m not sure if you want to add it?

Greetz,
Quuador

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I love this! Very informative!

I know someone else posted speculation on the quantity. But these were definitely distributed as full sets to the winners. There are few releases like this, but this one is particularly hard to find. Even when raw cards that aren’t mint are over $1k, the POP is still very low.

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I added the Sample Set cards for now but I’m still holding off on the FPO cards. It’s a really gray line here with these cards, I don’t want to the list to go too deep into cards that never had an intentional distribution. I think it would do a disservice to a list like this to clog it with FPO cards.

I am open to reconsidering both adding FPO cards and I also may decide to remove the Sample Set cards I already added. We’ll see how the list develops.

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You’re talking about these cards, right?

bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Victory_Medal_(Battle_Road_promo)

Are you sure none of these are included on the list already?

Which ones do you think may have a distribution of below 1,000 and why?

Appreciate any help.

The Lapras was added. The other stuff can be looked into more. Sourcing always helps a ton.

Do you have more information about these cards?

If they’re so rare why can you get them on Troll and Toad for $10?

www.trollandtoad.com/pokemon/vs-1st-edition-singles/whitney-s-furret-japanese-018-141-common-1st-edition-vs-set-/1169492

Or am I linking to a different version of the card?

Thanks for any help.

Your link leads to the regular Japanese 1st Edition version. thymeee is referring to the English, Tropical Mega Battle version, which is indeed ultra-rare. So rare in fact, that the entire set of these cards - which date back to 2001 - only has 33 cards graded by PSA to this day.

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I created entries for these cards in the “Rare Stamps” section. Would still appreciate more info if you have it!

Got ya, I’ll create entries for all of these cards.

Thanks for this! Super helpful to have this all in one place