Vintage Flip Coins
Flip coins were an accidental interest of mine. I have many memories of these coins knocking around drawers, boxes, and sometimes even inserted into binder pages during the Pokémon heyday. So few people played the actual game, they served no purpose to collectors, and they were barely a step above the damage counters — or even the box decks came in — but something about them speaks to me.
Undervalued, under appreciated, under-documented, vintage flip coins are one of my personal interests that I’ve taken quite far.
Like most of my collection, these coins cut off around 2003 — just as Generation II concluded.
Stagecoach’s List of Confirmed Coins
Thread Seeking Additional Info on Unverified Chansey
Storing them has always been a little awkward. They don’t stay still and I’ve given up in trying to keep them up-right. I love the album I keep them in though, which I think is really classy.
I believe at this point that this is a complete collection of Generation I+II flip coins, unless some surprise undocumented mystery surfaces. That is currently the case with this unknown Gold Chansey — this mystery persists! I have a few other tokens in the back of the book just for posterity, but they’re not an official component of this album.
Feb. 2024 Update: A new coin has been found!
Materials from the Pokémon League
Generation 1
Generation 2
The Pokémon League stuff is a forgotten history. So much material was printed and distributed, but it was all consumable or disposable. Very little of it is left, and not a lot of what is left is documented. I’m really grateful for archivists like @HumanForScale, who runs Pokumon.com, because these kinds of preservation efforts will someday result in the only evidence this stuff ever existed.
I keep an eye out for League stuff, including copies of their missives and communications. This stuff has no real market value, but it’s Pokémon history and I take a lot of satisfaction in collecting it.
In the thread linked above, there’s some fun facts about how some WotC cards were distributed — like how they ran out of Birthday Pikachus. I love those little stories, and they overlap a lot with my promo collection!
“Game Boy” Meowth Black Star Promo #10
This is my favorite card, or “Signature Card” - if you will. I like this card for a bunch of reasons.
- It was (and is) really uncommon for a non-holo Japanese Promo to get printed with holofoil in when released internationally. This is one of the only ones in the original WotC Black Star Promos to receive this treatment.
- This was the only card released in English with the “GB” symbol, making the card a unique release in the west. While Japanese promos often had different set symbols, or no set symbols at all, the WotC Promos all had the distinct Black Star Promo emblem as their set symbol. Usually the alternate set symbols from Japanese releases were not preserved anywhere on the western release of the card, but for some reason it was included here in the card art. It broke pattern to include it at all and this was a strange place to put it.
- This card coming as a pack-in with a Game Boy game made the card expensive if you were an 8 year old. You had to convince your parents to buy you a Game Boy game to get it and this meant you were definitely only getting one copy. You can always get more booster packs, but no guardian is going to buy their kid multiple Game Boy games to get duplicates of the card inside.
- Meowth was only depicted in its more feline posture for a short period of time before the anime-style of the Pokémon really took over. Meowth was the only true “regular cat” and its posture and mannerisms in this brief period remains my favorite depiction of the creature.
- The Pokémon takes up a large percentage of the card art, something that was not common in this era. Usually you did not get a big close-up of a Pokémon like this.
- Prior to the Neo sets that gave some Pokémon like Magnemite and Houndour a moment in the sun, a holographic card for a Pokémon that was not fully evolved was really novel.
I can keep listing reasons I love this card but I’ll stop there. It’s just a very personal card for me that I’ve always really loved.
About 2 years ago, I decided to try to get this card in “perfect condition”. At the time, only Beckett offered higher-than-10 grades. I set my attention on a Black Label Meowth and definitely did not get one. At the time of this writing one does still not exist. It is unlikely a Black Label for this card will ever exist.
When CGC started grading cards, someone with a lot more means than me was sending cards to them in huge quantities and got back a Pristine 10 with three 10 subgrades. It was arguably the highest grade the card had yet received, so I bought it from the collector. CGC has since abandoned these grades and I had the card reholdered to match its new grading scale and label.
This copy of the card is not a “perfect” print. It’s close, maybe as close as is possible to obtain, but it was the first Meowth to receive a premium grade above the standard 10 scale. I don’t know if there will ever be a perfect grade of a perfect candidate or verifiably flawless example of this card, but I have this one in the meantime.
This card represents “the hunt” to me - the endless quest in Pokémon to find special things just for you. It’s the crown jewel of my collection.
TAKING A BREAK HERE!
