Pokémon TCG launching in mainland China

General
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Maybe it’s time to continue learning Chinese. Haven’t practiced in 4 years though…

Might be because I’m searching untranslated on my phone, but are the set lists out yet? Gotta see how many Eeveelutions to add to the list of existing cards and which ones to actually pick up.

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Sorry! I’m in the US.

I’m sure that identifying fakes will be easy in-hand, but given that no one knows what packs and boxes will really be like, I’m hoping to buy as officially as possible to start.

Looks like Oct 28 is release day. For the Taiwan/HK market there would be pre-orders available, so I was hoping someone would have seen/heard something about that. The first sets will entail quite a learning curve!

Btw, I’m really interested to know what will happen to naming and not just the character system (trad-simplified)…

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There are already a lot of Chinese shops sell on EBay, so I’m expecting them to start putting up the new product as it gets closer to release. At least that’s probably as official as you can get, unless you find a middleman in China who’ll go to the store for you.

As for names, I think some names might change, but not every one. I think in 2020 they announced that some names would be changed but I’m not 100% on that.

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Noticing a lot more Chinese buyers purchasing Japanese slabs on eBay lately. Has anyone else noticed an uptick?

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Have had some yes

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So if you look closely in the official page:

You would notice a link to the Pokemon official store in T-mall:
https://baokemengwj.world.tmall.com/

Which is accpeting preorders as we speak:
https://detail.tmall.com/item_o.htm?id=684907473455 (packs)
https://detail.tmall.com/item_o.htm?id=685195910588 (starter deck)

T-mall is a Taobao subsidiary so any middleman specialized in Taobao and takes preorders would work. Have fun!

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What may be the market impact to the traditional Chinese cards that are already released and going forward? Seems like the release of simplified Chinese cards may spark more demand for English, Japanese, and traditional Chinese.

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Is the next modern collecting meta going to be traditional hànzì vs simplified hànzì cards? Traditional FTW as far as I’m concerned!

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This is very helpful. I just heard about the release on Pokebeach I think. I was wondering about the official site, so I appreciate your sharing. TMall should be easy to buy from, so that’s great.

As for other posts, I’m really interested about the fate of the traditional cards, but I think traditional is far more beautiful, so I’m hoping those survive and thrive. Nothing wrong with a niche, right? That said, 1.4 billion people make simplified a necessity and I’m glad that Pokemon is trying to make a serious move (even if the pack art doesn’t suggest a lot of special effort!)

In terms of naming, I’m curious because of the ways that, for instance, Minecraft terms in traditional and simplified are sometimes so different. Not a TCG, but an interesting reference point.

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Thank you for sharing the T-Mall link. This release reminds me of the Thai release but granted the customer base is much larger. I wonder what the rationale was to have a singular pokemon per box.

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Each of the three boxes contains just three types of Pokemon (grass, fire, water etc) to make deck building easier for players, also potentially good for sealed drafts.

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If you’re talking about MTG’s recent announcement of no longer printing Traditional Chinese cards, I would say not to worry, I believe the production of Traditional Chinese cards will still remain the same after launching Simplified Chinese sets. Here are the reasons:

  1. Pokemon is a multimedia franchise, so they can attract potential customers from games and anime and don’t have to purely rely on TCG players.
  2. Customers in Taiwan and HK is leaning more and more towards localized products. In the 90s there is a negative cycle between content (especially game) providers and customers going on in those places in which providers don’t want to spend money localizing (software issues, parallel imports overwhelming the market, etc.) and customers getting used to foreign contents because there were no translated copies. This is no longer the case these days, and customers would consider localized contents more.
  3. In addition to 2., it is definitely not a good decision to release text-heavy products in Simplified Chinese in Taiwan and HK. Political preferences aside, the difference between Traditional and Simplified characters is so huge that people native in Traditional Chinese will still run into troubles reading Simplified characters without extra learning.
  4. By projecting from the size of official events (qualifier counts, distribution numbers of prize cards, etc.), we know that Taiwan and HK has the largest player base among the southeast Asian regions where TCG is managed by TPC.
  5. Simplified Chinese wouldn’t catch up on Standard regulation any time soon (rumor has it that the first SWSH set wouldn’t be out until April 2023, when the rest of the world is entering SV), and this is assuming if all the necessary content review and/or registry process with the authorities went through without delays, which nobody can guarantee.

So no Traditional Chinese prints won’t be cancelled, enjoy what you’re currently enjoying and don’t worry too much. You should instead worrying about having more cards to add into your collection!

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Didn’t know of this existing topic.

Agree they will go for English cards. As for Japanese cards, I’m not so sure… But I foresee English cards (especially vintage) will see new tremendous demand and new price increases in near future.

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Hope you are right Steve!

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Oh I’m not worried at all. As I said, just interested. I’m also a historian of modern China, so I love seeing the macro picture play out in all of these interesting niches (Pokemon, MTG, Minecraft). I study patriotic boycotts of the early 20th C, and it’s an interesting moment for Pokemon to expand to the mainland!

I did not realize that the player base in Taiwan/HK was so high, though I know anecdotally that 7-11s etc have been selling out and leagues are full. That’s good to hear.

Also very interested about the printing location and print quality of the upcoming mainland cards, but I’ve got my orders in (thanks to E4) so hopefully I’ll find out soon!

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According to my research on pricing per pack, the simplified Chinese version will be printed in Japan. The curious thing is the Korean version which I always believed was printed in Japan, but apparently I am wrong. It is not possible that the price is lower than the Japanese one.

Pack price
Pack price793×209 5.71 KB

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I’m curious to see the set lists when these get released (which i didn’t find yet) since this will affect so many people’s single pokemon / language collections. I’m ofc interested in seeing did my slime boys make the cut in this wave so i could get them as examples of language in my collection :stuck_out_tongue:

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Just saw an update that this massive set is going to include cards from Hidden Fates. Hopefully there is a little something for everyone!

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Are there set lists out?

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I don’t think so. Just a handful of cards revealed