You can’t tease me like that… drop some pictures over here 
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Random reddit posts from covid years when people were digging out collections. If i ever see them again, i’ll grab the photos.
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I’ve had a ton of trouble tracking down any gen2 in auctions anywhere. The Ho-oh in this thread is the only I’ve seen so far.
Here’s what I don’t fully understand. Why would have Nintendo branded these promos if the weren’t the result of a Nintendo related item? My other question is that when you feel one, it feels much more inline with the quality of TCG card rather than say a Burger King low quality tear-off card of that era.
Who’s machines did this come out of? Mass printing high-quality TCG cards was not something very common.
One more factoid I noticed that I am not sure that was mentioned. These are slightly bigger than a regulation Pokemon TCG card, like maybe 2-5%, but the feel is similar (unlike Japanese cards) as to being a little matte and not glossy with similar rounded borders.
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Can a mod or smth change this to an article lol. it seems much more in line with what yall are doing here.
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Here are a few pictures I found online and saved of an opened Fruit Rolls box with a similar card glued (I assume with the temporary glue that can be peeled off/stretched so that it wouldn’t ruin the card)
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Done it, sorry for bothering.
Yep, the purpose was that, but missing tons of info I didn’t feel like calling this an article.
I’ve made it too poorly and don’t feel like matching the standards 
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Huge. Thanks for this. I really want to see how the much rarer Gen 2’s came to be.
That solves that mystery for sure. So, in short, these are the ‘Betty Crocker x Nintendo Pokemon Rolls Promos’.
I am curious at a future market for these. Seeing how well 2000 Topp’s Chrome price out, I started collecting and considering non-TCG vintage promos. I have uncut sheets of the Burger King promos I’ve had since inception, but I just can’t see them doing much due to supply and overall quality. Rightfully, they haven’t appreciated much.
But back to these, there are a few things going for this collection:
Low population (?) - How many of these cards, in gradable condition, exist still? How long was the print run inside these? Did most cards get tossed/abused-in-pocket?
Nintendo branding, not Betty Crocker - Being Nintendo branded and date stamp provides bit of nostalgic provenance, even if it did come from $1 fruit rollup box. I would highly doubt promos like this ever happened again with Nintendo brandings. If it did, I cannot find much evidence of such.
Quality on par with TCG - not a throwaway promo or tear-away that feels cheap.
Unexpected accumulation - The reason Beanie Babies failed to established any type of long-term value was the two-fold, no real limit to printing (errors aside) and the expecation of future value, thus creating a plentiful supply of perfect condition items. In the rolls promos, we have the exact opposite. It’s doubtful many of these were kept, and it’s somewhat obvious the supply can’t be that plentiful. 8 total graded cards? Less than 50 eBay auctions?
Unlimited Base Set is worth comical amounts right now (in bad way). Ex. A holo Clefairy, a 25 year old holograpghic that can only been had out of pack that was a 1/3 hit rate in a box, goes for $6 ungraded in 2024 (price charting numbers)? I get that ungraded condition does lower this average price, but you can pick up lighly played/PSA 6+ shadowless (not even base, much lower print run) Clefairy for about $25.
The only thing that makes sense is a supply-demand issue. Hell, some of the latest releases that you can pick up at retail anywhere have better value despite being printed to oblivion as we speak.
Sorry for my rant, back on topic TL:DR is that I see some future value in these due to branding, scarcity/print run/expectations of value, and tcg-like quality.
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Personal thoughts but id rate these between burger king trivia cards and gold border meowth (puts the expected range between $2-10). The supply and demand issue is whats going to hold back any value for them. They arent necessarily rare, but hard to locate because the generic-ness. Red border with X pokemon on it is about closest youll get to finding them in searches from a general seller, all other terms are hard to parse down (blue border, nintendo, white back, fruit roll, promo, etc). There wasnt really a question if they were legitimate before but more the question of where they came from, which seems to have been solved for now.
Currently they range between $5-15 raw depending on seller and most seem to be in good condition (not mint, but maybe lightly played) since they werent playable cards, it seems they were usually put into a collection and forgotten about. A psa8 burger king card is about $15-20 while a psa9 is $40, not really expecting these to be much more than that but if you can get a psa10 then it seems reasonable to be between $100-150 on value.
Maybe now that someone grades them the value will jump but I hope not since its fun to find them and work on completing a cheaper niche set.
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@TsunamiSurskit idk why i didnt think of you. Here is a set of Non-TCG Collectable cards, have u ran across these at any point in ur research? if not here ya go.
Search eBay for "nintendo official promo 1998’ and you’ll hit about 90% of whats on eBay for these. 30+ listings. It’s counter-intuitive given we know these to be the Betty Crocker X Nintendo collab, but this has become the defacto name for these.
As for pricing, what I am seeing is:
Looks like it was given to a child/dog - $0-$10
Heavy play, but still a card - $5-$15
Actual ownable condition - $5-$20
LP-NM of one of the more desirable - $20 - $50
The only graded offered card - $180 obo
I think these are a peculiar case. Where these most assuredly differ from both the Meowth Promo or the Burger King promos is how easy it was to ‘collect em’ all’. The meoth promo was popular back in the day (I own two from way back when), and the Burger King sheets were almost being dumped in recycle bins because of oversupply (I kept couple sets of the uncut sheets).
The amount of truly vintage American non-TCG promos are very rare. I think this would have much less future potential if a unique Nintendo branding wasn’t prominent on the card (entire back) and it was General-Mills/Betty Crocker back. But it’s clear given the lack of branding or disclaimer, Betty Crocker had nothing to do with this other than the distribution into the roll up boxes. Essentially, these are true non-tcg Nintendo promos, and may be unique in that sense.
Edit: March 02 update - Not sure if we’ve got eyes on this thread or just coincidental, but a few of the auctions for the ‘not so cheap’/good condition cards are being snatched up (at least one at $20), as I got the ‘got away’ automated e-mail from eBay. Should I have purchased more before I opened my mouth? Likely. I have a set but some of the cards are not mint.
First, I have to say I’m impressed with the amount of research done here and the info provided, so huge thank you to those who posted.
I only have the one Charmander Card with the red border and blue back, I am happy to post a pic of it if anyone thinks it worthwhile - it’s in pretty darn good shape. Also adding that in my humble opinion and limited knowledge on this subject, it’s as much of an official Pokemon card as BK and Bandai, which were non-TCG but still fully licensed.
Question: Why does the box say Pokemon Sticker, but I have a card and it’s not a sticker? Was the card separate, or was a sticker placed on it and removed? The box art doesn’t give much info.
In conclusion it sounds like CGC grades them but PSA does not - given the condition of the one I have, I may take my shot…
P.S. - Since we posted publicly on here, the cat may be out of the proverbial bag though I doubt there will be much interest…
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Hey everyone. This thread/article has been super helpful for me as I’ve been trying to figure out where this card I have came from for the last 2+ years. I’ve noticed the gen2 pokemon are much more scarce than gen1. It was cool to see whoever had the Ho-Oh card in this thread. I think I’m going to send this card to CGC.
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At least the birds paired up
Thank you!
Still nothing discovered for gen2
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Absolutely beautiful Lugia. I love that it looks mint.
I have yet to see a Gen 2 outside of this thread, let alone for sell. With the amount of us old school nerds on this forum, and how little it’s talked about, I feel this Lugia and that Ho-oh may be some of the rarest American cards to exist.
I look over a ton of eBay collections, and I occasionally see one or two of the common ones in the collection.
Unrelated - The owner of the graded Eevee has it up for sale at around $60 shipped. It’s only a 5.5 grade.
I’m local to Beckett and considering asking them to see if they would consider grading these. It would be great to see if we as a community could get a proper name on them. I think it needs to include ‘Nintendo’ in the name, because ‘Pokemon Rolls Promos’ that CGC is using doesn’t really do the set justice.
Nintendo X Betty Crocker/General Mills Promo feels ‘right’ to me, as usually brand is attached in cases in non-TCG cases like Cardass or Topsun.
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Thanks! I do agree the Lugia and Ho-Oh are quite rare solely based on the fact I haven’t seen any others outside of this thread.
I believe I acquired this one in a lot from a local seller. He just threw it in for free because he didn’t know what it was or where it came from. I think the seller thought it was a fake card of some sort.
I’m looking forward to hopefully finding more info on these Gen 2 cards. Thanks again to everyone for your contributions on this topic thus far!
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I also have a Lugia i have been safegaurding and wondering about. Not as mint as the other guys but still pretty nice, I never seen one till this thread lately and i have a feeling there are very few out there that are at least known about. I also aquired mine from a bulk sale that i purchased. I do know that Ho-oH and Lugia must have been the chase/pulls of the sets because on the box they are the only 2 legendary ones available on the map posters you could order. interested to see what happens if the other guy sends it in for grading and there arnt any others he could have a POP 1
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This box is huge.
even if we don’t have a complete checklist, we can already see that there is a distinction between the cards (rectangular, with gold and silver border) and the 26 stickers for the poster (square, red border). Great starting point, thanks!
At least confirmed the existence of totodile and elekid
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Yea it took quite some time to look through this fourum, google lense, ebay, reddit and all the other common places to look. just to find next to nothing and then some random day i was looking it up again, this guy had a box for sale on ebay for like $250. i dont know if it ever sold but the screenshot is all i needed. It has givin me at least a stepping point of where and what it came from. I have showed just about ever local seller in my area, and at larger shows of 200-300 vendors and no one knows what it is or where its from, some even thought it might be a fake card just because they had never seen or heard of it and these are guys that do it for a job.
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Ahahah, poor them! These are not the classic promos that one may have in mind. The distribution took place in dunno (cereal?) boxes, not really the classic distribution of a tcg, I can’t blame them if they don’t know these cards
That aside, small update! I’ve found one of those reddit thread @lyleberr was talking, and there were some more johto pokemon cards (I can finally be happy):
5 found together. I can’t really agree with the reddit post saying there are only 5 or 10 because of the Ho-oh and because we’ve already seen 9 from gen1 (15 total by now). Maybe 10 per gen…? Maybe there were 2 distribution for each gen?
There’s more. We just need to dig deeper.
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Glad you found an example, im fairly certain there is a hoothoot as well.
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