What are the most obscure cards you know of?
They could be 1 of 1s, or perhaps something more common but with a strange backstory.
For example, was there a random Pidgey Promo distributed during a two hour window in August 1999 where you had to first solve a rubix cube whilst blindfolded on a unicycle in the jungles of Sumatra?
Post your most obscure card stories here!
Thanks
Parallax
6 Likes
To quote myself from a related thread: What are some cards with ~drama~ surrounding their official releases?
Unlimited edition Japanese World Championship Pack cards:
Unlimited edition World Champions Pack cards:
… Irrelevant backstory: TL;DR: I collect Pikachu & Seviper.
So why was this card so hard to find? Well, let me break it down for you. Let me start with the 1st edition version of the set, which although not too hard to find were pretty short-printed as well:
The 1st edition version of this set was only available for purchase online
On top of that: it was only available for a two week period (June 15th to July 1st, 2007)
On top of that: it could only be bought by Japanese players
On top of that: it was TCG-wise a pretty bad set, so not a lot of players bought it
On top of that: it was released near the end of the TCG season, so they could only use the few usable cards for little over half a year, before they were out of rotation again
On top of that: the Seviper is a Rare, and unlike a lot of other sets, the non-Holo Rares had the same pull rates as Holofoil Rares, ex Ultra Rares, and even the Jolteon/Vaporeon/Flareon gold stars
On top of that: Seviper isn’t a very popular Pokémon to collect, so less likely to be put up for sale than the Pikachu
This information above is for the 1st edition version, though. For unlimited edition it’s even worse, which is why it’s not surprising it took so long to find this dang card:
90%+ of all World Champions Pack cards out there in auctions/bulk/lots are 1st edition, which is saying something considering the 1st edition versions were only available for a two week period, and could only be bought online by Japanese players.
On top of that: the unlimited edition World Championship Pack packs/boxes could only be bought at the 2008 Spring Battle Road event. This event was supposed to be held at five different locations for a week long period.
On top of that: due to bomb treats, three out of five locations were completely cancelled.
On top of that: those remaining two venues only went through their initial two days instead of entire week, before they were cancelled as well.
On top of that: numbers 4 to 7 of the previous list apply here as well.
I’d be surprised if more than a handful of unlimited edition World Champions Pack packs/boxes were sold in that two-day period of the two 2008 SBR events, making it one of the rarest Japanese sets that exist, most likely only overshadowed by the unlimited edition E1 Base Expansion Set (of which I’m still missing the Pikachu (EDIT Feb. 2022: not anymore , and which were only given as random decks at some early day events from what I’ve heard (EDIT: Feb. 2022: they were also consolation prizes for certain lotteries) - although unlike the WCP, the unlimited edition E1 isn’t available as full set; only a handful of cards from the E1 set were printed and distributed through those decks and events).
The five venues of which only two were continued due to bomb threats and were shortened, are the same as the ones of the Cynthia’s Feeling’s Battle Road 2008 promo that was already mentioned by @stagecoach in the main post.
Stamped French (and Italian) SM190 Detective Pikachu promos:
On May 8th, 2019, the Detective Pikachu movie was released in cinemas in France. People received a non-stamped Holofoil SM190 Detective Pikachu promo when visiting.French Detective Pikachu movie DVDs and Blu-Rays , only sold at E.Leclerc stores in France. Both the DVDs and Blu-Rays were released with an error however, since instead of the intended French copies, it could contain English, German, French, and Italian copies at random. Since these special editions were only sold at a single type of store, and because of this error, this stamped French SM190 Detective Pikachu promo took me quite a while find, and is probably one of the rarest French Pikachu cards, despite it being a pretty recent release. Eventually I was able to buy my copy from an Italian seller, so I’m pretty sure the Italian versions of these special DVDs and Blu-Rays contained the same four languages of this stamped promo at random. The English and German versions of these DVDs and Blu-Rays contained the intended languages, so those are pretty common to find.
As I mentioned in the quote above, I eventually managed to find my French copy from an Italian seller. Funny and ironically enough, I bought my Italian stamped copy from a French seller.
Greetz,
22 Likes
We also had a similar topic very recently. Maybe it is also relevant.
Ever since finding an unlimited expedition e1 zard ive beocme fascinated by how obscure some cards and sets can be.
What do people on here know about obscure set and cards we can all keep our eyes peeled for and maybe find one, one day
Cheers!
3 Likes
I’ll take any chance I get to ramble about Filler Cards. While obscure themselves, it jumps even more when you switch languages.
In my experience, Portuguese takes the cake with the largest variety of exclusive variations. All of the below cards came from Portuguese products and have not been seen with other languages.
Other languages do get some unique ones too with the “Left Blank” lanuage variations. Less of a language is printed means less errors get out making them more rare/obscure.
Jumping to English, to this day I want to know why this card ended up on sheet to then accidentally release. So different from most other Filler Cards. Might take the obscurity trophy for Fillers.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk
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Alph Lithographs from the HGSS sets
Sorta common, but pretty obscure. The legend cards and primes get all the attention instead
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Oh, sorry about that. Should i delete this thread?
No no, what I meant was, maybe you can also find some useful info with reference to your current thread.
Cheers!
6 Likes
These are fantastic. I never knew about them. Thanks for sharing!
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Super interesting background on the Champions Pack. Thanks Quuador
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Without jokes, @Quuador ’s knowledge is so impressive, well-structured and well-documented (with several resources and evidences) that I started using his contributions as verified bibliography at the time of building card articles in WikiDex (Spanish Pokémon Wiki) …
This one comes from the Spanish article of “Feraligatr Constructed Started Deck”
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Here is another somewhat similar thread. What is the most unknown and unique card you know about?
lyleberr:
Lol.
Greetz,
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What is the most unknown and unique card you know about?
Thanks for the compliments. 
