Hi! I asked if anyone would be interested in this niche set and few people liked it (probably out of politeness tho ) so i decided to go for it. But I really like the unique design which differs from all the other pokemon cards, the set consists of transparent lamin cards which makes it possible to stack them. I had to take the cards out of my binder since it was practically impossible to take photos of transparent cards in black binder pages but still taking photos of them was real pain since i had quite a severe covid few months ago and my hands still shake a lot after that.
While i like this set a lot, very little information could be found of it, but it was a collaboration set between Topps and Merlin published in 2006 and it includes a variety of pokemon from gen 1-3 in it. Since itās published in 2006 it may be some kind of pokemon 10th anniversary set, topps had another 10th anniversary set also planned after all (Pokemon topps top 10 collector cards) but it got cancelled in the end. The card list is translated in english, french, italian, spanish and german. Besides this english set i have spanish cards in my possession and iāve seen german and italian cards, french ones iāve never seen but i donāt have any doubts french ones wouldnāt exist. Since the languages include so many european ones iām not sure if the set ever got published in US or if it was an exclusive set for european countries, especially since the set was printed in UK according to the booster box. My english booster box has pack prices printed on it but it only has scandinavian currencies mentioned so my guess is that either they made different booster boxes in different marketing areas or the english cards were only sold in scandinavia and other languages in their respective countries, but that would leave also UK out of the places where it was published which would sound odd to me.
The set consists of 47 pokemon cards and 13 base cards (or magic match-up cards and master cards as the set states) so 60 cards in total and when you combine a pokemon with itās type base or with certain cards itās trainer base they form names of attacks or other words. Simple mechanics but usually so are the best things in life I included in photos all the pack arts and also a card list since there is one in every pack, + quite damaged empty booster box i have.
Hopefully at least some of you find this interesting, i myself really like non-tcg cards and itās always pleasant to see what kind of variety they bring in collecting pokemon!
These are really cool! Great information and history on them. Can you provide a couple examples of cards that are switched around so we can see how the messages change? Like latias on the background you used for rayquaza or similar.
@nish and @lyleberr thanks for your kind words! I was kinda hesitant about posting this since it was my first bigger thread here and the set was very different from what people usually admire here!
And unfortunately the message doesnāt change, thatās what i first tried when i got these cards but i guess the planning of the lines would have been too complex, lol. So thereās only 13 āmagic messagesā, one for all base cards, and if you try to connect wrong cards it just gives you smudge.
I have some of these cards! My very small local grocery store had these and it was so surprising for me to see then carry some Pokemon product that I kept buying them back then. I still have them
Looks like I have 16 cards overall so not so many but I remember trading some to collectors who collect cards of a certain Pokemon so thereās that. As these cards donāt seem to be that common. The Rayquaza sits in my Rayquaza binder collection
Well itās still more than 25% of the set and yeah, these may be real hidden gems for some single pokemon collectors, even though for singles i feel like the that certain pokemon is completed only after getting the right base card for it too
So I found an image of the box they came in and I believe every country received the box in English and then only the cards were in different languages. Based on the 6 different translations there are for āpackā I would say they were released in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Dutch.
PS: After lot of searching I found the first image of a german Mewtwo magic message and it was for sale!! For .50 cents!!! I instantly bought it and awaited it anxiously, so imagine my surprise when the letter arrived ripped open and nothing insideā¦ Someone stole it during the shipping process thinking it was expensive or something. Really disappointed, I paid only a total of 2 euro including shipping so I donāt care about the money but I would have no problem paying 10 times that for the card. Such a shame and back to .
Thanks for photo! I have to get my box when i have little time and check if it is similar of if thereās any differences, dutch is new language for me since the set list only has 5 languages in it, but iām anyway leaning more and more in only 3 actual released languages (which would make my grimer mini set complete so canāt complain). But sucks to hear about your mewtwo card, it always is annoying when something pricy gets lost but iāve always been even more pissed when something super niche gets lost when i canāt really be sure if i ever bump into one again
Yeah, its too weird that we dont see even a single italian or french card. Could it have been that it was supposed to be released in the 6 countries but the set was cancelled?? That would also explain the very few that can be found in german, spanish and frenchā:man_shrugging:. I wonder why these companies didnt keep track of their releases, I mean Merlin Stickers and Topps are big companies, there must be some info hidden in their records or something.
Iām thinking there might have been for example a release in waves where english got released first and other languages after that, and when the set didnāt sell as well as hoped the print runs for german and spanish were left small while the rest of the languages got cancelled completely, would explain why and how much we see the languages we see
) so i decided to go for it. But I really like the unique design which differs from all the other pokemon cards, the set consists of transparent lamin cards which makes it possible to stack them. I had to take the cards out of my binder since it was practically impossible to take photos of transparent cards in black binder pages but still taking photos of them was real pain since i had quite a severe covid few months ago and my hands still shake a lot after that.
I included in photos all the pack arts and also a card list since there is one in every pack, + quite damaged empty booster box i have.
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