Yeah the more I go through things the more obvious it is, if this isn’t the clearest example I don’t know what else I can show people. The Topsuns have the later corrected height and weight for Charizard which again makes it impossible to be the 1st printed:
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I completely agree with your other comments and found sources thus far, and imo the order is Bandai Carddass → No Rarity Base Set → Topsun No Number Blue Backs. But as for the 70.5kg instead of 90.5kg above, the 70 could simply be a typo. We for example also have a Drowsee card instead of Drowzee in the English EX FireRed & LeafGreen set of 2004, even though all Drowzee are correctly spelled in the sets before and after it. Mistakes and typos happen sometimes.
And although it has already been said a few times before, the ©1995 copyright dates on the Topsun cards (or any Pokémon card for that matter) doesn’t mean a thing. On the English (non-Shadowed) Base Set cards it also mentions “©1995, 96, 98 … ©1999”. The first date is the license date of Nintendo, the second the release date of the set. Japanese Base Set cards don’t have any copyright date at all. Topsun cards have only the License date. It varies, and that it varies isn’t all too uncommon. The only date that’s important, as others have already mentioned, is the release date.
Another example of why copyright dates on the cards themselves doesn’t mean a thing:
The Build-A-Bear Workshop stamped Snorlax from the Flashfire set has a copyright date of ©2014 (which is the date the set was released in), but this stamped card itself was released more than FIVE years later in August/September 2019:
Maybe they were already working on designing the Topsun cards in 1995; maybe they had already printed some in 1995. The same could be said about the Bandai Carddass or No Rarity Base Set. They also were designed and printed way before they were actually released.
Regardless of what happened behind the scenes, Topsun was released in March 1997, so it comes after the Bandai Carddass set of September 1996 and No Rarity Base Set set of October 20th, 1996 (or Pikachu & Jigglypuff CoroCoro Comic promos of October 15th, 1996).
(But regardless of this conclusion, feel free to continue the discussions about which were PRODUCED first in the factories. It’s pretty interesting to read through all these pieces of history and documentation. 
Maybe we can dig up some pre-released data on the Bandai Carddass and No Rarity Base Set cards as well somehow?)
Greetz,
Quuador
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@quuador , Awesome info I agree! I actually went through all the 1995 and 1996 corocoro comics there is no Pokemon mentioned at all in 1995, here is the first advertisement of Pokemon in Feb 1996 (Released Jan 1996). Pretty cool:
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There were also collector cards contained in the Pokemon Kid’s boxes that were released by Bandai in October 1996.
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I just came across this as I was researching. I literally wrote soomthing so similar to your post yesterday in the most recent post for this debate… It blows my mind that you wrote this 4 years ago!! And way more detailed seeing as though i was struggling to remeber specific things and explaining them. Im on my phone but i was trying to tag this post into the newer post. I know im not suppose to bump old threads but can one of the devs please put this OP into the new post? Sorry and thank you!!
@pfm could you do that zoom in thing for topsun cards and see which one was made fist? Like you did with the test prints? I did read the article you posted about it but imma be honest a lot of it kind of went over my head. But could you theoretically do the same thing with these cards?
I don’t believe you can since offset printing won’t have the MIC dot codes - that’s for commercial laser/ink printers.
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Okay cool
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Topsun is the first cards to be released around same time. regular english and non english pokemon / pocket monster
Topsun came out in the year 1994-1995 school year for me.
All the kids played.
PSA screwed everyone. The blue backs are from 1995. The green backs of top sun are from 1997. Yes, Topsun did date them 1995 still in year 1997.
Bandai cardass was the off brand pokemon that noone wanted. All the kids used to say get ur carddass out of here. My school bet decks and cards.
The Topsun can be considered one of the first japanese cards released. The blue backs.
They had an english version too in year 1995, and non english. There was like three decks come out in 1994-1995 school year. The topsun japanese and the japanese and english poecket monster/pokemon version. Those three decks were considered legit by all the kids, because they said nintendo copyright.
The original pocket monster / pokemon from nintendo with just say 1995 at the bottom with a first edition first printing. No, 95 96 98 crap. They look very close to the 1999-2000 wizards cards, but the 1995 originals are brighter yellow.
Its not a debate. The topsun cards are like one of the first japanese cards released blue back from 1995. Green backs are 1997 they still say 1995.
Did you read this thread?
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